Sheila Gibbons on Sexist Language

Sheila Gibbons wrote a piece of commentary for Women’s E-News about that pressing problem facing women — the rise of sexist language in the media.

Gibbons writes that,

Despite years of effort by women’s groups, linguists and educators to encourage speakers of English to adopt words that are gender-neutral, they note, and I note, a lapse into lazy terminology that excludes women. This slippage is occurring even at major newspapers where their executives should know better.

What sorts of things does Gibbons think go beyond the pale? Here are several quotes from news reports that upset Gibbons,

“For seasoned newsmen, trained to see through political spin, the spectacle is cringe-making.”

Personally, “cringe-making” is a far bigger offense than “newsmen” in that sentence.

“There’s nothing to connect to the reader or enable him to feel a real part of a public debate.”

“. . . most scientists and philosophers were still trying to draw distinctions between man and beast . . .”

“. . . a number of other scientists have been working to erase the man-animal distinction . . .”

“Journalists losing touch with the man on the street.”

Gibbons is also unhappy that post-9/11, the words “lawman” and “fireman saw a resurgence as well as the fact that even 30 years after attention was first brought to sexist language, people still talk about “manning battle stations” or talk about the achievements of “mankind.”

She does come up with a few examples that, on their face, are exclusionary (though she doesn’t provide enough context to be certain). She describes, for example, a news report of an accident in which a man and a woman were injured where the man is named early in the story and the woman is simply referred to as his wife for several paragraphs before his name is given. But, for the most part, Gibbons comes across as the sort of person who reads the newspaper looking for even the most trivial of apparent gender bias. Really, do we need to force journalists to start talking about the difference between “persons and beasts”? Yuck.

For someone so concerned about exclusion and accuracy, it is interesting that Gibbons herself throws around a term without offering any evidence. According to Gibbons,

Some of these usages stem from habit — others are stubbornly adhered to by those who scorn repairs in the fundamental biases of English, believing it’s a silly exercise proposed by “feminazis.”

Despite the voluminous quotes she offers as evidence of sexist language, Gibbons doesn’t even bother to offer a single quote where a journalist, editor or anyone else in the media asserts that efforts to curtail sexist language is the work of “feminazis.” I assume she does so because no serious person has made that claim, but it is useful to throw out there to smear anyone who might disagree with her views on language as an extremist.

Apparently sexist language is out, but rhetorical chicanery is definitely in.

Source:

Mankind, other lazy terms, return to news pages. Sheila Gibbons, Womens E-News, March 11, 2003.