• Avoid Stylistic Clunkers
• Special Terms for Women
• Gender-neutral Language Links
• Discussion Topics:
  • "Gender-netural" vs. "Non-sexist"
  • Gender and Grammar in the Bible

Avoid Stylistic Clunkers (and even worse mistakes)

"Every man for himself."

The original is what sailors or soldiers would cry out when the ship was going down or the battle was lost.

I can imagine using this image deliberately, because I wished to evoke an image from a bygone era (when soldiering and sailoring were male occupations). To change the phrase, then, would divorce it from its historical context. To many, however, that's precisely the point of gender-neutral language -- to change the way we speak so that we don't perpetuate the unjust value systems that shaped our language.

	Every man or woman for himself or herself  Every man/woman for him/her self
The above examples are quick fixes that avoid sexist language, but the result is stylistically awkward.
	Everyone for him or herself.
	A bit awkward, though.
	Everyone for yourselves.
	If you really needed to shout this while on board a sinking ship, the people around you would probably forgive the slight awkwardness.

The best solution is probably to avoid this cliché altogether.

"No man is an island."

	Nobody is an island.
	None of us are islands.
Both of the revisions above are efficient ways of removing the gender-specific language, but the original is actually a quotation from Meditation XVII by John Donne, better known as "Send Not To Know for Whom the Bell Tolls: It Tolls for Thee." If you rewrite Donne's observation, you may end up sounding ignorant and silly to a person who knows the source of the quote.  If you simply avoid clichés, you won't have to deal with this issue.
	"No man is an island, but whenever he stretched his great girth out onto his raft Bill sure looked like one." When used carefully, this phrase might still have value. In the above sequence, the quote applies only to Bill.

"Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System"

	Allan Greenspan, Chairperson of the Board of Governors...
	Allan Greenspan, Chair of the Board of Governors...
The word "Chairman" is part of Mr. Greenspan's title.  You can't go around changing other people's official titles just because you don't like the phrasing -- it would be inaccurate to call Greenspan "Chairperson of the Board". You are, of course, free to refer to Greenspan according to his official title ("Mr. Chairman") but refer in general terms to "being the chair" rather than "being the chairman".
	Allan Greenspan, who chairs the Board of Governors...
	The chair is Allan Greenspan.

Grammatical Playfulness

The following experimental and activist techniques remain too awkward for general use.

	Womyn (alternative spelling avoids using "man")
	I think s/he is standing outside of his/her house.
	A writer should sharpen her pencils daily.
Whenever I encounter these forms, I keep imagining all the more elegant, less obnoxious alternatives.  Your opinion may be different. More widely accepted strategies for avoiding sexist language include pluralizing ("Writers should sharpen their pencils") or alternating the gender of the people in your examples.

"... to boldly go where no man has gone before."

The opening credits of the Star Trek used the gender-specific term "man," but in the late 1980s, a TV sequel changed the text to read "where no one has gone before."

	...to boldly go where no man or woman has gone before.
	...to boldly go where no one has gone before.
The revision solves the gender problem, but introduces a new wrinkle -- one that really only matters in the specialized world of science fiction, but which makes an interesting case study. The word "man," while seeming to exclude women, was intended to carry the specific idea of "humanity" or "people from the planet Earth." (Aside from Mr. Spock, the Enterprise had a human crew.) The mission of the original Enterprise included the phrase, "to seek out new life, and new civilizations." If the Enterprise explores "where no one has gone before," then how could it find "new life, and new civilizations"? While human beings ("man") might not have been there before, obviously the new life and new civilizations are already there.
	..to boldly go where no humanoid, android, robot, intelligent gaseous cloud being, non-corporeal energy entity, holographic projection, psychokinetic thought-pattern reflection, or anything else has gone before.
	Okay, that solves the technical problem, but it's not exactly a snappy opening narration.
	...to boldly go where we have never gone before.
This revision aims to retain the epic, stately language of the original, seems more personal than "no one," and avoids using terms such as "human" or "mankind" might exclude the non-human crew members.

Special Terms that Refer to Women

	poetess; stewardess
	The preferred terms are "poet" and  "flight attendant." For some reason, "actress" is still in general use, as are highly specialized words such as executrix and dominatrix.  Don't even think of words like "doctress" or "reportress."
	female poet; lady doctor
	Aside from the clinical tone of "female" and the elitist tone of "lady," these terms imply that a poet or doctor is usually male.  Even if that were statistically the case, this usage is biased.
	woman pilot, woman photographer
	If the term "woman pilot" is acceptable, why does "man pilot" sound so funny? As with "female poet" and "lady doctor," the adjective "woman" still implies that the term is ordinarily male. A related problem is the formation of plurals of the "woman [noun]" variety, which are commonly given as "women [noun]s".  For example, we often read of "women doctors" or "women athletes."  The English language simply does not form plurals this way.   singular incorrect plural comment (for what little it's worth) makes me mad elevator operator elevators operators It is incorrect to make the adjective "elevator" plural just because we are talking about more than one noun. The proper plural would be "elevator operators". woman pilot women  pilots Why then is it common practice to make the adjective "woman" plural when we are talking about more than one of the nouns that it modifies? We don't expect a child psychologist to be a child; why should we expect a woman doctor to be a woman?

People will still go on talking about "women lawyers" and "women supreme court justices," so I might as well just give up.  A far more important point is that when push comes to shove, grammar changes to meet the needs of its users.  Many English speakers feel that we need new ways to handle the thorny issue of gender. 

Perhaps the current fuss over gender in language has something to do with the fact that English has been without the concept of grammatical gender for centuries now, so we think of gender personally, not grammatically.  In Latin, the word for manliness was feminine in gender; in German, the word Mann means "a person, or a human male," but man [lowercase] means "one" or "you." 

I have no idea what to do about all this.  In my own writing, I am very careful to avoid sexist errors on the one hand, and grammar errors (like those mentioned above) on the other.  Still, writing this web page actually forced me to become a bit more of a traditionalist, since I noticed how easy it is to avoid sexist mistakes without introducing grammatical or stylistic ones. 

Links on Gender-neutral Language

• What are Editors For?
  "There may be a need for an intelligent guide through the sex/race/ethnicity/disability/etc. minefields of current English usage. Unfortunately, it's not Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing (Indiana University Press, $15.00 cloth, $5.95 paper), by Marilyn Schwartz and the Task Force on Bias-Free Language of the Association of American University Presses. The task force is a committee of nineteen women and two men; I'll call them collectively the Bias Persons." -- Dennis Dutton
• Gender-Free Pronoun FAQ
  The author advocates the invention of new words such as "ey" instead of "he/she".  I think ey raises some good questions, even if ey doesn't answer them all.
• Non-Sexist Language
  Those people who think I am not strong enough on this topic should visit this site.  We both agree that people should be allowed to write however they want, but this author has some fun showing ridiculous uses of "man," as in the title of a research paper: "Development of the Uterus in Rats, Guinea Pigs, and Men."
• Several websites recommend using "Ms" "for all women when the parallel Mr. is applicable," though the different documents vary in the degree to which they acknowledge that some women might actually prefer "Miss" or "Mrs." (I'm not sure whom to credit.)

Discussion: "Gender-neutral" vs. "Non-sexist"

I chose "Gender-neutral Language" as the title for this web page.  Another option was "Non-gender-specific Language", which I rejected as being too long (one often sees it written "Non-gender Specific Language", but all three words form a single, hyphenated term modifying the word "language").   I could have titled my site "Gender-fair Language" or "Non-sexist Language," terms used on some of the web pages I listed above, but I felt those were emotionally loaded titles, since the implication is that you are unfair or sexist unless you write in a certain way.  Of course, to many people, that's precisely the point!

Is it the job of the writing teacher (or grammar handbook author) to effect social change by advocating a certain way of writing? 

Discussion: Gender and Grammar in the Bible

To remind everyone that grammar exists in the world, not outside it, take a look at these arguments for and against using gender-neutral language in new translations of the Bible.  What's your opinion?

• Inclusive Language Bible Translations (pro)
  "If translations that fully include women in God's agenda for humanity 'neuter' the biblical view of gender difference, then the Bible was written more for men than for women, and any talk of male/female equality is nonsensical. But if God's Word is for women and men equally, then translating it accordingly does not 'neuter,' render 'unisex,' or otherwise obliterate God-ordained gender differences."
• What's Wrong with Gender-Neutral Bible Translations? (con)

It's a long page, but here's a good representative snippet:

"Turning the Bible's singulars to plurals can give meanings the translators did not expect. In Psalm 19, a familiar verse says, 'But who can discern his errors?' (19:12, rsv). The nrsv [gender-neutral Bible] changed this to, "But who can detect their errors?" Readers will rightly look at the preceding context to see who "their" refers to -- and find this sequence: 'The ordinances of the Lord are true....More to be desired are they than gold....in keeping them there is great reward. But who can detect their errors?' (verses 9-12).  The nivi similarly has, 'Who can discern their errors?' On a normal reading, the proper way to understand these English statements is that God's ordinances have errors, but they are difficult to detect."

Note: The above claim refers to the inaccuracy of the translation once the word "his" has been pluralized to "their" -- but that can be fixed without accepting the above author's other arguments against gender-neutral bible translations.

Dennis G. Jerz
Fall, 1998 -- originally posted
04 Nov 2002 -- updated
15 July 2004 -- minor edits

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Why Gender-neutral Language Matters

In 1972... some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like "Social Man'', "Industrial Man'', and "Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like "Society'', "Industrial Life'', and "Political Behavior''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females.... The authors concluded, "This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female" ([Miller et al. 1980, pages 19-20], quoted by Spertus; emphasis added).