WHY I DO NOT USE GENDER-NEUTRAL LANGUAGE It has now been nearly a decade since the news leaked out that the foremost Evangelical translation of the Bible (the New International Version) was planning an updated, American version that would conform itself to the “rules” of gender-neutral language. The resulting grass-roots resistance movement thankfully (if temporarily) nipped that project in the bud, but it has proven powerless to stop the slow but persistent encroachment of the gender-neutral agenda. Most of the Bible translations that have been released over the last 15 years (from the New Revised Standard Version to the Contemporary English Version to the New Living Translation) have carefully and systematically eliminated “sexist” language from the pages of God’s Word. Simultaneous with this revamping of the Holy Scriptures, the mainline Protestant denominations have so retranslated and/or reworked their hymnals, prayer books, and creeds as to remove every trace of “gender-specific” language from the Sunday service. And they have been quite thorough in their gender-neutral overhaul. Where once the believer boldly proclaimed his belief that Jesus Christ “. . . for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man,” he now is expected (well, forced) to proclaim that “for us and for our salvation . . . [Christ] . . . became human.” With astonishing speed and success, most liberal mainline denominations have constructed for their parishioners (whether they wanted it or not) a space that, if not particularly sacred, is at least blissfully free from all that “sexist” and “insensitive” language of the past: by which is meant the language of Homer, Plato, Virgil, Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible. Meanwhile, in schools, colleges, and, yes, churches all over the country, students and parishioners have been indoctrinated into using gender-neutral language by professors, school teachers, pastors, and administrators alike. Often the “rules” are not formally taught; they are just taken for granted. Just as the basic tenets of Freudianism have been absorbed by millions of people who have never read Freud and may in fact be strongly opposed to his teachings and his worldview, so the “rules” of gender-neutral language have so assimilated their way into society as to be almost invisible. The champions of gender-neutral language have been remarkably successful at disseminating their agenda throughout almost every strata of society. Scan through almost any academic journal (including faith-based ones) and you will find nary a word or phrase that deviates from “non-sexist” language usage. More disturbing, flip through almost any textbook (K-12) used in the public school system, and you will find exactly the same total surrender to an agenda that was initiated by the radical feminists but which found its way (as homosexual marriage is slowly doing) into the mainstream. Worse yet, over the last five years, the almost total capitulation to gender-neutral language on the part of liberal mainline pastors and theologians has spread into the evangelical world. Thus, while many of our finest evangelical writers (I will not “name names”) bend, and at times distort, their prose to accommodate gender-neutral usage, a number of our best evangelical magazines move closer, with each issue, toward the total elimination of gender-specific language. Of course, not all segments of society have so capitulated. The great American heartland (including many who sit in mainline pews) has not fully embraced it; neither has most of the media (including and especially Hollywood) nor most of those great writers (like Thomas Cahill) and
periodicals (like Touchstone and The New York Review of Books) that truly care about style. Still, the gender-neutral agenda has been quite pervasive in its penetration. # It should be clear by now that I find this trend not only alarming but insidious. Indeed, what renders it most alarming and most insidious is that its use is advocated by people who otherwise would distance themselves from any kind of feminist agenda. Let me, in fact, make it clear that I do not “accuse” all those who use gender-neutral language of being feminists in disguise. Far from it. My point is that many who follow the “rules” are unwittingly furthering an agenda they do not endorse. Let me also, while I’m at it, further qualify myself to say that not all who use gender-neutral language do so out of intimidation.
There are many out there (particularly those with ties to academia) who believe sincerely (or at least have convinced themselves to believe sincerely) in gender-neutral usage. The problem is that many of these “converts,” though they still form a minority, are quite willing to go along with imposing their new-found “faith” in gender-neutral language on the majority. Another caveat. The purpose of this essay is not to accuse the translators of the CEV (or, for that matter, the writers of modern textbooks) of consciously and conspiratorially pressing some hidden feminist agenda. Rather, I hope to challenge those people who have accepted gender-neutral language without really thinking through its assumptions or its ramifications, who have simply thrown up their hands and said, “Oh well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” I write, that is, for those people in the pews and the classrooms and the offices who use gender-neutral language not out of strong conviction, but because they are either intimidated, indifferent, or uninformed about the goals and premises that underlie “non-sexist” language usage. And I write especially (though not exclusively) for Christians who have felt pressured to use gender-neutral language because it is the “Christian” thing to do. When the leaders of the mainline denominations decided, early in the 20th century, that they would become more relevant and exert more societal influence if they liberalized their doctrinal beliefs and practices, they really believed that the “people” were hungry for such liberalization and would accept it as more “natural” than the teachings of traditional orthodoxy. They proved, of course, to be dead wrong in their predictions of what the people really yearned for and of what they considered “natural” and “proper.” In seeking to be relevant, they became profoundly irrelevant; in seeking to accommodate the gospel to the culture, they lost the gospel without winning the culture. It is my contention (and my fear) that the widespread use of gender-neutral language in the church represents another form of accommodationism. # It will be the burden of this essay to explain why I (an English Professor of evangelical convictions who holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature) oppose gender-neutral language. Before I begin, however, it would perhaps be best to pause and consider what exactly the “rules” of gender-neutral language are. They are fairly simple and few in number: Never use “he” as the gender inclusive pronoun. Although “he” has been so used for thousands of years and in the great majority of languages (many of which are even more gender based than English), the “rules” of gender-neutral language say this is no longer acceptable. We must not make general statements like “Everyone returned to his home” or “A good doctor cares about his patients” or “The poet chooses his words carefully.” In such instances, we must replace “he” with “he or she” or “he/she,” or, better yet, just make the whole sentence plural, so that “he” can be replaced by the safely genderless “they.” Or we can
play with people’s minds (as many modern textbooks do), and switch back and forth between using first “he” and then “she” as the inclusive pronoun. Replace “sexist” words like fireman, policeman, chairman, and layman with gender neutral ones like firefighter, police officer, chair, and layperson. Use brothers and sisters rather than brothers or brethren, and men and women rather than men. Don’t use words (actor/actress, waiter/waitress) that distinguish between the sexes; either use the traditionally male word (actor) to encompass both sexes or, better yet, invent a new word (like server) that can be used in a unisex fashion. Strike altogether from your vocabulary phrases like man-made or man-hours. (When my third-grade daughter was assigned a paper in which she had to discuss the natural and human structures of a major American city, it took my wife and me a full thirty minutes
to figure out that by “human structures” the teacher meant “man-made structures.”) Never use the word man or mankind to signify the human race. Use instead words like human, person, humanity, or humankind. This even goes for Jesus; our Lord is no longer to be described as fully God and fully Man, but as fully divine and fully human. (There are even a small number of Christian writers who so contort their syntax as to never use the pronoun “he” in reference to God. Rather than write, “God cares about his people,” they write, “God cares about God’s people.”) Taken together, these mandates have helped increase the growing awkwardness, vagueness, and downright ugliness of most academic and corporate writing, while championing a particularly petty form of egalitarianism (on par with envious siblings who each insist on getting exactly the same size piece of pie). But now I am getting ahead of myself. Let me slow down and discuss, first, why I oppose gender-neutral translations of the Bible and other church documents, and, second, why I also oppose the tacit enforcement of gender-neutral language in our schools and churches and refuse to subscribe to it in my own teaching, speaking, and writing. # Those who insist on stretching their translations of the Bible on the syntactical rack of gender-neutral language are fond of equating the phrases “gender-neutral” and “gender-accurate.” These phrases are most certainly not synonymous. To use "he/she" rather than "he" is to be more politically (not grammatically) correct; the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with clarity of meaning or grammatical accuracy. When Paul says, "if anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation," everyone (and I mean everyone) knows that the "he" does not refer to men only but to all humanity (men and women). Now, in our
post-feminist society, there are many who will feign ignorance as to what the "he" refers to and will make long, impassioned speeches about how they really don't know what the author meant when he used "he," but these people are being intellectually dishonest. They know full well what the "he" means. I did my graduate work (1986-91) at the very politically correct University of Michigan and was shocked by the large number of Professors and especially graduate Teaching Assistants who made it their goal (if not their mission) to change the speech patterns of their students to comply with their gender-neutral agenda. It was their hope that, over time, people's writing (and thinking patterns) would so radically shift that they would truly be confused as to whether the inclusive "he" in an "archaic" essay referred to males only or to all human beings. That time has not yet arrived (and I pray that it never does), but the thinking (and hoping) behind it surely has. Today, essentially all the grammars and textbooks written for Freshmen Composition classes are insistently and flagrantly politicized in the area of gender-neutral language. Most universities and seminaries drill into the heads of their students that they must avoid “sexist” language at all costs, in both their speaking and writing. Even businesses have jumped on the bandwagon. This gender-neutral blitzkrieg has been quite successful, not (I would argue) because of any inherent “strength” or “justice” in its position, but because it has marshaled to its cause three of the strongest forces in Western (especially American) society: guilt, intimidation, and the desire to “fit in.” Massive societal peer pressure has been exerted on students, parishioners, and employees alike to “get with the program.” If they do not—if they persist in speaking the language used by all men in nearly all languages since the beginning of civilization rather than the newfangled, politically-correct terminology of yesterday—they must be ready to face scorn, embarrassment, and the cold shoulder. A close parallel to this is the strong expectation now placed on people to use the phrases “African American” and “Native American” rather than Black or Indian. Most people now use these new coined phrases in “polite” company, not because they think it inherently right to do so, but because they fear being accused (falsely and groundlessly, of course) of being a racist. Just so, the fear of being labeled a sexist if one speaks in the language used by nearly every American before 1980 is usually enough to enforce conformity. In the late 80’s, when the gender-neutral agenda began to be pursued in earnest by its proponents, many of the more liberal, secular universities paralleled this agenda by erecting (and enforcing)
their own speech codes that forbade the use of any language on campus that might be construed as racist or sexist. I am afraid that there is really only one word that can adequately describe this state of affairs. And I am afraid that that word is censorship.# In the Preface to the Contemporary English Version, the editors (in an attempt to justify their censoring of all “sexist” language from their translation) make the following claim:In everyday speech, “gender generic” or “inclusive” language is used, because it sounds most natural to people today. This means that where the biblical languages require [an important concession that!] masculine nouns or pronouns when both men and women are intended, this intention must be reflected in translation, though the English form may be very different from that of the original. The Greek text of “Matthew 16:24 is literally, “If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The Contemporary English Version shifts to a form which is still accurate and at the same time more effective in English: “If any of you want to be my
followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me.” The assumption that underlies this paragraph is not only radically untrue; it is insincere, manipulative, and patronizing. The literal translation of Matthew 16:24 quoted above is neither unnatural nor ineffective. Even after two decades of gender-neutral brainwashing in our schools and universities, any teen (or even child) would recognize immediately the naturalness of the original verse and would understand that its invitation is made to all people, not just males. The editors of the CEV would have us believe that their gender-neutral translation of the verse is more natural and effective and that it more truly reflects the way “real people” speak. But they are putting the cart before the horse. The true goal of the gender-neutral agenda is not to reflect existing patterns of speech, writing, and thought, but to so radically alter those patterns that people will, in time, really come to think of the literal translation as unnatural. The Bible is the most widely read and influential book of all time. Along with the creeds, hymns, and prayers recited weekly in liturgical services, the Bible is responsible for defining the rhetorical and syntactical patterns along which run our hopes, our values, and our dreams. Those wishing to normatize gender-neutral language could have found no better tool than the Bible to accomplish their goal. Just as those in the media industry who advocate the normatizing of the homosexual lifestyle have realized that the best way to do so is to get people accustomed to seeing same-sex couples both on film and in TV sitcoms, so have those who advocate “non-sexist” language realized that their best way of spreading their agenda is to achieve total immersion. Once the schools, the workplaces, and the churches have conformed their various “textbooks” to fit the “rules,” the average American will find it nearly impossible to free his mind from a constant flow of gender-neutral language. It is, I think, quite significant that the translators of the CEV do not “fix up” the “sexist” language of Matthew 16:24 by replacing the “he,” “himself,” and “his” of the original verse with “he/she,” “himself/herself,” and “his/her.” They resort instead to recasting the whole verse into second person. Many of the other gender inclusive Bible translations prefer instead to recast such “sexist” verses into the plural (“All those who would be my followers must forget about themselves . . .”), but none, at least to my knowledge, have chosen to insert a he/she into the original text. Why, you might ask, do they prefer to use second person or plural (the CEV, in fact, uses both) rather than substitute in he/she? Merely to answer that the he/she construction is awkward and a bit ungainly will not do, since students and academicians across the country are trained to use such constructions and to accept them as “natural.” No, the reason lies elsewhere. To have used he/she would have immediately clued the reader in to the fact that the translators are playing fast and loose with the text, that they are inserting into the original alien phraseology. By using second person/plural instead, the translators are enabled to preserve the illusion that this is what the Bible really sounds like: that it in fact “endorses” the gender-neutral agenda. Indeed, let this point be made clear: translations like the CEV and TNIV have eliminated every single use of the inclusive he or of man/mankind in the Bible—even when they have to perform syntactical contortions to do so! Despite what they say in their prefaces, “naturalness” and “effectiveness” are not the foremost goals in the minds of such translators. Neither, I would argue, is accuracy! If I have to wonder constantly whether it is the Bible writers or the translators who are using second person/plural, then I can’t fully “trust” my Bible. For heaven’s sake! Would anyone in academia dare to “translate” the poetry of Shakespeare or Milton in such a way as to eliminate all uses of the word man/mankind? Yet that is exactly what has been done to the poetic verses of David’s Psalms and Wesley’s hymns. # Let’s get another thing clear. Though a few scattered people in the past have toyed with an alternative to the inclusive “he” (see again Chapter 14 of The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy), gender-neutral language represents something unprecedented in the history of language. Like same-sex marriage, it is a wholly new thing, an idea that would have seemed ludicrous (if not unthinkable) to anyone before, say, 1970. And yet, despite this fact, its very vocal proponents act as if it were the most obvious and natural thing in the world: the necessary endpoint of thousands of years of linguistic evolution. Buoyed up on a wave of what C. S. Lewis
called “chronological snobbery,” they feel no shame in blithely sweeping away three millennia of traditional syntactical structures that are shared alike by Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, and the majority of other world languages. You see, although many reasons have been put forward over the last 15 years to justify gender-neutral translations of the Bible, there are really only two reasons that hold any weight. The first, discussed above, is the argument that the English language has so changed as to render traditional “sexist” language both unnatural and ineffective. The second is the (generally unspoken and often unconscious) claim that had the writers of the Bible lived today, they would have used gender-neutral language. Though I may be accused here of building a straw man, I would contend that many (if not most) of those who translate the Bible in accordance with the “rules” of gender-neutral language believe deep down that they are doing what Paul or Jesus would have done were they alive today. Personally, I find such a claim as nonsensical as it is offensive, a supreme example of our modern cultural arrogance, of that progressivist elitism that says we are right and all the ages before us wrong. Although it is undeniable that we are all influenced by our historical moment and the values and mores of our culture, we today seem to think that we sit in a privileged position from which we can judge objectively all the ages and people that came before us. We really think that if Paul had lived today and had attended one of our “enlightened” universities or seminaries that he would have come around to our position sooner or later. Quite to the contrary, I see Paul (like Jesus) speaking out against the entrenched idols of his day, injecting a breath of fresh air into the self-satisfied stuffiness of legalistic religion. It is almost impossible to imagine Paul pussyfooting around his pronouns and making sure always to say humans instead of men and humankind instead of mankind. He was too vital for that, too real, too passionately on fire. Does that mean that Paul would have been “culturally insensitive” or blissfully unconcerned with the plight of women? Certainly not! He would surely (like Jesus before him) have striven to treat women with respect and equal dignity. Indeed, inasmuch as the advocates of gender-neutral language call for better treatment of women, I applaud them. Many have their hearts, I believe, in the right place. But the elimination of male pronouns or the use of euphemisms like “humankind” are not changes that will inspire people (whether male or female) to honor women or to give them the respect that is due them. Can we not follow in the footsteps of Paul by finding ways to change the hearts of fallen men and women without
accommodating the idols of modern society? Can we not affirm the God-given gift of femininity without jumping (wittingly or un) on the feminist bandwagon. Indeed, I would argue that, far from enhancing the dignity and uniqueness of women, gender-neutral language often ends up effacing femininity. It is, on the whole, a good thing that modern women have been given the opportunity to work in traditionally male professions, but too often that opportunity has come with a price: the expectation that professional women will act and think and behave like men. Too often, gender-neutral means anti-feminine (not to be confused with anti-feminist!). Gender-neutral language has been one of many forces behind a growing breakdown of the essential differences between masculinity and femininity. If such forces ever win out, a time may come when we will no longer respect women as women or encourage them to use their gifts to serve the church
and society in a way that affirms (rather than acts in spite of) their God-given femininity. But there is another reason to take pause before we convince ourselves that a modern-day Paul would have cheered the CEV or the NRSV or the new and emasculated hymnal. To make such a claim is not only to impose our own very contemporary values on Paul; it is to set a dangerous if not lethal precedent. It is to suggest that the language and culture of the Biblical writers are not a sufficient vessel for carrying the Word of God. I do not exaggerate when I say that, if we accept the reasoning that says a modern Paul would have used gender-neutral language, it will not be long before we assert (as many already have) that if Jesus could have been transported to the 21st century and met a loving homosexual couple face-to-face, he would have given his blessing to their marriage. Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson took his copy of the New Testament and crossed out all those passages that involved the miraculous (including the Resurrection account). He did so because he was quite fully convinced that his “enlightened” world had disproven the existence and even possibility of miracles, and because he was also quite sure that had Jesus and the writers of the New Testament lived in his age, they would have seconded his wise editing out (or, better, censoring) of stories that (to the modern man) would appear so patently unnatural and ineffective. Jefferson felt confident in his ability to dictate to Jesus the proper way to behave in the modern world; our new slate of gender-neutral translators feel equally confident in their ability to dictate how he should speak. I have said that there are only two legitimate reasons for condoning gender-neutral translations of the Bible, but there is, of course, a third. Many who advocate gender-neutral translations of the Bible (and of the hymns, creeds, and prayer books) do so, so they claim, to avoid offending the more “sensitive” people in the pews. I can’t say I’ve met any of these hypothetical sensitive people, but, if they do exist, they are certainly vastly outnumbered by the people who are genuinely (if silently) disturbed by the co-opting of their scriptures and traditions. (Indeed, I would argue that the majority of those “sensitive” people are precisely the ones who are engaged in neutering the Bible and the prayer books!) And besides, even if there are a significant number of such “sensitive” people, how far are we to go in accommodating their sensitivity? Shall we cease to speak about sin and the need for confession? Such talk certainly offends more people than the types of pronouns used in the service. And how far, one may legitimately ask, is the revamping of traditional language to go? What is next? Gender-neutral translations of Augustine’s Confessions, the Imitation of Christ, and the Summa Theologica? Shall we build for these “sensitive” people a nice little insulated world safe from all male pronouns? Or, better yet, and much more in keeping with the politically correct, multicultural, postmodern agenda of the public schools, shall we just keep them from reading anything that was written before the advent of gender-neutral language? Many public schools (and universities!) have already removed from their curricula any work that contains the word “nigger” (farewell Conrad, Faulkner, Twain, and Flannery O’Connor). Why not extend such PC censorship to include all pre-1980 works that use “sexist” and “insensitive” language? After all, our age is in possession of all knowledge and understands the true nature of virtue. # It remains to discuss my more general opposition to gender-neutral language. Before doing so, however, I would like to pause once again to consider why it is I felt so compelled to write this essay. I mentioned above that the spread of the gender-neutral agenda has been accomplished primarily through subtle tactics of intimidation. As an English Professor, I have found that most people (young and old alike) have little confidence in their writing abilities or their control of grammar and syntax. Such doubts and fears leave them particularly vulnerable to being beaten into submission by teachers who present gender-neutral language as if it were a fait accompli, a thing proven and incontrovertible. Well, I am a writer and speaker who has taught
both composition and literature for fifteen years, and I can declare to you boldly and confidently that gender-neutral language is neither a proven fact nor an incontestable given. If I may don, for a moment, my professorial robes, I hereby grant all those who read this essay the permission not to use gender-neutral language. I grant them as well the right to refuse to purchase, read, or acknowledge as authoritative the CEV, the NRSV, the NLT, and the revised hymnal and Book of Common Prayer. I grant them further the courage to speak up in their congregations and schools and universities and question those in authority as to whether they should themselves be embracing and propagating the gender-neutral agenda. I do not grant these things out of some puffed up sense of pride or self-importance, but because the granting has to start somewhere, and it
might as well start with an English Professor. So often, we want to speak out, but we will not do so until someone speaks out first. If I am right, then I am by no means the only one in this country who is fed up with the gender-neutral takeover of our churches, our businesses, and our educational institutions. To all of you who have winced in silent agony when you heard the Bible verses and hymns and prayers that you most love mangled and emasculated, I have but this to say: the time to speak out has come! Perhaps the most frightening aspect of George Orwell’s 1984 is the way Orwell’s totalitarian rulers have succeeded in controlling not only the bodies but the minds of their citizen drones. Be ye not deceived: to control someone’s language is, in the end, to control his thinking. For Winston Smith, Orwell’s defeated hero, the totalitarian ethos and practice of his society had spread too far to be stopped. For us,
however, there is still time. Just say no!# OK. I’ve had my say and am ready to step down off my soapbox and reenter the arena. For the question must now be asked: what is wrong with gender-neutral language? Granted, imposing our own politically correct preferences upon the writers of the past is unfair at best and unethical at worst. But what about using gender-neutral language in works written today. There are still, after all, many Christian writers who, though they themselves write and speak in “non-sexist” language, are still fair-minded enough to use a traditional (non gender-neutral) translation of the Bible when quoting verses from the scriptures. What could be wrong with using
language that purports to be fair to, and inclusive of, women? Isn’t America all about equality?Well, yes and no. If you mean by equality the equal dignity and inherent worth of every human being; if you mean the freedom from oppression and the liberty to worship as you please; if you mean, further, equal pay for equal work and equal educational and employment options without regard to race, creed, or gender: then, yes, America is all about equality. Indeed, it must be admitted, some of the early crusading feminists helped bring about much-needed reforms that extended the blessings of equality to countless women. Unfortunately, when the proponents of gender-neutral language (and their multiculturalist allies in the public schools) talk about equality, they mean not equal dignity or pay or opportunity, but egalitarianism: the belief that everyone is the same and should be treated the same. The tenets of egalitarianism hold that the differences we see between the sexes and between people in general are not innate, essential, or God-given, but social constructs. The goal of egalitarianism is not unity in diversity or the celebration of inherent worth but a bland, universal sameness: the creation of a lowest-common-denominator world devoid of all difference and uniqueness. It was this desire, this yearning to build an egalitarian state that led directly to the atrocities committed during the political and cultural Revolutions that tore apart France, Russian, China, and Cambodia. And when I say led directly, I mean precisely that. When these four would-be utopias began to kill all those who were too far “corrupted” to be assimilated and sent the rest to be retrained in brutal labor camps, they were not betraying their principles (as do Christians who shoot and kill abortion doctors), but enacting them. The one thing the egalitarian idol will not (and cannot) allow is deviation from the norm. If you would like a true word image of the logical and necessary outcome of egalitarianism, then picture in your mind a great artist or writer shoveling mud while publicly denouncing his own God-given gifts. Being forced to use “he/she” rather than “he” or “person” rather than “man” may seem worlds away from the Gulag Archipelago, but I would argue that the same foundational ethos underlies both. In both cases, a form of censorship is imposed that is meant to restrict and retrain the mind: to narrow the “free exercise” of thought; to reduce it to a certain groove; to render it incapable of thinking outside the publicly mandated egalitarian box. Of course, we are nowhere near this Orwellian nightmare, at least not yet. But the warning signs are there. While doing my graduate work at the University of Michigan, I was forced to deal, not only with gender-neutral language per se, but with another offshoot of the feminist linguistic agenda. Although women frequently refer to themselves as “girls,” and although most consider it a compliment when they are referred to as a “lady,” the egalitarian protocol on campus mandated that these words be stricken from our vocabulary (and thought). After all they reasoned, we do not call grown-up males “boys”; why then should we call grown-up females “girls.” And as for lady, far from a compliment, such words are oppressive, patriarchal tools meant to instill submission in women. As you can imagine, those of us who did not want to run afoul of the politically correct “thought police” were forced to monitor our words and to second guess ourselves at every turn. I do no exaggerate when I say that when I graduated and moved to Texas to teach at Houston Baptist University that I was able to reclaim a considerable portion of my mental and emotional energy. For you see, when the human mind is put in a situation where it must continually twist, bend, and contort itself to conform to an unnatural pattern imposed on it from above, it gets tired, frustrated, and (as my fellow Texans might say) just plain worn out. This is precisely the effect that gender-neutral language has on those who feel compelled to use it. The constant, nagging worry that one might slip up and say “he” or “mankind” or “man-made” causes the mind to get both exhausted and muddled. Now, the feminists could, I suppose, counter my argument by claiming that, in time, “non-sexist” language will become so common that it will seem natural to those who use it. But that is the problem: gender-neutral language does not represent a natural evolution in linguistic patterns and usage; it is an agenda imposed from above. As such, it will, I contend, always seem unnatural and forced and will continue to muddle the minds of those who use it. Why is this “muddling” a problem? Because, over time, such behavior instills in its user a loss of initiative and nerve. In educators, administrators, and ministers, in particular, it helps foster a type of fastidiousness and over-precision that most of us (I include myself in the group) are already prone to developing. Early in the 20th century, T. S. Eliot wrote a brilliant character study of a certain type of modern homo urbanus (“city man”) who is prevented from breaking out of the meaningless tedium of his life by just such a fastidiousness and lack of nerve. His name is J. Alfred Prufrock, and, despite the fact that he is capable of great imaginative thought, he is stifled by a host of petty (but nonetheless real) fears that prevent him from asserting himself in any way. He does not speak forth the prophetic words that he feels burning inside him for the same reason that a modern academic will not dare to speak the word “mankind” in a meeting of his colleagues: he fears he will be punished (not with imprisonment or exile but dismissive
scorn), vivisected (not with a knife but a withering glance), and decapitated (not by Madame le Guillotine but by a cutting remark from a fashionable lady). The censorious imposition of gender-neutral language is, I believe, one of several factors that is helping to produce a generation of American males who are as timid, ineffective, and emasculated as J. Alfred Prufrock. And that is not only a tragic thing for the men of America; it is even more tragic for the women. For, despite all the best efforts of the feminists and their allies, the vast majority of girls and women are still looking and hoping to marry a man with a backbone: a man who is unafraid to assert himself, to be a leader, to make decisions. Despite the propaganda that is taught in the schools and the media, most wives do not want to wear the pants in the family. They want a husband they can respect enough to trust, follow, and be guided by. The sad fact of the matter is that the feminists who have pushed gender-neutral language into the mainstream (though not necessarily their unwitting allies) don’t really care about average women. The proof of this is how strongly the National Organization of Women opposed Promise Keepers: a Christian men’s conference held in stadiums all over the country that encourages men to be strong and responsible husbands and fathers. Promise Keepers is one of the best things that has ever happened to American women (particularly wives), but it ran afoul of the same anti-patriarchal, egalitarian agenda that underlies gender-neutral language. Though I celebrate the contributions of professional women, our nation (and churches, and families) are desperately in need of men (yes, males!) who are willing to assert themselves and to take leadership roles, but how can they be expected to do so when everything (including language) encourages them not to. Of all the gender-neutral “rules,” perhaps the most damaging is the one that insists on replacing man/mankind with human/humankind. Aside from the downright ugliness of this practice, the refusal to use man/mankind has had the subtle effect of not only neutering but dehumanizing language. When most readers read the word man or mankind, an image of a real, concrete man pops into their head. When they read human or person, something far more abstract is conjured instead, something that more closely parallels the impersonal, amorphous god of pantheism than the personal, incarnate God of the Bible (in whose image we were made). Now, of course, this is the very reason feminists want us to use the word person rather than man. They reject any and all notions of male headship, including the Pauline practice of imaging and summing up (fallen) humanity in the person of Adam. They would far prefer for us to image in our minds a neutered, faceless, androgynous thing than have our thoughts directed to the image of a male. Likewise, they would prefer us to use “it” rather than “she” when referring to objects toward which we feel love and affection: ships, countries, churches, etc. (Holy Mother Church is no more acceptable than Father God.) The only exception allowed to this rule is the juvenile practice of alternating male and female names for hurricanes: not even the most petty, envious prepubescent child could have thought that one up! I said above that most American women want husbands who will lead (which means, in part, man secure enough in their masculinity not to be threatened by strong, gifted wives). They also want something else: a man with enough gumption to act as the ambassador between his family and the world. All languages have their own equivalent of the word mankind, because in all cultures (even those “matriarchal” utopias that postmoderns dream about), the male has been considered the representative human being. Feminists absolutely hate the idea, and yet that is precisely what the vast majority of wives want their husbands to be. When men lose their place, their identity, and their integrity, it is women, in the end, who suffer the most. But then that is a casualty the feminist is more than willing to accept. You’ve come a long way baby! Louis Markos, Prof. in English, Houston Baptist Univ., http://fc.hbu.edu/~lmarkos | ||