An end to the language/gender debate?

I WOULDN’T BE any kind of writer if I wrote articles criticizing people’s grammar; I would be some kind of public proofreader, the type of person that begs for an ass-kicking.

Last Monday I criticized Cheryl Johnson for constructing an argument based on erroneous observations about language, but I think the point was missed because she may have seen it as an attack on her grammar.

I would like to start by saying that Ms. Johnson’s articles suffer no lack of excellence in their style, grammar or diction, and I think she always manages to get her ideas across.

If anything, I made an error by making my own article far too wordy and not expressing the connections between my ideas clearly enough.

That being said, I still maintain that the subjugation of women is the result of misguided cultural values, not our language.

The particular misguidance I spoke of is what I call our “me first” culture, wherein every person puts his or her own personal happiness before that of others; this, I argued, is what causes the disintegration of families, common morality, and respect for other people, particularly women.

Furthermore, I still maintain that making changes in the structure of our language will not have any significant impact upon the values of those people who speak it.

As shown last week by my examples from ancient Greek and Hebrew culture and language, no significant connection can be made between the degree of freedom granted to women by society and the amount or type of recognition they receive in the grammatical structure of their language.

Now Ms. Johnson brought up an interesting and important point in her article of last Friday. It goes something like this: the very words by which men and women are addressed in society are laden with oppressive patriarchal values.

Calling a woman “Ms.” tells men that she isn’t “taken,” and calling a woman “Mrs.” is like a cattle-brand that tells other men to back off. Why shouldn’t men have the same restrictions?

Also, the bride’s taking of her husband’s name at marriage reinforces her status as a possession. Why not combine last names, so that when Jane Johnson marries John Smith, they become Jane and John Johnson-Smith?

These are excellent points, but before I go on I would like to point out that the proposed solution to the second point is silly if we consider it within any context longer than one marriage. Consider that Jane and John have a little boy, James Johnson-Smith. James grows up and gets married to a woman named Jenny Jones-O‘Neill (or even, in a probable future, to a man named Jerry Jones-O‘Neill).

Will they then become James and Jenny Johnson-Smith-Jones-O‘Neill? The second generation of marriages in this new system will be cursed with names that sound like law firms; I shudder to consider what the third and fourth will have to endure.

That could be taken to its own illogical ends, but Ms. Johnson’s point about “Ms.” and “Mrs.” is a very good one and cannot be pushed away.

That the letters m-a-n appear in the word “woman” is a linguistic artifact; “Ms.” and “Mrs.” are part of a real social structure and were instituted for the specific purpose of indicating a woman’s marital status, and the fact that a man’s marital status doesn’t have to be indicated within this social structure strengthens Ms. Johnson’s argument that it is a device made to reinforce patriarchal society.

This is the real dividing line in our debate. This is where language and society meet, and as such we cannot rely on simple arguments of logic anymore but must utilize value judgments; that is to say, we can only now decide whether we are for or against patriarchy and the patriarchal institution of marriage.

Personally, I find that patriarchy and monogamous marriage are exceedingly important to the success of Western culture and offer women and men the best means of assuring their freedom and happiness while at the same time contributing to a stable society.

I find these issues fascinating, but I will personally not be taking any more space in The Collegian’s pages to address them. If any of you find you have something more to add I think it would be great if you wrote a letter to the editor or used Collegian’s online message-board. I would be glad to read and respond to your opinions online.

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