(incorporating the International Ex-Fetus Association)

Sexist Language: Does Satan Think She's Male ?

Copyright: Peter Zohrab 2001

1. Introduction

Many Feminists have argued that God should not be regarded solely as male. Some have even referred to God as "She". But I have never heard a Feminist refer to the Devil as "she". Why is this ? It is quite obvious that most Feminists are biased, one-sided, and anti-male. They only want the good things in Life to be female ! This evil one-sidedness makes some Feminists similar to Satan, in my view.

 

2. The Issues

Everyone in the Western World is probably by now aware of the standard Feminist line on "sexist language" -- in names for occupations, in particular. One example of this espousal by governments of the Feminist line on sexist language is the booklet "Watch Your Language". (New Zealand State Services Commission 1990)

 

This booklet suggests, for example, replacing the words on the left with the words on the right:

(and so on)

 

The main reason given for this enforced change of vocabulary is that using an occupational term with male overtones discriminates against women, by implying that it applies only to men. This apparently discourages women from applying for such positions, and it makes it less likely that anyone would hire them for these sorts of jobs.

 

The State Services Commission booklet cites research which indicates that males and females take more interest in job- advertisements if the occupational term is gender-neutral, than if it seems to include the opposite sex only. This is a fair argument.

 

But many of the occupations involved are not attractive to most women, so the name changes may seem to some people to be a waste of time, effort and money. It is not as if all mainly-male occupations are better paid and more attractive than all mainly-female occupations! A lot of them are dirty, dangerous, and poorly-paid. Many more men die in job-related accidents than do women. This, in itself, is a Men's Rights issue.

 

3. Double Standards

But the Feminist campaign to eliminate sexist language does not apply only to occupational terms. Words such as "chairman", "spokesman" (which often do not involve actual occupations), and even terms such as "chick" (referring to a woman) come under fire from Feminists. I have been carrying out my own campaign to eliminate the double-standard that some TV stations, in particular, operate under, as far as sexist language in general is concerned. I have written to broadcasting bodies, given talks at Linguistics seminars and at a Linguistics conference, posted articles on Usenet, and written a newspaper article on this topic.

 

Some stations avoided words (such as "actress"), that Feminists object to -- but they continued to use sexist words like "gunman", instead of gender-neutral alternatives, such as "gunperson", "gunner", or "shooter". If a word was derogatory only to mere men, then they were perfectly happy to use it. A large part of the appeal of most actors and actresses is in fact their sex appeal. In fact, I find it offensive to hear attractive actresses referred to as "actors", which is a term properly referring to males.

 

The word "gunman" denigrates all males, because it implies that only men go around killing people with guns. This is parallel to the word "chairman", which Feminists say discriminates against (all) women, because it implies that only men chair meetings.

 

The difference is that Feminists want women to be thought of as potential "chairpersons", and so on, but they are quite happy for only men to be thought of as potential "gunmen", because this word has negative overtones. Feminists often say that they only want equality, but issues such as sexist language make it obvious that this is a lie. Feminists are just a women's pressure-group, and they should be treated accordingly.

 

Here is a passage from the Feminist book, "Woman's Consciousness, Man's World", by Sheila Rowbotham (1973, Baltimore: Penguin Books):

 

"The language of theory - removed language - only expresses a reality experienced by the oppressors. It speaks only for their world, from their point of view. Ultimately a revolutionary movement has to break the hold of the dominant group over theory, it has to structure its own connections. Language is part of the political and ideological power of rulers." (pp.32-33)

 

Strange as it may seem, I agree with much of that passage. The problem now is that the language of Gender Politics is overwhelmingly the language of the Feminists. It expresses mainly the reality that Feminists feel that they experience. It speaks only for their world, from their point of view. They, with their Women's Studies Departments, their Feminist-dominated media, and their Ministries of Women's Affairs - THEY are the oppressors, as far as the politics of gender are concerned in modern western societies.

 

The point is that Society has seldom, anywhere, been nearly so monolithic or totalitarian that the rulers of the State (who have been, and still are, mainly male) also controlled the subcultures that controlled abstract theory. Society has usually been decentralised enough to allow at least some (usually a gigantic) degree of autonomy to the artists and universities, etc. that control theoretical language. So the oppressors that Rowbotham should have been referring to are the rulers of academic theory. And these have been increasingly Feminist.

Therefore, ultimately, the Men's Movement has to break the hold of the Feminists over Gender theory, it has to structure its own connections. Feminist language, with its embedded assumptions, is part of the political and ideological power of our rulers -- initially of the rulers of political theory in Academia, and now also, increasingly, of our political rulers as well.

Why do government agencies and the media order their employees to use words like "chairperson" and "slaughterperson", when they are quite happy to carry on using words with negative overtones like "gunman" ? The answer is that the "sexist language" agenda has been written by Feminist pressure-groups.

Feminists think it is OK to use a sexist word like "gunman", because the only people it disadvantages is men -- it makes it look as if all people who use guns aggressively are men. On the other hand, you can't say "slaughterman" or "chairman", because that discriminates against women -- it might make it look as if women were less suitable than men for those positions. How many women actually want to, or do have such occupations is deemed to be irrelevant. So it should also be irrelevant how many women actually use guns aggressively.

In many of the occupations involved, after all, very few women are ever likely to be involved, so the name change may seem to some people to be a waste of time, effort and money. It is not as if all mainly-male occupations are better paid and more attractive than all mainly-female occupations!

They don't seem to worry about a man being called a "hunk", however. Advertisers are terrified of Feminist pressure groups, so television is full of references to "hunks".

Seldom, if ever, do you hear slang words for women, such as "birds" or "chicks", on television. That is one example of the Establishment's double standard on sexist language. It is more than just a slip, or an accidental inconsistency.

Feminists in the Establishment are determined to prop up the myth that only women -- never men -- are oppressed in society. In New Zealand, for example, their influence seems to be strong in TVNZ, TV3, and the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

The Code of Broadcasting Practice bans the portrayal of people in a manner that encourages denigration of, or discrimination against sections of the community on account of sex. I wrote to TVNZ and TV3 to complain of the sexist use of the word "gunman" in one of their news programmes. I suggested that they should use the word "gunperson".

 

Both TV3 and TVNZ rejected my complaint. TVNZ said that the word "gunman" was simply factual and descriptive. The person who carried out the shooting did so with a gun, and he was a man. They said that they avoided words like "actress", "waitress", and "hostess", because the gender of the person was not relevant to the occupation. At no time did they try to explain why it was relevant to say that a gunperson was male, rather than female.

But it would also be "factual" to describe Audrey Hepburn, for example, as an "actress" -- but TVNZ had introduced a policy under which she would be referred to as an "actor". That is less factual and less descriptive than "actress", because Audrey Hepburn was a member of the acting profession, and she was also a woman.

TVNZ deliberately censored the fact that she was a woman, despite the fact that a large part of the appeal of most actors and actresses is in fact their sex appeal. In fact, I find it offensive to hear attractive actresses referred to as "actors", which is a term properly referring to males.

TV3 gave a rather confused argument for rejecting the complaint. But basically they said that few male NZers would have been denigrated by the use of the word "gunman", and that it was purely an "academic" argument. But the word "gunman" denigrates all males, because it implies that only men go around killing people with guns. This is just like the word "chairman", which Feminists say discriminates against (all) women, because it implies that only men chair meetings.

The difference was, as I have said above, that Feminists want women to be thought of as potential "chairpersons", but they are quite happy for only men to be thought of as potential "gunpersons", because this word has negative overtones. The whole policy on sexist language originated as an academic argument. The point is that, where it suited Feminists, it has been implemented in the real world.

I referred my complaints against TVNZ and TV3 to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. The form on which you do this gives you the option of asking to put your case in person, so I did make a request to present my argument face-to-face. This request was refused, with no reason given. The Authority then rejected my whole argument as irrelevant. Moreover, at the suggestion of TVNZ, it exercised its powers under the Broadcasting Act to rule my complaint out of order on the grounds that it was "trivial".

From its beginnings in early 1990 to early May 1993, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has dealt with 256 formal decisions. In every case, the decision has been signed by "Iain Galloway, Chairperson". What is obvious is that the Authority itself does not consider the question of sexist language to be trivial. If they did, Mr. Galloway would sometimes have signed himself "Chairman", sometimes "Chair", and sometimes "Chairperson". His absolute consistency on this point shows that the Authority took sexist language very seriously indeed -- unless it discriminated only against men.

However, I was glad to see on page 13 of the January 17, 1998 edition of the Listener an article entitled "PC come, PC go". It stated:

"Are the walls of Political Correctness starting to crumble -- even in that PC bastion Wellington ? A small but significant shift was noted at the recent Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in the capital. For the first four years of the awards, the premier individual prizes went to Best Male Actor and Best Female Actor -- in keeping with the official theatrical view that 'actress' is a sexist term. No more. When Herbal Bed star Michele Amas stepped up to receive her award, it was for Best Actress...."

Since I am the only person I have ever heard of who has mounted a campaign to get actresses called "actresses", I am bound to feel justified in taking some of the credit for this change.

 

4. Linguistic Capture

My starting-point here is a 1989 article by Janet Holmes, a well-known Sociolinguist and Feminist. The article, entitled Linguistic Capture: Breaking out of the Language Trap, attacked the alleged effect on people's thinking of "New Right" economic terminology, on the one hand, and so-called "sexist language", on the other.

This implied that the author and her readers were to be found towards one end of the political spectrum, and "sexists" and the New Right together near the other end. But there is no scarcity of Right-Wing Feminists. Feminism has been associated with the Left Wing because the Left tends to find categories of "oppressed" people under every bed -- not because of the logic of the respective ideologies.

Certainly Masculism, as I see it, could appeal to any part of the political spectrum. Once men are acknowledged to be oppressed (in some ways), I very much hope that those Leftists who oppose all forms of oppression will rally to support us.

Although Janet Holmes does not herself define the term Linguistic Capture in that article, I consider that Linguistic Capture is merely a special case -- applied to the field of propaganda and ideology -- of the creative act that any living being carries out when it modifies or sensorily processes its environment -- either sensorily, physically, verbally, or in whatever way. In this sense, artists "capture" their environments when they depicts them. Our eyes and brains "capture" a part of the environment when they interpret a drawing as being (in the famous example of optical illusions) either two black faces or one white candlestick. And a given scientific (including Linguistic) theory "captures" reality in a way that differs from the way that other theories do.

Despite the fact that my perspective is a Masculist one, I find myself in agreement with much of what Janet Holmes writes, for example:

"... the belief that language influences our perceptions of the world, that it affects the

way we view reality, and may serve to maintain and reinforce existing inequities

and imbalances." (page 18)

and

"There are escape routes. Alternative labels are available. There is not only one way of

describing the world, and we are not obliged to accept any one person's view of what is going on. Indeed one can reasonably argue that changing the language is a feasible strategy for altering people's attitudes and perceptions of the world."

and also:

"... the changes we make, such as the deliberate use of non-sexist terminology, are important choices which reflect a desire to challenge the political status quo."

and finally:

"... we need to be constantly vigilant that we do not allow unjust power relations to be

reproduced by an unthinking acceptance of a particular representation of reality. We need not be controlled and oppressed by the patterns of our language. We always have a choice. What is important is that we exercise it."

Naturally enough, I apply the principles and ideas just cited in a mirror-image sort of way from the way that Feminists do. Thus I view the term "sexist" (not in itself, but just in the way that it tends to be used to apply to anything that Feminists disapprove of) as serving "to maintain and reinforce existing inequities and imbalances."

Let's take an example from the mass media, which seem pretty much to be under the totalitarian control of the Feminazis. Early in 1990 there was a well-publicised case of a man in Canada who murdered female Engineering students at random because (so the news media informed me) he was anti-Feminist. Although he subsequently killed himself, my aim is EMPHATICALLY NOT to acclaim him as the first known martyr of the anti-Feminazi Resistance, or anything like that.

My point is that I heard another version of that news item on a subsequent news programme, where that man was simply and glibly described as a "sexist". Not then, and at no time did I learn anything that would lead one to rationally conclude that he was in fact a "sexist", as opposed to an anti-Feminist. The two terms were simply being used as equivalent. Nor did I ever learn WHY he was anti-Feminist, what HIS ideology was.

The existing inequities and imbalances of New Zealand society specifically, and Western society in general, whereby women are designated an "oppressed minority" (whereas they are in fact a privileged majority), are maintained and reinforced by the use of the term "sexist" to suppress the expression of anti-Feminazi opinions.

There is a lot of subjectivity involved in deciding when and where reference to sex and/or gender is appropriate or inappropriate. For instance, take the examples that Vetterling-Braggin ("Sexist Language: a Modern Philosophical Analysis". Totowa, New Jersey:Rowman and Littlefield 1981) uses to introduce the topic of Sexism:

"The claim that we usually are able to distinguish "sexist" from "non-sexist" sentences

is not unreasonable. For example, for the set of sentences

1) "Women make terrible drivers."

2) "She is a foxy chick."

3) "Some women drive poorly."

4) "She is an attractive woman."

it is likely that most of us would select 1) and 2) as 'sexist' and 3) and 4) as 'non-sexist'.

We would probably also consider as 'sexist' the statements made by virtue of using (i.e. writing, typing, saying, etc.) sentences 1) and 2), but those made by virtue of using sentences 3) and 4) as 'non-sexist'." (page 1)

I find myself in complete disagreement with her categorisation. Ministry of Transport and Insurance company studies routinely come up with the conclusion that young men are more often involved in car accidents than are other age/sex groups of the population. I do not imagine that anyone would argue that that conclusion is sexist. I doubt that Feminists would consider it "sexist" to say that young men make terrible drivers.

Similarly, I think that anyone is entitled to say that women make terrible drivers, if that is what they actually believe, without being accused of sexism. They may well be wrong, but they should not be intimidated from saying it. It seems to me quite likely that women, on the whole, tend to make different kinds of driving errors (probably less dangerous ones than young men make), and so some men might have a negative view of women drivers because the errors that they make are different from, and therefore more noticeable than the ones that these men themselves tend to make. The sentence,

3) "Some women drive poorly."

is not a true equivalent, as it lacks the implication that most, if not all, women drive badly, and also the emotive connotations of the word "terrible". One is entitled to feel and express emotion at the thought of people driving badly, because bad driving can be dangerous and lead to frustration and road rage.

Similarly, to categorise the statement

2) "She is a foxy chick."

as "sexist" is to ignore totally the obvious factors of style and context. To a man who is sexually attracted to a particular woman there may well be no other stylistically and emotionally appropriate way for him to express his emotions about her to his peers. It is simply ludicrous to assume, as Vetterling-Braggin appears to do, that this hypothetical male might just as well have said,

4) "She is an attractive woman."

A heterosexual woman might say that about another woman, but a heterosexual man would have to be exercising self-restraint and reserve to express himself in those neutral, quasi-objective terms. The attitude implicit in Vetterling-Braggin's approach appears to be that men should have, and express only those attitudes to women that women themselves have towards other women. This I find not only completely unacceptable, but also completely unrealistic (and actually "sexist" in itself !).

I think it is important to see how this term is used outside Academia, and for this we need look no further than a run-of-the-mill dictionary, such as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1974), which includes the following entry:

* sex.ism ... n : prejudice or discrimination against women.

The most interesting feature of this definition, from my point of view, is the fact that, unlike some Feminist academics, it does not bother making the token admission that "sexism" can work against men, as well as women. Thus, if I wanted to argue (for example) that it is "sexist" (in the sense of "discriminatory against men") to propose Employment Equity legislation without addressing the inequities suffered by men in society, then I would not only be wrong, presumably, but I would not even be speaking correct English, according to some dictionaries. I have not done a survey of dictionaries in this regard -- I expect they vary quite a lot.

I'll go back now to the second passage I quoted from Janet Holmes' article, which I repeat here:

"There are escape routes. Alternative labels are available. There is not only one way of describing the world, and we are not obliged to accept any one person's view of what is going on. Indeed one can reasonably argue that changing the language is feasible strategy for altering people's attitudes and perceptions of the world."

Two can play at that game. By using terms such as "Feminazi" and "Masculist", men can start to assert themselves and acquire some rights -- even in Western countries. The trouble is that Feminism, being essentially a form of organised nagging, puts women into a traditional, accustomed role, whereas it is a bit "unmanly" for men to attack women (even Feminazis) as I am doing. Nor is it very macho for a man to do the political equivalent of admitting that he doesn't wear the pants in his own home -- i.e. to admit that women are more powerful than men in Western societies. However, the Feminist agenda is open-ended. There is no limit to the ways that the status of men can be undermined in Western societies, unless men adopt similar tactics to the Feminazis. So we need more men who are man enough to put up with the backbiting and yapping of the curs who snap at the heels of anyone who tries to stand up for the legitimate human rights of men.

Now let's turn again to my third quotation from Janet Holmes' article:

"... the changes we make, such as the deliberate use of non-sexist terminology, are important choices which reflect a desire to challenge the political status quo."

The political status quo in the Western world in general is, to a large extent, a Feminist status quo. This can be seen by comparing it with the situation that prevailed a few decades ago.

I will conclude this section by heartily endorsing the sentiments expressed in my fourth and final quotation from Janet Holmes' article:

"... we need to be constantly vigilant that we do not allow unjust power relations to be

reproduced by an unthinking acceptance of a particular representation of reality. We need not be controlled and oppressed by the patterns of our language. We always have a choice. What is important is that we exercise it."

 

5. Power and Language

Elshtain (1982) is another Feminazi work on the relationship between power and language. She quotes, with apparent approval, the following passage from Rowbotham (1973):

"The language of theory -- removed language -- only expresses a reality experienced by the oppressors. It speaks only for their world, from their point of view. Ultimately a revolutionary movement has to break the hold of the dominant group over theory, it has to structure its own connections. Language is part of the political and ideological power of rulers." (pp.32-33)

In the context of Feminazism, however, this argument can be stood on its head: as the vast bulk of the theory on sexual politics has been developed by Feminazis, we can conclude from the above quotation that the sexual politics agenda is being set by Feminazis, and it is the Feminazis that are oppressing men, who seldom get their own viewpoint heard or propagated.

Penelope ("Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers' Tongues. New York: Pergamon. 1990) claims that some words are insults by virtue of being "female words". She cites the terms "motherfucker", son of a bitch", "bastard", "sissy", and "cunt". How does she explain that the word "prick" (meaning "penis") is used as an insult, then ? If female words are inherently insulting, as she says, how could a highly male term like "prick" be insulting ?

Anyway, the word "motherfucker" involves two people -- only one of whom is female. Likewise with "son of a bitch". The term "bastard" is not so much a reference to the mother as to the legal status of the child. The term "sissy" has its counterpart in "tomboy", and (as we have seen) the word "cunt" has its counterpart in "prick". Penelope's argument, like a lot of Feminist arguments, does not stand up to scrutiny. They have only been published and disseminated because honest and intelligent men have been too busy or frightened to scrutinise them.

 

6. Sexist Language in Chinese and German)

Feminism and the Internet have one thing in common: the language which they both use most of the time is English. This may not always be the case in the future. In recognition of the fact that the 1995 international conference on women was held in Beijing, I'd like to take a look at the issue of "sexist language" in two languages other than English -- Chinese and German.

In Chinese, occupational terms are mostly constructed by adding a gender-neutral suffix (such as "yuan", "ren", or "jia") onto the end of a word that names the activity or sphere that the job involves. For example (I am ignoring tone-marks in my transcription),

If you want to specify the sex of the person concered, in Chinese, you actually have to add an extra word.

German is a language that is closely related to English, but one difference between the two languages is the standard German ending "-in", which you can put onto the end of any masculine noun, in order to make it feminine. For example (I am indicating umlauts with the letter "e" placed after the relevant vowel):

(and so on)

German-speaking Feminists tend to take an opposite line to English-speaking Feminists. Whereas English-speaking Feminists tend to see occupational terms ending in "-er" or "-or" as gender-neutral, German-speaking Feminists tend to see terms ending in "-er" as specifically masculine. Therefore, German-speaking Feminists tend to prefer to see some version of the feminine "-in" ending in such words, in order to make women "visible" in such occupations.

What German-speaking and English-speaking Feminists have in common is that they tend to consider only what women want -- what men might prefer is, in most cases, not taken into account. As a result, the trendiest solution in German these days is to use the artificial device of a capital "I" in the middle of such words, e.g.

This Feminist solution incorporates both the masculine and feminine forms in the one word. That seems like a good idea, ideally, but the reality is that the written versions end up looking much more similar to the feminine forms than to the masculine forms. The only difference is the capital "I", which replaces a lower-case "i". In spoken German, the new forms are virtually the same as the feminine forms. So this solution is totally unacceptable, from a Men's Rights point of view.

I don't know what Chinese-speaking Feminists have been saying about their language, but I'd expect that there are some theses lying around somewhere that examine Chinese characters from a Feminist point of view.

Just to show that Masculists can play that game, too, I'd like to analyse the very common character which means "good" (pronounced "hao"). This is traditionally analysed as being made up of the character for "woman", on the left, and the character for "child", on the right. Some experts state that this is not the correct historical derivation of the character. My point is not so much to argue that this is the true origin of the character -- I'm just showing the kind of analysis that could be applied to thousands of characters. This might show up, on the whole, a pro-female bias or a pro-male bias or a near-balance between the two.

This derivation, if correct, is quite clearly sexist, and disadvantages men in custody battles, as it implies that the natural place for a child is with its mother. A non-sexist version of the character might have the character for "human being" on the left, for example, instead of the character for "woman". Even if this is not the historically correct derivation of the character, the fact that this is traditionally considered to be its derivation says a lot about anti-father sexist attitudes in Chinese societies (as in others).

 

7. Hufeisen's Work-around

In her article, "Warum das Deutsche keine Maennersprache ist"(My Translation: "Why German is not a Man's Language found on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ualberta.ca/~german/ejournal/maenner.htm), Britta Hufeisen tries to use Linguistic arguments to support the Feminist forms in German. Her intention is to remove the argument from the political arena, by taking a sort of Anarchistic approach.

She writes:

"Linguistisch kommt es jedoch darauf an, wer sich angesprochen fühlt: Wer sich bei der Bezeichnung 'Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter' oder 'Assistenzprofessor' als nicht gemeint empfindet, so ist der Sprechakt nicht gelungen, auch wenn der Person von seiten der Verwaltung versichert wird, sie sei 'mitgemeint'." (My translation: Linguistically, however, the issue is who feels addressed: If someone doesn't feel designated by the designation 'Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter' (scientific colleague) or 'Assistenzprofessor' (Assistant Professor), then the speech act has not succeeded, even if the person is assured by the Administration that they were also included.)

Unfortunately for her, it's not quite as simple as that. There are three parties involved in a speech act: the speaker/writer, the addressee, and the third-party hearer/reader. For a speech-act to be successful, the first two parties, at least, must end up in agreement with what was communicated. The addressee hasn't normally got the right to act like a woman playing hard-to-get, saying, "I know what you mean, but I'm going to refuse to see what you mean." That would, in most circumstances, be regarded as playing a rather childish game. Language is a cooperative endeavour, and successful speech acts -- like most social activities -- rely on cooperation between the parties involved.

Hufeisen's solution is not a solution at all. Society expects language-users to cooperate with each other. If a Feminist woman in a conversation refuses to feel designated by a particular term, then that is a political act of linguistic insurrection on her part. She may or may not succeed, eventually, in bringing Society around to her point of view by using these and other tactics. However, it is very self-centred and sexist of Hufeisen to simply ignore the intentions of the speaker/writer as if they were insignificant in this scenario.

 

"Betrachten wir das Ganze also aus der semiotischen Perspektive, so können wir feststellen, daß unser Problem kein sprachsystematisches ist, denn die deutsche Sprache hat bis auf ganz wenige lexikalische und syntaktische Lücken Bestände zur Bezeichnung für Frauen." (My translation: If we look at the whole issue from a Semiotical perspective, then, we can observe that our problem is not one of linguistic structure, as the German language has the wherewithall to designate women -- apart from a very few lexical and syntactic gaps.)

On this issue I disagree with Hufeisen as well. We have already seen that Feminist Linguists have not so far come up with a noun-ending which is neutral as between males and females in both the spoken and written forms of German. I don't know whether or not it would be possible to come up with such an ending. I wouldn't mind trying myself, but I am not a native-speaker of German, so any solution I came up with would probably not be politically acceptable anyway.

 

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Last Update: 16 October 2004

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