Jerz > Writing > Grammar and Syntax >
A phrase like “a good policeman knows his duty” unnecessarily excludes women. While it might be excessive to read history as if every general use of “man” is overtly sexist, today’s culture calls for alternatives.
Using “police officer” instead of “policeman” is easy, but replacing every “his” with “his or her” will sound tedious in a longer document.
| Gender-specific | Gender-neutral | Comment |
| Dear Sir, | Dear [Specific Name or Title] | Okay, so “Dear Sir or Madam” avoids the problem of exclusivity, but it’s stuffy and awkward. If an internet search doesn’t turn up the person’s actual name, try “Dear Admissions Committee,” or just “Admissions Committee Members”. |
| policeman | police officer | The same goes for salesman, businessman, etc. Note that in some contexts, calling Sally Jones “a successful businesswoman” or referring to “Congresswoman Mary Smith” is perfectly acceptable. Still, such terms may subtly reinforce the idea that it is unusual for a woman to have that job. |
| gunman | shooter | The term loses a bit of specificity when “gun” is removed, and in fact journalists do regularly use “gunman” — presumably after a legal official has identified a suspect as male. When the gender of the person with the gun is unknown, writing a story about a “shooter” is better than referring to “the gunman or gunwoman” over and over. |
“Every man for himself.”
I can imagine using this image deliberately, because I wished to evoke an image from a bygone era (abandoning ship, giving up the battle). To change the phrase, then, would divorce it from its historical context. To many, of course, that’s precisely the point of advocating gender-neutral language; if we change the way we speak, we will change the way we think, so that we don’t perpetuate the imbalanced cultural view that shaped our language. Still…
| 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. | |
| Correct, but still 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 the 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. 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 with his great girth stretched out on his inflatable 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. | |
“Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System”
| Stanley Fischer, Vice Chairperson of the Board of Governors… | |
| Stanley Fischer, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors… | |
| The word “Chairman” is part of Mr. Fischer’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 Fischer “Vice Chairperson of the Board”. You are, of course, free to refer to Fisher according to his official title (“Mr. Vice Chairman”) but refer in general terms to “being the vice chair.” | |
| Stanley Fischer, who serves as vice chair, … | |
| Janet L. Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. | |
| On the organization’s official website, Fischer is listed as “Vice Chairman” but his boss, Janet L. Yellen, is listed as “Chair.” I might prefer the parallel nature of “chairman/chairwoman” or the simplicity of “chair,” but my wishes don’t determine what other people’s job titles are. | |
3) Grammatical Whimsy
The following experimental and activist techniques remain too awkward for general use, though I do find it fascinating when one of these terms takes root.
| Womyn (alternative spelling avoids using “man”) | |
| I think s/he is standing outside of his/her house. | |
| A writer should sharpen her pencils daily. A reader should keep his eyes open. | |
| Whenever I encounter these forms, I keep imagining all the more elegant, less obnoxious alternatives, but I also enjoy the creativity. (In recent years, I have noticed this tendency being mocked by people who use “s/h/it” instead of “she/he/it”.) Is all this politically correct nonsense, or a usefully creative response to a social problem? The answer you get depends on whom you ask. 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.”
Though the 1960s Star Trek TV show was famously progressive for putting a black female officer on the bridge, its opening narration used the word “man” to mean “a person.” How can we improve this?
| …to boldly go where no man or woman has gone before. | |
| …to boldly go where no one has gone before. | |
The above revision (from the 1980s series, Star Trek: The Next Generation) 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.
| |
| ..to boldly go where no humanoid, android, robot, intelligent gaseous cloud being, non-corporeal energy entity, holographic projection, or psychokinetic thought-pattern reflection has gone before. | |
| Okay, that solves the technical problem, but it would hardly be a stirring monologue. | |
| ..to boldly go where we have never gone before. | |
| Nobody from Star Trek ever asked me but, I’d prefer this version, which aims to retain the epic, stately language of the original, it’s more personal than “no one,” and it avoids terms that might exclude the non-human crew members. (Here’s hoping some future iteration of Star Trek will use this version.) | |
| stewardess (dated); waitress (iffy); actress (still current) | |
| New professions are not creating feminine forms; there are no “reportresses” or “computer programresses,” but the terms for older professional categories are still in flux. The term “stewardess” is out of date; a female server who is waiting on you probably won’t correct you if you call her “waitress,” and the term “actress” is still current (although MTV’s award of “Best Actor” to Emma Watson in 2017 is an innovation that may catch on). | |
| woman pilot, woman photographer | |
| Because it is not common to refer to a “man pilot” or “man photographer,” these terms imply that a pilot or photographer is usually male. Even if that were statistically the case, this usage is biased. | |
| female pilot, lady photographer | |
| The clinical tone of “female” would probably be acceptable in a scientific study. The word “lady” carries an elitist tone, which would not be appropriate if you were simply talking about a photographer who happens to be a woman. Further, the term “lady photographer” might also refer to a person who photographs ladies. | |
| women pilots, women photographers | |
| 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. One girl genius. Two girl geniuses. One woman pilot. Two woman pilots. | |
| pilot, photographer | |
| If the person’s gender is important to the point you are making, go ahead and mention it in a different sentence. If Sally Jones is flying my plane, she’s the pilot Sally Jones. Calling her the woman pilot Sally Jones, or the lady pilot Sally Jones, or the female pilot Sally Jones calls a lot of attention to her gender. I can tell by the name that she’s female.If you are writing about someone with name your aren’t sure your reader will be able to place as male or female, just throw in a pronoun: “Sitting in the pilot’s seat, Afaf Hadad adjusted her headset.” “The winning photographer, Chris Jones, impressed the judges with her creativity.” | |
Many English speakers feel that we need new ways to handle the thorny issue of gender. Our culture has changed faster than our language.
No matter what I say, people will still go on talking about “women lawyers” and “women supreme court justices.” And while I may wince a little — deep inside — when I hear someone say “Whoever it was left their car running,” A far more important, more lasting point is that when push comes to shove, grammar changes to meet the needs of its users.
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 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.
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? Can language ever actually be apolitical?
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.” Words and Women, Casey Miller and Kate Swift, pp. 23-34.
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Can you post more examples. We have an exam on effective word choice.....and i dont know what to use.
eg. All men can contribute....blah blah blah
*I dont know what word to replace "men".....Lol i use humanity, person, people and human:P.....*
This page demonstrates that sometimes, the solution involves rewriting, rather than simple word substitution. Any of the words you suggest would avoid the sexism, but "all men can" could also be "everyone can."
Etymology is right. This trying to gender neutralize everything in the English language is rubbish; much to do about nothing. Instead of conducting a manhunt for the gunman, we now need to conduct a womanhunt for the gunwoman, should the perpetrator be a she? I understand this writer's point of using alternatives, but then we're simply shelving real (and useful) words that are part of our language and tradition. C'mon now! The last time I checked, even the word "woman" ended with m-a-n. What should we do about that?
All the above examples make a lot of sense to me except for the "gunman" Vs "shooter" one.
When one considers the fact that less than 3% of mass shootings are perpetrated by women (see link below), it feels pretty safe to assume that the shooter is male. Mass shootings are an overwhelmingly male dominated phenomenon and often specifically motivated by a hatred for women. Trying to gender-neutralize shooters, while seemingly coming from a position of non-discrimination, actually runs the risk of contributing to the erasure of the sexist motivation of many mass shootings. Killers are frequently portrayed in the media as mentally ill or religious extremists, but even when they have an extensive history of sexist violence, this aspect is seldom discussed.
reference: https://www.statista.com/statistics/476445/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-gender/
I am not sure if I could even name one female mass shooter.
I teach my journalism students that they should never make any assumptions, and that includes assuming the gender of anyone they write about. This is only really important in a breaking-news situation. Once the authorities identify the gender of a suspect, reporters will know what gender-specific terms to use.
I teach my students not to make assumptions, even if they're statistically as safe as the one you present. Most soldiers and chess grandmasters are men, but some are women. Most rapists are men, but some women are convicted of rape. Most victims of sexual assault are female, but some men are victims. Most nurses and kindergarten teachers and single parents are women, but some are men. And some people are gender-nonconforming in other, more complex ways. I teach my students "verify or duck," so if they don't actually know someone's gender, it's just not good journalism to assume.
Regarding the erasure of sexist motives... there are plenty of low-quality websites that capitalize on legitimate journalism, republishing stories under sensationalized headlines, either to drive traffic or, in the case of the Russian bots, to widen social divisions within America.
Meanwhile, please take a look at this blog post that I wrote in order to address a student's compliant about a headline that stigmatized mental illness.
When the AP ran a story about a man who shot up a bar, they ran a picture of him looking scruffy in a DMV photo and identified him as an ex-Marine who was living with his mom. When a Chinese website republished the story, they ran a photo of the man in his military uniform, and identified him as a former machine-gunner suspected of having PTSD. Both stories mention that the man was visited months ago by a mental health team that was worried he might have PTSD but they cleared him; but the Chinese headline referenced only the fact that he was suspected of having PTSD.
My point is that the misleading headline and the old photo of the suspect in his military uniform were carefully chosen by the operators of the Chinese website. They piggybacked on the Associated Press reporting and crafted their own first impression, even though the stories themselves were almost identical.
https://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2018/11/09/my-student-calls-out-a-mental-health-stigma-in-a-biased-headline-but-heres-why-we-shouldnt-blame-the-media/
If you find a story that seems to blames mental illness or religious extremists, check the source -- it may well be a low-quality site publishing commentary on legitimate stories published by legitimate news sources. If instead it's a legitimate news source publishing a biased story that exploits mental illness or religious extremism, write a letter to the editor.
If you once got stuck in a poorly maintained elevator, I’m not going to spend any time defending elevators in general, but I won’t join you in attacking all elevators. I’ll just ask you what elevator I should avoid.
My point is that if you have found biased coverage, please don't blame it on "the media," blame it on the specific source that published a biased story.
Greg, thanks for your comment. We can "search for the shooting suspect" and avoid the specific problem you mention. ("Womention"?) My section on "every man for himself" addresses the question of traditiion.
I gave a red X to the term "womyn," classifying it as a whimsical over-reaction. But anyone is free to ignore my advice, or post a web page that gives different advice.
'A phrase like “a good policeman knows his duty” unnecessarily excludes women.'
No it doesn't. The word "man" and suffix "-man" are gender-neutral, referring to all members of our species, both male and female.
If you really want to be gender-neutral, refer to females as "men", and refer to males as "wermen".
I don't think anyone would actually refer to a specific female police officer as a "policeman". In conversation would you point to a woman and say "Yes, that policeman standing over there."? I doubt it. You would likely say "police officer" or "officer". I don't think a 5 year old girl understands that "the word “man” and suffix “-man” are gender-neutral, referring to all members of our species, both male and female." Certain words like "policeman" can create gender stereotypes in the mind of a child. There's no need to put these stereotypes in young minds. Men are also affected by gender in language, for example, there's no need to say "male nurse John Smith" and point out that he is doing a stereotypically female job.
Murse? I mean, there are Mannies.
Policewoman?
Etymology, go ahead and apply for a job using language like you suggest. Or write advertising copy, or write a letter to the editor. Let us know how that works out for you.
(Janile Evans posted the following comment on an older version of this page. --DGJ)
Definitely the issue among men and women are constantly debated since there are already a lot of jobs which were basically only for men in the past but are now work of the women in today's time as well. The nouns that we use to describe something can be oppressive to other people and may anger them. Therefore the use of neutral words are a must in every conversation.
I like how it used my eyeball picture that I use on forums. I don't know how that happened, but I think it's neat :D