Gender-Inclusive Language and "Man"

The following discussion of gender-inclusive language began in Sept. 2000
with a question about how to deal with a student who wishes to use "man"
as a synonym for "humanity" or "human being."  Part 3 consists of
yet another discussion of gender-inclusive language, this one quite
brief, from January 2002.  See also a related discussion from July
1995 in the file 'Gender-Inclusive Language.' For additional WMST-L
files on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

PAGE 1 OF 3

Hi,
This pedagogy question is in the category of -- teaching something one
has taken for granted to such a degree that one is speechless as to how
to explain it--
I found myself faced with student skepticism as to the significance of
the critique of "man" as a term for humanity--  The students thought it
was nit picking and no big deal and everyone knew "man" meant human beings..
Does anyone have any compelling strategies for deconstructing this one??

thanks in advance,
Kathy Miriam
kmiriam  @  cats.ucsc.edu

You might ask them to substitute woman for all those places where they read man
 and ask them about that experience.  How does it change their perceptions of
 what they are reading?  Could woman just as easily be used?  Why or why not?
 Also, you might pick up Aileen Pace Nielson's article on "Sexism in English";
 although it's about 12-15 years old, it's still relevant.  She talks about the
 ways in which language is gendered.  You might have them list the ways in which
 they picture such professionals as postmen, firemen, etc. -- I bet they come up
 with male pictures.  Then you can interrogate that.
Alyson Buckman
Austin College

I use the appeal-to-authority strategy, i.e., statements by APA, MLA, NCTE,
etc. etc., that have published statements about the use of inclusive language,
i.e., avoiding sexist language. Most composition handbooks have such
statements, and I'm sure they're available on the web with a simple search.
Just this last week I had occasion to rely on authorities, semi-joking with my
students that as director of women's studies I recognize that some are likely
to think I just might be biased, so if they turn to page XX, they'll see that
there just may be something to the notion that language isn't neutral and man
really does mean man.

Just got curious and did a quick search. Here are a couple of places to look:

history of "man"
http://www.stetson.edu/departments/history/nongenderlang.html

huge variety of statements, including religious
http://www.mcn.net/~wleman/inclusive.htm

hostile to
http://www.adoremus.org/597-Femonics.html

can't quite tell, may be based on mla (mla's entry was a bad address in my
search)
http://www.otago.ac.nz/personnelservices/Policies/NonSexistLangGuide.html

resource list, with annotations
http://www.sunflower.com/~madfinch/pro/804/804b.html

ah, eureka  . . . apa online
http://www.niu.edu/english/nonsexist.html


jane.olmsted  @  wku.edu

If "man" really was generic, it wouldn't sound so ridiculous in the
following sentence:

Man differs from other mammals in that he has menstrual cycles instead of
going into heat, and he bears young which require nursing at his breast for
extensive periods during which they are essentially helpless.

As long as it's used as a marker to distinguish male from female, it can't
also be universal.

Max Dashu    <www.suppressedhistories.net>
International Women's Studies since 1970
 <maxdashu  @  lanminds.com>

>Does anyone have any compelling strategies for deconstructing [the
pseudo-genericity issue]??

Below is a great article on the topic (by a male, which seems to grab those
most skeptical):

Gastil, John. "Generic Pronouns and Sexist Language: The Oxymoronic
Character of Masculine Generics." Sex Roles 23, 11/12 (1990): 629-643.

Tamarah Cohen
e-mail: tamarahc  @  khc.kansai-gaidai-u.ac.jp

i've found it helpful to note that "all men are created equal" never
meant women; "put a man on the moon" never meant a woman;  "man's
conquest of [fill in the blank]" never means women...

similarly, that the language of human development purposefully
misleads--i.e. perhaps it is important to know that WOMEN invented
agriculture, textiles, medicine...

the more examples along these lines you can come up with, the more
likely the student is to understand that the term "man" is not as
"generic" as popularly advertised in the first place...

debbie <louis  @  umbc.edu>

In my Introductory Women's Studies classes, we look at the concept of
privilege early in the semester. As part of that we look at the
definition of privilege from the dictionary. While "we are browsing
the dictionary," I show them the definitions (in this order) for
woman, man, white, and black. I show each one on an overhead and have
them read it aloud to their classmates.They typically have strong
responses to what they read. Even asking women how they feel when
presented with how they seem to be defined (as well as for looking at
race) generates an interesting discussion. The issue of "reading too
much into it" often comes up, and I then challenge students to
identify "how one knows when s/he is reading too much into
something." That often becomes a semester-long challenge, they try to
come up with a checklist of sorts for knowing when one has "gone too
far." The fact that it is not easy to do is the real lesson here.

Hope this helps in some way. Good luck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   BRIAN R. JARA
   Lecturer & Undergraduate Advisor
   Women's Studies Program
   The Pennsylvania State University
   111 Willard Building
   University Park, PA 16802
   office: 814-865-1294    fax: 814-863-3578    e-mail: bjara  @  psu.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>Does anyone have any compelling strategies for deconstructing this one??

Jane Olmsted's excellent set of links will tell you far more than I could
about pedagogical strategy.  But part of the difficulty is that "man" has
worked its way into so many other words: for example, "woman" (from the Old
English "wifmon," "wife of the man"), and "human/humanity" (from the Latin
"humanus," which derives in turn from "homo," "man").  So substituting
"humanity" doesn't necessarily get around the problem ... I nonetheless
find it preferable to the generic use of "man," which strikes me as archaic
and outmoded.

Adam Jones

Adam Jones, Profesor/Investigador
Divisi=F3n de Estudios Internacionales
Centro de Investigaci=F3n y Docencia Econ=F3micas (CIDE)
Carretera M=E9xico-Toluca 3655
Col. Lomas de Santa Fe, C.P. 01210, M=E9xico, D.F., M=C9XICO
Tel. (525) 727-9800, ext. 2447  Fax: (525) 727-9872

Executive Director, Gendercide Watch <http://www.gendercide.org>
Personal website: <http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/adamj>

There was a lot of research done in the 70's that showed that when the book
says "man" people do in fact picture a man, not a generic person (What
exactly does a generic person look like, anyway?  : )  ). For example,
grade-school children were asked to draw pictures to illustrate narratives
about the activities of "prehistoric man", and the overwhelming majority
drew male figures. Sorry I don't have specific citations.
__________________________
Clare Holzman
330 West 58th Street, 404
New York, NY 10019
phone 212 245 7282
fax 718 721 9313

holzmr01  @  med.nyu.edu
__________________________________________________

In 1973, Mary Anne Ferguson began her Introduction to an anthology entitled
IMAGES OF WOMEN IN LITERATURE with the following anecdote:

    A famous surgeon was a passenger in a car driven by his teenage son.
"I'll drop you at the hospital, Dad," said the young man.
    "Fine, son," said his father.  Those were his last words; a wildly
careening convertible crossed the center strip and ran headlong into the
car.  At the emergency room the father was pronounced dead on arrival; the
son was taken for emergency surgery. The surgeon called to the scene
reached for a scaplel but paused:  "I can't operate," the surgeon said;
"this is my son."

This seemingly impossible riddle is, of course, resolved if we just take
into account that surgeons can be women, and, in this case, the surgeon is
the boy's mother.  I still use this "riddle" in classes and it works nearly
every time.  As Ferguson goes on to note in her Intro, most of the people
who "get" the riddle are the ones who've heard it before.  That is still true.

I don't think you will ever completely silence the skeptics.  But I always
think it's great when a student protests.  I'm interested in raising
consciousness not silencing opposition. When a student protests, she is
raising doubts others have but may not feel free to express.  The ensuing
discussion allows more doubts to emerge and the underlying ideas about the
power of language to construct our worlds to develop more fully.

-----------------
Temma F. Berg
Co-coordinator of Women's Studies
Associate Professor
Department of English
Gettysburg College
717-337-6753
tberg  @  gettysburg.edu

>Jane Olmsted's excellent set of links will tell you far more than I could
>about pedagogical strategy.  But part of the difficulty is that "man" has
>worked its way into so many other words: for example, "woman" (from the Old
>English "wifmon," "wife of the man"), and "human/humanity" (from the Latin
>"humanus," which derives in turn from "homo," "man").  So substituting
>"humanity" doesn't necessarily get around the problem ... I nonetheless
>find it preferable to the generic use of "man," which strikes me as archaic
>and outmoded.
>
>Adam Jones

A couple of common etymology mistakes here. The "wif" of "wifman" does not
mean "wife" in the sense of "female spouse"; it simply means "woman."
Chaucer wrote about the "wyues of the parisshe." (This sense still occurs
in a few of archaic terms such as "fishwife" and "old wives' tales,"
neither of which have anything to do with marital status.) "Wifman" just
means "female person."

The Latin "homo" does NOT mean "man" in sense of "adult male"; it means
"man" in the sense of "human being." This is an excellent example of how
people are confused, even about other languages, by the generic use of
"man" in English (and its equivalents in several modern Europe languages,
in which the same shift in meaning occurred).

The Latin for "adult male human being" is "vir." It is cognate the old
English word "wer" (as in "werwolf").

Howard Scott


Scott & Aronoff Translation and Editorial Services
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
mailto:alterego  @  alterego.montreal.qc.ca

RE: Kathy Miriam's posting:

Below are citations for some studies that provide empirical evidence and/or
theoretical discussions re: generic "man" is not generic. Collectively they
provide overwhelming evidence that the generic masculine is not without
consequences in terms of what we visualize, what we remember, what we
expect, and what we do. (These studies are cited in various texts that I
have used for psych of women courses; the textbooks themselves - one by
Rhoda Unger & Mary Crawford, one by Margaret Matlin, one by Hilary Lips -
also provide excellent support for this topic).

However, if the evidence accumulated (and this is certainly not an
exhaustive list of studies) doesn't impress your students, perhaps trying
some of the demonstrations embodied in the studies may be more successful.

Cheers,
Deb Hume
Stephens College


    Hamilton, M. C. (1991). Masculine bias in the attribution of personhood:
People = male, male = people. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 15, 393-402.
    Henley, N. M. (1989). Mountain or molehill? What we do know and don't
know about sex bias in language. In M. Crawford & M. Gentry (Eds.), Gender
and thought (pp. 59-78). New York: Springer-Verlag.
    Crawford, M. & English, L. (1984). Generic versus specific inclusion of
women in language: Effects on recall. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research,
13, 373-381.
    Khosroshahi, F. (1989). Penguins don't care, but women do: A social
identity analysis of a Whorfian problem. Language in Society, 18, 505.
    Schneider, J. W., & Hacker, S. W. (1973). Sex role imagery and use of
generic "man" in introductory texts: A case in the sociology of sociology.
American Sociology, 8, 12-18.
    Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978
    Hamilton, M. C. (1988). Using masculine generics: Does generic He
increase male bias in the user's imagery? Sex Roles, 19, 785-799.
    Ivy, D. K. et al. (1995). The lawyer, the babysitter, and the student:
Inclusive language usage and instruction. Women and Language, 18, 13-21.
    Matlin, M. W. (1985). Current issues in psycholinguistics. In T. M.
Schlechter & M. P. Toglia (Eds.) New directions in cognitive science (pp.
217-241). Norwood, NJ: ABLEX.
    Switzer, J. Y. (1990). The impact of generic word choices: An empirical
language investigation of age- and sex-related differences. Sex Roles, 22,
69-82.
    Wilson , E. & Ng, S. H. (1988). Sex bias in visual images evoked by
generics: A New Zealand study. Sex Roles, 18, 159-168.
    Gastil, J.  (1990). Generic pronouns and sexist language: The oxymoronic
character of masculine generics. Sex Roles, 23, 629-643.
    Briere, J., & Lanktree, C. (1983). Sex-role related effects of sex bias
in language. Sex Roles, 9, 625-632.

At 11:51 a.m. 21/09/00 -0400, Howard Scott wrote:

>A couple of common etymology mistakes here. The "wif" of "wifman" does not
>mean "wife" in the sense of "female spouse"; it simply means "woman."
>Chaucer wrote about the "wyues of the parisshe." (This sense still occurs
>in a few of archaic terms such as "fishwife" and "old wives' tales,"
>neither of which have anything to do with marital status.) "Wifman" just
>means "female person."

The correction is appreciated and well-taken.  I should, in fact, have
remembered this, since as I recall the Old English for adult males also had
a prefix along the lines of "wif-".  (Was the term "waep-man"?)  Only
subsequently was the prefix dropped, and "man" (adult male) and "man"
(person) rendered equivalent.  This is an interesting process in itself, of
course, and one that in its apparent sexism makes using the generic "man"
today seem rather suspect.

>The Latin for "adult male human being" is "vir." It is cognate the old
>English word "wer" (as in "werwolf").

This might also make us suspicious of using the word "virtue," which has
the same root!  :-)

Thanks again for lending your expertise to the discussion --

Adam Jones

Adam Jones, Profesor/Investigador
Divisi=F3n de Estudios Internacionales
Centro de Investigaci=F3n y Docencia Econ=F3micas (CIDE)
Carretera M=E9xico-Toluca 3655
Col. Lomas de Santa Fe, C.P. 01210, M=E9xico, D.F., M=C9XICO
Tel. (525) 727-9800, ext. 2447  Fax: (525) 727-9872

Executive Director, Gendercide Watch <http://www.gendercide.org>
Personal website: <http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/adamj>

Dear Kathy,
         In my introductory level textbook, Issues in Feminism, 4ed, it is
treated in various ways: specifically in Chapter 2 (The "Human" and the
"Male": A Preliminary Distinction); from the point of view of perspective
in Chapter 1 ("Bias in Academe"); and in a very effective article by Dale
Spender in Chapter 8, "Disappearing Tricks."  It's a fundamental issue.
Good luck.  Sheila Ruth

I forwarded this query to a colleague, who responded as follows. She asked
that I share it with the list.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Jessica Fields
Sociology, CB# 3210
UNC-Chapel Hill
27599-3210
919/962-1007

---------- Forwarded message ----------

To: Jessica Fields <jfields  @  email.unc.edu>

Please forward this to the listserv:

I have been teaching sex and gender courses for many years and have found
that most students are resistant to believing that
_seemingly_ benign terms like
"mankind," "you guys," and "freshman" matter. They can see problems with
slurs such as "whore" or "slut," but not male so-called generics.

The article that works best, in my experience, is Douglas Hofstadter's
1986 "A
Person Paper on Purity in Language," Pp. 159-167 in _Mathematical
Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern_, edited by DS, New
York: Bantam. In that article he writes a parody of sexist language by
subsituting "white" for "man" in language: we'd then have freswhite,
chairwhite, you whiteys, etc. Few students would ever
think of using such racist words, yet women are supposed to be flattered
by "you guys," etc.

I have also written a short piece for the Orange County Rape Crisis Center
Newsletter called "Why Sexist Language Matters." I'm happy to send it to
anyone (snail mail) if you send me your address. In that piece I show how
sexist language reinforces OTHER types of gender inequality (thus showing
why it's important). I also explain why many WOMEN prefer the male-based
"generics."

I also have written (with two former students) a website about sexist
language: www.youall.freeservers.com (NOTE that this works best on
Internet Explorer, not Netscape, thus far). At that site you'll be able to 
download a business-sized card that explains the problems with the term "you
guys." I leave these at restaurants, etc., when I have been "you guysed."

Sherryl Kleinman
Department of Sociology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3210
(email: kleinman  @  email.unc.edu)