Writing on a Topical Language Issue Practice

Britain inherently sexist?

It’s been difficult to witness America fall prey to vicious capitalism over the past two years, electing a man with a blatant disregard for individuality. Misogynist, racist, pig- a few of our favourite slurs used by you guys in the comments. 

Are we justified in our judgement? Are we, Britain, any better?

Why don’t we begin with one of the first things we are taught to do, speak. Have you ever said Mrs and Mr? Does this sound strange to you? That’s what we thought. Standard English has opted to place males above females in order of precedence. Following this men are usually placed before women in text. For example The Sun implements address terms such as the widow, the wife, the daughter, weakening their involvement or power in the article. However this may be due to the significantly lower crime rates within females, with women only accounting for 19.6% of arrests in violent crime.

The possessive ‘my’ is frequently used by males to refer to the women in their lives. Undermining their purpose and value, even if they have higher status than their ‘husband’. The term ‘man’ is persistently used to refer to both men and women, eg mankind.

Linguists Zimmerman & West have extensively researched mixed sex conversation and came to the conclusion it’s there that lies the evidence for male linguistic domination. Boys have the balls to interrupt and less inclined to worry about conflict in conversation, using direct orders “do this…” “I want…” “I need you to…”

Further research suggests this difference in language use is because of the gender separation between children at such a young age. Girls interact with girls and boys with boys- therefore develop their language amongst themselves, adopting similar features.

After assessing the issue we believe it may be more probable that context is everything. Men have historically had more power, wealth and influence and this is reflected in the words we use.

To Say the English Language is Sexist is Outdated

Some people, be they linguists or laymen, may make the claim that the English language is inherently sexist, and I would like to take a bearing on how much of this audience believes this as well, so please may I have a show of hands; who agrees with this statement?

Now, of course this may depend upon somebody’s definition of sexist. A very small percentage of men may argue that we allow women to speak at all, and that is a generous gift - a charity which females should be eternally grateful for. However, ignoring those people, as we should generally try to achieve, if we go on the dictionary definition of sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

As a sort of bearing upon English, I have some examples of European languages: German, French and Spanish, all of which have gendered language - masculine, feminine and, sometimes, neutral words are the ways in which these languages classify words, with different articles to describe them. For example, instead of my, German has meiner, mein and meine. This linguistic detail has logically been described as sexist before - with the word ‘kitchen’ being feminine and the such - and the omission of such a feature from English is already a point firmly in the ‘not sexist’ zone. 

Though, in terms of how the English language may be perceived as sexist, there are some features such as how legally, a gender neutral subject is often referred to as ‘he’, which dismisses the possibility of a female or other gender. This has been argued as sexist before, and people are pushing to make so-called ‘legalese’ gender neutral, which would require the extensive rewriting of innumerable documents, and who really wants to go through thousands and thousands of pages of legal nomenclature to look for individual ‘hes’ and ‘hims’. Not to mention the multiplicity of ambiguities which may be caused by this rewriting. As well as this legal gender bias, there is also professional bias, as one may label a female actor an ‘actress’. These gendered forms provide an unneeded distinction between the males and females of the profession, and many people are attempting to get them to go the way of ‘doctress’ and ‘victress’ which, I’m sure many of you will never of heard, unless you are a victorian time-traveller. After many of these have been gotten rid of, a fraction of what once existed are currently used.

While those factors may have covered the discrimination area of the aforementioned definition, these may cater more to the stereotyping factor, as we can ask one of the audience what they first think of when I say the word ‘mistress’ 

Pick audience member to answer, hopefully they answer with “a secondary sexual partner”.

Exactly, but when I ask the same of the male counterpart: master, you will most likely think of a professional who has perfected his practice, which is extremely problematic, as we see female terms for states become more and more negative such as ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’. This is yet another reason for which people want to rid this language of gendered terms, and I completely agree, for, in order to language a part of your country’s equality, you must first make equality a constituent part of your language.

We are trying, and managing largely, to achieve this, what with gendered terms being slowly and surely driven out of the country, as well as legal language being slowly perfected and the already successful omission of gendered words. This is exactly why I believe that while the English Language is not void of sexism, it is not forward thinking to criticise it as such, as we are getting much better.

Experts suggest that the english language may have a subconscious bias toward the male gender. Research over the last 50 years has been pointing more and more in this direction, and the public becomes more and more aware of these inequalities.