the most incendiary article I've read in ages

So, you wanna piss me off first thing in the morning, do you? Be my alarm clock-- that'll sure do the trick. Other than that, you can give me this article to read.

This really is the first time that an article about language and (not-)feminism has evoked such unmitigated ire from me in quite a while. In said article, David Gelernter rails against the new-ish convention of using gender-neutral terms in various avenues of writing in the English language, blames feminists for the inconvenience of it all, and bemoans the death of the English language as a whole (disregarding the inclusive, mutative, organic quality inherent to English, of course). His perspective has all the nuanced revelation of a pair of wooden clogs upside the head. And he repeated shows his ass like the ignorant yokel he clearly is. (Please forgive me the personal attacks on the man! Like I said, the article has left me fuming.)

His argument against the inculturation of students to the use of terms like "he or she" as opposed to just "he" or "firefighter" as opposed to "fireman" is that the words "mean exactly the same thing" and are more economic in terms of style. I would agree that "he or she" is unwieldy. Having spent a number of my years trying to be a poet and, then, having spent subsequent years in a glorified editorial job, I do not sneeze at the yearning for a well-employed economy of language. Really, packing a lotta meaning into a small space is a grand project. But at the expense of alienating a target audience? Gelernter goes on to cite a bunch of really outdated sources that say "he" is gender-neutral and functions as inclusively as "he or she." And that's just bullshit. "He" is NOT gender-neutral and it never was. It is a pronoun designating a MALE antecedent. It just is. There's no way around that. The fact that it was acceptable to use "he" to mean people of both genders 50 years ago only points to the fact that writers-- and people in general-- were less sensitive to their female audiences. That's ALL that means-- it does not make it OK that women were commonly excluded from most discourses. Nor does it make it bad that journalistic and academic writings of all stripes are NOW attempting to be sensitive to those female audiences.

And the same goes for terms like "firefighter" and "fireman." "Fireman" has the word "man" right in there. It is gender-specific. I would also argue here that "firefighter" is a more accurate term anyway. A firefighter fights fires. An extremely literal reading of "fireman" could interpret the word to mean "arsonist." (Yes, I know that's ridiculous, but I'm making a point about semiotics here.)

And then I came to this paragraph:

The fixed idea forced by language rapists upon a whole generation of students, that "he" can refer only to a male, is (in short) wrong. It is applied with nonsensical inconsistency, too. The same feminist warriors who would never write "he" where "he or she" will do would also never write "the author or authoress" where "the author" will do. They hate such words as actress and waitress; in these cases they insist that the masculine form be used for men and women. You would never find my feminist colleagues writing a phrase such as, "When an Anglican priest or priestess mounts the pulpit ... " You will find them writing, "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, he or she is about to address the congregation." Logic has never been a strong suit among the commissar-intellectuals who have bossed American culture since the 1970s. True, "he" sounds explicitly masculine in a way "priest" doesn't, to those who are just learning the language. Children also find it odd that "enough" should be spelled that way, that New York should be at the same latitude as Spain, that 7 squared is 49, and so on. Education was invented to set people straight on all these fine points.

Now, I'm going to try to parse apart all the things I find wrong with these sentiments. First of all, the difference between "author" and "authoress" (or "priest" and "priestess") and "fireman" and "firefighter" are not the same at ALL. It makes perfect sense that a "feminist" (quotation marks here because I'm gonna take Gelernter's notion of feminism to task here in a minute) writer might prefer a term like "author" over a term like "fireman." "Author" is INHERENTLY gender-neutral from the get-go. As I've said, "fireman" has the word "man" in it. That's a big difference. And as far as the priest vs. priestess thing, well, that's actually a matter of accuracy. Episcopalian churches have priests. Their female clergy are not called "priestesses." They are priests. A Wiccan organization has priests and priestesses, but if a writer is referring to a member of the Christian clergy, it would be WRONG to refer to a female priest as a priestess. So, that argument is just plain ol' stooooopid.

Now, let's talk about this phrase "language rapists." Oh. My. God. How is it possible to NOT be offended by that idea? To use a term denoting violent sexual assault (one that is far easier to perpetrate upon female anatomy than it is upon male, no less) to describe the natural evolutionary processes of our language is so repugnant that I'm considering tracking down this Gelernter dude and giving him a piece of my pretty l'il language-rapist's hairbrush handle! Furthermore, has anyone noticed how he's positing an abstract concept, namely the English language, as a female entity? And a disempowered, pathetic female entity at that! It's "the mother tongue." "She" is a rape victim. "She" is a damsel in need of defending. Ugh. VOMIT! It's an old trope and a tired one. It's about as distasteful as the anthropomorphizing of sperm cells by calling them "The L'il Swimmers" or "The Happy Soldiers." For a guy so concerned with language, Gelernter sure as hell seems unaware of the resonances of his own word choice.

I recall once having a conversation with a woman (of European descent) from South Africa. She was a lay-person with no particular emotional investment in the English language. I was deeply ensconced in my Creative Writing graduate program at the time. She was lamenting Americans' deplorable usage, claiming that ONLY the Queen's English was a viable conduit for verbal and written communication. Now, I speak fairly well. I enjoy dalliances into assorted vernaculars, but, for the most part, I speak a lot like I write-- though, probably, with fewer convulutedly structured sentences. In other words, I hold my own with the Queeniest (ha!) of English speakers. And so, employing only the properest of dictions, I attempted to point out to her that excluding assorted English dictions that might seem more vernacular or might show evidence of non-white, non-European cultural heritage from the auspices of Proper English was a deeply, deeply racist notion. She really wasn't hearing me and, as I foresaw that it would be a waste of my breath and energy to argue with her, I let it go, but my hackles were surely raised. My point in relaying this anecdote here is just to draw the comparison-- by Gelernter's argument, the English language could only be considered to contribute to the inherent sexism in the cultural systems of all English speakers, much in the way my South African friend was unwittingly arguing for a continuation of a racist and exclusionary version of our language. But the thing is, those of us who believe enough in the structural integrity of language can see that it will withstand marauders of all genders, creeds and colors. In fact, such marauders can only enliven the language, keep it new and enrich it with added meanings and nuances. We're not rapists. We're gift-bearing new choristers! Please do not shun us with your reactionary, ill-informed desires to protect the old English fortress. After all, the best way to kill a language is to refuse to let it grow and change and encompass more and more and more opportunities to create meanings through specificity.

And now comes the time in this post, as with many posts before, at which I feel the need to take on the scapegoating of feminists. The other night, while on video-chat with my brother and sister-in-law in Tucson, some book or other with the word "feminism" in the title came into the conversation. Some former student of my brother's had apparently contributed to this book and my sister-in-law said she was looking forward to reading it. My brother, not a neanderthal by any means, said, "Oh, not me! I don't want to read anything about feminism!" I'm sure I looked a little surprised. I'm always a little surprised when people who are close to me espouse seemingly close-minded sentiments. He then said something about how there was just too big a stigma surrounding the notion of feminism. At that, I'm sure I looked positively shocked. Now, I know I exist in something of a very pro-feminist bubble. I'm constantly searching for assorted writings written from a feminist perspective. And because feminism is field of particular interest to me, the idea that some folks-- my own brother even-- think there is still a stigma against feminism seems really quite dated and a little outlandish. I mean, the wave of the anti-feminist backlash crested and crashed, oh, I dunno, about 12-15 years ago! Hasn't everyone heard that it's cool to be a feminist again? OK, yeah, fine, I know that must be a little naive.

In any case, my brother's clearly not alone. David Gelernter hasn't heard either. And as a result, Mr. Gelernter seems to be suffering from a particularly paralyzing Vagina-Monster-Phobia (add THAT one to your list, Jen!). In this article, feminists use "heavy artillery" and are "warriors." Besides being "language rapists," we are also clearly dismissed for being contrarians and generally stupid. We "drive 80-ton 16-wheelers into the nimble sports-car of English style." If that isn't an image that posits the old-school lesbian bull-dyke against the playboy dandy, I don't know what is! (However, I like the odds of the bull-dyke 16-wheeler in that match quite a lot!) Regardless, there's no way one could miss the distinct reek of fear of that which is female wafting throughout this article.

And beyond that, that fear is based on a pretty egregious misconception about what it means to be a feminist in this day and age. I've posted long and hard (ha!) about how a reasonable, rational third-wave feminist falls into neither the category of the it's-a-man's-world-after-all-and-I-am-merely-a-victim-of-all-man-sourced-injustices-because-I-like-being-a-girl sort of girl nor the category of I'm-just-as-good-as-a-man-and-will-behave-like-one-to-prove-it sort of girl. Having been minimally victimized by men, I have little reason to dislike them. And while I recognize a more systemic version of sexism, I'm hardly out to disembowel and cause to implode any number of social structures (language included) just because they show symptoms of that systemic sexism. Not that I could if I wanted to. I merely hope to draw attention to said symptoms and not blindly accept them. In due course, perhaps I can contribute, in some small way, to the healing of the symptoms. And I'm not ashamed that I identify as a feminist. However, I do resent being lumped in, wholesale, with a bunch of women from previous generations who espoused more unilateral feminist views. I mean, we needed these women-- those feisty broads out there on the vanguard-- and we wouldn't be where we are now without their work in the last century, but their perspectives are no longer so efficacious, especially for those of us who would not only like to contribute to the breadth of human society but would like to engage in hetero interpersonal relationships. It behoves us to examine where their blind spots were as much as it behoves us to examine the where blind spots of whackjob reactionaries like Gelernter are. But Gelernter's mistake is that he assumes all us feminist chicks have the same blind spots. And we don't. With any luck at all, though, ours are slightly more manageable than his, as clearly, he's peeking at us through a fucking pinhole!