One area currently under debate is gender-neutral English. Above, I discussed the issue of how to discuss a specific unknown person, but it is another question how to discuss a generic person, i.e. with ``he'' or ``he or she'', etc. Related to this is whether to use terms like ``chairman'' and ``man-hours'' when one does not wish to exclude females.
The most convincing argument that terms like ``he'' and ``man'' are not truly neutral comes not from abstract arguments but from empirical research:
In 1972, two sociologists at Drake University, Joseph Schneider and Sally Hacker, decided to test the hypothesis that man is generally understood to embrace woman. Some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like ``Social Man'', ``Industrial Man'', and ``Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like ``Society'', ``Industrial Life'', and ``Political Behavior''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females. In some instances the differences reached magnitudes of 30 to 40 per cent. The authors concluded, `This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female ([Miller et al 1980, pages 19--20,]).Additionally, ``a number of studies have shown that young people are influenced in their job preferences and their willingness to apply for advertised jobs by gender bias in the wording of the advertisements'' ([Bem et al 1973] in [Frank et al 1983, page 90,]).
Several sentences can be found that demonstrate that ``man'' is often unintentionally used to exclude women:
David Moser once .... observed that in books you will find many sentences in this vein: `Man has traditionally been a hunter, and he has kept his females close to the hearth, where they could tend his children.'.... So much for the sexual neutrality of the generic `man'. I began to look for such anomalies, and soon ran across the following gem in a book on sexuality: `It is unknown in what way Man used to make love, when he was a primitive savage millions of years ago' [Hofstadter 1986, page 145,].Consider also the
commandment.
In an approximately one month period of observation, I was able to find many examples of people waffling on the issues of gender nonspecific language at and around the MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab. I consider ambivalence more revealing than conforming to the old ways, because it shows that many individuals are trying to grapple with the issues but are unable to do so in a consistent manner. These examples are presented not because the behavior was egregious but to show the conflict within individuals:
This is not progress, in my opinion. In fact, in some ways, it is retrograde motion, and damages the cause of nonsexist language. The problem is that these people are simultaneously showing that they recognize that ``he'' is not truly generic and yet continuing to use it as if it were. They are thereby, at one and the same time, increasing other people's recognition of the sham of considering ``he'' as a generic, and yet reinforcing the old convention of using it anyway. It's a bad bind [Hofstadter 1986, page 150,].
Several writers, in order to argue for non-sexist writing, have written essays with other biases than the traditional male/female ones, and the results are (intentionally) shocking. In this section, I describe three such forays.
Most of the clamor, as you certainly know by now, revolves around the age-old usage of the noun ``white'' and words built from it, such as chairwhite, mailwhite,... The negrists claim that using the word ``white'', either on its own or as a component, to talk about all the members of the human species is somehow degrading to blacks and reinforces racism. Therefore the libbers propose that we substitute ``person'' everywhere where ``white'' now occurs. Sensitive speakers of our secretary tongue of course find this preposterous. There is great beauty to a phrase such as ``All whites are created equal.'' Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Independence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say ``All persons are created equal'', or ``All whites and blacks are created equal''.... [Hofstadter 1986, page 159,]
.
It is telling to look at the reaction to MacTech Quarterly's policy, printed in the issue following the editorial announcement [MTQ 1989B]. A follow-up article wrote that responses poured in, ``impassioned on both sides''. Some readers canceled their subscriptions, while others pledged to buy as much as possible from the parent organization. One of the most interesting positive letters was from a female novice programmer who wrote:
[A]s a woman who is a bit intimidated by her love of math and computers, I deeply appreciate being able to open the MacTech Quarterly and have the articles addressed to me, personally, a woman.Negative letters condemned the (male) editor for abusing his editorial position. One particularly angry writer repeatedly called into question the editor's manhood:
Ms. Hines,(Note too the use of ``balls'', i.e. something women do not possess, as a metaphor for fortitude.) The letter illustrates that a man is sometimes considered to be a sell-out for taking a feminist position. (While some men praised the editor for his decision, apparently all of the harshest critics were male.) In addition to the above ad hominem letter, there were more carefully-reasoned objections:You seem to be suffering from severe gender confusion. As a private matter, that's fine. Everyone has their foibles. But when it becomes editorial policy it's offensive in the extreme....
When I feel like listening to emasculated male apologists I can always turn on Donahue. He's easy to turn off and I don't have to pay for broadcasting his silly ideas. So unless you will be adopting a more well-thought-out policy, cancel my subscription and send my refund. And I will suggest MTQ adopt the subtitle, ``A Magazine for High Tech Women and Eunuchs''.
If you've got even a dim memory of when you had balls, you'll print this.
This is clearly a point on which people have strong opinions.
In response to my call for information, a man wrote:
I'm the co-author of the [X] Guide;... One of the decisions that I made was to remove all the sexist language, e.g. ``when the user types his command'' sort of stuff. It wasn't that hard to do, and I figured that it was appropriate.A couple of the reviewers ... noticed this --- I suppose my prose wasn't quite as seamless as I thought it was --- and commented on it. They both suggested putting the male gender pronouns back in since ``most of the users are men, anyway''. I didn't take this suggestion; but what struck me was that these folks actually noticed the lack of male pronouns.
Many people are not sure whether to use traditional or neutral terms. The large number of mixed examples implies that people do not just disagree with each other, but that individuals are unsure how best to express themselves. Additionally, many defenders of male terms do not appeal to tradition or claim that the term is neutral, but they say that the generic person would probably be male. Thus, an empirical rather than theoretical criterion is used, suggesting that the pronoun would change if enough females entered the computer world.