- We'll have an opportunity to participate in the program by calling the KANU open line at 864-4530. Now here's our moderator for A Feminist Perspective, Kaci Ikey. - Hello, and thank you for tuning in to A Feminist Perspective. This weekly show is sponsored by the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center, a program and information service of the Dean of Women's Office 220 Strong Hall. Also located in this office is our Women's Library. This library contains vast amounts of information, news clippings, magazine articles, research studies and books pertaining to the many aspects of the Women's Movement. We would like to invite you to come in and browse or to take advantage of our Lending Library that's in 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. Our program topic for this evening is Our Sexist Language and our guests are Bonnie Patton, President of the Lawrence and Ottawa Chapter of NOW, the National Organization for Women. And she's also the State Coordinator for NOW. Liz Whitt is a graduate student in French here at KU. And Jean Robinson is a French Instructor at UMKC, active in the Lawrence Women's Political Caucus and Political Action Task Force Coordinator at the Lawrence Chapter of NOW. I think our basic thesis for the program tonight is simply that our language is sexist. It is both cause and effect of sexism. Through its all-pervasive influence, it limits how we see and decrees how we should see women. As a result, we should now work to change our awareness, our women-related attitudes and then our language should change to adequately reflect the new consciousness of women. I also think a definition of what sexist language is would be that any language that expresses such stereotyped attitudes and expectations or that assumes the inherent superiority of one sex over the other is indeed sexist language. Bonnie or Liz or Jean, do you have anything to add to that definition or comments on that definition? - I would just add an agreement that language is important and that if our language is sexist, and I agree with you that it is, then something should be done about it. And that's going to be perhaps a good part of our interest of the evening. Languages do change and sometimes we initiate those changes when we realize that there's something lacking. - Yes, I'd go along with that. I'd add that I feel that language is the structure by which we define our world and as such, if there are sexist aspects of the language that they do retard any kind of social movement and that while it can seem rather artificial to try to change a language that I think it can work together with other aspects of the movement to change conceptions and change a society. - Did you have anything else to add, Bonnie? - Well, this was an interest. For those who need to have it said by a man, one way a similar statement was made was by Huey Newton, who at that time was the Black Panther Minister of Defense. The way he put it was that "power is the ability "to define phenomena and make them act "in the desired manner." I think very often the way that we define ourselves encourages us to act in one way or another. Same with men, of course. And the definition that you gave, whatever makes man or woman inherently better in any capacity, I would define as sexist and I think it's very powerful and has an effect on our behavior. - It seems that he was saying that in that case, whites that make definitions for words or that give certain connotations to certain words. That gives them the power to have this kind of influence on the people that they're talking about. And I think that women and women-related words or whatever really falls into that category. - Yeah, it's really not just in this case whites talking about blacks, or Negroes at that time, that he was reacting to, but the way the person being talked about comes to talk about herself. We adopt the language and it causes us to view ourselves in given ways. - I think that the term consciousness raising has been used so much in the women's movement and that has a real meaning for me when I realized how I hear things in the language now that I would never have thought of at all a year ago or certainly longer ago than that. And I think that consciousness raising in this sense just means a new awareness. The things we took for granted did not have to be taken for granted and we can speak differently. And I mean that just as you say, women talking about women or blacks talking about blacks or men talking about men. - Maybe we can try and pull out some examples of what we're talking about and point out for those who may not be aware of how we really are permeated by these kinds of examples. I think that there is one I read an article about a dictionary definition of woman and the first one was something like the female species or something. And after the number two was woman is fickle. And now, that gives a whole new idea on what we're talking about as a dictionary definition. And I'm sure that the dictionary was edited by a man. I think that may have a little to do with it. But I think it's also that this has just been handed down for so long and no one has really said, no, wait a minute. What is this really saying to people and to women? - Yes, I think on the most basic level there is sexism just in the connotations that have built up around the words that are used to describe what is a biological distinction. The connotations that go along with woman or with female or feminine, the adjective. I ran into one just the other night of talking about literary characters. And the reference was that the woman was completely female, therefore the hero was easily bored by her. If you switch the roles and say the man was completely male, therefore the women was easily bored, it wouldn't make as much immediate sense because of all of the connotations that are immediately there with the word female. - Here's one example of this. It sounds peculiar and we often have the women in the movement criticized for being disagreeable about what seems to be a very simple thing. In 1972, it was finally noted that the faculty washroom doors for women in Philosophy Hall at Columbia University were labeled, Women and the washroom doors for men were labeled, For Officers of Instruction. Now, that has to give a big message to any women who happens to be an officer of instruction. I doubt that it drives her crazy, but it has to give her a message. And we see the same thing a lot of times in professional caucuses when we get, those of us who are active in education, get invitations to conferences. And we are told that there will be social gatherings held for members' wives. Well, it's certainly not that you're not allowed to come and it's very nice that there are social activities. But somehow you get the feeling that as a member, you really are an anomaly and that you're very unusual. And that's too bad. - I think that points out a place where it's so easy to just use a slightly different term that includes the possibilities for everyone. If that same invitation had said members and spouses or members and friends, there would have been no problem. Everyone could've brought whomever they wanted. I had to fill out a form at a doctor's office and I happened to be the only patient in the family with this doctor. Well, the form wanted to know patient's name and then it wanted to know the name of my father or husband. And I said, couldn't this read that if you do want some information for billing purposes, it could be patient and parent or spouse, whichever was applicable if they happened to need. But there are all sorts of other people who don't have a father or a husband around and it excludes them just as much as it offended me. - Head of the household and wife on our income tax forms. And it's really not the time you wish to start a big battle. I mean, because you'd go to jail, but nonetheless, it's offensive and irritating because of what it implies. - So I guess that's where the consciousness raising comes back to me that it is just as easy if the women's movement is criticized saying we're adding all these problems of making people change, it is easy to say spouse rather than wife. - Yeah, I think we're talking about the kind of subtle exclusion that a lot of women who are conscious of language and with things we're saying to them that for example in newspapers, say, there's a doctor did such and such or an engineer, but if it's a woman, it's a lady doctor or a lady engineer or something like that, which you can't help but get the message that you're something different or set off or at least unusual to say the least. - It's probably worth I guess saying again what one of us said earlier that it may have been that that language did reflect reality, but to say that we're trying to change language artificially, you still look at the fact that the reality has changed by now. There are thousands of women surgeons, there are thousands of women university teachers. It isn't unusual and it's the language that hasn't changed in many cases. - I am aware or have read something about gender and nouns in English. Maybe I'm more aware of and Liz is, too, because of teaching French where nouns are given a masculine gender or a feminine. In English, that's not supposed to exist. In theory, our nouns are either unless the context is perfectly clear. So the case of engineer, grammatically, that should say to the whole world that that's open to either. But then the next area it seems to me we get into is this whole group of professions and roles that have somehow had the word man on the end because that was reality. And so we can't just leave off lady engineer and try to make sure that everyone assumes that an engineer could be male or female. Perhaps, the changes have been more obvious in insisting on the inclusion of congresswoman, instead of just congressman in the dictionary. Now, I haven't looked lately, but I'm sure many of those words are not in dictionaries that are more than a year or two old. Do you think that the answer is just to create a congresswoman equivalent to congressman or would it be simpler to try to find a word that isn't male or female that would be parallel to engineer? - Well, I think the problem from my point of view is that the professions which have been distinguished male female with two words such as poet and poetess, what is normally used to make that distinction is a diminutive ending which carries all of the connotations of someone who is less than a poet, simply because she is female in that case. So I'm not sure. I would like to believe that at some point, we could reach a point where the sex differentiation would not be important, where engineer could stand as such without having to make a sex differentiation one way or the other. And yet, I'm aware in a lot of the places where there is only one word as for example, engineer or doctor, we only have one, we forget the reality behind that word that there are women there. And so I really don't know. - So there's a question as to whether it's better to reinforce the idea that there are women, like authoress or poetess that do these kinds of things and yet, I can see the other side, too, that somehow in people's eyes and ears and minds that it's not quite the same as being a male author or a male poet or something. - Yes, I heard of woman poet, poetess, who made a tour of Europe. And in Europe at the poetry readings, the women were not allowed to read in the same order as the men. They had a separate section of the women. And because she was a specially invited guest, she was allowed to read her poetry at the same time as the men, which seems to me to spell out very clearly the fact that there is a status distinction going with poet or poetess. They were making an exception for her. - Do you have any ideas on the reasons that they did that might be, why is that? - Well, in our field, I would say it is because as most of the editors of dictionaries are male, so are most of the literary critics, the people who are making the decisions as to whether something is valuable or not. - It's hard to come to terms with how much stake some people seem to have in continuing chairman, for instance, for any person presiding over a group until you get into a situation that I faced that was doubly fun because it was the president of the Speech Communication Association who referred in one lengthy letter to me and in about the ninth paragraph to the progress that blacks have made because they learned so and so and so, and then at the last, his last paragraph where he became vehement and the issue had never been raised except my post in one organization as Chairperson of the SCA Women's Caucus. And he started his last paragraph with the line, I will not let the women's liberation movement dictate my use of the English language. I shall continue to refer to you as doctor, miss or missus or chairman, whichever you are. And he became very upset and had had his secretary cross out chairperson, you could see the white ink, and put in chairman. And there wasn't much to say to him because he'd slipped when he got that angry, except to point out that he had somehow learned to say black, so I suppose the black liberation movement had coerced his use of the English language. In other words, to him, it was a moral principle at least as it concerned women. - Maybe our memories are short and maybe the same kind of response was being given to blacks and people who said I refuse to quit using terms Negro or colored, whichever you happened to be using at the time. So that might make us feel that things will not be the same in 10 years. But I think this not wanting to make a scene is a lot of the reason that a lot of this is perpetuated, too, and I'm familiar with a department, not here, in a nearby college, and the dean of the college had sent out a letter congratulating the new chairwoman, but since he had used the term chairman, she was not about to correct someone who was her boss. And her feeling was that it just wasn't worth it to her to possibly antagonize him and so she would continue to be addressed as chairman. - It's like miss, missus or Ms, and a lot of women don't feel free to say. Even if they do feel that they would rather be addressed or at least on paper as Ms, they don't feel that they don't wanna cause those waves that you might talk about the reaction that you received at one time. - Well, I guess I'm in the same feeling of a lot of other women of wanting to make some changes but not wanting to be really nasty about it. And I thought that changing to the title Ms would be very easy for me. And so I decided to use that exclusively in professional correspondence and be addressed that way at work. The first time that a departmental memo came out and different people in our department were addressed as doctor or mister or misses or miss or Ms, I happened to be the only one who had chosen the title Ms and that was quite a conversation topic with me for several days. And I found myself feeling very defensive as I was being confronted with, "What are you trying to do? "What are you trying to say? "How have you changed and who are you "that we didn't know about?" And my response I guess is that I see Ms as an easier title, that that can be something people can call me without being wrong. If they don't know whether or not I have a doctorate, they don't know whether or not I'm married, that should be the easy way out. But it turned out to be a difficult option or change to make. And I don't think anyone has called me Ms, I'm sure of that. It's now written all the time, but never used orally. - Have either Jean, or I mean, Liz or Bonnie, have you had any experience with this kind of title syndrome or whatever? - I guess I get around it by either being in the classroom or just going by my first name most of the time. So I really haven't been involved. - No, the easy way out I suppose is to be called doctor, but sometimes it does seem like a cop out. So I normally just don't respond to missus. I don't open mail for instance that comes addressed that way because I just don't wanna open the mail that comes that way. My name is Bonnie or I'm a person, female, Ms, or everybody can hide behind the doctor. But I think we mentioned a few weeks ago here, mail that comes addressed to doctor and missus just doesn't get opened by either one of us anymore. - Doctor and doctor, huh? - I know a women who's teaching at the medical center, for nurses at the medical center who wanted to have Ms on her name plaque on the door and name plaque on the desk, all those places, and had to send them back three times before they came up and they finally came up with just her first and last name. Whoever was in charge of making those nameplates could not bring themselves to put just Ms on the plaque. - And yet, I don't know about that particular case, but mister on name plaques is so common that there's really no hesitation there. - Oh, well, they made the very clear distinction there, everyone else between miss and missus, the title was on the plaque. - I don't know if we do need to make clear or more clear our feelings about Ms and why it is important to, say, me or to Jean or Liz, any of us. Maybe we should say Ms, instead of I just realized that you were saying MS and that all of us realized that speaking before this program that it is new enough to us that the sound is unusual and that we even though are supportive of the term perhaps think about it first before we address a stranger as Ms somebody. So maybe hearing the term more often would be helpful for all of us and we are seeing it more than we're hearing it. - It's just as foreign sounding to those of us who use it as anyone else, really. - Hey, I'm coming from Texas. I spent a good bit of time learning to say miss and missus 'cause of course, I grew up saying Ms and now to go back is complicated somewhat. - I think we just need to reinforce the idea that the only thing that a miss or missus tells anyone is the marital status. And what really is the point of that? - For women, if it isn't a point for men, and it isn't. - I don't think it should be for either anyway. - That's a good point. I think I've been confronted with, "Are you ashamed of being married?" There is no feeling of shame at all and I certainly don't feel that any of the misters that I have met in the past were necessarily ashamed of being married because they were addressed as mister. - Or you could say ashamed of being single. - Yes, that's what I was thinking with spinster. It's sometimes used as a one-up kind of thing maybe, too, and it's just very nice for... But what happened? Didn't something happen in French recently that women were finally given, all women given permission or is that in Spanish, over certain age can still refer to themselves in some way that didn't specify. They could all become madame or they could all become senora after-- - Well, that has been the use of the terms in French since the aristocratic common breakdown. Originally, madame was used for noble women, while mademoiselle was used for commoners, whether or not married in both cases. When that broke down, then madame was used for a mature women and mademoiselle for a young girl. And so there wasn't the marriage connotation with the name. - Still memorizing about 10 to 12 years ago that one was for married and one was for single, but that was wrong at that time. - Right, so we were asked in the classroom whether French is going to come up with a Ms term. And the response is they don't need it as much as we do. - They have tried and unfortunately, their attempts have been very bad, like was one of the possibilities, which is again using a diminutive term. - I think along those lines, oriental languages, we were talking about not saying mankind or humanity and things like that. Oriental languages have a completely distinct word for humanity or whatever that doesn't have man or woman in that. - Genkind was the one we were talking about earlier, wasn't it? - Right. - Did we have the reasons that genkind is a logical creation of a new word? - I have an article here that talks about sexist language and the author says, gen would express the warmth and generalize sexuality of generous, gentle and genuine, the specific sexuality of genital and genetic. In the new family of gen, girls and boys would grow to genhood and to speak of genkind would be to include all the people of the earth. So I think that's a pretty good idea. - Yeah, it's important I suppose to get 'cause sometimes it really sounds very artificial when we're talking about creating a whole new language. And it just seems somehow to be important to keep going back to the fact that it's possible to feel very left out when you keep hearing the word he, him, every student should turn in his papers, and it is supposed to mean both, but when we assumed it meant both in the Constitution, we found out in suit after suit after suit that it did not mean both. And it would seem to me sensible to say, okay, if it didn't mean men and women there... - Where does it mean? - Right, it still took an amendment to allow us to vote. And it goes on and on and on. So if it doesn't mean it there, maybe it doesn't mean it anywhere. - Right. - It's worth going back to the fact that very often we find we are excluded and then we're told, oh, well, in this case, it meant men. And in this case, just happened to be the Constitution of the United States. That's a pretty big case. - And who makes the rules? I think we'll need to take a station break here, a short one. And then we'll be back to discuss some more about our sexist language. - Next Saturday afternoon at 1, KANU will present a special musical tape from the hit summer music festival in Germany. It'll be a performance of George Frideric Handel's cantata in three parts for soloist, chorus and orchestra, entitled L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, The Lively Man, The Thoughtful Man and The Moderate Man. The performance will feature the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra of Pforzheim and wind instrument soloists, the Bergdorfer Chamber Chorus and soloist, Soprano Barbara Randelli, Senator Curt Equiluz and Bass Kurt Mole. The performance will be conducted by Gunter Weissenborn. That's next Saturday afternoon at 1. And may we also remind you that the 1972-73 Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon broadcast will again be presented over KANU. The first broadcast will be heard on December 9th starting at 1 Central Standard Time. The opening performance of this year's series will be Giuseppe Verdi's great masterpiece, Otello. - Many people either call or write us asking about the programming on KANU and KFKU, since KANU serves Kansas, approximately 19 hours a day, with 110,000 watts of FM stereo, and KFKU is a shared time AM radio station with WREN in Topeka. The problem of knowing what program is playing at what time can be very confusing. So here's our solution. Write us at Broadcasting Hall, the University. - And welcome back to A Feminist Perspective where tonight we're discussing our sexist language. Our guests tonight are Bonnie Patton, Liz Whitt and Jean Robinson. We'd like to now invite you to call in comments or questions or anything, and the number here is 864-4530. - You know, it's worth noting just now that when that beautiful male voice said Ms. Kaci Ikey, all of us kind of went, huh? Ms, just what you said, Jean, it's hard to start saying. I mean, if we feel it's important to say, I guess we're gonna have to grow up and take it like a woman or a person. But all of us reacted and said, hey. - It's also because you just never hear it. - Maybe 'cause that was such a nice voice saying it, hard to know. - I'd still like to draw out some examples or things not only of words that oppress women, but how about words that oppress men and words that stereotype men and don't let men expand to a full humanness. - I think maybe the word, lady, very often says to us don't do these things. Although, they might be worth doing if you were a person. Don't do them if you're a lady. And I think maybe a parallel is just the word, man, for men. Men don't do this, men don't cry, men don't show their pain, men don't reach out to other people. - Take it like a man. - Take it like a man. - Or little boys, don't do those same things if they wanna grow up. - In one of the articles that I read recently gave an example of something that hurts I think both men and women. It's the use of the word effeminate. There is no really acceptable term for a male person who doesn't act like a man, except effeminate, which is a derogatory term and which hurts both. I think that there ought to be room in the vocabulary for a male person who does not fit the stereotype. - I think we have a phone call here, so we might take those questions. - Hello? - Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can. - I'm interested in knowing what sort of a salutation one uses when he writes to a company and he doesn't know who's going to open the letter, a man or a woman. - Bonnie, did you have a response? - I have started using gentlepeople and it's hard to imagine someone's reacting negatively to that, just gentlepeople as we used to use gentleman. - Yes, I do like that one. I have been using dear sir or Ms. - I've said dear friend or dear friends, knowing that that's not always applicable at times. The strangers are not my friends. Occasionally, dear colleague can work if it's a letter having to do with a job. - Oh, I see, thank you very much. - Thank you for calling. - I think that's still a problem. I think that's a more uncomfortable thing perhaps for us right now than the Ms issue is that I'll try this dear gentlepeople, but I will stop before I type that word the first few times. So if anyone has any other suggestions or words that have worked, I guess we ought to share those. - Yes, call them in. - One example, we were talking about some kinds of phrases that can bring a shock of recognition and I think the one that we talk about maybe most commonly is what happens at the end of many marriage ceremonies. And what happens is that when a man and a women go to be married, they walk out of the ceremony very often as man and wife. Some prayer books and so on, some of them have it now husband and wife. But I think if you wound up walking out as women and husband, it would become immediately clear that there's a change in the status of the woman and no definitional change in the status of the man after marriage. - I had one of those recognition shocks just last week when the new issue of Ms arrived. And on the cover in big print was Peace on Earth, Good Will to People. That's an expression that I had never thought of. - Yeah, people works a lot of times again quite easily in oh just sayings, proverbs, truisms, that we've all repeated for a long time. And I think that's a real good example of that. - Yes, another one that I ran into just recently that I hadn't thought about myself are the numerous references made to the forefathers of our nation with no mention ever made of the foremothers or the land where our fathers died, which is the same thing. - And graduate students who are hoping for financial assistance have to apply for fellowships all the time. - I think we have another phone call. Okay, we have to wait a minute for that call. One more title that perhaps is hard on men in the country as I think all of us here agree that men should have as many choices and options to do whatever they want to do with their day that some more men are going to choose to stay home with children or perhaps without children, but househusband hasn't really caught on. And I think that there might be some better term than housewife or househusband. Perhaps if homemaker is really accepted as the respectable word that I think it is, that can take in husbands or wives. - Except Jean, I read recently that another dictionary definition of housewife is one who does not work. I'm sure that many people, many women would object to that definition. - I think the time that the homemaker will achieve the status we're talking about as what it ought to be able to have is when it becomes a choice for the person who assumes it, rather than the only appropriate role for that person to fill. And that's likely to happen when men choose it and when women are perfectly free to choose other alternatives without taking on two jobs, that of housewife and faculty person or housewife and person who works. - Right, I think it's also an attitudinal thing within women that many times they put themselves down, their own work down by saying, oh, I'm just a housewife and then putting that whole... I think that a lot of women do that and probably unconsciously, which doesn't help the status of that position either. Another, still talking about definitions or examples of sexist language, I read of one about a woman who does not marry or an old maid or a spinster. I think we mentioned that word before. When a woman doesn't marry that's what she becomes, past a certain age. - A progression is inevitable. - Right, right, but a man is always a bachelor, no matter how old he is. - Okay, I think we have another call. Hello? - Hi, I have a comment and a question. I am interested in the whole issue that you're talking about tonight. And I know that the problems involved in changing the linguistic system are ominous and at the same time, some of the problems in relation to making some of the changes at a gross institutional level would be most difficult, but I'm concerned about how maybe you, each of you handle the issue of language when it occurs to you in the day-to-day work? I know that an example or an analogy is the typical racist language that we have in our culture. And I know for me, it's a personal struggle each day to contend with the subtleties that slip out of my white mouth every once in awhile that imply some of my inbred racist qualities. And I suspect that same thing happens in interpersonal relationships that you experience each day. I know of with regard to myself that where I begin to catch the slips that relate to sexist behavior, I try to correct them or if people say things to me that are racist, I try to correct them on the spot. How do you like to have your comments on how you in your day-to-day work when you are confronted with what are obviously to you repugnant sexist language, how do you handle it with people? Are you straightforward or do you say I find it offensive to me, personally and do you do it an on the spot teaching job? How do you handle it, interpersonally, day-to-day? - I think one important thing that I try to do is to keep in mind that what's probably happening most of the time is just the experience you cited, making statements that imply things that are out of your awareness, out of your consciousness and that if you were conscious of them and aware of them, you would not be holding them. In other words, they aren't conscious statements you're making. Given that, if I find something offensive that's unintended, my comment is generally I can't reply to that very well just because of the terminology and am often able to say the terminology puts a block somehow between us. - I don't want to let you cop out. Although, it may be unconscious, it's nonetheless behavior and it's nonetheless very real. And what I'm concerned about is even though you may recognize it as unconscious, I guess I'm asking this question as much for myself as anything else because I need to build a technique for myself to begin addressing this, do you start getting a little more aggressive with respect to this, even though you may be willing to grant its essentially unconscious origins? I mean, do you simply say, I find myself increasingly saying to people who use racist language and even my parents, for example, to say I find that personally offensive. I do not want you to use that kind of language in my presence. And I know that on a couple of occasions I've said that with respect to what I considered to be glaring sexist statements, even though granted, they may be very unconscious and very unintended. I mean, when do you finally start pushing on the thing? - Well, at the time I started pushing is when I say I can't respond to that because it's offensive to me. - And do you say that? - Yes. - Yeah, okay, good. - Now, if the next response is, well, you're crazy, then I figure there's no point in pursuing it. Or if it's, wow, what do you mean? It doesn't make sense to me that that would bother you but would you tell me why? If it feels like it's a real question, then I respond. - Okay, and just one final question and I'll get off the line. With respect to handling this thing interpersonally and I'd like to have some other response to my question from the others, are you increasingly getting a sensitive response from people? Is it your experience that in the day-to-day battle that each of you fight that you're getting by and large a larger percent of sensitive responses, the less angry ones, the less people who shut you out totally? Are there more hearers, more listeners? - Jean, you wanted to respond. - Okay, I'm not sure. I don't know that I can respond to the last question. There are still a lot of funny flippant responses. And I don't know how long that's gonna be with us. I haven't found too much hostility but so much humor that is a put down kind of humor that I think that will be with me every time I'm in a new group for the next few years. But in going back to that first question, I really think personally trying to keep away from immediate hostility because of this awareness that the sexist language is unconscious. And I was in one meeting this year when the women were very quickly vocally interrupting to correct the language of our male guests. And that was counterproductive, I think. The men were doing every stereotypic kind of sexist generalization that they could and so in that sense, they deserved to be corrected. But their reaction to the interruptions was pretty much immediate anger. So my tactic lately has been in meeting situations to tell the person after the meeting is over the instances that I wish they would change, the vocabulary items that I wish they would change. So that's just taking it down to a one-to-one level, rather than trying to say something in front of a whole group. - I have found more understanding and more sympathy. That may be because I've been more selective in the men I've been around or been discussing with. But I noticed for instance the other day a colleague at Haskell where I teach was describing the way that he taught paragraph structure. And one of his comments was I try to get them to see the topic sentence as the father of the sentence. And all he did was look at me and say, I mean, father or mother of the sentence, I mean parent in the sentence, and that came from him. And I've noticed a lot of this, at least with the men that I've been around, a lot more understanding and a lot more awareness. And maybe that comes because they assume basically that I will be trying to keep contact with them on an interpersonal level. - I know though that at least in my case it is so exhausting really to feel like you need to confront someone each time and say and bring it out and go through the whole thing. And it just feels like sometimes you're just gonna scream you're just so tired of saying the same things to many people. But I do have this kind of optimism that there are more people that are listening and that aren't gonna laugh and slough it off, that really care that you do feel put down or feel something negative about the way that they are acting towards you. - I think it has a big effect if they realize that your feeling is directed toward them. In other words, you're making estimates about them when they use the language, rather than feeling hurt or wounded, I normally make assumptions about the person using the language. - I think we have another call now. - Hello? - Hello? - Hello? - Yes. Oh, I've been waiting for some time so I did not realize you meant me. I just would like to make a comment. You already mentioned the latest issue of Ms and I found an article in there which I thought was very interesting and related to today's topic. What Are We Talking About? It's a two-page article about the meaning of words and for example, the meaning and development of a wife and woman and mistress and so forth. And I thought that you might mention this article to interested readers and listeners. - Very good, now, is that the December issue of Ms-- - Yes, it's the December issue and it's on page 70. For example, the interesting thing is that the ancient English word of wife meant actually adult female, human being and not married, making no distinction whether the woman was married or not. And so there are some quite interesting development of the meaning of these words with expressed female human beings. - Right. - Mm-hm. - That's actually what I want to say. - Thank you very much for calling. - You're welcome. - I have not seen the most recent article in Ms. Have any of you read that particular article? - Not that one. - No. - Sounds good. - I'm sure that men and women listening to this show have heard this magazine referred to often, but I would recommend that if you're curious about these articles and the covers of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to People kinds of things that listeners might search out a copy if it's still on the newsstands. And that's certainly a case of increasing awareness. - I noticed that in the last edition, there was a letter by Rod McEwan who had sent in $99 for nine subscriptions for friends and then $99 for them to give subscriptions to people who really seemed to need it. Not a bad idea at all for a Christmas present, either way. - Another reaction to the man's question about how I deal with the down and day-to-day level, the sexist language and I just realized that I don't think I've ever called a man a male chauvinist pig in real anger and in a real angry situation, but I certainly have called my male friends male chauvinist pigs in showing them that something that they have just said in terms of sexist language. So maybe that's my personal way of getting back at all of the humor that I was just talking about, the flippancy, that we're surrounded with in the women's movement that I use that. It's a pretty terrible insult I think when I use that flippantly when I want someone to be aware of something they've just done. - You don't like to think that you respond to a put down by another put down, but sometimes it's more than you can take and you just feel like you have to say something like that, too. - I think we have another call. Hello? - Hello? - Yes. I apologize for the fact that I tuned in at 7:30 and I'm sure you must have taken up the fact that we have no generic pronoun in English for person the way the French do. We always use the he, his and so forth. - Right, uh-huh. - And I was just reading a book the other night that's hot off the press, a book by a woman on psychology of adolescence. And she has written, on the other hand today's... This shows how foolish we can get with our using he as the generic pronoun. On the other hand, today's adolescents through his pregnancies out of wedlock-- Appearance, et cetera, challenges his appearance. - Thank you, that's very enlightening. - Yes, that's very close to another example that someone told me earlier tonight. The definition for fallopian tube in a dictionary, which was the passageway of the ovary in man and other mammals. - It makes you wonder. What was the name of that book that you referred to? - She's off. - I think she's off, okay. I think it was the psychology of the adolescent. I wasn't quite sure. - She assumed that we had touched on the French, one, but we hadn't. And I think that's good to point out that some of us have tried to use one instead of he. And the reaction that is real I think is that that use of one is stilted in English. But we should be aware of the fact that it is not stilted. It's very much in use in other languages and could again come into use in English. - Are there any other languages? Do you have any idea? I know you do. - Well, in German, there is a term for one, but it's mon, unfortunately. - Same as here. - Maybe we should touch on the textbooks and the children. - That's in seven minutes, we can. It's too much to say. - Well, the parallels to racist language have been brought up. It's a very important parallel I think, but there has been... A lot of work has been done in the past few years to get racist language, racist pictures, racist stereotypes out of textbooks. And I'm sure that that job is not done, but at least it's been started. And I think we're going to have to as parents and educators, we're gonna have to realize that the same commitment has to be made to textbooks locally. A friend of mine made a study of a third or fourth grade reader, I can't remember, presently being used in a school here in Lawrence and discovered that men were depicted in something like 30 different roles, animals were the main characters of 10 more stories and a woman was heroine, one role, and in only one story in that collection. And that just has to changed, I think. - Along that line, Vicky Landman now is doing a study for NOW, her task force on discrimination and education, about that matter in the books that are in the grade school libraries. And if there are people who are listening who have examples of the sort of books they would like to have studied for this reason or analyze because of just the stereotypes that are there, they could call her. I'm sure her number is in the KU student catalog, Vicky Landman. - Our colleague, Affirmative Action Office. - So this language is certainly involves pictures and everything more than just that we've concentrated on the words tonight. But another friend said that her little first grader came home and mother thought for the first time in her life had said, "Mommy can a girl be..." and picked some job. And felt that that was a direct result of having read about that job and that person and talked about it in school and they had been talking about a man. And she didn't assume that that was a general offense. She saw the exclusion. - I think that's also depicted by the many times that there was a study done on counting the number of times that he is used in books and the number of times she is used. And the number of times he is used far, far outnumbers, way over twice as many times, as she is used. And I can't help but think this has some kind of effect on little girls that are growing up and thinking, now, does that mean me or not? - Yeah, I guess we keep having to come back to something Jean said earlier. Maybe in 10 years, things will be different, but when we get to the point that the question is raised as it was sensibly raised early in the program, how much of an issue do you make? I find that I sometimes do make an issue in much the same way as women who are involved in the women's movement are sometimes told they've lost their sense of humor. Although now virtually no one accuses a black person of having lost her sense of humor when she doesn't laugh at a Rufus and Mandy joke. It just isn't done. We are able to laugh about a lot of things. We just no longer choose to laugh at ourselves or talk about ourselves in ways that may restrict our options. - All right, I can really respond personally to that idea of someone saying, "Well, you've just lost your sense of humor." And you think, well now, maybe I have, but then you think on the other hand, there's this other gut level feeling that's saying, wait a minute, I really haven't. You just don't understand or something. I think you had an announcement at the beginning. You have announcements, too. We like to take the last portion of the show for announcements of any activities or whatever. - Yes, there are two announcements. NOW is coordinating NOW and has been working for about a month coordinating an effort to have free childcare available for the children of KU students who will be enrolling January 17, 18th and 19th. We need men and women to volunteer to help us with the childcare center, so that parents can have the care for the children when they register. If you're willing to help for any amount of time, one or two hours during those days, 17th, 18th, 19th of January, Mary Freedman, or let's see, Mrs. Paul Freedman, in the telephone directory at 842-9322 would be happy and proud to hear from you. On the other hand, if you wish to reserve childcare, we'll only be able to take care of 20 children an hour during all this time. Please call the Affirmative Action Office. They're coordinating that part of the effort. - Okay, thank you. I'd like to thank Liz and Jean and Bonnie for coming tonight and discussing our sexist language with me. And also to thank our callers for hearing and listening and calling in, too. Next week, the topic will be The Dating Game. So you might want to tune in to that, too. Again, I'd like to invite anyone listening to come up to our Women's Resource and Career Planning Center located in 220 Strong Hall and especially to browse around or take advantage of the Lending Library, our Women's Library up in the Dean of Women's Office and that's 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. Thank you again for tuning in. - Listen again next Monday at 7 for A Feminist Perspective presented in cooperation with the Office of the Dean of Women at the University of Kansas. This is KANU Lawrence where the time is one minute before 8 o'clock.