English is not sexist, it has been altered to become sexist by stereotyping

PLEASE NOTE: JUST A MADE UP ESSAY

It’s hard to discuss whether a language is sexist or not, as our language is undergoing gender neutrality in terms of more gender-neutral alternatives has been created within the past 20 years. Which shows a big improvement on how the power in discourse is shifting within our society embedded with the patriarchal ideology. Recently I have been watching an interview with the BBC, interviewing a female engineer about her daily life – marked form is used positively within this context. 

How shocking and strongly how the patriarchal ideology has been embedded in my 6-year-old son’s mind as he has questioned me ‘Mummy why could this woman become an engineer, she is a woman though’. My first reaction was to freeze and unsure how to answer his question. But it was absolutely normal having this kind of thought, as we all know living in the UK means you have to accept the fact this is a country which speaks a language with an inequality. Even the EU has strongly emphasized banning the use of marked forms, but why do we still use it, though? Is it still valuable in a society moving towards gender neutrality? 

Well, blame the English teachers in primary school. English teacher has always taught us the vocabs about jobs, food or even just normal words we use in our daily basis, but reinforcing what has been discussed, the educational system is responsible for the use of marked forms and ideology. Because the teachers tended to teach us words such as ‘Policemen’ ‘firemen’ ‘surgeon’ and quite unfamiliar to see words that associates with women gender being taught unless it is a nurse or ‘mid-wife’. A reflection on a feminist theory published by linguist Dale Spender, he said adding the suffix ‘men’ or ‘ess’ strengthens the perceptions that the male category is the norm and that it corresponds the female category is derivation and therefore less important. 

Or maybe because women are seen to be ‘weaker’ sex as linguist Robin Lakoff published her deficit theory in the 70s about the fact women uses weaker language, may have illustrated an imagery to the others where woman are not strong enough to catch thieves or save the day. Indeed you may have noticed that the ideology has started embedding since we were young but we have not been aware of it, furthermore to bring out a concept on jobs which some jobs can only be carried out by a specific gender. I am sure you are very aware that no one uses these terms anymore and are becoming more obsolete as there is more gender neutral phrases are being created within the past years. 

Therefore I do not see the point why do we have to judge people what work should they be doing depending on their sex. 

Just like how women has to identified their marital status, for example attending my son’s parent evening, the school he goes to would ask me to fill in a slip with a title ‘Mr/ Mrs’ has already been filled in by the school itself automatically by computer, they were the only 2 options. Like do I have to be married to become a mother? Since when does the title ‘Mrs’ has been used as one size fits all? The Swedes has recently introduced a new gender-neutral title ‘Hens', I’d be so much happier if they have used that instead of being stereotyped as a married woman. 

Our language is changing anyways but it takes a bit of time – nowadays the use of a male pronoun to refer to both men and women. Using ‘he’ or ‘his’ to refer to humans in general (known as ‘male as norm’) is actually still fairly common, probably because no-one is actually completely sure what the grammatically correct alternative is. 

Using the plural ‘they’ or ‘their’ never sounds quite right when we are actually referring to the singular. Another option is to change the focus of whatever is being said by the second person, using ‘you’ and ‘your’ – but, of course, this can completely change the register of the sentence. It’s difficult to determine whether or not language is sexist or not, it may have been like this all the time. I realized the way how I greet my friends using a word that looks like gender neutral but actually has the implication of manpower, such as calling my female friends ‘Hey guys’ or the utterance ‘oh, man’, our language is littered with expressions refers to men as the powerful collective. it is unbearable in the English language as men have the power and the authority in charge within our society. Until we have equality in our language, it’s difficult to argue for equality in language elsewhere, which is why it’s so important that change is encouraged. And we can quite easily encourage it by giving a little more time and thought to the words we use, like use more gender neutral alternatives. Surely this will take a while in our lifetime, probably 20 years? 30? 40? – all we can do now is that simply make little changes and live happily. Eventually one day we will have equalities within our language or in every language. 

*Please note this is based on my personal views, no offense 

Kelsey