January 4, 2019 • 45 mins
Language, why so sexist? A & B delve into some history, some science and some sexism.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff I'm never told you. And today we're
doing a topic that has been on my mind since
(00:25):
probably about seventh grade, and it is sexism in language.
And language is a really powerful tool that we use
to communicate ideas um vocally or in written word. And
it's not only for like making plans for the evening um,
but big ideas ways we can change things, and it
can shape our thoughts and how we think. And I'm
(00:46):
not just saying this because we're podcasters and it's sort
of how we make a living um, but it says
so much about our cultures and attitudes and how those
things have changed. And I love I read somewhere in
an article that it's like looking at a societal and
cultural fossil record. That, yeah, I love that by chasing
(01:06):
it back, we can get a snapshot of what life
was like for our ancestors and how we've improved and
how we've stayed the same in some cases, how we've
gotten worse. Because it is a reflection of us past
and present, of our relationships, of our discourse, the discourse
we have in public and private, of our wants and
needs a tool that can be used for persuasion intimidation.
(01:28):
It can also be used to help perpetuate and reproduce
sexist and racist and ablest and homophobic ideas, consciously or unconsciously.
Even our language discriminates against us. And I am guilty
of a lot of the things we're going to talk
about in this episode, UM, like saying hey, guys are
(01:50):
oh man or ablest wise saying stupid or dumb. I'm
really bad about that and it's something that I've been
working on. Yeah, I will say that being a pot
castor it forces you to be very critical and deliberate
and careful about your language. UM. In a former life,
I used to run trainings UM for activists and organizers
(02:11):
in the progressive space, and we intentionally wanted these trainings
to be inclusive so that no matter your background, you
would feel uplifted and respected and heard. And you know,
when you're in front of a room of people that
you specifically have gotten the room because of their diverse
backgrounds and you want to be inclusive with you really
get a sense of how difficult it can be to
(02:33):
modify your language. And for me, it was UM using
the word crazy a lot, which I realized now is
kind of messed up. It's very ablest and my trick
for how I would you know, if I said crazy,
or if I addressed the room of men, women, non binary,
(02:53):
gender nonconforming, you know, if I if I address this
inclusive space with hey, guys, that wouldn't work. And so
I ended up doing was putting a rubber band around
my wrist and whenever I heard myself say one of
the things I was trying not to say, I would snap.
It just aska not hard, but it just has a
way to remind myself you're not doing that. You're not
(03:13):
doing that as a as a physical self corrective method.
That sounds like a great tip. That reminds me of
when I was trying to work on my posture and
I put um duct tape on my lewer back and
so every time I was slouching, it would pull on
the hairs and skin on my mor back and it
would make me sit up straight. It sounds like you
were doing the language version of my duct tape back
(03:36):
trick pretty much. Um So, listeners probably know I'm a
bit of a language nerd um So we're gonna be
using some language terms but I promise it'll be fun um.
And this is something, this whole idea of sexism and language,
like I said, I've been thinking about since middle school,
when someone told me during French class that throughout most
(03:57):
of the world, the word for woman is a so
ceated with the word for evil. And I don't know
if that's true. I couldn't find out if that was
actually true. But while I was researching to find out
if it was true, I found a wealth of sexism
in our language and I wanted to talk about it.
And I think another thing before we dive in here
(04:17):
that we forget are these other forms of communication, like
body language or sign language. I used to be part
of this organization in college that was all about fostering
relationships and understanding between different cultures, and when we went
to conferences, we all spoke different languages. So the delegation
from each country would go on stage and do a
(04:38):
dance that they had prepared that they thought communicated what
they were all about, and it was a great icebreaker.
I just feel like we forget a lot that we
do communicate, and we can communicate in all of these
other ways. Dancing is a fun one, yeah, that's a
good reminder. We often don't think about non verbal communication
as a as a as this. I don't. I forget
(04:58):
about it all the time. But like when Annie and
I do this podcast. I right now I am in
d C. And Annie is in Atlanta, but we have
on Skype so we can see how the other is
visually and like facially responding. Um. Because it does help
to communicate, Yes, it does. And I've said before on
this show. I have one ear that is really really bad,
(05:21):
and so I depend a lot on watching people's mouths too.
It helps me process simultaneously. It's almost like I'm hearing
you through my eyes. Um. And if I don't. That's
why I hate speaking on the phone so much. It
makes me really anxious when I can't see people's mouths
because I'm having to work twice as hard to make
(05:44):
out what they're saying. And it makes me seem really
awkward on the phone. Um. In fact, I found out
later that somebody almost didn't give me a job because
I was so awkward on the phone. But it was
just me trying to okay. I think that's what they said. Like,
there's there's always these paul is that seem a little
longer than necessary when you're speaking with me on the phone,
because I'm trying to make sure Okay, I think I
(06:05):
know what you said. UM. So if you've ever noticed
any awkwardness with phone interviews, that's what it was. You say.
It's a shout out to your former interviewees. Yes, but
here I am in an audio medium, so dreams can
come true. Um. And we are going to be digging
(06:28):
into mostly sexism in language and mostly English. But I
did want to include that in there, that there is
a lot of nonverbal communication stuff. And also for listeners
outside of the English speaking world, please right in if
you have examples, um, from your own language, because I
would love to hear them. I, like I said, I'm
(06:49):
a really big language nerd um. And also, we're not
here to ruin your party, are we are? But it's
so you can throw a better party that's more welcoming
to everyone. And also, I mean, these are fun facts,
even if some of them are sad. That sounds so strange,
but it's true. It's like what historically where these things
(07:11):
have come from in some cases is really interesting. I
also think it's just an interesting reminder that language changes
and shapes and you know, grows with culture. One of
the things I wanted to make sure that we point
out is that you know, in conversations that folks are
having around the dictionary, adding the pronouns they and how
(07:31):
the push to make our language less gendered, language shapes,
it changes, it grows, it breathes, you know, the words
that mean one thing and become something else, and that's
how it's always been. I think we can get really
hung up on this word means x always and we
need to step back and see the ways that language
does grow and it's it's some of it is disappointing,
(07:53):
but yeah, like you said, it's interesting and it's interesting
too to see how language has shaped over the years. Yeah,
seeing it evolve. Um right now, kind of like you
were saying, I went to a talk and they were
discussing how and a lot of languages there aren't words
for transgender specifically, and how kind of a race is
(08:13):
that experience when there aren't words for it? And then
what do you do? Do you make a word you
adopt like an English word. So these conversations are happening
in language is constantly shifting, and I think that that
is a good thing that it's becoming more inclusive, but
there are still a lot of words I think we
(08:35):
take for granted that do have uh, this underlying sexism
with them. And so to talk about this, we're gonna
discuss co location first. So co location is when you
hear a word and your brain automatically fills in the
blank for the word that should go with it. Um. So,
(08:57):
if I say, I think the example the Guardian are
Clay I was reading about this gave is pop, like
your mind might automatically think star or corn or something
that it just your brain supplies this word for you
that it thinks goes with that word, the first word.
And I've been doing a lot of research into Disney's
(09:18):
portrayals of Mother's Lately and one another one I found
is evil stepmother. So a lot of times when you
hear the word stepmother, your brain automatically thinks evil, which
is not great. It's not great. I mean I remember
growing up and thinking that step moms were all evil,
(09:41):
like if there was if someone was like, oh this
is my stepmom. When I was a kid, I associated
that with evil, with like she must be horrible in
the basement, right, And yeah, the research shows that that
association starts pretty much as soon as you can watch Cinderella,
like it's cemented. Um So. In early The Guardian published
(10:04):
an article criticizing the Oxford English Dictionary and some of
the sexist examples of colocation they used when demonstrating a
word's common usage, which is, by the way, how the
dictionary defended these examples kind of like, it's sexist, but
it's how people use it. It's not us, it's the
type of thing. Um So, here's the official statement the
(10:25):
o E D released. The example sentences we use are
taken from a huge variety of different sources and do
not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press.
So yeah, we're not sexist. You are. I love I
love that response. Right. Um So, here's an example of
what we're talking about, rabid feminist. This was an example
(10:49):
they gave for the how the word rabbit is commonly
used rabbit feminist. Another example is nagging wife and grading
and shrill to suscribe female voices but not male voices.
I do love that. The writer and comedian Lindy West,
her autobiography is called Shrill and now she's developing a
(11:11):
TV show spinning off of that experience, and it's really
sort of taking back this idea that as a as
a loud feminists that you know, she has probably been
called shrill her entire life, you know, kind of reclaiming
that word and saying, yeah, I am shrill, my badge
of honor, I'm proud to be shrill. So, after all
(11:34):
of this negative press, the o E ED released a
statement saying they were reviewing the example sentence for rabid
to ensure that it reflects current usage, which is good,
but it's only a start because I would bet that
a lot of folks are still going to co locate
rabid with feminist. Yeah. I think I co located with
(11:55):
with dog that. Yeah, that makes sense to me. That
makes to me. Another part of this conversation is pejoration. Um,
So this is, as you might guess from pejorative. It's
when the meaning of a word gets worse as time
goes on. And linguists positive that this happens more often
(12:16):
when looking at words referring to women than when looking
at words referring to men. And there are so many examples,
and surprise, surprise, most of them negatively sexualized women over time. Um.
And also all of them reinforce the gender binary, which
we were sort of talking about at the top, which
is another problem that we need to tackle when it
(12:37):
comes to our language. But okay, let's look at some examples,
starting with courtesan or courtison. At one, you gotta say
it fancy, Yeah, I realized I didn't put the right
accent with it, quotas on which at one time a
courtisan was the female version of the courtier, which referred
(12:59):
to somebody invited to attend the court of royalty. Courtisan
lost that meaning completely, And if you look up the
definition now you'll get something along the lines of a
prostitute or paramore, especially one associating with noblemen or men
of wealth and nothing else. That's the definition that you get.
(13:19):
And to me, this is so telling to the positions
of power women were allowed to have or not have,
suspicions around women's ambitions and motives, anxieties around female sexuality
and sexual agency, and valuing women based on their bodies
and sex appeal. Um. And if those sound like they're
still relevant, that's because they are. So. Another one is governess.
(13:44):
So if you think about it logically, governess should be
the female version of governor, which is the title of
someone who has power and authority over a place. But
around the fifteenth century it came to meet a woman
who cares for and supervises someone, usually a child. Now
that's not to say that, you know, taking care of
a kid is not a valid and important job, but
(14:05):
compared that to governor, it doesn't really have the same weight. Yeah,
it's not equal. Another one is hussey. Hussy once meant
head of house and the story it's derived from the
thirteenth century word for housewife, but when the seventeenth century
rolled around, it took on another meaning, which eventually became
the only definition a disreputable woman of improper behavior. And
(14:29):
again this is a put down of women to undercut
their power and to stigmatize female sexuality. One of my
favorites madam that this used to be what ma'am is today,
only more it distinguished. Like when I hear madam, I
think of it as as a very kind of distinguished title.
It denotes a woman with high rank, the female equipvent
(14:50):
of sir. Now in the eighteenth century this change when
people heard using madam to mean quote a concedered and
precocious girl, a young woman, a hussy, a minx, or
a prostitute or mistress, and by the nineteenth century, a
woman managing a brothel because that is the only high
up rank a woman can have, right, is managing a brothel?
That sounds about right. And speaking of mistress, this is
(15:15):
another great example. Once the female equivalent of master or
someone with power or authority, and usually an employer. Um.
But as we all probably know, that is not the
meaning anymore. It lost to that original meaning in the
seventeenth century and it now refers to a woman that
is not a man's wife, that the man is having
a long term sexual relationship with. That is its sole definition.
(15:40):
And once again you see the title stripped of power,
and you see it sexualized and sexualized in service to men.
One of my favorite words spinster. It's a good one.
It's not one that you hear a lot of, but
it's got a lot of weight a hatched to it.
(16:00):
I'll guess for me, I guess I'll put it that way. Um. So, basically,
y'all know what a spencer is supposed to be. It's
a woman who lives alone. Maybe she asked some cats,
Maybe she's weird probably wears a lot of sweaters, maybe
some clogs in the mix. I don't know, you know,
like there's a weird woman who romantic partnership is like
off the table. She lives alone and has cats. Well,
(16:22):
spencer actually just meant someone who spun thread or yarn. Now,
typically that person was a woman, but not always, and
it wasn't until the eighteenth century that that definition became
associated with someone who was outside of the typical like
marrying or childbearing age. Yeah, because for a while, an
(16:43):
unmarried woman one way she can make money is by
spinning yarn. And so the legal definition actually became um
that spencer referred to an unmarried woman. And then from
there it's pretty easy to see. Yeah, it was old
made essentially in the current definition comes with the disclaimer
(17:05):
disparaging and defensive. But the male equivalent is bachelor. That's
a much more has a much more positive connotation. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was thinking about this recently, how
I don't I don't know if you remember this, but
back in the day, Warren Beatty, young Warren Beatty, he
was sort of this um serial they used to call him,
(17:25):
like a serial bachelor and kind of in the seventies
and the eighties, he was sort of this like sexy,
worldly guy who was like the quintessential bachelor. And there's
not really a a female equivalent, and in culture, at
least what I can think of, it's like, you know,
an unmarried woman who is having lots of fun dating around,
(17:48):
has a great career, travels, Like that's not really We
definitely associate enjoying intentional singleness with men and with women.
It's just sad and weird. Yes, And I was thinking
about this too when it comes to the word cougar
and how that has this negative vibe to it. And
(18:09):
I was trying to think if there was a male equivalent, Um, cougar, Yeah,
there is a male clipping to cougar, it's silver fox.
See that sounds so much nicer. I guess it is
not a one to one comparison, but an older, still
handsome man who kind of like can date a younger woman,
but not in like the sugar baby sugar daddy kind
(18:30):
of way. I would consider that to be a silver fox.
A so like Sean Connery, you might be a silver fox,
right right right right? Um, that was the most when
I saw what is it called entrapment? When I was
pretty young, and I didn't buy it immediately because I
was like, Sean Connery is too old. Why is that
(18:51):
hot lady came to him? Is that Catherine's Aida Jones. Yeah,
she's married to Michael Dugla. I know, I didn't know
that at the time. She was married to a silver fox.
She is, she is, She's very important to this whole conversation.
This was ten year old Annie's thoughts. Please don't judge
(19:11):
current Annie on it. I haven't seen that movie in
a while. I'll have to rethink it. But so. Another
example is tart. It used to be a shortening of sweetheart,
but starting in the eighteen eighties, it came to mean yep,
a prostitute or a woman of immoral character. Another good one, wench.
(19:32):
It used to just mean a baby or a young,
unmarried woman. Starting in the fourteen hundreds, it began to
be used to describe a mistress or a sexually lawless
or quote loose woman. Yeah, so pretty much all of these,
if we look at them, they started meaning something that
was equivalent to the male word, the male version of
(19:55):
the word, and then they all lost their power and
by and large started defining women through their sexual desirability,
our lack of desirability with regards to men, or otherwise
subordinating them to men and or defining them in relationship
to men. So the very fact that we have a
misses and miss but not a male equivalent, that should
(20:15):
tell you something definitely. So we have some more discussion
around this whole thing. But first we have a quick
break for word from our sponsor M and we're back,
Thank you, sponsor. Another piece of this whole thing is
(20:38):
how in our language, male is generally the default, and
this is everywhere. Think of popular suffixes in English added
onto words traditionally referring to men, so that they now
refer to women, like et s, tricks, or the suffix
man to refer to jobs that both men and women
can't hold, like in chairman, councilman, policeman, salesman, maleman, and
(21:01):
the word mankind or even human mankind or man made.
I mean it's everywhere. Um or if you look at
the words for doctor or lawyer, think of how often
you hear in the news female doctor or female lawyer,
since women are seen as outside of the norm in
those professions. And I remember hearing female prosecutor over and
(21:23):
over again in the whole Brett Kavanaugh news coverage thing
female prosecutor. Yeah, as if that means that she prosecutes
with her vagina, Like, oh, she's a woman, you know,
you know, it didn't make any sense. And it's funny
because recently they've just done some rejiggering of how they're
(21:44):
going to make those signs that say things like men working,
that they're going to try to figure out a way
to have it be more gender inclusive, where you know,
it's not men working, it's people working, you know. Um,
and so yeah, they're there. It's interesting how these things
kind of show up. Pretty recently, Alexandria okco Cortes, somebody
tweeted at her that she needed to stop saying congress
(22:07):
people because you know, she's in Congress and she's not
a man. Then the title as congressman, and that person
eventually apologized. They were like, yeah, she's right, Like she's
right to say congress people. Um. It's really interesting how
gendered these things are. They're just we'd say them without
even thinking about it, really, but it does warp how
we see ourselves. It does um, and it kind of
(22:29):
reminds me of that riddle where uh, I mean, ultimately
the answer is the surgeon is a woman, but it's
supposed to showcase I guess that you automatically assumed it
was a man, so like the whole, to get to
the answer of the riddle, you have to be like, ah,
the surgeon is a woman. Um. It's even in our riddles,
(22:53):
is what I'm trying to say. We cannot escape sexism
even in our riddles. That's right, And actually we're going
to talk about that more a little later. Um. And
if we can even look at the reverse example of
like male nurse, so yeah, it hurts everybody. Um. And
since we don't have a gender neutral third person pronoun
(23:13):
in English, most of our idioms and proverbs and perhaps
riddles use the masculine he. And another thing about proverbs
is the ones that do you she are refer specifically
to women usually don't paint women in the best light,
like he who follows his wife's advice will never see
the face of God, or a neck without a head,
(23:35):
bucks without a whole, and a girl with that shame
are not worth admiring or marrying. What an expression? I
know when we're people saying that I missed it. A
woman is like a lemon. You squeeze her and throw
her away. Gross. Yeah, seven, women in their right senses
are surpassed by a madman, which is offensive on more
(23:57):
than one level. Nice like little layer of the it's
ablest sexist. Yes, that's good. Yeah. Um. And then if
we look at gendered languages, that is Latin languages where
nouns themselves are gendered, like French or Spanish. Um, so
love for masculine in law for feminine in French. Every down,
(24:20):
we'll have either the law in front of it. Most
of you probably know this, but you know, just make
sure we're on the same page. On top of that,
these languages don't have a gender neutral plural word like
them are they? Instead, you have the masculine plural and
the feminine plural. For example, in French, heel which is masculine,
or l which is feminine. And when you're talking about
(24:41):
a group of all men are all women the word
you would use to describe the group is clear. Even
if one man enters a group of five, ten, one hundred,
one thousand women. Though you switch over to the masculine plural,
you don't call it a group of women anymore. It
becomes a group of men, even though there's one man
in a whole group. And the suggestion is that one
(25:02):
man takes precedent over any number of women. He is
the most important person in that group. He is how
you will refer to that group. And if someone walks by, uh,
this group of mostly women and one dude, the person
is going to address them as if they were all
men are, alternately as if there aren't any women present. Yeah.
That reminds me of the episode that we did on
(25:24):
women and travel Alone, where if people still accused a
group of women as traveling alone, as if the only
thing that validates their existence is the presence of at
least one man, you could be a hundred women deep
and it's still alone. Right, you're traveling alone? What were
you doing? And this is where I said, like the English,
(25:45):
hey guys would fall into two And I am very
guilty of saying that. In my brain it's de gendered.
But as the article I was reading pointed out, if
you went to a group of men and said hey, ladies,
it would in general not be taken favorably and might
even start a fight. Yes, well, that's one of my
favorite colloquialism, really bits and handy y'all people people in
(26:10):
the South like that, like we got it down. Y'all
means all. It's a it's a gender neutral way to
address a group. So instead of saying hey guys or
hey ladies, I'm gonna say hey, y'all. And what's funny
because when I was teaching, you have to find all
different kinds of ways to address a classroom, um that
(26:31):
are not guys or hey ladies or whatever. So it
was always good morning, friends, good morning, comrades, good morning,
this good morning that you know, um, So they are
all kinds of better words other than guys to use. Yeah,
And it's one of those things where in my head
it's d gendered, but I don't know what it is
in other people's heads. And I don't want to leave
(26:52):
anyone out with my choice of language, and it I
know that some people are probably thinking this seems such
a small thing, But as I tried to get across
from the beginning, language really is very important and it
impacts so much of the way we think, even if
we don't realize it. Definitely, Oh god, there's this is
really random. But there's this classic final episode of the
(27:13):
Mary Tyler Moore Show. That show ends with Mary getting fired,
and when she's fired, it's she's the only woman in
a group of male journalists and the person who is
firing or says you guys are fired. And then she's like,
wait a minute, he said guys, maybe that doesn't include me,
and she has to like ask she was included in that,
because technically she is not a guy, and I'm going
(27:37):
to assume she was. She was. Um. Here's another one
that a couple of you listeners have written in about
is the whole question of calling women girls and whether
or not it's degrading UM and generally outside of friend groups,
if you think about it, if you called a group
of men boys, it is viewed as an insult or
(27:57):
it implies that they are in potent Oh my goodness,
this is Benna. I have a lot of feelings on
this particular one. Um. First of all, I call women girls.
I definitely should not um, But for me, it's it's
a friendly thing, like hey girl, Hey girl. And even
someone someone pointed out that that's not necessarily you know,
(28:19):
if someone is non binary, saying hey girl to them
is might not be something they want to hear. Someone
is gender nonconforming, that might not be something they want
to hear. I call men girl like if we're friends,
you're my girl, like that how it is in my head,
And it sucks to realize that, like the imprint, like
what you were saying with guys, like the way that
(28:41):
it reads in my head might not be the way
it reads to other people in their head. And I
just want to be you know, aware of that. But
then it's also tough because if it shows how limiting
our language is, Like if you if if I'm am
a woman in a heterosexual romantic relationship, that person is
supposed to be my boyfriend, but he's not a boy.
(29:02):
I'm not a girl. You know, we don't really have
a lot of words that Like I don't use the
word boyfriend. I don't use the word girlfriend, because this
is if I'm in a relationship with someone, I'm not
a girl. He's not a boy. That's not seventh grade
or girlfriend, and boyfriend does not accurately describe what a
like partnership between two adults is totally agree. I remember
(29:25):
we did an episode, a video episode on this a
while ago, but how there aren't really good substitutes for that,
but how it is so it does feel so high school,
like just the terminology doesn't fit. Yeah, I I for
my romantic partners, I use the word boo. I don't
want to be anyone's girlfriend, like I'll be your boo.
(29:47):
That's that's a good one. I think that's a step up. Um.
And if you're thinking that this is an unwieldy grammatical rule,
you are correct. But studies show that grammar rules like
this do influence woul global sexism, so that's kind of
a big thing. Two thousand nine study found that grammar
like this does correlate with sexism. When asked to read
(30:08):
a passage in either English, which is a gender natural language,
meaning nouns are in assign gender, but there are gender
specific pronouns, or French and Spanish gendered languages. Those that
read the passage and engendered languages showed higher levels of
sexism in their responses on a questionnaire they filled out afterwards.
Doesn't mean that English speakers are less sexist, but it
(30:30):
does show that grammar things like this might influence how
we think, even if it's unconsciously. The research didn't stop there,
they took the World Economic Forums Global Gender Gap Index,
which measures the gender inequality in one thirty four countries
and in various sectors like economics, politics, health, and education,
and they divided them up by language type most common
(30:51):
in that country. Natural gender was gendered fifty four point
five percent and gender less nineteen point four. If you're
doing that math and you're saying that's not you are
totally correct. The remaining countries spoke a mixture of these
language types. Now, when controlling for things that might influence
gender inequality like religion, political system, relative development, and geographical location,
(31:14):
the researchers found that countries where gendered languages are primarily
spoken ranked highest in terms of general inequality. Interestingly, though
genderless language is displayed the second highest rate of general
inequality and natural gender is the least and one hypothesis
for why genderless languages didn't fare as well suggest that
in all language without a gender the brain in the brain,
(31:38):
the default is male. Other studies kind of demonstrate this,
finding that hearing a phrase like heroines and heroes makes
people believe that there are more heroines um, as opposed
to just saying heroes, UM. You're just gonna think all
men are. And that's what the study found, and that
the order matters too, Like whatever you say first, your
(31:58):
brain assigns that being more importance, So putting heroines first
instead of heroes. Uh, there's all these things that we
don't realize our brain is doing when we say things. Um,
if we go back to the gendering of nouns, a
two thousand to study found that this leaked out into
other thought processes. The researchers put together a list of
(32:20):
twenty four objects that have opposite genders in Spanish and German.
For both languages, half of the items were gendered masculine
and the other half feminine. A group of native Spanish
speakers and a group of native German speakers who were
also proficient in English were then asked in English to
come up with three adjectives for each object. With each participant,
(32:43):
the gender of their native language influenced the adjectives of
the words that they chose. For example, the German word
for key is masculine, and in Spanish it is feminine.
German speakers described keys with words like useful, hard, heavy, jagged,
and metal. Spanish speakers described it using words like intricate, little, tiny, lovely,
(33:03):
and golden. Or if we look at the example of bridge,
the German speakers described it as delicate, fragile, beautiful, elegant,
and slender. Spanish speakers described a bridge using words like strong, big, dangerous, sturdy,
and towering. And I bet you can guess in which
language bridge is gendered feminine. Yeah, it's the German language.
(33:27):
And that's pretty stark. Those examples. It kind of shocked me. Yeah,
they're describing a bridge. It sounds like you're describing like
a woman's arm, like slender, elegant. It's really stark, it is.
These participants were also shown a pair of pictures, one
containing a person and the other an object, and they
(33:49):
were asked to rate how similar the pictures were the
person and the object. If the biological sex of the
person matched the gender of the object in their native language,
that participants rated them as similar. If it didn't, then
they said they had no similarities, which is interesting. Yeah,
(34:09):
it's it's wild how language. I mean, it really gets
in your head. I guess these examples just really drive
that home that it really gets in your head and
in ways that you might not even realize. Yeah, and
I as someone who didn't grow up with speaking a
gendered language. I remember learning UM, French and Spanish in
(34:32):
like elementary school and being so confused by the the
article before the word, and so I don't have I
don't really have a starting point for knowing how much
that impacts how you think of things. I do remember
thinking like, I feel like chocolate is masculine in French UM,
(34:54):
and I always thought it should be feminine, which says
more about me than it does about the French language.
But I had more of that kind of association with
it UM. But yeah, again, I would love to hear
from people who speak other languages about their thoughts on this.
And obviously studies like the ones we're describing are tricky.
(35:15):
There are a lot of factors that influence inequality and UM.
The larger sample size countries that speak gendered languages compared
to those that speak genter, natural ones makes it harder
to draw conclusions. But at the same time, I would
love to see more research because I think that there
is something worth looking into their definitely, and we have
(35:37):
a little bit more for you, But first we have
one more quick break for word from our sponsor M
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So another thing that
we can discuss U is masculine eised words versus feminized words.
(36:02):
Over time, some words and even non gendered languages have
been masculinized are feminized, sort of like that co location
thing we were discussing at the top, but a bit broader.
So men are more likely to be described using certain
words and women are more likely to be described using
other words. And masculinized words generally have a more positive
connotation and feminized words generally have a more negative one.
(36:27):
And we could even extend this conversation to include phrases
like like a girl, which has traditionally been considered a
bad thing, but it's sort of like shrill kind of
being reclaimed. But still this idea that things that are
associated with femininity are bad. That's so a thing, I mean,
And you've talked a bit on the show about how
that's something that you grew up with. Yeah, by the
(36:49):
time I think I mentioned this in an episode. By
the time I was in kindergarten, I hated the color
pink because I associated it with being girly and I
didn't want to be associated with that. Um And we
talked about how this could even be applied and there's
a lot of discussion around this um recently, that it
could be applied to the party system the US, with
(37:10):
the Democratic Party being the feminized party in the Conservative
Party being the masculinized party. Oh that's interesting. Oh yeah,
there's so much interesting writing around that happening as we speak.
And I think we it's if you spend any time
in the mucky muck that is, like right wing Twitter,
(37:32):
their obsession with conveying like liberal or progressive men on
the left as feminine is really fascinating, like terms like
calling a progressive male like beta soy boy, like yeah,
like soy boy, beta, couk, things like that, where it's
so weirdly, it's just very weird. It is it is um.
(37:55):
And there's actually a study kind of looking into this
where um it was looking into the relationship or possible
relationships between sexism and self image, and it found that
people who display hostile sexism dislike of women, that's what
they defined it as in the study, are more likely
to describe themselves using words we typically associate with masculinity
(38:16):
like brave, physically, strong, determined, admirable, confident, And that was
the case for men, but for women displaying hostile sexism,
they describe themselves in terms that win against traditional femininity.
So not tolerant, not cooperative, not compassionate, not sensitive, things
like that, almost going out of their way to say
(38:37):
I am not like those other girls, which is a
trope we've discussed before. Yes, it's so, I mean, it's
funny when we apply gender traits that are good, you know,
it's just really really you are, like who wants to
describe themselves as intolerant and not cooperative? Like those aren't
(38:59):
good qual a. No, I can't imagine being very proud
why I am not sensitive, not tolerant, not and it's
all of these nuts, like it's nothing like that you are.
You're just basically saying I am not that m hmm um.
And the study also found that sexism and racism are
(39:20):
likely to occur in the same people because basically they're
buying into the idea that we are not all created
equal and that the unequal social hierarchies that stem from that.
Um like, they buy into those Oh no, like surprise
me at all. It's one of those things reading it
like thank you science. I mean, I've I always suspected
(39:42):
science confirms what we've already known forever exactly. Yeah, other
studies have shown that words masculinized and words that are
feminized influence what we believe to be the proper behavior
for men and for women, and that this impacts what
types of job men versus women can get. For instance,
women are more likely to get jobs with descriptors like kind, caring,
(40:05):
other things like that, and men are more likely to
get jobs with words like ambitious and independent. And this
impacts the advertising and targeting of jobs. So which jobs
men and women are more likely to pursue based on
the descriptors in the job description, and also the candidate
more likely to get hired for it. So it's kind
of like not cyclical, I guess, sort of cyclical, but
(40:27):
it happens from the advertising process to the job interview.
It impacts all of that. And I think once you
have the job, I think it probably at least in
my you know, my personal experience, I think it informs
who ends up doing what kind of labor in a workplace.
So we've talked about emotional labor. You know, if you
(40:49):
associate being caring or organized or you know, sensitive with
being a woman, you might let your mail employees get
like not do that, Like you might be thinking like, oh,
that's just a gendered trait that I associate with women. Therefore,
you know, Joe, the man doesn't have to be responsible
(41:09):
for that bit of labor. And so I think, not
only can it inform who applies for and gets what jobs,
but how those jobs are done once you get them. Yeah, yeah, completely,
And all of the stuff we're talking about does have
a real world impact, like things like that um contributing
to a culture that disrespects women, that makes it difficult
for them to be as openly ambitious to get equal pay,
(41:32):
to whole positions of authority because we don't see women
in those positions reflected in our language, and that in
turn influences how we think of women. It suggests that
women are less than are are outside of the norm.
It suggest that women are sexual objects at the service
of men, and that they are not to be believed
that the masculine is ideal, And this stuff is internalized
(41:55):
at a young age. It contributes to a culture that
routinely erases the experience trans people and non binary folks.
These are important things that we're talking about on a
societal level right now, and of course language is only
one part of the solution, but it is something that
we can work on improving. Definitely, there are some changes
that we can be happy about. Some institutions around the
(42:18):
world are taking steps to change language, whether it's at
the countrywide level in the case of Switzerland updating their
dictionary with a gender neutral pronoun or u S University
is like Yale swapping out words like freshman or upper
classmen to first year and upper year. And for those
that are thinking, well, this sounds like a lot of work, uh,
(42:38):
and it can be, But there are some steps that
we can take on a personal level. Gently calling people
out is one, including yourself. My Mbi Ali has a
whole video on how to do this when it comes
to the whole girl versus woman thing, and it's wonderful
and super helpful. Um. Doing this all the time might
seem like a full time job, but doing it even
some of the time can make a difference. Yeah, and
(43:01):
updating idioms and award titles like instead of best man
for the job, best person for the job in letters
or emails, using something gender neutral. If you don't know
how someone identifies to whom it may concern. For example,
our name A name works too if you're comfortable on
a first name basis, because then again, if you're not,
then you get into the mr, mrs, mrs, mrs mrs
(43:23):
thing totally using they are avoiding pronounce altogether, which can
be helpful to be more inclusive of folks who are
gender nonconforming. UM. Here in d C you can actually
get the honorific mix m X on your driver's license
is opposed to like miss or mrs. UM. It's a
gender neutral way of addressing someone formally. That's that's pretty cool. UM.
(43:48):
In general, being more aware of the words we choose
and what those words communicates and what they say about
the values and beliefs of our society. On a deeper level,
if you will, recognizing where we need to do some
work and then doing that work. I think that that's
where we can leave this. Yeah. I think it's just
really about being open to thinking about how we use
(44:11):
language and and sort of you know, being willing to
get it wrong and being willing to change and sort
of update these outdated ways of thinking. Yeah, and knowing
this history, I think is can be a important step
of that. An important step of moving forward and making
something better, and I'm excited to see that This about
(44:36):
brings us to the end of our deep dive into
the sexism of language. Like we said, we'd love to
hear from people who speak different languages, um what your
experience has been. You can email us at mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram
(44:56):
at Stuff I've Never Told You And where can people
find you? Bridget Well, As I mentioned in an earlier episode,
my time with Sminty is winding down, so if you
want to keep up with all the fun things I'm
gonna be doing, you can find me on Twitter at
Bridget Marie and on Instagram at Bridget Marie in d C,
d C Like the City. Thanks as always to our
(45:17):
producer Trevor Young, and thanks to you for listening.
Hey, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff I'm never told you. And today we're
doing a topic that has been on my mind since
(00:25):
probably about seventh grade, and it is sexism in language.
And language is a really powerful tool that we use
to communicate ideas um vocally or in written word. And
it's not only for like making plans for the evening um,
but big ideas ways we can change things, and it
can shape our thoughts and how we think. And I'm
(00:46):
not just saying this because we're podcasters and it's sort
of how we make a living um, but it says
so much about our cultures and attitudes and how those
things have changed. And I love I read somewhere in
an article that it's like looking at a societal and
cultural fossil record. That, yeah, I love that by chasing
(01:06):
it back, we can get a snapshot of what life
was like for our ancestors and how we've improved and
how we've stayed the same in some cases, how we've
gotten worse. Because it is a reflection of us past
and present, of our relationships, of our discourse, the discourse
we have in public and private, of our wants and
needs a tool that can be used for persuasion intimidation.
(01:28):
It can also be used to help perpetuate and reproduce
sexist and racist and ablest and homophobic ideas, consciously or unconsciously.
Even our language discriminates against us. And I am guilty
of a lot of the things we're going to talk
about in this episode, UM, like saying hey, guys are
(01:50):
oh man or ablest wise saying stupid or dumb. I'm
really bad about that and it's something that I've been
working on. Yeah, I will say that being a pot
castor it forces you to be very critical and deliberate
and careful about your language. UM. In a former life,
I used to run trainings UM for activists and organizers
(02:11):
in the progressive space, and we intentionally wanted these trainings
to be inclusive so that no matter your background, you
would feel uplifted and respected and heard. And you know,
when you're in front of a room of people that
you specifically have gotten the room because of their diverse
backgrounds and you want to be inclusive with you really
get a sense of how difficult it can be to
(02:33):
modify your language. And for me, it was UM using
the word crazy a lot, which I realized now is
kind of messed up. It's very ablest and my trick
for how I would you know, if I said crazy,
or if I addressed the room of men, women, non binary,
(02:53):
gender nonconforming, you know, if I if I address this
inclusive space with hey, guys, that wouldn't work. And so
I ended up doing was putting a rubber band around
my wrist and whenever I heard myself say one of
the things I was trying not to say, I would snap.
It just aska not hard, but it just has a
way to remind myself you're not doing that. You're not
(03:13):
doing that as a as a physical self corrective method.
That sounds like a great tip. That reminds me of
when I was trying to work on my posture and
I put um duct tape on my lewer back and
so every time I was slouching, it would pull on
the hairs and skin on my mor back and it
would make me sit up straight. It sounds like you
were doing the language version of my duct tape back
(03:36):
trick pretty much. Um So, listeners probably know I'm a
bit of a language nerd um So we're gonna be
using some language terms but I promise it'll be fun um.
And this is something, this whole idea of sexism and language,
like I said, I've been thinking about since middle school,
when someone told me during French class that throughout most
(03:57):
of the world, the word for woman is a so
ceated with the word for evil. And I don't know
if that's true. I couldn't find out if that was
actually true. But while I was researching to find out
if it was true, I found a wealth of sexism
in our language and I wanted to talk about it.
And I think another thing before we dive in here
(04:17):
that we forget are these other forms of communication, like
body language or sign language. I used to be part
of this organization in college that was all about fostering
relationships and understanding between different cultures, and when we went
to conferences, we all spoke different languages. So the delegation
from each country would go on stage and do a
(04:38):
dance that they had prepared that they thought communicated what
they were all about, and it was a great icebreaker.
I just feel like we forget a lot that we
do communicate, and we can communicate in all of these
other ways. Dancing is a fun one, yeah, that's a
good reminder. We often don't think about non verbal communication
as a as a as this. I don't. I forget
(04:58):
about it all the time. But like when Annie and
I do this podcast. I right now I am in
d C. And Annie is in Atlanta, but we have
on Skype so we can see how the other is
visually and like facially responding. Um. Because it does help
to communicate, Yes, it does. And I've said before on
this show. I have one ear that is really really bad,
(05:21):
and so I depend a lot on watching people's mouths too.
It helps me process simultaneously. It's almost like I'm hearing
you through my eyes. Um. And if I don't. That's
why I hate speaking on the phone so much. It
makes me really anxious when I can't see people's mouths
because I'm having to work twice as hard to make
(05:44):
out what they're saying. And it makes me seem really
awkward on the phone. Um. In fact, I found out
later that somebody almost didn't give me a job because
I was so awkward on the phone. But it was
just me trying to okay. I think that's what they said. Like,
there's there's always these paul is that seem a little
longer than necessary when you're speaking with me on the phone,
because I'm trying to make sure Okay, I think I
(06:05):
know what you said. UM. So if you've ever noticed
any awkwardness with phone interviews, that's what it was. You say.
It's a shout out to your former interviewees. Yes, but
here I am in an audio medium, so dreams can
come true. Um. And we are going to be digging
(06:28):
into mostly sexism in language and mostly English. But I
did want to include that in there, that there is
a lot of nonverbal communication stuff. And also for listeners
outside of the English speaking world, please right in if
you have examples, um, from your own language, because I
would love to hear them. I, like I said, I'm
(06:49):
a really big language nerd um. And also, we're not
here to ruin your party, are we are? But it's
so you can throw a better party that's more welcoming
to everyone. And also, I mean, these are fun facts,
even if some of them are sad. That sounds so strange,
but it's true. It's like what historically where these things
(07:11):
have come from in some cases is really interesting. I
also think it's just an interesting reminder that language changes
and shapes and you know, grows with culture. One of
the things I wanted to make sure that we point
out is that you know, in conversations that folks are
having around the dictionary, adding the pronouns they and how
(07:31):
the push to make our language less gendered, language shapes,
it changes, it grows, it breathes, you know, the words
that mean one thing and become something else, and that's
how it's always been. I think we can get really
hung up on this word means x always and we
need to step back and see the ways that language
does grow and it's it's some of it is disappointing,
(07:53):
but yeah, like you said, it's interesting and it's interesting
too to see how language has shaped over the years. Yeah,
seeing it evolve. Um right now, kind of like you
were saying, I went to a talk and they were
discussing how and a lot of languages there aren't words
for transgender specifically, and how kind of a race is
(08:13):
that experience when there aren't words for it? And then
what do you do? Do you make a word you
adopt like an English word. So these conversations are happening
in language is constantly shifting, and I think that that
is a good thing that it's becoming more inclusive, but
there are still a lot of words I think we
(08:35):
take for granted that do have uh, this underlying sexism
with them. And so to talk about this, we're gonna
discuss co location first. So co location is when you
hear a word and your brain automatically fills in the
blank for the word that should go with it. Um. So,
(08:57):
if I say, I think the example the Guardian are
Clay I was reading about this gave is pop, like
your mind might automatically think star or corn or something
that it just your brain supplies this word for you
that it thinks goes with that word, the first word.
And I've been doing a lot of research into Disney's
(09:18):
portrayals of Mother's Lately and one another one I found
is evil stepmother. So a lot of times when you
hear the word stepmother, your brain automatically thinks evil, which
is not great. It's not great. I mean I remember
growing up and thinking that step moms were all evil,
(09:41):
like if there was if someone was like, oh this
is my stepmom. When I was a kid, I associated
that with evil, with like she must be horrible in
the basement, right, And yeah, the research shows that that
association starts pretty much as soon as you can watch Cinderella,
like it's cemented. Um So. In early The Guardian published
(10:04):
an article criticizing the Oxford English Dictionary and some of
the sexist examples of colocation they used when demonstrating a
word's common usage, which is, by the way, how the
dictionary defended these examples kind of like, it's sexist, but
it's how people use it. It's not us, it's the
type of thing. Um So, here's the official statement the
(10:25):
o E D released. The example sentences we use are
taken from a huge variety of different sources and do
not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press.
So yeah, we're not sexist. You are. I love I
love that response. Right. Um So, here's an example of
what we're talking about, rabid feminist. This was an example
(10:49):
they gave for the how the word rabbit is commonly
used rabbit feminist. Another example is nagging wife and grading
and shrill to suscribe female voices but not male voices.
I do love that. The writer and comedian Lindy West,
her autobiography is called Shrill and now she's developing a
(11:11):
TV show spinning off of that experience, and it's really
sort of taking back this idea that as a as
a loud feminists that you know, she has probably been
called shrill her entire life, you know, kind of reclaiming
that word and saying, yeah, I am shrill, my badge
of honor, I'm proud to be shrill. So, after all
(11:34):
of this negative press, the o E ED released a
statement saying they were reviewing the example sentence for rabid
to ensure that it reflects current usage, which is good,
but it's only a start because I would bet that
a lot of folks are still going to co locate
rabid with feminist. Yeah. I think I co located with
(11:55):
with dog that. Yeah, that makes sense to me. That
makes to me. Another part of this conversation is pejoration. Um,
So this is, as you might guess from pejorative. It's
when the meaning of a word gets worse as time
goes on. And linguists positive that this happens more often
(12:16):
when looking at words referring to women than when looking
at words referring to men. And there are so many examples,
and surprise, surprise, most of them negatively sexualized women over time. Um.
And also all of them reinforce the gender binary, which
we were sort of talking about at the top, which
is another problem that we need to tackle when it
(12:37):
comes to our language. But okay, let's look at some examples,
starting with courtesan or courtison. At one, you gotta say
it fancy, Yeah, I realized I didn't put the right
accent with it, quotas on which at one time a
courtisan was the female version of the courtier, which referred
(12:59):
to somebody invited to attend the court of royalty. Courtisan
lost that meaning completely, And if you look up the
definition now you'll get something along the lines of a
prostitute or paramore, especially one associating with noblemen or men
of wealth and nothing else. That's the definition that you get.
(13:19):
And to me, this is so telling to the positions
of power women were allowed to have or not have,
suspicions around women's ambitions and motives, anxieties around female sexuality
and sexual agency, and valuing women based on their bodies
and sex appeal. Um. And if those sound like they're
still relevant, that's because they are. So. Another one is governess.
(13:44):
So if you think about it logically, governess should be
the female version of governor, which is the title of
someone who has power and authority over a place. But
around the fifteenth century it came to meet a woman
who cares for and supervises someone, usually a child. Now
that's not to say that, you know, taking care of
a kid is not a valid and important job, but
(14:05):
compared that to governor, it doesn't really have the same weight. Yeah,
it's not equal. Another one is hussey. Hussy once meant
head of house and the story it's derived from the
thirteenth century word for housewife, but when the seventeenth century
rolled around, it took on another meaning, which eventually became
the only definition a disreputable woman of improper behavior. And
(14:29):
again this is a put down of women to undercut
their power and to stigmatize female sexuality. One of my
favorites madam that this used to be what ma'am is today,
only more it distinguished. Like when I hear madam, I
think of it as as a very kind of distinguished title.
It denotes a woman with high rank, the female equipvent
(14:50):
of sir. Now in the eighteenth century this change when
people heard using madam to mean quote a concedered and
precocious girl, a young woman, a hussy, a minx, or
a prostitute or mistress, and by the nineteenth century, a
woman managing a brothel because that is the only high
up rank a woman can have, right, is managing a brothel?
That sounds about right. And speaking of mistress, this is
(15:15):
another great example. Once the female equivalent of master or
someone with power or authority, and usually an employer. Um.
But as we all probably know, that is not the
meaning anymore. It lost to that original meaning in the
seventeenth century and it now refers to a woman that
is not a man's wife, that the man is having
a long term sexual relationship with. That is its sole definition.
(15:40):
And once again you see the title stripped of power,
and you see it sexualized and sexualized in service to men.
One of my favorite words spinster. It's a good one.
It's not one that you hear a lot of, but
it's got a lot of weight a hatched to it.
(16:00):
I'll guess for me, I guess I'll put it that way. Um. So, basically,
y'all know what a spencer is supposed to be. It's
a woman who lives alone. Maybe she asked some cats,
Maybe she's weird probably wears a lot of sweaters, maybe
some clogs in the mix. I don't know, you know,
like there's a weird woman who romantic partnership is like
off the table. She lives alone and has cats. Well,
(16:22):
spencer actually just meant someone who spun thread or yarn. Now,
typically that person was a woman, but not always, and
it wasn't until the eighteenth century that that definition became
associated with someone who was outside of the typical like
marrying or childbearing age. Yeah, because for a while, an
(16:43):
unmarried woman one way she can make money is by
spinning yarn. And so the legal definition actually became um
that spencer referred to an unmarried woman. And then from
there it's pretty easy to see. Yeah, it was old
made essentially in the current definition comes with the disclaimer
(17:05):
disparaging and defensive. But the male equivalent is bachelor. That's
a much more has a much more positive connotation. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was thinking about this recently, how
I don't I don't know if you remember this, but
back in the day, Warren Beatty, young Warren Beatty, he
was sort of this um serial they used to call him,
(17:25):
like a serial bachelor and kind of in the seventies
and the eighties, he was sort of this like sexy,
worldly guy who was like the quintessential bachelor. And there's
not really a a female equivalent, and in culture, at
least what I can think of, it's like, you know,
an unmarried woman who is having lots of fun dating around,
(17:48):
has a great career, travels, Like that's not really We
definitely associate enjoying intentional singleness with men and with women.
It's just sad and weird. Yes, And I was thinking
about this too when it comes to the word cougar
and how that has this negative vibe to it. And
(18:09):
I was trying to think if there was a male equivalent, Um, cougar, Yeah,
there is a male clipping to cougar, it's silver fox.
See that sounds so much nicer. I guess it is
not a one to one comparison, but an older, still
handsome man who kind of like can date a younger woman,
but not in like the sugar baby sugar daddy kind
(18:30):
of way. I would consider that to be a silver fox.
A so like Sean Connery, you might be a silver fox,
right right right right? Um, that was the most when
I saw what is it called entrapment? When I was
pretty young, and I didn't buy it immediately because I
was like, Sean Connery is too old. Why is that
(18:51):
hot lady came to him? Is that Catherine's Aida Jones. Yeah,
she's married to Michael Dugla. I know, I didn't know
that at the time. She was married to a silver fox.
She is, she is, She's very important to this whole conversation.
This was ten year old Annie's thoughts. Please don't judge
(19:11):
current Annie on it. I haven't seen that movie in
a while. I'll have to rethink it. But so. Another
example is tart. It used to be a shortening of sweetheart,
but starting in the eighteen eighties, it came to mean yep,
a prostitute or a woman of immoral character. Another good one, wench.
(19:32):
It used to just mean a baby or a young,
unmarried woman. Starting in the fourteen hundreds, it began to
be used to describe a mistress or a sexually lawless
or quote loose woman. Yeah, so pretty much all of these,
if we look at them, they started meaning something that
was equivalent to the male word, the male version of
(19:55):
the word, and then they all lost their power and
by and large started defining women through their sexual desirability,
our lack of desirability with regards to men, or otherwise
subordinating them to men and or defining them in relationship
to men. So the very fact that we have a
misses and miss but not a male equivalent, that should
(20:15):
tell you something definitely. So we have some more discussion
around this whole thing. But first we have a quick
break for word from our sponsor M and we're back,
Thank you, sponsor. Another piece of this whole thing is
(20:38):
how in our language, male is generally the default, and
this is everywhere. Think of popular suffixes in English added
onto words traditionally referring to men, so that they now
refer to women, like et s, tricks, or the suffix
man to refer to jobs that both men and women
can't hold, like in chairman, councilman, policeman, salesman, maleman, and
(21:01):
the word mankind or even human mankind or man made.
I mean it's everywhere. Um or if you look at
the words for doctor or lawyer, think of how often
you hear in the news female doctor or female lawyer,
since women are seen as outside of the norm in
those professions. And I remember hearing female prosecutor over and
(21:23):
over again in the whole Brett Kavanaugh news coverage thing
female prosecutor. Yeah, as if that means that she prosecutes
with her vagina, Like, oh, she's a woman, you know,
you know, it didn't make any sense. And it's funny
because recently they've just done some rejiggering of how they're
(21:44):
going to make those signs that say things like men working,
that they're going to try to figure out a way
to have it be more gender inclusive, where you know,
it's not men working, it's people working, you know. Um,
and so yeah, they're there. It's interesting how these things
kind of show up. Pretty recently, Alexandria okco Cortes, somebody
tweeted at her that she needed to stop saying congress
(22:07):
people because you know, she's in Congress and she's not
a man. Then the title as congressman, and that person
eventually apologized. They were like, yeah, she's right, Like she's
right to say congress people. Um. It's really interesting how
gendered these things are. They're just we'd say them without
even thinking about it, really, but it does warp how
we see ourselves. It does um, and it kind of
(22:29):
reminds me of that riddle where uh, I mean, ultimately
the answer is the surgeon is a woman, but it's
supposed to showcase I guess that you automatically assumed it
was a man, so like the whole, to get to
the answer of the riddle, you have to be like, ah,
the surgeon is a woman. Um. It's even in our riddles,
(22:53):
is what I'm trying to say. We cannot escape sexism
even in our riddles. That's right, And actually we're going
to talk about that more a little later. Um. And
if we can even look at the reverse example of
like male nurse, so yeah, it hurts everybody. Um. And
since we don't have a gender neutral third person pronoun
(23:13):
in English, most of our idioms and proverbs and perhaps
riddles use the masculine he. And another thing about proverbs
is the ones that do you she are refer specifically
to women usually don't paint women in the best light,
like he who follows his wife's advice will never see
the face of God, or a neck without a head,
(23:35):
bucks without a whole, and a girl with that shame
are not worth admiring or marrying. What an expression? I
know when we're people saying that I missed it. A
woman is like a lemon. You squeeze her and throw
her away. Gross. Yeah, seven, women in their right senses
are surpassed by a madman, which is offensive on more
(23:57):
than one level. Nice like little layer of the it's
ablest sexist. Yes, that's good. Yeah. Um. And then if
we look at gendered languages, that is Latin languages where
nouns themselves are gendered, like French or Spanish. Um, so
love for masculine in law for feminine in French. Every down,
(24:20):
we'll have either the law in front of it. Most
of you probably know this, but you know, just make
sure we're on the same page. On top of that,
these languages don't have a gender neutral plural word like
them are they? Instead, you have the masculine plural and
the feminine plural. For example, in French, heel which is masculine,
or l which is feminine. And when you're talking about
(24:41):
a group of all men are all women the word
you would use to describe the group is clear. Even
if one man enters a group of five, ten, one hundred,
one thousand women. Though you switch over to the masculine plural,
you don't call it a group of women anymore. It
becomes a group of men, even though there's one man
in a whole group. And the suggestion is that one
(25:02):
man takes precedent over any number of women. He is
the most important person in that group. He is how
you will refer to that group. And if someone walks by, uh,
this group of mostly women and one dude, the person
is going to address them as if they were all
men are, alternately as if there aren't any women present. Yeah.
That reminds me of the episode that we did on
(25:24):
women and travel Alone, where if people still accused a
group of women as traveling alone, as if the only
thing that validates their existence is the presence of at
least one man, you could be a hundred women deep
and it's still alone. Right, you're traveling alone? What were
you doing? And this is where I said, like the English,
(25:45):
hey guys would fall into two And I am very
guilty of saying that. In my brain it's de gendered.
But as the article I was reading pointed out, if
you went to a group of men and said hey, ladies,
it would in general not be taken favorably and might
even start a fight. Yes, well, that's one of my
favorite colloquialism, really bits and handy y'all people people in
(26:10):
the South like that, like we got it down. Y'all
means all. It's a it's a gender neutral way to
address a group. So instead of saying hey guys or
hey ladies, I'm gonna say hey, y'all. And what's funny
because when I was teaching, you have to find all
different kinds of ways to address a classroom, um that
(26:31):
are not guys or hey ladies or whatever. So it
was always good morning, friends, good morning, comrades, good morning,
this good morning that you know, um, So they are
all kinds of better words other than guys to use. Yeah,
And it's one of those things where in my head
it's d gendered, but I don't know what it is
in other people's heads. And I don't want to leave
(26:52):
anyone out with my choice of language, and it I
know that some people are probably thinking this seems such
a small thing, But as I tried to get across
from the beginning, language really is very important and it
impacts so much of the way we think, even if
we don't realize it. Definitely, Oh god, there's this is
really random. But there's this classic final episode of the
(27:13):
Mary Tyler Moore Show. That show ends with Mary getting fired,
and when she's fired, it's she's the only woman in
a group of male journalists and the person who is
firing or says you guys are fired. And then she's like,
wait a minute, he said guys, maybe that doesn't include me,
and she has to like ask she was included in that,
because technically she is not a guy, and I'm going
(27:37):
to assume she was. She was. Um. Here's another one
that a couple of you listeners have written in about
is the whole question of calling women girls and whether
or not it's degrading UM and generally outside of friend groups,
if you think about it, if you called a group
of men boys, it is viewed as an insult or
(27:57):
it implies that they are in potent Oh my goodness,
this is Benna. I have a lot of feelings on
this particular one. Um. First of all, I call women girls.
I definitely should not um, But for me, it's it's
a friendly thing, like hey girl, Hey girl. And even
someone someone pointed out that that's not necessarily you know,
(28:19):
if someone is non binary, saying hey girl to them
is might not be something they want to hear. Someone
is gender nonconforming, that might not be something they want
to hear. I call men girl like if we're friends,
you're my girl, like that how it is in my head,
And it sucks to realize that, like the imprint, like
what you were saying with guys, like the way that
(28:41):
it reads in my head might not be the way
it reads to other people in their head. And I
just want to be you know, aware of that. But
then it's also tough because if it shows how limiting
our language is, Like if you if if I'm am
a woman in a heterosexual romantic relationship, that person is
supposed to be my boyfriend, but he's not a boy.
(29:02):
I'm not a girl. You know, we don't really have
a lot of words that Like I don't use the
word boyfriend. I don't use the word girlfriend, because this
is if I'm in a relationship with someone, I'm not
a girl. He's not a boy. That's not seventh grade
or girlfriend, and boyfriend does not accurately describe what a
like partnership between two adults is totally agree. I remember
(29:25):
we did an episode, a video episode on this a
while ago, but how there aren't really good substitutes for that,
but how it is so it does feel so high school,
like just the terminology doesn't fit. Yeah, I I for
my romantic partners, I use the word boo. I don't
want to be anyone's girlfriend, like I'll be your boo.
(29:47):
That's that's a good one. I think that's a step up. Um.
And if you're thinking that this is an unwieldy grammatical rule,
you are correct. But studies show that grammar rules like
this do influence woul global sexism, so that's kind of
a big thing. Two thousand nine study found that grammar
like this does correlate with sexism. When asked to read
(30:08):
a passage in either English, which is a gender natural language,
meaning nouns are in assign gender, but there are gender
specific pronouns, or French and Spanish gendered languages. Those that
read the passage and engendered languages showed higher levels of
sexism in their responses on a questionnaire they filled out afterwards.
Doesn't mean that English speakers are less sexist, but it
(30:30):
does show that grammar things like this might influence how
we think, even if it's unconsciously. The research didn't stop there,
they took the World Economic Forums Global Gender Gap Index,
which measures the gender inequality in one thirty four countries
and in various sectors like economics, politics, health, and education,
and they divided them up by language type most common
(30:51):
in that country. Natural gender was gendered fifty four point
five percent and gender less nineteen point four. If you're
doing that math and you're saying that's not you are
totally correct. The remaining countries spoke a mixture of these
language types. Now, when controlling for things that might influence
gender inequality like religion, political system, relative development, and geographical location,
(31:14):
the researchers found that countries where gendered languages are primarily
spoken ranked highest in terms of general inequality. Interestingly, though
genderless language is displayed the second highest rate of general
inequality and natural gender is the least and one hypothesis
for why genderless languages didn't fare as well suggest that
in all language without a gender the brain in the brain,
(31:38):
the default is male. Other studies kind of demonstrate this,
finding that hearing a phrase like heroines and heroes makes
people believe that there are more heroines um, as opposed
to just saying heroes, UM. You're just gonna think all
men are. And that's what the study found, and that
the order matters too, Like whatever you say first, your
(31:58):
brain assigns that being more importance, So putting heroines first
instead of heroes. Uh, there's all these things that we
don't realize our brain is doing when we say things. Um,
if we go back to the gendering of nouns, a
two thousand to study found that this leaked out into
other thought processes. The researchers put together a list of
(32:20):
twenty four objects that have opposite genders in Spanish and German.
For both languages, half of the items were gendered masculine
and the other half feminine. A group of native Spanish
speakers and a group of native German speakers who were
also proficient in English were then asked in English to
come up with three adjectives for each object. With each participant,
(32:43):
the gender of their native language influenced the adjectives of
the words that they chose. For example, the German word
for key is masculine, and in Spanish it is feminine.
German speakers described keys with words like useful, hard, heavy, jagged,
and metal. Spanish speakers described it using words like intricate, little, tiny, lovely,
(33:03):
and golden. Or if we look at the example of bridge,
the German speakers described it as delicate, fragile, beautiful, elegant,
and slender. Spanish speakers described a bridge using words like strong, big, dangerous, sturdy,
and towering. And I bet you can guess in which
language bridge is gendered feminine. Yeah, it's the German language.
(33:27):
And that's pretty stark. Those examples. It kind of shocked me. Yeah,
they're describing a bridge. It sounds like you're describing like
a woman's arm, like slender, elegant. It's really stark, it is.
These participants were also shown a pair of pictures, one
containing a person and the other an object, and they
(33:49):
were asked to rate how similar the pictures were the
person and the object. If the biological sex of the
person matched the gender of the object in their native language,
that participants rated them as similar. If it didn't, then
they said they had no similarities, which is interesting. Yeah,
(34:09):
it's it's wild how language. I mean, it really gets
in your head. I guess these examples just really drive
that home that it really gets in your head and
in ways that you might not even realize. Yeah, and
I as someone who didn't grow up with speaking a
gendered language. I remember learning UM, French and Spanish in
(34:32):
like elementary school and being so confused by the the
article before the word, and so I don't have I
don't really have a starting point for knowing how much
that impacts how you think of things. I do remember
thinking like, I feel like chocolate is masculine in French UM,
(34:54):
and I always thought it should be feminine, which says
more about me than it does about the French language.
But I had more of that kind of association with
it UM. But yeah, again, I would love to hear
from people who speak other languages about their thoughts on this.
And obviously studies like the ones we're describing are tricky.
(35:15):
There are a lot of factors that influence inequality and UM.
The larger sample size countries that speak gendered languages compared
to those that speak genter, natural ones makes it harder
to draw conclusions. But at the same time, I would
love to see more research because I think that there
is something worth looking into their definitely, and we have
(35:37):
a little bit more for you, But first we have
one more quick break for word from our sponsor M
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So another thing that
we can discuss U is masculine eised words versus feminized words.
(36:02):
Over time, some words and even non gendered languages have
been masculinized are feminized, sort of like that co location
thing we were discussing at the top, but a bit broader.
So men are more likely to be described using certain
words and women are more likely to be described using
other words. And masculinized words generally have a more positive
connotation and feminized words generally have a more negative one.
(36:27):
And we could even extend this conversation to include phrases
like like a girl, which has traditionally been considered a
bad thing, but it's sort of like shrill kind of
being reclaimed. But still this idea that things that are
associated with femininity are bad. That's so a thing, I mean,
And you've talked a bit on the show about how
that's something that you grew up with. Yeah, by the
(36:49):
time I think I mentioned this in an episode. By
the time I was in kindergarten, I hated the color
pink because I associated it with being girly and I
didn't want to be associated with that. Um And we
talked about how this could even be applied and there's
a lot of discussion around this um recently, that it
could be applied to the party system the US, with
(37:10):
the Democratic Party being the feminized party in the Conservative
Party being the masculinized party. Oh that's interesting. Oh yeah,
there's so much interesting writing around that happening as we speak.
And I think we it's if you spend any time
in the mucky muck that is, like right wing Twitter,
(37:32):
their obsession with conveying like liberal or progressive men on
the left as feminine is really fascinating, like terms like
calling a progressive male like beta soy boy, like yeah,
like soy boy, beta, couk, things like that, where it's
so weirdly, it's just very weird. It is it is um.
(37:55):
And there's actually a study kind of looking into this
where um it was looking into the relationship or possible
relationships between sexism and self image, and it found that
people who display hostile sexism dislike of women, that's what
they defined it as in the study, are more likely
to describe themselves using words we typically associate with masculinity
(38:16):
like brave, physically, strong, determined, admirable, confident, And that was
the case for men, but for women displaying hostile sexism,
they describe themselves in terms that win against traditional femininity.
So not tolerant, not cooperative, not compassionate, not sensitive, things
like that, almost going out of their way to say
(38:37):
I am not like those other girls, which is a
trope we've discussed before. Yes, it's so, I mean, it's
funny when we apply gender traits that are good, you know,
it's just really really you are, like who wants to
describe themselves as intolerant and not cooperative? Like those aren't
(38:59):
good qual a. No, I can't imagine being very proud
why I am not sensitive, not tolerant, not and it's
all of these nuts, like it's nothing like that you are.
You're just basically saying I am not that m hmm um.
And the study also found that sexism and racism are
(39:20):
likely to occur in the same people because basically they're
buying into the idea that we are not all created
equal and that the unequal social hierarchies that stem from that.
Um like, they buy into those Oh no, like surprise
me at all. It's one of those things reading it
like thank you science. I mean, I've I always suspected
(39:42):
science confirms what we've already known forever exactly. Yeah, other
studies have shown that words masculinized and words that are
feminized influence what we believe to be the proper behavior
for men and for women, and that this impacts what
types of job men versus women can get. For instance,
women are more likely to get jobs with descriptors like kind, caring,
(40:05):
other things like that, and men are more likely to
get jobs with words like ambitious and independent. And this
impacts the advertising and targeting of jobs. So which jobs
men and women are more likely to pursue based on
the descriptors in the job description, and also the candidate
more likely to get hired for it. So it's kind
of like not cyclical, I guess, sort of cyclical, but
(40:27):
it happens from the advertising process to the job interview.
It impacts all of that. And I think once you
have the job, I think it probably at least in
my you know, my personal experience, I think it informs
who ends up doing what kind of labor in a workplace.
So we've talked about emotional labor. You know, if you
(40:49):
associate being caring or organized or you know, sensitive with
being a woman, you might let your mail employees get
like not do that, Like you might be thinking like, oh,
that's just a gendered trait that I associate with women. Therefore,
you know, Joe, the man doesn't have to be responsible
(41:09):
for that bit of labor. And so I think, not
only can it inform who applies for and gets what jobs,
but how those jobs are done once you get them. Yeah, yeah, completely,
And all of the stuff we're talking about does have
a real world impact, like things like that um contributing
to a culture that disrespects women, that makes it difficult
for them to be as openly ambitious to get equal pay,
(41:32):
to whole positions of authority because we don't see women
in those positions reflected in our language, and that in
turn influences how we think of women. It suggests that
women are less than are are outside of the norm.
It suggest that women are sexual objects at the service
of men, and that they are not to be believed
that the masculine is ideal, And this stuff is internalized
(41:55):
at a young age. It contributes to a culture that
routinely erases the experience trans people and non binary folks.
These are important things that we're talking about on a
societal level right now, and of course language is only
one part of the solution, but it is something that
we can work on improving. Definitely, there are some changes
that we can be happy about. Some institutions around the
(42:18):
world are taking steps to change language, whether it's at
the countrywide level in the case of Switzerland updating their
dictionary with a gender neutral pronoun or u S University
is like Yale swapping out words like freshman or upper
classmen to first year and upper year. And for those
that are thinking, well, this sounds like a lot of work, uh,
(42:38):
and it can be, But there are some steps that
we can take on a personal level. Gently calling people
out is one, including yourself. My Mbi Ali has a
whole video on how to do this when it comes
to the whole girl versus woman thing, and it's wonderful
and super helpful. Um. Doing this all the time might
seem like a full time job, but doing it even
some of the time can make a difference. Yeah, and
(43:01):
updating idioms and award titles like instead of best man
for the job, best person for the job in letters
or emails, using something gender neutral. If you don't know
how someone identifies to whom it may concern. For example,
our name A name works too if you're comfortable on
a first name basis, because then again, if you're not,
then you get into the mr, mrs, mrs, mrs mrs
(43:23):
thing totally using they are avoiding pronounce altogether, which can
be helpful to be more inclusive of folks who are
gender nonconforming. UM. Here in d C you can actually
get the honorific mix m X on your driver's license
is opposed to like miss or mrs. UM. It's a
gender neutral way of addressing someone formally. That's that's pretty cool. UM.
(43:48):
In general, being more aware of the words we choose
and what those words communicates and what they say about
the values and beliefs of our society. On a deeper level,
if you will, recognizing where we need to do some
work and then doing that work. I think that that's
where we can leave this. Yeah. I think it's just
really about being open to thinking about how we use
(44:11):
language and and sort of you know, being willing to
get it wrong and being willing to change and sort
of update these outdated ways of thinking. Yeah, and knowing
this history, I think is can be a important step
of that. An important step of moving forward and making
something better, and I'm excited to see that This about
(44:36):
brings us to the end of our deep dive into
the sexism of language. Like we said, we'd love to
hear from people who speak different languages, um what your
experience has been. You can email us at mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com, or you can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram
(44:56):
at Stuff I've Never Told You And where can people
find you? Bridget Well, As I mentioned in an earlier episode,
my time with Sminty is winding down, so if you
want to keep up with all the fun things I'm
gonna be doing, you can find me on Twitter at
Bridget Marie and on Instagram at Bridget Marie in d C,
d C Like the City. Thanks as always to our
(45:17):
producer Trevor Young, and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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