Non-sexist
language
Gender-neutral
words
Surely with the English language so living and wonderful
it can invent new non-sexist words that do not spoil English style
by circumlocutions and censorships.
O sibling person, fold to thy
heart thy sibling'
The proper study of huperkind is
perchildren.
The child is parent of the adult,
and
I would wish my days to be
bound each to each in (not filial,
so what?) in offsprung piety'
Our country is the world - our
countrypeople are all peoplekind.
The principal my university college was liable to give women
students Alexis Carroll's Man the Unknown as a wedding present.
The solution to sexist language is new words for human
males-and-females - not seventeen pages in Style Manuals that
change hundreds of old words into phrases or plaster-words of
Circumspeak, and whip up backlashes against feminism.
English is the international language of the world ,used by
more than 600 million people. It needs a short generic term for
human beings, such as 'man', for
everyday use. Many other languages have one word for generic man
and another for human males, as in Latin hom
and vir. Why not English?
The present alternative - not having a generic term for people
regardless of sex is that we are bungled around by
'chairs', and stuffy longer words
like 'persons' 'humans' fire-officers',
postal workers', store-suppliers', and fore-assistants
It is sexist to keep the word
'woman' as a derivative of 'man' if
'man' means the human male. So invent another word for human
males. Then we can keep 'man' as the generic term to refer to both
sexes, as in human, mankind, chairman, postman, airman, salesman,
foreman. 'Man is naturally gentle'
'The Future of Man', ' Be a man!' and
so on. ('Be a person, indeed!) And women students could still be
given Alexis Carroll when they married, without feminist
outrage.
There would be no need to rewrite all English literature and
everyday speech, to make it more longwinded and clumsy. We can
keep our mad dogs and Englishmen, the proper
study of mankind is man, Son of Man, man the pumps, a man of
letters. Instead of silly words like
perdaughters, to match the sexist
word persons.
What new words, readers? Heman?
Hubman? (if woman really means wifeman).
Blokes and sheilas, lads and lasses, fellers
and chicks, guys and dolls? What about
Heman and Sheman, or Himan and
Herman, or He and She used as
nouns (like the poet did, writing about 'where'er she be, that not
impossible She ). What about Homs and
Fems as some hairdressers say? This is close to other
languages with Latin derivations. Or go Scots, with
monnie and wifie ? What is the Welsh?
We need a few more Welsh words in English. However, both words
need to be short and crisp. What about a
birl for a boy or girl?
Hisher and Heshe. The irritating
his/her, he/she business wrecks
English writing style and readers' tempers. Writers about children
often strain awkwardly to be even-handed by using he and she
alternately, instead of the entirely masculine gender that
replaced the earlier 'it'. One
Melbourne celebrity wrote a book on Child-Care using the feminine
case for the child - except in the chapter on 'Children's
Behaviour Disorders', the child was exclusively male.
We should anoint the growing custom of using the plural
pronouns they and them for the singular, or invent and test new
pronouns that mean both or either sex -
heshe = he or she, shim = her or him, sher = his or her "Heshe can go to sher home and we will meet shim." rather than "He
or she can go to his or her home and we will
meet him or her". sher-shim-shis for he/she her/him
her/his? We can then retain a poetry, literature and philosophy that
does not lose scansion, height and depth in
person-translation..
The English language is supposed to be alive - liven it
then!
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