Sexist Language
Despite decades of feminist consciousness-raising, sexist language still exists in our culture. Gender-specific titles and pronouns can subtly influence sexism as well as our thoughts and expectations about gender roles and appropriate occupations and goals for the sexes.
Defining Sexist Language
Sexist language is language that excludes either men or women when discussing a topic that is applicable to both sexes. This includes using the word man to refer to humanity, and using titles like Congressman and fireman. Another common error that shows gender bias is assuming that the subject of all sentences is male. For instance, the statement "Each student chose his own topic for his term paper," leads the reader to assume that all the students in the class were male, despite the probability that half of them were female.
Underlying sexist language is gender bias, which can occur consciously or unconsciously. When unconscious, the gender bias in language can be considered to be the product of society: other people use sexist language, and repetition normalizes it until the speaker unconsciously produces his or her own sexist language where men are the norm and women the "other."
Reasons to Avoid Sexist Language
Sexist language encourages discrimination and can discourage people from pursuing their dreams. If engineers are always spoken of as male, a girl who aspires to be an engineer may feel that she has no hope, since "all" engineers are men.
Sexist language also offends people when they find themselves excluded. This is not an issue that violates your right to free speech; you are free to use offensive language, and also free to decide that you do not agree with the definition of what constitutes sexist language. However, if you are using language that is offensive to half of your audience, you will not get your message across.