Mothers' Day Series Pt1 - Feminist Vocabulary

As it’s Mother’s Day, I think it apropos to discuss women and sexism. It's additionally prompted by a friend’s concern over my use of the ‘he’ pronoun in place of ‘the Progressive’ for my ‘Wisdom of the Ages’ post.  It’s vital I avoid that kind of confusion as much as possible. I'll be posting this as a series for a few more days culminating with a post on honor later this week. If there's anything you think I should discuss, be sure to let me know via a comment section.

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The inclusivity gesture of using 'he/she' or 'they' in place of 'he' is silly. The English language originated among Catholics that devoted a large portion of worship toward Mary, a woman, and unsurprisingly found women noteworthy and special. There’s thus a feminine pronoun, ‘she,’ to honor that devotion. There’s no male equivalent to ‘she.’

The feminists want to believe that ‘he’ is a male-specific pronoun and using it to refer to both sexes discounts women and is evil. ‘He’ is in fact sexually generic like the word “Progressive” or “Conservative” or “Dog” or “Driver” or “Cleaner” or “Idiot.” Just because the present English curricula have been politicized by feminists does not mean the language is not filled with sexually generic nouns and is somehow radically changed by changing the definition of the ‘he’ personal pronoun. The language itself remains intact but for a bunch of confusion around pronouns and the inclusion of this evil symbol in spoken English: /.

Indeed the feminist language crusaders have spread beyond simply changing pronouns to working against the word ‘man’ itself. I’ve heard those desiring to be ‘inclusive’ use words like ‘Congressperson’ and ‘committeewoman.’ These make little sense on two levels:

1.      ‘Man’ refers to all people, not just those of the male sex. The language itself is kind of dismissive of males when referring to us as just “men” as if “meh, just somebody.” A woman, on the other hand, is a person with a womb: a special characteristic that grants her distinction. I think you see this in Anglophonic cultures: men are rather expendable draftees while women are given lifeboats first.

2.      As a womb has little to do with being on a committee and being an individual does, proper titles use the word ‘man:’ Congressman, Committeeman, etc.

The use of the word “person” refers to your appearance and those things in your bodily possession (‘to search one’s person’) and not you as an individual. While it’s unintentional, those who use ‘congressperson’ may stumble on an old Latin use of the word ‘person’ for characters in a drama wearing masks. This would imply that your office is merely your ‘mask’ that can be taken off and handed along; that it is not a title of nobility or a vestment of power in a man himself.

Maybe it’s thus better to use ‘Congressperson,’ I don’t know. Until I think about that further, I’ll defer the decision and continue to use Congressman and the sexually generic pronouns in the place of the ridiculous ‘he/she’ or ‘(s)he. Keep in mind that this is my sign of respect and upholding for women as basely superior to the rest of us, not  participation in some sexist conspiracy.
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For further reading:

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Chapter 16: "How American Democracy has Modified the English Language"