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Opportunities for inadvertent sexism
Sep. 13th, 2012 05:40 pmA chance comment from a colleague sparked an interesting — to me, at least! — discussion of meaning and intent and sexism. The whole thing started when they made a throwaway comment about the general uselessness of the diversity and equality training courses were required to do. I suggested that, being white and male and straight and privileged, their view might be at odds with someone to whom these things did not apply.
In order to support their claim of uselessness, they moved on to something they considered to be an absurd example of sort of thinking embodied by the course: the idea that the word "woman" should be preferred over "lady", because some women found the latter term to be offensive. Their argument was that lady was more polite than woman and that, because they didn't use it with the intent to offend, taking offence was unreasonable.
I didn't agree and pointed out that lady has an archaic feel and, thanks to its historical use, condescending overtones that woman lacks — also, as I could have said but didn't, the only time a lot of people use the word is in association with a public lavatory! I also noted that regardless of the speaker's intentions, the interpretation of a particular term lies with the listener making it possible to come out with something unintentionally sexist, hence the value of courses that help you put yourself in the mindset of others and realise why they might find certain terms unacceptable.
(As an aside, wikipedia subsequently confirmed my suspicion that the woman/lady split is something of a class shibboleth: historically, those with a higher social status were content to use the term "woman" with those lower down the ladder insisting on "lady")
Personally, I reckon it's best to use person and third person plural pronouns wherever possible. It works well in the majority of cases, where the gender of the subject doesn't matter. But occasionally I'll catch myself saying something like, "You can understand why people might find the term babe patronising and condescending..." and have to go back and add a clarifying, "You can understand why women might..."
In order to support their claim of uselessness, they moved on to something they considered to be an absurd example of sort of thinking embodied by the course: the idea that the word "woman" should be preferred over "lady", because some women found the latter term to be offensive. Their argument was that lady was more polite than woman and that, because they didn't use it with the intent to offend, taking offence was unreasonable.
I didn't agree and pointed out that lady has an archaic feel and, thanks to its historical use, condescending overtones that woman lacks — also, as I could have said but didn't, the only time a lot of people use the word is in association with a public lavatory! I also noted that regardless of the speaker's intentions, the interpretation of a particular term lies with the listener making it possible to come out with something unintentionally sexist, hence the value of courses that help you put yourself in the mindset of others and realise why they might find certain terms unacceptable.
(As an aside, wikipedia subsequently confirmed my suspicion that the woman/lady split is something of a class shibboleth: historically, those with a higher social status were content to use the term "woman" with those lower down the ladder insisting on "lady")
Personally, I reckon it's best to use person and third person plural pronouns wherever possible. It works well in the majority of cases, where the gender of the subject doesn't matter. But occasionally I'll catch myself saying something like, "You can understand why people might find the term babe patronising and condescending..." and have to go back and add a clarifying, "You can understand why women might..."
