| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| SEXIST LANGUAGE |
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| is the label applied to English words and grammatical features that appear to favor one sex over another or to stress the separateness or inequality of the sexes; its current application is almost entirely to features that appear to favor men and to imply lesser roles for women (but see SEXISM). Today, Standard English seeks to avoid language that may be thought sexist, even though there is much evidence that not all users agree completely on the details of how best to pursue that goal. Being sensitive to the linguistic manners expected of you by those to whom you write or speak, however, is likely to serve you as well as can be hoped until such time as the values underlying our language practices change enough to cause the language to change to reflect them. Major changes in this matter of gender are now in train: the referents for pilot and priest are no longer only masculine, as once they were. Like parent, they may be either male or female, and so they and many occupational terms once clearly gender-distinctive now reflect a change in English treatment of gender. The only caution is that change, trivial or sweeping, cannot be cited as Standard until actual language use reflects it. The results of pressures to eliminate such language must in the end be measured on a word-by-word basis; the choices will be based upon what Standard users actually say and write in each instance, rather than on any overall policy about avoiding particular words or substituting one for another. | 1 |
| The aspect of the grammar of English that has received the most attention in this regard is the long-standing Standard insistence on the generic masculine third person singular pronoun, as in Each person [Everybody] must bring his own calculator. The fact that only the third person singular pronouns reflect gender makes this issue stand out. At least four ways of avoiding the generic masculine pronoun have been proposed: (1) deliberately to substitute feminine singular pronouns for the masculine singular pronouns in such structures (Each person [Everybody] must bring her own calculator); (2) to insist that both masculine and feminine pronouns be used in each instance (Each person [Everybody] must bring his or her own calculator); (3) to add a second example everywhere, so that one of each pair may be masculine and one feminine, like Noah’s animals; or (4) to use the third person plural pronouns instead (Each student [Everybody] must bring their own calculator). This fourth approach appears to be the one most likely to succeed, both because it sticks with nouns and pronouns of common gender, so-called because they are gender-inclusive rather than gender-distinctive, and also because Common and Vulgar English have long used the plural pronouns in these positions. | 2 |
| Best advice: Standard in all but the most Formal of Edited English, and perhaps in some Oratorical circumstances is the use of the plural pronoun in such sentences: Each person [Everybody] must bring their own calculator(s). For Edited English, most editors will recommend shifting the entire sentence into the plural: All persons [Everybody] must bring their own calculators, either avoiding the impersonal pronoun everybody or using it and taking a chance on some conservative objection to the breach in agreement. Actually, that problem is likely to disappear with this generation, since the notional agreement of impersonal pronouns with subsequent pronouns is now widely accepted, even as these impersonal pronouns continue to require singular verbs. Everybody and its like are now clearly gender-inclusive. | 3 |
| For further aspects of this subject, see also -ESS; FEMININE OCCUPATIONAL FORMS; FEMINISM; FEMINIST VIEWS OF ENGLISH; HE; INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE; SEXISM; S/HE. | 4 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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