feminazi

Rules For Media Coverage of Feminists

thusspakezuska — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:54:30 +0000

Rules For Media Coverage of Feminists

The most excellent Dr. Isis has launched her most excellent Letters to Our Daughters project. Isis tells us

The inspiration for my Letters to Our Daughters Project comes from my hope that we can recreate our family tree here, creating a forum where the mothers and aunts in our fields (which I hope to not limit to physiology, but that's where I'll start because that's who I know) can share their wisdom with us. I think there is a wealth of information among these successful women and I hope to use this forum to share it with young scientists who are yearning for that knowledge.

Today, Isis tells us, Someone has noticed. Isis followed up on this interest from Someone at a public radio program, only to be finally informed that

"If we can't identify you by name on our program, then there really is not enough controversy here for us to do a story on this project."

So what's that all about then?

Isis says she is left feeling squeemy by this encounter and I don't blame her a bit. Some commenters are of the opinion that it can all be chalked up to MSM-syndrome: the mainstream media just doesn't "get" the blogosphere, those old farts who run those tired forms of reporting don't understand us hip young folks. (Never mind there are young reporters and old fart bloggers, including yours truly.) A few other bloggers suspect a ruse, someone trying to suss out Dr. Isis's identity, but Isis claims she verified Someone's identity and was not being Zuckered. (always glad to help try and create a new term, sister Isis!)

Here's my take on this: it has much less to do with the cluelessness of MSM about the bloggysphere, or somebody's desire to unmask Isis in particular, than it does with how MSM generally shapes stories about feminists. Stories involving feminists, by definition, must always be controversial, because feminism and feminists cannot be taken as uncontroversial things.

So herewith I present one possible scenario for a "controversy" that Someone from public radio might have been interested in cooking up for a program piece. Just talking about the nice anonymous blogger who started a project to encourage young women scientists? Not so interesting. Framing it (oh my god, I used that word!) as another chapter of the ongoing campus culture wars? MUCH more interesting! If you're gonna talk about feminazis, there are rules to be followed. Let's get started.

Rule Number 1: Feminists must not be portrayed as doing anything really positive for Humankind, especially women. Feminists are RUINING!!!11!!!1! women's lives by not allowing them all to "choose" full-time wife- and motherhood, unless the women are poor, in which case feminists are ruining poor women's lives by encouraging them to expect social justice instead of just relying on themselves and getting off welfare and going out to work to support their children. (You can play at home! Pick your favorite issue. See if you can explain how, no matter what, feminists are RUINING!!!11!!!1! women's lives.)

Rule Number 2: Feminists should be portrayed as though their real agenda, no matter what they say, is to emasculate Mankind. Feminists may say they are all about equity in the workplace but what they really mean is stealing jobs from men - the very jobs that make men out of the boys! Just ask Christina Hoff Sommers. She's created whole conferences about this very issue, and the media loves her. Next the crafty feminists give those jobs to unqualified women (probably unqualified black or Latina women, to boot). Finally, they force men to go against their natural selves through the imposition of ridiculous workplace rules like no groping your colleagues and other ridiculous restraints on a man's evolved sex drives. You might as well just Bobbitt every man the minute he enters the workplace.

Rule Number 3: You cannot under any circumstances cover anything a feminist is doing without having one or two "experts" to explain why they are evil and wrong. If it's science-related, preferably one of these experts would be Christina Hoff Sommers. She's not a scientist, but no matter - she's positioned herself as the go-to "conservative feminist" on gender and science. If it's academia-related, it would be great to get some commentary from someone like David Horowitz. The two of them can explain to you how any particular feminist is destroying the minds of America's youth and the pillars of the American university tradition as we have known it and, by extension, America itself.

So, my guess is, Someone wanted to create a nice "fair and balanced" public radio program about Dr. Isis's Letters To Our Daughters project. You gotta have controversy in order to be fair and balanced. The controversy is: Isis thinks she's doing something good, but it's not really good for young girls, because it encourages them to think of themselves as victims. Furthermore, pushing young women into careers they don't really want to do - and aren't, by their biology, naturally inclined toward - is bad for them, bad for science, and bad for our country. Feminists only want to do this because they hate men, and they hate our country. Just ask David and Christina. They will explain it to you.

But you can't expect them to swoop down on Dr. Isis's college campus and collect evidence of the nefarious intent of MRU's network of evil feminist malcontents, of which Dr. Isis is most surely just the latest manifestation, if they don't know where it is they are to swoop. The controversy is much less exciting if you can't make a stink on campus. Maybe find a female science student right on MRU who will proclaim, "I don't want any "special help"!"

Yeah, that's how these things are manufactured. I have friends on college campuses who have been the target of stuff like this. Isis, I say, count yourself lucky that Someone flounced off into the night. There are some kinds of attention your project just doesn't need.

thusspakezuska Fri, 05/08/2009 - 14:54

Tags

Those Humorless Feminists

What They're Saying

feminazi

gender equity

Hoff Sommers

Horowitz

Isis

Letters to our Daughters

Science

STEM

I'm a "old fart" as well - card carrying AARP member and all. MSM really really doesn't get the blogosphere. I know more about Dr. Isis by reading her blog than I know about almost all of the MSM - not that I care to know that much at them.

Stories involving feminists, by definition, must always be controversial, because feminism and feminists cannot be taken as uncontroversial things.

Of course. Once something is not controversial, there's no use in having a term for it any more.

When was the last time you saw someone described as an "abolitionist" or "suffragist?"

Zuska, you are so awesome that I have no words for your awesomeness. This post is fantastic.

You know, D.C. is right. I'm in it for the drama.

what volcanista said. Awesome post.

You know, D.C. is right. I'm in it for the drama.

I'd rather not misinterpret that.

Just so I'm not myself misunderstood: I'm looking forward to the day when "feminism" is precisely as controversial as the abolition of slavery -- and therefore, there won't be any useful semantic content to the label "feminist."

Finally, they force men to go against their natural selves through the imposition of ridiculous workplace rules like no groping your colleagues and other ridiculous restraints on a man's evolved sex drives.

Here's a controversy they could print - I once worked at a place where guys were encouraged to be guys by the owner guy and it wasn't just the women who hated it. It created a tense & unproductive vibe. Women & men left, the company lost valuable resources and some sued. It was lose-lose all round. Those 'ridiculous' workplace rules benefit everyone and translate to the bottom line.

No takers? Thought not..

Zuska, I had never considered it this way. Damn it, I hate it when you you're right (as you so frequently are). I am keeping my Naughty Monkeys though.

Ged: "I once worked at a place where guys were encouraged to be guys"

Why do I get the bad feeling that this really means that guys were prodded to act like macho knuckle draggers?

Something to consider: controversy sells, and most radio shows have to show a profit or they'll be canceled. I suspect you'll find the same attitude toward any sort of community advocacy that would interest a radio show.

Especially talk radio (which, as you tacitly assume, is mostly "conservative".) They need people to call in, and they need those people to already know which side of the "controversy" they're going to be on. IMO most people who listen to "talk radio" fantasize about calling in, but don't. But they need to have an opinion to (fantasize about) call(ing) in about. No controversy, no opinion. "Gee, that's nice" just doesn't cut it.

On the subject of talk radio being "conservative", of course! Why would anybody not stuck in the last century bother with radio at all, when there's blogs, BBS, and talkback on most on-line newspapers?

I once worked at a place where guys were encouraged to "be guys"

I think punctuation makes meaning much clearer.

I've never had a problem being a guy, but I've never been big on "being a guy." The distinction is not trivial.

*Applause*

Z, your analysis sounds exactly right to me.

Just so I'm not myself misunderstood: I'm looking forward to the day when "feminism" is precisely as controversial as the abolition of slavery -- and therefore, there won't be any useful semantic content to the label "feminist."

For fuck's sake, dude, no one gives a flying fuck what day you're "looking forward to". How about focusing on current reality, and not pie in the sky bullshit that has about as much likelihood of occurring in our lifetimes as establishing a permanent human colony on fucking Mars?

Amen, Zuska. If the rules you describe were *not* in effect, wouldn't the fact that Dr Isis and her informants *needed to remain anonymous* be good evidence of a controversy, at a career-threatening level?

> "there really is not enough controversy here for us to do a story"

For "controversy" read "screaming catfight"?

Maybe. But I would have thought that if these 'rules' were key to how this thing would play out, that Isis being anonymous and pseudonymous would make the most sense as part of the controversy itself.

I had suggested that this was a fake, but Isis confirms that it is not. I'm now leaning towards clueless person as best explanation. But the Zuska Model of Media Coverage of Feminists seems reasonable, notwithstanding.

How about focusing on current reality

Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and ask why not?

Put another way, some of us prefer lighting candles to cursing in the darkness.

Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and ask why not?

Put another way, some of us prefer lighting candles to cursing in the darkness.

Do you have the slightest idea how obnoxiously condescending it is to show up at a feminist blog and start blathering about how fucking great it will be when feminism is obsolete? You are doing the opposite of "lighting candles" if by that you mean "showing the way to a better outcome". Rather, you are insulting women who *are* actually trying to figure out what can be done, slapping them in the face with your male privilege.

Do you have the slightest idea how obnoxiously condescending it is to show up

I bow to the Master.

blathering about how fucking great it will be when feminism is obsolete?

I rather suspect it's about as objectionable as telling a multitude who grew up under Jim Crow about a day when one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

If that's the indictment, I'm proud to plead guilty.

Sorry, DC, you're no Dr. King.

I rather suspect it's about as objectionable as telling a multitude who grew up under Jim Crow about a day when one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! Yeah, d00d blathering on a feminist blog about how great it's gonna be when feminism is obsolete is totally exactly just like Martin Luther King preaching to his fellow black Americans about ending racism. I am sure all the laydeez are totally inspired by your eloquent d00dly call to action.

PhysioProf, I adore you.

D.C., re. your dreaming: noise with inaction is just noise. Also, hello, wtf insulting. Are you always this oblivious and egotistical?

Sorry, DC, you're no Dr. King.

Damn straight I'm not -- which is why I'm so flattered to be compared to him.

I am a woman, I definitely support women's rights, and I agree with D.C. Sessions that once feminism achieves its goals, we won't need to label anyone as a feminist any more.

D.C., re. your dreaming: noise with inaction is just noise.

Yup. I've made that point a time or two and Boy! Howdy! did it draw incoming.

Oh, and to clarify: I meant the feminist goals of women being accepted as equals and the end of discrimination against women--not the whole "anti-man" agenda many people equate with feminism.

You know, the one thing that has completely chapped my ass about this project and this discussion are the men who have suggested that the feminists are somehow hurting the cause of equality by focusing on the struggles women face. That by ignoring the menz or highlighting how far we still have to go, it reinforces the current disparity. There are a lot of men who seem to think that "Isis is doing it wrongz." Yes, it's lovely to think that there will be time when men and women are truly equal, but it also trivializes the current struggle.

So I am going to basically summarize the reactions to the project:

Women -- "Yay! This is awesome!"
Men, Group 1 -- "This is pretty cool, Isis. Maybe I can learn something too."
Men, Group 2 -- "I have concerns about this project." "What about the men, Isis? You're ruining science by not letting us play."

AS far as I am concerned, Group 2 can bite me.

Damn straight I'm not -- which is why I'm so flattered to be compared to him.

Or which is why you flatter yourself so much by comparing yourself to him? Uh huh.

Zuska, I think you've nailed it. I inwardly cringe every time there's a MSM report on women in the workplace (especially women in science), because of the "balanced" reporting.

That said, I think that Letters to Our Daughters might might fit nicely on "This American Life", which is focused people telling their stories.

Zuska, I think you've nailed it. I inwardly cringe every time there's a MSM report on women in the workplace (especially women in science), because of the "balanced" reporting.

That's setting a meaninglessly low bar for cringeworthiness: the MSM insist on "balanced" reporting of everything, right down to the sale of African seven-year-old girls to HIV-positive creeps looking for the "virgins cure AIDS" treatment [1].

There's so much more work to be done WRT the status of women in the workplace [2] that reference to the MSM treatment of the subject is like reference to the comic-book treatment: there are glimmers here and there of enlightenment, totally drowned out by a flood of just how physioprofing clueless can you be?

[1] Obligatory disclaimer: it has nothing to do with the continent, color, crushing poverty, or bias against the HIV-positive. The practice exists and is still beyond objectionable.
[2] Not to mention everywhere else.

Dude, how fucking stupid are you that you continue to fail to understand that the women discussing this matter neither need nor want your d00dly advice on how they should be doing it? Or is it that you get it, but you are intentionally acting like an asshole?

Either way, get a fucking grip, man.

My general experience is that, in trying to describe how things should or could be, many men miss what is actually happening and opportunities to be real allies.

Forgive my old fart syndrome (OFS). But I have no clue what "MSM-syndrome" or "MSM" is suppose to stand for. Usually in my scientific writing I do as an example: Kiss My Ass (KMA) and then use KMA afterwords throughout. Is this post good enough to make your front page again? Someone, please explain MSM and I'll read the entire article.

Zuska- I think you've nailed it (at least partially- it's still possible this particular Someone was *also* clueless about the bloggysphere; irrespective of generation).

I shudder to think of how a story contrasting Christina Hoff Sommers with the Letters to Our Daughter's project would have gone. I sincerely *hope* our mysterious senior producer wouldn't have sunk that low- but I can see the journalistic incentive for 'controversy', and I think you're right that the very word feminism gives a lazy journalist very handy stock controversy.

CPP- oh go soak your head.
DC Sessions might/might not be clueless, but he's said nothing on this thread which strikes me as anywhere near as batshit whackaloon as you thinking your petty vindictive bullying has any place in a constructive disscussion about feminism and the media.
Go direct your vitriol at someone who deserves it (may I suggest Christina Hoff Sommers after reading Zuska's link?).

Becca: If it was not for Physioprof, who would defend Zuska and the other women? (At least let him think he's helping.)

That's setting a meaninglessly low bar for cringeworthiness: the MSM insist on "balanced" reporting of everything, right down to the sale of African seven-year-old girls to HIV-positive creeps looking for the "virgins cure AIDS" treatment [1].

There's so much more work to be done WRT the status of women in the workplace [2] that reference to the MSM treatment of the subject is like reference to the comic-book treatment: there are glimmers here and there of enlightenment, totally drowned out by a flood of just how physioprofing clueless can you be?

So what exactly are you suggesting? That we shouldn't bother discussing the way the MSM* reports on issues involving women because their reporting on other subjects is equally is bad? Of course there is more work to be done, but Zuska's post was about the treatment of feminist subjects by the MSM, so that's what we're discussing here. At least that's what I'm discussing.

Anyway, I think it's very shortsighted to dismiss the MSM because of its frequently awful reporting on political and social issues. Most of the general public does get their news from TV or newspapers (or information filtered from those sources onto talk shows), so an article in the New York Times or a segment on CNN can certainly influence the opinion of both the public and policymakers. Every time Sommers is quoted in one of these articles it provides legitimacy to her and her arguments.

* Main Stream Media

So what exactly are you suggesting? That we shouldn't bother discussing the way the MSM* reports on issues involving women because their reporting on other subjects is equally is bad? Of course there is more work to be done, but Zuska's post was about the treatment of feminist subjects by the MSM, so that's what we're discussing here. At least that's what I'm discussing.

I read Zuska's post as being about more than the MSM. They screw up so much that you can pick almost anything that they touch as being badly treated.

Women's issues deserve better than to be lumped in with the rest of their stock (and usually trivial) cluelessness, so that's how I read it: as being an instance of setting women up to fail and the public's acceptance of cardboard-cutout stereotyping.

Anyway, I think it's very shortsighted to dismiss the MSM because of its frequently awful reporting on political and social issues.

"Dismiss" as in "cease to take what they say seriously," or "dismiss" as in "pretend that they don't have power?" The first, I would hope any adult did long ago. The latter would be extremely foolish.

However, what I meant above is that I don't cringe at the MSM treatment of nontrivial issues like feminism only because I don't expect them to handle even trivial issues competently. It's like the things that toddlers say: you'd be embarrassed if a teen said them, but from a toddler you can't expect any better.

Comrade PhysioProf:

I read your writings often, although I comment rarely, and once again I read your writings about feminism in general and women's issues in academia specifically and come away with the impression that there is almost no way that I (or most other males) could have a positive interaction with you about these topics of discussion. Your presence in a thread can and does intimidate me into not commenting on the topic at hand, because I feel that if I support the feminist stance on the topic, then you will say something like "women don't need you giving them your male approval"; if I take issue with the feminist stance on the topic, you will take this as evidence that I am anti-feminist/sexist on every issue under the sun and my opinions are not worth addressing; and, if I do neither of those two things and claim to have no particular opinion on the topic, then you will decry me as one of those silent majority males who are damaging the cause of feminism through inaction. I really, really can't think of anything to say on women's issues that won't be met with your contempt, but there must be something, since you yourself are a male who says things about women's issues, and I presume you find your own attitudes towards women acceptable.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to accept that the problem lies with me on this; whereas you are a professor who interacts with women in an academic workplace setting on a frequent basis, are married, and grew up in a society in which the ways men exercised power and privilege were much more overt than they are currently, none of these things are true for me. In sum, I may simply be too immature (I'm 20 and a mere undergraduate) to think broadly and imaginatively enough on feminist issues in order for me to reach a conclusion that somebody such as yourself would find satisfactory. Perhaps this is the case for D.C. Sessions as well, perhaps it is not. But instead of attributing comments that you perceive as off-base to some insidious, malignant strain of male paternalism, isn't it more likely that the person is someone like me, genuinely troubled by all the ways in which women are inhibited and made uncomfortable by men in society, but uncertain as to what attitudes we could hold that women would appreciate? Isn't it possible that people like me are actually afraid that self-described male champions of feminism such as yourself will ridicule our attempts to communicate solidarity with feminism and embarrass us in front of the women we are trying to support? That's definitely the case for me. If I had made the comments that D.C. Sessions posted earlier in the thread (not that I would, I'm more the "cursing the darkness" type) and was met with the responses that you provided, the chances of me ever commenting again on feminist issues on ScienceBlogs would be very slim. You would have created one of those silent majority, implicitly-supporting-the-status-quo males that you so despise.

I know mockery is your style, and at times it can be devastatingly effective, but I think in this specific instance it was unwarranted and poisonous to the environment of this comment thread (to the point that I felt compelled to comment, which takes some doing). I feel that most men (in my age group, at least) want to support women's issues, and maybe it is our fault if we support them inappropriately, but it is definitely your fault if we persist in our ways because you mocked rather than enlightened us. I would appreciate, but am certainly not demanding, a comment, detailing some of the ways in which you explicitly and constructively promote feminism in general and women in academia in particular, and providing some sort of template from which a male such as myself could go about doing the same. If ever there was an easy way to earn respect on the internet, such a comment would be it. If such a comment (or a full-blown post) already exists from you on such a matter I would appreciate direction to it, but perhaps a rehearsal would still be in order. Cheers.

-deatkin

@Peggy: Main Stream Media = MSM. Thanks. You helped an old fart (OF). Tomorrow is mother's day. I wish all those women folk all the best for all you have done. All of us have women in are lives and of those mothers are the most important. Here is to all mothers (consider this a toast), as CPP would say you mothers-all-fucking-rock (MAFR). Be proud to be women. The attachment between mother and child is special. Nothing else compares. Happy Mother Day (HMD).

I would appreciate, but am certainly not demanding, a comment, detailing some of the ways in which you explicitly and constructively promote feminism in general and women in academia in particular, and providing some sort of template from which a male such as myself could go about doing the same.

Don't give women suggestions about what you think they ought to do about institutionalized misogyny. Listen to women when they tell you what to do about institutionalized misogyny.

This shit is not as fucking complicated as dumbshits like you and Sessions try to make it seem. But you obviously like to admire your own endless paragraphs of blithering bullshit.

HAHAHAH! Physio, YOU'RE doing it wrongz! Join the club, man. No cover charge.

deatkin, Feminism 101. go there.

Zuska, yup.

w.p. "(At least let him think he's helping.)"
Nope; not my job to validate him.

deatkin- nicely said.
For the record, CPP regularly makes me feel like my comments are unwelcome, and I'm a girl (last time I checked).

CPP- are you sure your commenting on this thread isn't a reflection of your own internalization of institutionalized misogyny? Cause it sure seems like you believe that feminists having an intelligent discussion about the way the media treats feminism just isn't interesting enough without you injecting in mockery of random clueless d00ds.

jc- yup. Doing it very wrongz indeed.

Don't give women suggestions about what you think they ought to do about institutionalized misogyny. Listen to women when they tell you what to do about institutionalized misogyny.

Or to write it in one sentence: "A man's role in the feminist movement is to follow women's orders without contributing to the discussion." Dude, you sound like the caricature of a feminist as described by Rush Limbaugh.

You know, CPP, you are an ass. Why do you speak for everyone and have the final word? You have once again completely hijacked a thread and totally moved it away from the original post so that is is obscured by your own egotistical roost-ruling attitude.

I would like to go back to the original subject, if I have your permission (I am only a guy, and thereby clueless for all that.)

It looks like what is happening here is that someone wants to take the "Letters to our daughters" project and do the same thing that was done when they bastardized the "Take our daughters to work day" into "Take our kids to work day." That issue was presented as a day off for the girls from school, and the poor boys were being treated unfairly by the system because they were boys. "Reverse sexism," they called it. And now it is a totally meaningless "Take your kids to work day," that is a pre-packaged fun and games day where the kids spend about 2 minutes with the parent and the rest doing crossword puzzles and watching movies.

Except that they can't quite figure the angle from which they can do this, so they are turning it into something else, something more sinister.

Me, I want more women in STEM not because I feel any particular penitence for being male, but because from an economic and societal standpoint, I think that suppressing the desire among young women to go into science and technology is a huge waste of talent when the need for a larger talent pool is growing more and more acute.

If Dr. Isis' project helps redress a waste of talent I am all for it (plus I also believe in the touchy-feely "follow your dream" stuff, but I had better not mention that lest I seem too patronizing.)

Or to write it in one sentence: "A man's role in the feminist movement is to follow women's orders without contributing to the discussion."

Seriously, you take "Stop talking and LISTEN for a minute" as "follow women's orders"? You might want to check your privilege for just a second and consider that perhaps women who have lived with misogyny their entire lives just might know a tad bit more about it than men who have never had to stop and think about it, and that listening might be a way to learn something. Feminism 101, indeed.

CPP -
What are YOU doing about institutionalized misogyny? Besides bellowing and lunging at the other males like a beachmaster defending his patch of sand and his harem?

Remember Eldridge Cleaver's statement: âYou're either part of the solution or you're part of the problemâ? There's another one: "You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.â So what are you doing to become part of the solution and start teaching people to become less misogynist?

I didn't totally mind D.C.'s comment, once he explained his point, actually. Telling feminists they need to be more farsighted is really problematic, but I think he clarified that that wasn't what he was saying. I'm not quite sure how it's relevant to point out that feminism is controversial because its goals haven't been realized yet, but it didn't strike me as offensively off-topic.

CPP can be harsh, yes, but often he gets it right. And sometimes it really does help to have an ally call people out instead of that decision (let it slide or say something) always resting with feminist women. And since I think it did kind of sound like D.C. was telling feminists how to do things (even if that wasn't the intended message), that kind of thing should get called out.

If you feel like everything you say is wrong, listen and learn. I'm not telling you to shut up - I'm telling you to listen. Only when you have a strong sense of entitlement to have your voice heard in every single forum might those things sound the same.

(Also, if your comments that are meant to agree with feminists are getting called out as sounding like you are bestowing your manly approval on the little ladies' ideas, maybe you're not wording them as well as you think...)

Anonymous Coward, calling people out on their shit is a way of making them more aware of the impact of their words. It's not an empty gesture. As deatkin was pointing out, a person's words and language can have a strong impact on others. Rape jokes communicate to men that rape is funny and not a serious problem (and maybe even okay). Woman-bashing conversations communally enforce a host of negative ideas. All kinds of comments about and against women can serve to silence any women present and remind them of "their place." These aren't empty words. And even if a person continues to think all that shit to themselves, if they stop vocalizing it, it stops reinforcing other people's prejudices.

We need allies. Feminist women aren't always going to be present in every conversation, and if men start calling each other out on this shit, it might help communicate that it's really NOT okay.

Just don't expect a cookie for it, or pat yourself on the back about it. Do it because it's right and leave it at that. It's just common decency.

CPP - I'm not sure if I'm understanding you.

In real life (rather than on the internet) when feminism or institutionalized mysogny comes up in a discussion, are you saying that I should listen to the perspective of the women and attempt understand their perspective before I attempt to add to the discussion at all? And then, if a male attempts something barbarically stupid, whether or not feminists are present, I should call them on their shit so that they learn that their behavior is no longer acceptable?
I can totally understand that perspective.

Or are you suggesting that I'm not even potentially capable of contributing to the discussion, because I'm a male, and so my job is solely to smile, nod my head, listen, and then mock any male who doesn't understand that our job isn't to contribute anything.
Because the latter just feels wrong to me.

There is an article on the NYT on women bullying.

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/05/10/business/10wom…

Much of it is the same old same old.

I hope this isnât considered hijacking the thread, but the connection is (for those who canât otherwise follow it) from MSM treatment of feminism, to MSM treatment of women being maltreated (the reason there is a need for feminism) to MSM treatment of anyone being maltreated, and back to parental advice on how to deal with being maltreated, and to answer the comment by Isis regarding men who want their own âletters to our sonsâ.

There already are a number of writings that fit in that category for men, the Prince, the Art of War. That is the whole purpose of boot camp in military training. That is the purpose of hazing when you join the military or any other male dominated group. The purpose is to give you the tools and the training to survive in that situation.

When it is kill or be killed, you have to be able and willing to do the killing first in order to survive. That reality is not the âfaultâ of the participants; it is the natural and unavoidable consequence of the system they are âcompetingâ in.

When getting grants becomes more competitive, donât be surprised when the more âcompetitiveâ researchers get the grants, not the most competent. As always, the easiest way to win any âcompetitionâ is to ensure that your opponents donât even try. Bullying is a very effective way of achieving that.

However, what I meant above is that I don't cringe at the MSM treatment of nontrivial issues like feminism only because I don't expect them to handle even trivial issues competently. It's like the things that toddlers say: you'd be embarrassed if a teen said them, but from a toddler you can't expect any better.

Now I understand better what you meant. I disagree though that we should essentially give them a pass. It doesn't make any sense to me to lump together all the bad reporting that is out there and ignore the fact that the MSM can do a good job. There is still excellent investigative reporting (just check the last Pulitzer awarded, for example), there are writers who do a good job covering science news, and often coverage of local events and local politics is quite good. What makes me especially cringe when issues concerning women are covered is that they aren't given the same respect as other news items - for example, articles about women in the workplace are published in the lifestyle section, rather than the business section; and they are often seem to work hard trying to portray women's issues as an "entertaining" catfight and to reinforce gender stereotypes than as news that affects half the population.

volcanista - I "call people out on their shit" when I feel it's necessary. And I was asking Comrade Physio Pfuck what HE had done to solve the problem.

CPP FTW! not listening is what makes me want to punch people.

And Zuska: "Maybe find a female science student right on MRU who will proclaim, "I don't want any "special help"!" " Ohhh that is sooo true. So true it hurts. Don't forget said female will need to also write a whiny editorial to the school newspaper about how she's doing just fine and the rest of us should shut up.

Comrade Physio Phuck! HA HA HA HA.

You're a douche, AC.

Right, AC, and what CPP had just done to help solve the problem was to call certain people on this thread out on their shit. Have you even read the thread?

I think you nailed it, Zuska. After all, the MSM are more than happy to put people on the air in shadow with distorted voices and fake hair and hats. Usually guys who are scared for their family or their career.

What is wrong about putting "Dr. Isis" on the air? Nothing.

What is wrong with hir idea? Nothing.

Peggy- I think that any issue that is near and dear to our hearts is apt to be something where flaws in media coverage stand out like glaring neon lights.
For example, there are precious few cases in the MSM I typically characterize as good science reporting (SB doesn't count as MSM right?). As a microbiologist, everytime I hear reporters mix up viruses and bacteria, I get the urge to subject them to involuntary tattoos with the correct information printed on their arms.

That said, the irritating treatment of "women's issues" you describe is remarkably common. I'm also optimistic enough to be reasonably sure the MSM could do better.
(Although "news that affects half the population!" is not necessarily the way I'd put it. Women's issues really are of interest to everyone - which is part of what makes it silly to have articles about businesswomen only in the lifestyles section).

"what CPP had just done to help solve the problem was to call certain people on this thread out on their shit."
You really think so?
Let's review: what CPP has just done was help PERPETUATE the problem by pretending that his own personal petty vendetta (he and DC have a history) had any fucking value whatsoever compared to a valid discussion of feminism in the media.

When volcanista and Peggy disagreed with DC Sessions they expressed well-reasoned counter positions. This is what intelligent people do; it allows for clarification of the actual point of disagreement which is vastly more likely to lead to problem solving than antisocial tirades.

Look, if you want CPP speaking for YOU, as an individual, that's fine. Personally, I can swear a bluestreak myself if I am so inclined; I don't see how ad hominin logical fallacies help the feminist cause; and I don't buy that CPP is doing this to be an ally (as opposed to using it as an outlet for his own bizarre obsessive feuds).

"Don't give women suggestions about what you think they ought to do about institutionalized misogyny. Listen to women when they tell you what to do about institutionalized misogyny.

This shit is not as fucking complicated as dumbshits like you and Sessions try to make it seem. But you obviously like to admire your own endless paragraphs of blithering bullshit."

I don't talk often, but when I do I talk a lot, because I really want people to come away from the conversation with the meaning I'm trying to give it. Sometimes they're not interested in my meaning and I'm just wasting time, but sometimes they are and I wind up having a very rewarding day. So far, with Comrade PhysioProf, this appears to be an instance of the former, but that could yet change. CPP telling me to listen isn't of much use when I'm already listening. The problem is, nobody's really saying anything. And now I can hardly remember what it is I wish somebody would say.

I don't talk often, but when I do I talk a lot, because I really want people to come away from the conversation with the meaning I'm trying to give it...The problem is, nobody's really saying anything. And now I can hardly remember what it is I wish somebody would say.

Oh little muffin, you had my sympathy for your adorable 20-year old self as you went toe-to-toe with PhysioProf until this very moment. If you're going to interject your penis-bearing self into a feminist discussion and make the claim that noone is saying anything of value to you, then you need much, much more help than Womens Studies 101 can ever provide. You might need to go to feminist kindergarten.

I'm getting flashbacks to the 60 and 70s feminist meetings I attended. And stopped attending after I heard the same shit from them as I heard from the guys in the SDS, BPP and the rest, just with a new label. If I wasn't willing to toe their line, I weasn't radical/feminist enough

Exactly what do you propose to do to eliminate academic misogyny? Kill all the ones who stand between you and the coveted department chair?

Oh little muffin, you had my sympathy for your adorable 20-year old self as you went toe-to-toe with PhysioProf until this very moment. If you're going to interject your penis-bearing self into a feminist discussion and make the claim that noone is saying anything of value to you, then you need much, much more help than Womens Studies 101 can ever provide.

Cut the kid some slack, Isis. He's right: the comments here have diverged from the original topic and have mostly become about personalities. That may be instructive in its way, but filtering the signal from the noise is a bit to demand of a self-confessed neophyte.

Anonymous Coward: "Exactly what do you propose to do to eliminate academic misogyny? Kill all the ones who stand between you and the coveted department chair?"

Actually, what Isis and Zuska and plenty of other feminists are doing is educating people about all the little and not-so-little ways that sexism gets reinforced.

Tiny Shiny Keys and Gendered Language

thusspakezuska — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:03:13 +0000

Tiny Shiny Keys and Gendered Language

Yesterday I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR and caught this very intriguing segment, Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong. Would you describe a bridge as fragile, elegant, beautiful, peaceful, slender, pretty? Or as strong, dangerous, long, sturdy, big, towering? Lera Boroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University, found that it depends - for native German and Spanish speakers, on whether your native tongue assigns a feminine or masculine gender to the noun bridge.

Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German -- die brucke -- is a feminine noun, and the word for "bridge" in Spanish -- el puente -- is a masculine noun, native speakers unconsciously give nouns the characteristics of their grammatical gender.
"Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way?" she asks in a recent essay. "It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender."

When asked to describe a "key" -- a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish -- German speakers were more likely to use words such as "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated" and "useful." Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny" and "tiny."

Boroditsky's essay "Sex, Syntax, and Semantics" is forthcoming in Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Cognition. It is a fascinating (and very readable) look at one aspect of the "does language shape thought" question, which Boroditsky recasts as "Does thinking for speaking a particular language have an effect on how people think when not thinking for speaking that same language?" It turns out the answer is yes. If you speak German and learn to think of Die Bruecke, when you are speaking English, the bridge - gender neutral in English - is still going to seem feminine to you, and you are going to associate feminine qualities with its descriptive elements. (And this may be part of why I had so much trouble learning German - faced with a sea of genderless objects, I was at a loss as to how to accurately attach a gendered pronoun to each of them.)

Boroditsky and colleagues developed a fictitious language with two categories for nouns, which they taught to English speakers. In one instance, the categories were clearly associated with male and female. In another, there was no such association. In the first case, subjects produced more masculine adjectives to describe objects when the name of the object belonged to the male category, and similarly more feminine adjectives for objects with names in the female category. Subjects were then asked to rate similarity between pairs of items. Items from the same category were rated as more highly similar than items from opposite categories. When gender was removed from the categories, as in the second case, there was no increase in similarity for within-category comparisons. So, it isn't just being in the same category that causes people to see objects as being similar to one another - the category has to have some sort of significance, such as that given by biological gender. In this way, the linguistic category - the gender of the noun - induces people to carry out comparisons they would not otherwise have made.

The results of various studies reviewed by Boroditsky show that grammatical distinctions in language can affect memory, descriptions of words and pictures, assessments of similarities between pictures, and ability to generate similarities between pictures, as well as several other tasks. Language does play a role in thinking. Boroditsky concludes: "Considering the many ways in which languages differ, our findings suggest that the private mental lives of people who speak different languages may differ much more than previously thought."

So thinking of a key as feminine means that you will likely see it as tiny and shiny rather than heavy and jagged, as you would if you think of it as masculine. Boroditsky doesn't discuss this, but I couldn't help wondering what her findings mean in regard to terms like "woman scientist" or "woman engineer". To me, such terms have always implicitly reified "scientist" and "engineer" as inherently masculine and thus in need of adjectification to explain the presence of women. Yet, if you only say "scientist" or "engineer", the average person automatically pictures a man . This is so even when the average person doing the picturing is a hairy-legged feminazi ScienceBlogger, much to my frequent chagrin. It's very, very difficult to escape the culture we bathe in daily. I often think it would be better, therefore, if we would say things like "scientists who are women" or "women who do science", even if such locutions seem awkward and time-consuming. They are more disruptive of our ingrained thought patterns, precisely because of their awkward, time-consuming nature.

The English language does not have gendered nouns or verbs, yet we do our best to make it a gendered language - using "he" to mean "he or she", using "mankind" to mean "humans", etc. - and this cannot help but affect the way we think. I believe Boroditsky's results support this. Therefore, when you refer to "the engineer" as "he" you are doing harm - you are NOT using a harmless all-inclusive generic he, you are imprinting the notion that engineers are men and men only on the minds of your listeners. Language like this really is meaningful and significant - if not, why would people be so upset about requests to change it?

So the next time you are confronted with an angry humorless feminist bitching about sexist language - pay attention, dammit!

thusspakezuska Tue, 04/07/2009 - 08:03

Tags

Ludicrous Language

Those Humorless Feminists

My kids and I were in the car going to school when that story was broadcast and we were absolutely transfixed! First - excellent example of good science journalism. Second, I thought about the way my worldview changed as I moved from a gendered language (Serbian) to a non-gendered language (English) about 18 years ago. I think in English now and while my thoughts are, I think, less gendered than before, I still have occasional lapses - which The Bride Of Coturnix laughs at - when I refer to an object as a He or a She. Those things get deeply ingrained.

Fascinating! So English is the great gender neutralizer? Does that mean we see things for HOW THEY REALLY ARE?

Speak it! There's an unfortunately mundane explanation for the resistance to continuing to use sexist language that was the norm a few decades back: laziness. Learning how to alter your writing style to take out the sexism takes a little effort, and it requires paying attention to what you're saying (and try shifting back to the old mode when you're writing fiction sometime--not fun).

...or how about you try to think of a pronoun in the English language with a gender-neutral but non-dehumanizing connotation. Hmm, can't think of any? Yes, that's my point exactly. Hear me out for a second.

I noticed this back as a child watching my parents drive. When someone cut her off in a particularly rude or dangerous way, my mom would yell about how bad "she" was to do so. When my dad was driving, he would yell about "he" should watch where he's going. I always thought it interesting, because as a child I wondered how in the heck they knew the gender of the other driver. I was very nearsighted so I assumed they just had better eyes. But when we got closer they were frequently wrong about the gender, a fact that didn't seem to bother them at all as their rantings just shifted seamlessly into the right gendered pronoun.

But that gets to a larger issue, one I discuss occasionally with my wife (who's Bulgarian, a language with masculine, feminine, AND neuter genders). Bulgarians use the neuter gender for small objects, and they often use it in an affectionate way. Little kids are neuter, as are small objects. To put something in the neuter form is to show that you think it's dear, a very affectionate thing. But in English, to refer to a kid as "it" is dehumanizing and insulting. Bulgarians who learn English, even when told of the distinction, still frequently refer to human babies or even close pets as "it" instinctively when a native English speaker would always just use he or she. And there's a bigger problem: what pronoun SHOULD they use in English when they don't know the gender but they don't want to dehumanize it? The jury's out.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me back to my original point. The English language lacks a humanizing but gender-neutral pronoun. In certain situations "one" or even the ever-so-ungrammatical but ever-so-useful "they" will suffice, but not always. You're looking at someone's child and belt out, "Oh, how old is... IT?" it just sounds horrible. So people tend to pick a gendered word through lack of choice, and frequently it's the gender they are. So yes, engineers, scientists, doctors, etc tend to speak of others in those professions as "he." Not necessarily because of an intrinsic gender bias on their part, but because historically those professions (like almost all) were manned by men and men were also the ones writing about them (and THAT was where the gender bias was, not in the word choice). They just picked the gendered pronoun that was most like them and those who were reading their works. It's not fair, but it also doesn't imply a deeper bias toward women all by itself. Women also use "she" instinctively when they think about a nurse, for instance--men aren't the only ones to make assumptions. So I guess All I'm asking is for you to imagine, just for a moment, that everyone who uses a gendered pronoun in English isn't in fact sexist. Maybe they're just forced to make an assumption due to language constraints. Find a way to amend the language to fix the problem, and you might find that this supposedly deeply-held gender bias largely go away with the removal of the linguistic constraints.

Bit of etymology: Man used to be ungendered, and the sexes were 'werman' (male) and 'wifman'. It was around the 13th century that 'man' started to mean 'male human'.

Aaaannnnndd.....lengthy comment #4 proves my point about the meaning and significance of gendered language and how vigorously people will defend its continuing usage.

So I guess All I'm asking is for you to imagine, just for a moment, that everyone who uses a gendered pronoun in English isn't in fact sexist.

I never said people who use gendered pronouns are sexist. Where, exactly, did you get that? Gendered pronouns are certainly appropriate to use when it's necessary to refer to gender. "one", "they", "he or she" are all perfectly acceptable ways of indicating that the gender is unspecified or could be either. "Oh, how old is the baby/chlid?" There are always ways around these language questions. It's the insistence that we MUST continue using inappropriately gendered language in situations where it does not make sense that I find amusing. There's really no need for it - except to defend the status quo, of course.

This is fascinating. I was taught that German grammar doesn't actually assign words a gender, that they simply call things "die" words, "der" words, and "das" words. (Which of course works out to masculine, feminine, and neuter, but I wasn't sure if they were explicitly considered to be genders...) Amazing to see the differences between languages. Seems to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis...

The other rebuttal is that language ought to be beautiful. Repetition of "he or she" is much more awkward than "he", "she", or even "one" as inclusive generic pronouns. Some writers defer to the pronoun that matches their own gender as a generic, while others prefer to alternate between "he" and "she" as generics. Some people make the mistake of using "they" as a singular pronoun, which is wrong but at least concise.

Also, it's interesting to note that vehicles often take feminine pronouns in english.

On a separate note, if we're gonna run around assigning genders to inanimate objects, how is a key not masculine?

"Oh, how old is the baby/child?" There are always ways around these language questions.

Yes, that's the better approach, when possible. But when you need to discuss an abstract person at greater length, it gets awkward to avoid using pronouns at all. And as I said, I prefer "he" or "she", at the author's discretion, to "he or she".
The ideal solution, as #4 implies, would be to have a gender-neutral, short, single word like "it", but without the dehumanizing aspect of "it".

I'm not sure how far this goes towards your conclusion regarding humans in specific roles. Regardless of language cues, I rather suspect that we imagine people-in-roles based on our experience base: the unspecified "engineer" is most often male simply because the majority of engineers we've known have been. There may also be an added weight that we assign to early experience.

Of course, gendered languages would reinforce this kind of cultural hysteresis.

One might get a rough idea of the influence exerted by gendered languages by comparing occupational gender disparity in countries with gendered and non-gendered languages. Personal recollection (not to be trusted) suggests that the influence isn't all that great.

Either way, though, we have a lot of resistance to change built into the social psychology of our cultures. Bummer.

On a separate note, if we're gonna run around assigning genders to inanimate objects, how is a key not masculine?

Very often languages assign "gender" based on phonetics: words with an "-ah" ending are often feminine, to give an example. Loan words thus acquire "genders" that have nothing to do with anything other than the sound of the word.

I vaguely recall that this has resulted in some real howlers. "Key" would be downright boring by comparison.

Actually Zuska, I think you slightly missed my point. It was that the English language doesn't have a gender neutral human pronoun. I never said that we "MUST continue using inappropriately gendered language" in any situation, so I'm not quite sure who that's directed at. I personally think it's silly and awkward, as I thought I made clear with my childhood anecdote about being confused over my parents' choices of gender in their pronouns. I just explained why I think people do it and why it might reflect a missing piece in the English language more than intrinsic gender bias.

What you say is, basically, that we should stop using pronouns to get around the problem. That was your solution to the small example I gave before. But I'm sorry, that's not how people speak. Try editing a very small story about a "scientist" of unknown gender in English and I guarantee you'll either default to "they"--which is wrong because it doesn't agree in number--or a form of "he" or "she", which is wrong because it assumes a gender. Try the following idiotic (but gender neutral) passage I just came up with:

"The scientist pulled the scientist's nose closer to the bubbling vial and recoiled sharply at the smell. Fighting the stinging in the scientist's eyes, the scientist wondered why anyone would've mailed such a thing to the scientist, but the scientist decided to put it off for another day and get to work for now."

I find it impossible to use a pronoun without either resorting to "they" or the "he/she" construct, which is a stand-in for the word that we lack. Or, you know, just picking "he" or "she" and calling it a day. You'll have a 50% chance of being wrong about the gender, but you'll be grammatically correct.

Given a gender-neutral pronoun, I think people would use it. We just don't have one. And I think that people get a bit wrapped up in seeing gender bias and don't realize that sometimes there's a reason people are doing what they're doing and it might have nothing to do with trying to insult women or pushing some sexist agenda.

(And as an aside, I was actually referring more to "usagi" in the one part of my comment which you chose to quote, as usagi seems to imply much more directly that using a gendered word is "sexist")

oh i love this post. it's very interesting stuff, especially for someone who's grown up bilingually. i wonder what that did to my brain in terms of gender perception.

is there a lot of research being done in this area?

D. C. Sessions,

You're absolutely right about languages assigning gender based upon phonetics (although it's the other way around sometimes). It's actually hard for Bulgarians to decode the gender in English names because names ending in consonants sound very masculine to them. My wife has been in the US for a while and studied English for years before that, but still occasionally has to ask me about the gender of some names. The only ones that are obvious, funny enough, are a lot of Black American names. Since some of the more creative Black female names tend to end in the "-ah" sound, it makes it easy to understand. Being Black, I think it's sorta charming in a way :-)

Also, since a lot of English words end in consonants (at least phonetically, ignoring those silent e's) a lot of nouns created in English are being incorporated into Bulgarian as loan words and almost all are masculine. Even those of new professions, by the way. I don't know if that means anything at all or will mean anything in the future in terms of their perception of the technology or the occupations.

Something to think about, I guess.

I heard that!!! We must be kindred feminist spirits. The funny thing is that in Spanish "science" is "la ciencia." That makes it most decidedly feminine.

There was a push for a gender-neutral pronoun in English: Hu, short for "human."

It's not very aesthetic, but then again, neither is "they," "her or she" or "s/h/it."

Fascinating,though not surprising.This would explain a little why I find parts of German so irritating,despite speaking it fluently.
To the pronouns: I didn't realise "it" was perceived to be so bad.I always use it quite happily to refer to a human whose gender I don't know.I've also noticed that I'm the only native English speaker who doesn't feel the need to correct my Chinese friends when they use 'he' and 'she' incorrectly. (In Chinese,the pronouns are written differently,but sound the same,thereby eliminating the problem mentioned by Aaron.) Maybe we should stop seeing 'it' as de-humanising.
Going back to the post,I remember a (comparatively non-sexist) male friend of mine saying:"Yes,but they are the fairer sex.",obviously expecting me to be annoyed.I just stared at him and said:"So?" Turns out he had assumed that "fairer",which I thought just meant 'prettier',had all kinds of 'weaker','sillier',etc. connotations. Why? Well,because it was used of women,of course.This kind of thinking is far too ingrained,and should be rooted out and exposed as often as possible.

I'm seeing a common fallacy - the belief that 'they/their' is plural only. This is incorrect, and the use of those two, and their relatives, for singular indefinite-gender has been part of English for a long, long time. That fallacy got started as a result of the pronunciations of grammatical prescriptionists trying to impose Latin grammar onto English. The same people who are responsible for Churchill's famous quote "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

More on singular they/their/etc here: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html#X1a

Some famous users of such: Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, and George Orwell.

On the notion that language ought to be beautiful (therefore, we can't POSSIBLY use "he or she" or "they"): what's so beautiful about having your whole existence dismissed by the insistence that "he" really, truly does mean "he and she" and "mankind" really, truly does mean the ladeez too?

Isn't there an old joke/riddle where a child is in an accident and is rushed to the ER by its father and the ER doctor dramatically announces that they cannot operate on this child because it is their child? (Those incorrect pronouns are vital, because the answer, of course, is that the doctor is the mother of the child.) This plays up both points you have made here. When most people hear the story, they assume that an ER surgeon will be male and can't make sense of the situation. (Although I guess one could assume that the kid has two dads . . .)

A. Willow,
Yes, "ta" is useful in Mandarin because it represents either he or she when talking, so you don't have to be specific. Man, you just brought me back to college with that reference... I was studying Mandarine while going through some tough computer science courses at the time. NOT fun! Nin shi yi ge zhong guo ren ma?

dreiken,
I personally feel that "they" is used because we simply lack an alternative. It's a bit awkward but workable, and the language police likely just pointed that out and identified it as an error. And you're right that the formalization of the English grammar was a relatively recent construction (although not a bad one, in my opinion), although I'm fairly sure that having a pronoun agree in number with the noun it's replacing doesn't require a "Latin" influence. Moreover, the fact that someone uses "they" as an alternative to "it" doesn't exactly make it correct and imply that we're not lacking a word--it just means that it was used. It establishes precedent, but not correctness. The English language varies, always has, and does so even nowadays. Ever heard Indian or Pakistani English? I have a funny story to tell about that from a closer American-Indian friend of mine, but I know this post will be too long as is. So let's stick closer to home.

To me, "She be hatin." is grammatically correct and has a very specific meaning in the English language (because some would argue that I grew up learning two dialects of English, being Black), but I doubt that most people would refer to it as "correct English" anyway. I also grew up in PA, and "drug" was always an acceptable past-tense form of "drag" instead of "dragged." But some would say that that's wrong, and it *must* be "dragged."

And going back to the time period that you bring up, I was reading through a book written in the mid 1700s the other day (Wealth of Nations... don't ask) and I was shocked to see just how different the English language was even then in some ways. There were constructs in usage then that we'd definitely consider errors nowadays... heck, the language was just more fluid then (for better or worse). So yeah, establishing precedence is crucial to but not necessarily sufficient in and of itself in deciding the correctness of a given usage of the language. The moment you decide that there is one "correct" in a language that varies, by definition some variations of usage are "incorrect" regardless of their historical usage.

I've come to accept that there is value in define a "correct" for the sake of language preservation, so that's why I'd argue that using "they" as the singular, gender-neutral pronoun for humans is incorrect and we need another word, even if I occasionally feel a bit dirty and use it myself when I need a stand-in pronoun.

This whole experiment may fail to gain replicated results if it is tried again with monolingual native speakers of Chinese or some other language with no grammatical gender at all. English most definitely is still marked for gender, as one would expect of an Indo-European language. But try the experiment on more speakers of more different languages and see what happens.

Whether or not "they" is acceptable for use as a gender-neutral singular pronoun really depends on where you fall on the prescriptive/descriptive spectrum in linguistics.

I am pretty much a descriptivist, because the prescriptive folks inevitably get into lots of "my dictionary is better than yours!" debates and that's just not fun. But "they" as a gender-neutral singular still just sounds wrong to my ears in some cases. I say this not out of a passion for patriarchal language, but simply because once you internalize the rules of grammar it's hard to let go without a lot of exposure. If linguistic trends continue, we'll probably reach a point where singular "they" sounds fine to me. And then we will be free from the patriarchal grip of having so few third person singular subjective pronouns that are gender neutral but not dehumanizing.

I find this fascinating. I've thought about all three (he, he or she, invent gender-neutral pronouns) sides of the issue, and I still think there's no perfect solution. In Middle English, he probably really was mostly gender-neutral, but definitely not today, no matter what people insist. I'm in a love/hate relationship with English for sure. The obvious solution is for everyone to start speaking another language! Just kidding.

12 @Aaron: (And as an aside, I was actually referring more to "usagi" in the one part of my comment which you chose to quote, as usagi seems to imply much more directly that using a gendered word is "sexist")

I was referring primarily to technical writing for public consumption such as academic policy statements. Having been involved in a decade-long rewriting and updating of certain "zombie" policies that have been around longer than I've been alive, there is an abundance of what can be called sexist language that remains in such documents by sheer inertia (for instance, all the faculty and students being referred to as "he/him/his" while all the administrative staff [formerly secretaries] are "she/her/hers"). My personal preferred solution is to use a plural construction as consistently as possible. I find it the easiest to work with and to maintain (and I freely admit, I'm a stickler for subject/verb agreement & always use "their" as a plural--sorry, whacked upside the head once too many times in ninth grade English to accept the historical argument for using it as a singular; in modern usage, it's plural).

I've never bought the inelegance argument as a reason for not revising something. It's laziness. Sometimes getting gender out of a passage where it doesn't belong requires you toss the whole thing out and start over. How you phrase it on your personal blog or with your family is none of my business. When you're writing something that's coming out of my office as an official statement of policy for the institution, you're damn right I'm reading it for sexist use of pronouns and revising when appropriate. That's a part of the editing process any competent manager needs to take responsibility for. Not doing it is every bit as obvious as seeing their, there, or they're misused and creates an identically negative impression of your attention to detail.

Hooray for my native tongue, Turkish, which does not have gendered nouns or verbs or even pronouns.

By the way, it seems that children have found a solution to gendered pronouns:
Grammar Girl.

Then dont speak at all.