Envisioning gender neutrality

Defying unequal distributions of power embedded in language

“WOMON” AND “WYMEN” are two different spellings of the words woman and women. Some men and women have used these altered spellings in order to raise our awareness that not all is equal in the language of girls and boys.

However, the usage is so insidious that we don’t readily see it.

For instance, the word man or men is present in the terms woman and women. But no where do we see the reverse.

We have no equivalent, because male terminology reigns.

For instance, we call boys and girls, as well as men and women, guys, as in, “see you guys later.” But, and I’ll use a term that is fading out, gals, to illustrate my point.

Girls and women can be called gals, but never boys and men. See where I am going with this?

Why is it okay in mixed company to say, “you guys,” but not, for instance, “you gals?”

Another place where we see a dominance of male language is in the word “mankind,” which is used in such a way that it includes males and females.

But we could never get away with including males in the term, “womankind.” Or even in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community, lesbians and gay men can all be “gay,” but never can gay men be lesbians.

The point is this; the female sex is definitely still “the second sex,” as Simone de Beauvoir put so well. If we were, women wouldn’t have to fight so darn hard to get recognition.

Let me give you one example. I was once hired onto a team of men, who did some psychological screening, administered psychological tests and then scored them.

Of course, the interpretation was left to the psychologists. Anyway, I held equal title with my co-workers and did the same job as they did.

But as soon as I was hired, my boss asked me to take care of the filing and shredding of paper.

I told him I was willing to do it, as long as other members of the team also filed and shredded, or at least did some comparable menial job.

Don’t get me wrong. This is an important job. How would anyone find anything otherwise?

I have the utmost respect for the people who do it. But I was not hired for that purpose.

And it was because I was the only woman on the team that I was asked to do it.

My boss was a good guy and while he was a little taken aback with my challenge, he did ask my teammates to share the task.

This was an important challenge, because my job would have largely become one of going behind the men and keeping track of all their paperwork, which was their expectation when a “woman” came on board.

I constantly had to deflect the role they wanted me to assume, while still being a “player.”

That is no surprise to any of us who have struggled to rise up from within a “mankind” world and make our own stamp as womon.

Perhaps with enough effort, we will find a way to create a new language that shows the female sex equality.

But it does take effort.

Even though some of the textbooks, for instance, are replacing the term “mankind” with the term “humankind,” those who are determined to take us from “The second sex” to the equal sex will have to trek up a path that is long and arduous.

But perhaps the journey will end and we will be able to declare the term coined by de Beauvoir obsolete and relegate it to an archive somewhere.

I think she would like that.

Comment on this story in the Opinion forum >>