Why Gendered Language Sucks

2009-12-19

English, like many languages, is as gendered language. Gendered language supposedly gives us more information about the subjects of a conversation. Take for example the sentence "My friend Sam will stop by after he goes to the store.". If we do not already know who Sam is, the "he" in the sentence gives us additional information by indicating that Sam is a male. With this information, we can infer quite reliably that Sam has a penis and testicles. Beyond that, we can only imagine quite unreliably any number of common male traits and male stereotypes that may or may not apply to Sam. We should ask ourselves whether this really qualifies as information at all. Our imaginations may guess that Sam has a mustache and muscular arms but later when we meet Sam in person, we might find that instead Sam has a beard and is skinny. And is the kind of genitals Sam has so important that it should be one of the first things we learn about Sam? Does this not reflect an undue focus on gender and gender stereotypes? Why should our language force us to be conscious of gender and gender specifiers all of the time?

Gendered language supposedly allows us to shorten our language by taking advantage of context. For example, in the same sentence, we avoid having to write the name "Sam" twice, instead replacing the second occurrence with short word "he". This works fine so long as our context does not include more than one male and one female. In other situations, such as when we are discussing two females, using "she" only confuses things. Unfortunately, such situations are quite common. We would be better off using full names to avoid confusion. We can do this, but we often don't because gendering is such an ingrained aspect of English.

In other situations, gendering makes language longer, not shorter. For example, the gender neutral "actor" is shorter than the gendered "actress". But good gender neutral options are not always available. If we want to specify a person without specifying a gender, we often get stuck using male-gendered words like "he" to refer to either men or women, or using verbose and awkward compounds like "he/she". Technically, we could use "it" instead, but using "it" to refer to a person sounds very unnatural in English. I would prefer to use gender neutral language most of the time, and optionally specify gender in the rare situations that gender is relevant.

What can we do about flaws in a language that we didn't design? Certainly, we can't step too far outside of the norm without loosing our ability to communicate effectively with others. Some unfortunate aspects of language are outside of our control. However, in other situations we can seamlessly choose a gender neutral or unambiguous option over the gendered or ambiguous option. Where we have the ability to make a good choice, we should make it. This of course, usually requires the kind of care and judgement that can't be expressed as a formula.