Feminist Accuses English Language Of Being Sexist, Gets Brilliantly Schooled By Linguist
It started off with a premise that, to be fair, deserves discussion and scrutiny. A Tumblr user, who refers to herself as ‘Feminist Chewbacca’ wanted to discover the root causes of patriarchal domination in society, and turned to the English language to investigate the inherent sexism it allegedly contains.
In these days of fake news and agenda pushing however, it has never been more important to check your facts. This is where Feminist Chewbacca came unstuck. Reblogging a post she had found on Visual Poetry, she had probably not counted on being fact-checked by an actual linguist. Her poorly chosen examples were deconstructed one by one, until she began to look rather basic, and a bit silly.
A couple of things to note here. Firstly, by introducing her post with the words: “Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,” Feminist Chewbacca sets a militant tone that isn’t going to endear her to many people, and she needs to have rock-solid arguments to respond to the inevitable attacks on her position.
Secondly, it is of course by no means clear that this ‘linguist’ is indeed qualified or not, and his facts also deserved to be checked. After some cursory research I can gather that while some claims hold water, others are open to argument themselves. There is certainly more to the issue, and Feminist Chewbacca is right to shine a light on it. She just went about it in the wrong way.
So what to take from this sordid affair? Well, I guess it’s easy to pass off someone else’s arguments as your own, but at least maybe check if they are factually correct first. Also, if you begin from an extremist position and with fighting words, expect people to fight back. If they come armed with facts and you are just regurgitating opinions that suit your political outlook, you are just asking to be made to look stupid.
Scroll down to check out how it unfolded below, and let us know what you think in the comments!
Tumblr user ‘Feminist Chewbacca’ picked up artwork that resonated with her beliefs, that sexism is rooted in language
Image credits: Richard Tipping
But this linguist wasn’t having it, and wrote a detailed and qualified response
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Share on FacebookFeminist perspectives do not postulate that men are biologically inferior.
Excellent schooling and very interesting information. It's funny that the Old French "femella" is current day's word for female in Catalan ("mascle" = male and "femella" = female).
Many male commenters have erroneously concluded that this clapback proves the patriarchy doesn't exist. The patriarchy is real--the clapback points out only that you shouldn't fabricate evidence to support your view.
Of course patriarchy exists! Unfortunately it's most dumb people who have the most b******t to say.
Load More Replies...Interesting. In my education classes we we never made fun of anyone. Perhaps this why I try to bolster peoples dignity when showing them a new perspective, while keeping my smugness over 'knowing things' in check. But, I could be wrong. Maybe I will try this much celebrated method of educating.
She's malicious, she get slack for being malicious. No need to show respect or care for someone who doesn't show it for anyone.
Load More Replies...It's 'regardless.' Irregardless isn't a word, FYI.
Load More Replies...The linguist might be correct, but can't we be more classy in making arguments? Why do we have to stoop to sounding superior? I love an argument that puts the facts out there without swearing. Of course, language changes over time and swearing is become commonplace and accepted, even among academicians, but I long for academic civility.
if a feminist can act superior with fake notions of language, why can't a reasonable person act superior with facts and evidence?
Load More Replies...Well done! I just wish to add that in Latin the word "persona", besides person (deriving as said from Etruscan phersu), also meant "mask". "Personam tragicam forte vulpes viderat; quam postquam huc illuc semel atque iterum verterat, 'O quanta species' inquit 'cerebrum non habet.'"... Gaio Giulio Fedro, a Roman writer and fabulist (20/15 b.C. ca. – 51 a.C. ca.) A give a very rough translation: Casually a fox found a theatrical mask. After having turned it over and over the fox observed: what a magnificent appearance indeed, but it has no brain... By the way.
I mean, the fact that the word "man" use to mean "human" - says something about how we view gender. We are socialized into understanding humans as men and women only as secondary, and of course this is reflected in how language has evolved. So no, languages are not in themselves sexist - but they are reflections of patriarchal structures that sees men and women differently. I recommend Simone de Beauvoirs groundbreaking feminist theory for those who want to learn more ;)
Too bad he reveals himself as an MRA freak at the end of his little screed. I'm not saying he's wrong, but someone can be right and still be a whiny jackass.
So it's ok to say men are biologically inferior, but not ok to suggest that said statement is misandrist?
Load More Replies...That's what people do when they know they can't win because they know they are wrong. Happens here too. It's called the voting system. Instead of replying and using words. People use votes to hide comments that don't align with their views. It's a really bad system and kind of censoring. It removes a lot of really interesting views and comments. A shame. Then we are left with very few perspectives. So far for freedom of speech here.
Load More Replies...The linguistic etymology of those particular words are pretty well documented and we covered that in high school English. English, like most languages, is a growing and twisted history that often come from unrelated root words. I was thinking of historical mangle of things... "Let's go, it will be gay!" (1918) = "Its effin sick dog, no joke!" (2018)
Or, "You don't have to be happy to be gay!" (Laugh-In, Goldie Hawn)
Load More Replies...Even if it wasn’t the correct way. She’s still right about the fact that we live in a very patriarchal and misogynistic society. Words can be used against women in many ways.
Is she also right about men's "biologic inferiority"? Or can we just agree that that post was indeed misandric and toxic?
Load More Replies...Feminists aren't women who hate men. They can be any gender, and all they want is for equality for everyone. More people need to understand
Not this one. She very specifically states in no uncertain terms that men are inferior. "...to compensate for their biological inferiority...". She's a misandrist cut and dried.
Load More Replies...Yep. English isn't a sexist language at all. If anything, it is a mongrel language with Celtic, German, Scandinavian, and Roman influences all mixed up in such a messy way that spelling and pronunciation are completely unrelated and make no sense at all. A German word with an 'a' in it, is always pronounced the same. In English, words with an 'a' can sound completely different, like 'saw', 'ran', 'raft', or 'hate'. Oh, yes there is even more confusion when you put words with a 'u', who also sound like 'a' in the mix, like 'sun'. Crazy.
I think many words have gained sexist meanings though.
Load More Replies...I bet that in the time-honoured tradition, she engaged in a respectful conversation with him and admitted she'd been wrong. :D
I'd heard about the other words but had no idea people were getting offended by 'person'! That's beyond ridiculous! I want to marry this linguist.
Woah, slow down there. Maybe you should meet the guy first...
Load More Replies...Very interesting. Unfortunately for me, I'll forget every word of it within the next thirty minutes.
As a graduate geochemistry/geology student this amazes me as I am always trying to learn new things, and I love it when someone gets schooled because they choose to oversimplify a system that is much more complicated, and so very much not the system they believed it to be to begin with. Simply spectacular. Oh, and wait, "Stay in your lane..." fantastic.
i hate what she said to begin with, "men fabricated the idea due to their inferiority and general superfluous". As a feminist myself i hate people like her who give a bad name to it. The definition of feminism is equal rights to both men and women. To even the playing field she should work on empowering women not degrading men because in doing so she is no better - in fact worse than the men who degrade women as she hides behind the facade of doing the right thing. Bravo to the linguist
It's also a rotten language to learn. My husband used to volunteer teaching ESL, and said his students were perpetually frustrated because there don't seem to be any real rules, and the rules that exist are completely counterintuitive.
Load More Replies...As someone whose mother tongue is gender neutral I always laughted on these people. Tought it was always funny seeing their head became red when they tryied to apply their theories to us.
Dumbasses calling themselves feminists like this lady just discredit feminism by such nonsense and ignorance. I am really sad how this ideology which originally changed world into much better place for women evolved into total b******t at some point.
My gosh I've so much to say to the linguist guy who clearly seemed like he got the first opportunity to unleash his superpower of....word origins! By no means am I a super feminist to go about defending the lady who got roasted, by I DO remember asking my Mamma when I was very young about 'early woman' (Coz she used to tell me about early man being a collective term for men AND women) . At that point I remember feeling "so unfair!" ... so, maybe I don't agree with the root words being anti feminist, but I DO agree that colloquially, language seems a tad gender biased.
I totally agree! I think with the way words have developed it has begun to sound somewhat sexist, though I get that wasn't the orgins.
Load More Replies...I appreciate his advanced knowledge of etymology and linguistics but that doesn't change the fact that a patriarchal society decided and changed those words to the meanings that they carry today. Dropping stems and altering words based on other etymologies, that he admits to not understanding, may in fact have some patriarchal undertones. Besides, if anyone wants to alter language to empower themselves, that is completely their decision. Americans did that with the changing of pronunciation of words like garage and the spelling of gray and color, etc.
Patriarchal society is fine if it just does stuff like change language
Load More Replies...@boredpanda, please correct the above images: - visual-poetry posted the photo - mitosisisyourtosis is the 'feminist' you were referring to - rhysiare is the 'linguist' you were refering to This is the never ending chain on tumblr - https://dedalvs.tumblr.com/post/141948202482/madmaudlingoes-langsandlit
Good learning opportunity. Too bad this person had to be a snide a*****e about it. Can we just TRY to take the personal insults out of it? Ugh.
Love that you took the time to get the right info out there and not to mention fantastic username mitosisisyourtosis.
Another reasonable response I found and love https://xkcd.com/1562/ (no I in vowels)
People like her are what drive people to thinking feminists are idiots, when that is anything but true.
Just refer to all people as "he", possessive form "her". Problem solved.
Why the hell do misandrists call themselves feminists? Man hating is as anti-feminist as woman-hating!
Can we finally draw a line and stop calling women like that "femists" and call their by their real name, which is misandrist? English is LITERALLY a genderfree language, because it lost the grammatical gender after Middle English. I'm sick and tired of feminazis. As the misandrists they are, they are exactly on the same level as all the misogynists out there.
Actually, they're not. You are equivocating. Sexism is weighted such that, institutionally, men have WAY more power and influence.
Load More Replies...Lol. I think this is pointless. It is like patiently telling your dog that the mailman is not going to kill us all. He will listen, wag his tail, and then tomorrow he will bark all over again. Actually, this is a bad analogy because the feminist will not listen, nor wag her tail, but will definitely continue to bark.
She is not a feminist...she is a misandrist as well as a moron.
theres actually a great podcast on the history of the English language called The History of the English Language. I'm only on episode 7 but this dude's argument is pretty spot on (according to the podcast)
There is a great podcast on the history of the English language called the History of the English Language. I am only on episode 7 but this dude is pretty spot on (according to the podcast)
I read the article and I read many of the comments. I think the middle ground comes from the feeling given by the words in a mysogynistic society. We have made some progress, but have a ways to go. The original meaning and origin of a word may not have much relation to the current connotation. I have noticed with racial groups too. The group is identified by a label. The group is subject to prejudice and belittling. The label then picks up the meaning promoted by the prejudice and belittling. If the label is changed, it does not change the denigrated attitude to the group. The new label usually picks up the same negative connotation as the old label. So while the original poster is incorrect about the origin of the words, the feeling of less than remains and the similarities feel like a deliberate put down. She is expressing her hurt about the situation, maybe not in a way that is clear to others or gathers empathy, but carries an underlying message about her pain.
Loved this - certainly puts things in perspective. Please engage your brain before commenting, it always helps.
THANK YOU for posting this one. I am an old school feminist, and get sooo embarrassed by these modern feminazis.
Genesis 1:27 God created man… male and female He created them. Genesis 5:2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.
Not quite. Those looks like English words, not ancient Hebrew.
Load More Replies...Can I just say that she isn't a feminist. At the start she spoke about men's inferiority towards women, a feminist believes, and potentially preaches the EQUALITY between men and women. They don't get annoyed about stupid little things like all crossing lights are men, they accept that they are people. A feminist gets annoyed when a man isn't allowed to hit a women but the other way round is fine. That's not equality. A feminist gets annoyed when women are bought and sold like possessions. These are true examples of inequality. She has the wrong idea. If you don't believe me then look it up. And we're not all crazy, its people like her who aren't real feminists that come out and give us a bad name. Xx
I suspect the feminists screamed "mansplaining biggot" from behind her screen at home and her IQ remained the same as before, smaller than a plant.
Thank your to the school-er (and scholar) I learnt the word proselytise which I hadn't heard of before, and I intend to use against militant Veganist I have no issue with Vegans, so long as they leave me to my food decisions
The stronger a person feels about a particular perspective or ideology the harder it is to be confronted by the absolute opposite of it. As a vegan myself, I try to gently promote the ideologies of kindness and respect toward all animals, without trying to assault people who haven't come to the same determination themselves. I wasn't always vegan. Just like it annoys me when adults bash teens (don't they remember being bashed by adults when they were teens???), I won't abuse someone for being something I myself had been. It pisses me off when vegans act like d***s. It hurts everyone.
Load More Replies...It seems to me that some people like this linguist are grasping at straws to avoid seeing their own responsibilities to humanity as a whole. Men can be free of feminism when they look at themselves and support women as human beings. All the rest is details.
I really appreciate the time that the responding author took to counter each point, rather than simply labeling the blogger as ignorant and being done with it. It would have also been nice if the responding author - who appears likely has the knowledge to do this - provided the blogger with some facts that may provide a stronger basis for her argument, presuming they exist.
and this is just for ENGLISH!!! in french: woman = femme. man=homme. so nothing to be crazy about
I would bet “this” person will search until they literally pass out attempting to find “something” to justify their paranoia!
Load More Replies...PART 2 of 2: One would think that someone so passionate about linguistics and etymology would have a gentler, more mature approach. But even so, if this linguist can’t find it within her/himself to be kind, they could at least not butcher the english language while trying to prove what a linguistic expert they are. Among my favorites were: “…who think like you along these lines and for good reason, because you are wholly ignorant…” Not only is the above sentence painfully redundant; it also says the same thing twice! And I don’t even have time to go into, all, the, misplaced, commas, and general molestation of quotation marks and grammar. The one redeeming factor in this linguist’s post is the on-line handle: "mitosisisyourtosis." It took me a while to figure it out, but “my tosis is your tosis” is pretty great. That one redeeming gem forced me to raise this sad linguist’s grade from an F to a C minus. mary-milkt...292c1b.jpg
PART 1 of 2: The response written by this "linguist" is so chock full o' grammatical errors, spelling errors, incorrect punctuation and just plain REALLY BAD WRITING that I find it hard to take her/him seriously. The thing that bothers me the most, though, is the punitive, snarky, immature tone of his/her rebuttal. It's hard to know when this linguist says "In my linguistics class in undergrad, we actually made fun of people…” if s/he is a professor, or a student. Either way, it’s sad. If this person is an educator who openly admits to encouraging his/her students to “make fun of people” then it’s no mystery why there’s a bullying epidemic in our schools. And if this linguist is referring to a time when s/he was an undergrad student, it’s still pretty sad that they chose to pass their time sitting around making FUN of people who were simply ignorant or misguided about certain areas of the english language. How about being KIND (or at least civil) when correcting others? IMG_1613-2...89ea64.jpg
For a linguist, this guy's writing is pretty sloppy (just assuming it's a guy). In addition, though he was successful in demonstrating (though without citing any actual sources beyond his own linguistic accumen) that the original posters argument was flawed and based on a very superficial knowledge of the English language, he was not successful at all in debunking the claim that patriarchal bias is built into English and other languages. In fact, there is even more to support that claim in the text than in the original poster's short blurb. Example: He/She When an entire population is divided in terms of those who are "here" (he) vs "there" (she), those described as "here" are clearly dominant and designating those "there" (she) as the "other." The linguist continually points out—while being apparently ignorant of the significance—instances where the language is similarly divided along gender lines to favor a dominant male gender. Whether this division was done by design or was....
(2of2).....Whether this division was done by design or was a more evolutionary result of an already male dominant society is not clear from the text but clearly the separation and bias is there, regardless of our dear linguists arrogant and unsupported insistance that it is not. While the original poster that our linguist is responding to seems to have gotten the linguistic mechanics wrong, their point remains valid and is, in fact, supported in many ways by the information our dear linguist has provided. It just goes to show that citing a lot of scholarly sounding information does not make you right or justify making unsupported claims. Nice try Mr. Linguist.
It's as if some internet commenters think that everything was just thought up in the last few centuries or so. They never consider that words are thousands of year old. Kinda like with pronouns.
he was then promptly squelched and blocked, and his comment deleted. A new tweet went up simply stating that "her post offended a man so much she had to block him because he was so rude"
The only thing worse than being wrong, even ignorant, is being right but also being an arrogant condescending A$$hole. This person had the opportunity to teach, to share knowledge that many people may not have been aware of...but instead just alienates and proves that it is possible to be intelligent (at least about one subject) but totally clueless in other ways that are more important. EQ trumps IQ...look it up while you are cruising in your own, rude, lane.
I'm not a feminist, but to play devil's advocate here... Even if the historical roots of the words, like "person" and "son" have nothing to do with each other, she could be saying the way language is now is a problem. Because the way the words exist now give that impression, even if false.
I am going to throw one more stick in the fire: Chairman, fireman, etc etc. came from the latin "manibus" and later french "Main" which meant hand : The hand of the chair, the hand of the fire - the person who controlled the chair, fire etc., etc. It was meant to be gender neutral. We could have just gone back to using the french "main" to make it so again. People do not know about their own language...
A “simpleton’s way of deduction. This feminist is educationally “LAZY”, and stuck in the victim hood/me too/millennial mindset. Feminism has destroyed the West. Sweden (feminist ruled), is virtually dead
Shame a linguist said "like you are doing off of." You'd think a linguist writing in English could at least speak it. Nonetheless, nice roast.
here's the original post on tumblr: http://rhysiare.tumblr.com/post/138012970426/mitosisisyourtosis-visual-poetry and some more discussion: http://tumblinguistics.tumblr.com/post/142090790851/smallwanderer218-dedalvs-madmaudlingoes Would it have hurt your author to credit where they took this from? It's a 10-second google search ....
The complainant must belong to one of those "Burning Bra Movements". One cannot simply launch into a tirade without doing your homework.
I frikkin hate Feminazis. The idea that anyone would think that idiots like this speak for me makes me sick. I don't need a "movement" to have my back to be a strong woman. I can do that quite nicely all by myself, and I don't have to vilify men to do it.
He could have just explained. Most people would be ignorant of that. He doesn't have to gloat so much about having known it. The first three paragraphs are about how embarrassed she should be. Just get to the point.
Interesting use of pronouns in this article... Nothing that I read would indicate that Feminist Chewbacca was 'she' or that mitosisisyouryourtosis was a 'he' and yet these were the pronouns used without any sense of irony when discussing how a feminist had been 'schooled'
I think that the linguist could be more polite and be above this whole "feminism/masculinism" scenario. Clearly, the main reason for using his skills wasn't to correct the woman but to mock her and humiliate her to show his superior masculinity over her. BUT the woman was calling for it so, who can you blame? BTW That last sentence of the linguist really got me laughing hard. "I will school the everloving hell out of you, STAY IN YOUR LANE." :D :D :D Masculinism level over 9999 :D I think both of these characters may have experienced some bad things from the opposite sexes, but is this really the way to cure it? Maybe temporary relief, but THE EGO is always hungry. KEEP YOUR EGO IN LINE INSTEAD. The lesson has been learned and I hope that the majority of the people watching this case didn't choose any side of those two people and could see through this feminism/masculinism sh*t. Please, stop fighting each other and stop proving what doesn't even exist..... let's have a harmony :) <3
I think that the linguist could be more polite and be above this whole "feminism/masculinism" scenario. Clearly, the main reason for using his skills wasn't to correct the woman but to mock her and humiliate her to show his superior masculinity over her. BUT the woman was calling for it so, who can you blame? BTW That last sentence of the linguist really got me laughing hard. "I will school the everloving hell out of you, STAY IN YOUR LANE." :D :D :D Masculinism level 9999 :D I think both of these characters may have experienced some bad things from the opposite sexes, but is this really the way to cure it? Maybe temporary relief, but THE EGO is always hungry. KEEP YOUR EGO IN LINE INSTEAD. The lesson has been learned and I hope that the majority of the people watching this case didn't choose any side of those two people and could see through this feminism/masculinism sh*t. Please, stop fighting each other and stop proving what doesn't even exist..... let's have a harmony :) <3
Research, research, research. Or .. get schooled by those that have. ANY school will teach you that before graduation. She must have forgotten is all. shiesh.
Someone should check their grammar before an all out language attack. While very informative and enlightening, this article has several typos. Signed, an artist.
A certain person should check their grammar before an all out language attack. There are several typos in this article. Signed, an artist.
And what language is not? Pointless to complain about the language. You should be more focused on how people use it.
While I agree with the writer's comments I must take issue with his/her atrocious grammar. For instance, as a linguist, one would assume the writer would avoid tautology, e.g. .....conspiratorial thinking like you are doing off of. (end of point four) I realise I'm being pedantic but as a lover of the English language I hate to see it misused especially by someone purporting (late Middle English (in the sense ‘express, signify’): from Old French purporter, from medieval Latin proportare, from Latin pro- ‘forth’ + portare ‘carry, bear’. The sense ‘appear to be’ dates from the late 18th century) to be an expert.
Lol. I think this is pointless. It is like patiently telling your dog that the mailman is not going to kill us all. He will listen, wag his tail, and then tomorrow he will bark all over again. Actually, this is a bad analogy because the feminist will not listen, nor wag her tail, but will definitely continue to bark.
So basically she complained about sexism but at the same time she said that men "compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness"...
Oh my god. . . this was interesting enough to perk up even the most bored panda.
This linguist is using 'Proto-Indo-European,' a language that is basically made up by linguists to theorize about what earlier languages may have sounded like, to debase a significant part of this feminists argument which DOES happen to be true, which is that woman and human are derived from the word 'man'. In doing so he is being disingenuous and sexist, trying to shut down someone who is pointing out a very true fact about most languages, which is that they are sexist often at their base. The simple use of 'man' and 'he' as base pronouns in texts about general people is an strong indicator of this. No one should have to think twice about whether the English language is quite often sexist in use.
"She" derived from 'that/there' and "he" derived from 'this/here'... But it's TOTALLY NOT MALE-CENTERED AT ALL! And "man" used to just mean "human"... while "wifman" meant female human and "werman" meant male human. Then through the evolution of language "wif-" became "wo-" but for REASONS UNKNOWN BUT TOTALLY DEFINITELY NOT PATRIARCHY "wer-" was dropped and "man" somehow mysteriously became 'male' and was synonymous with human.
They both sound like absolute jerks. I'll agree to a certain extent with the original poster's second paragraph that it is a patriarchal language, but her first paragraph is so combative and patronizing (inserting herself into that role that she disparages) that it absolutely begs to be challenged. That said, the respondent's post is equally smug, combative, and diminutive, also begging to be challenged. 1) the fact that "He" comes from "this/here" and "She" comes from "that/there" VERY much gives credence to the argument that the masculine perspective is the central/dominant/default first-person ideology. 2) "Man" dropping its "were" (for unknown reasons) again shows that culture simply accepted the masculine as default without question, because of patriarchal society. 3) The lack of "any direct correlation" why the two word would morph into a masculine progenitor-based term again blindly glosses the larger social structure in which it happened.
In the end, the original poster is largely correct that our language does reinforce a patriarchal society. But she's wrong that it was didn't develop naturally, in the sense that culture and language evolved together over time from the same stimuli. There was no intention behind crafting the terms to make up for "biological inferiority" or "general superfluousness," a weak argument that really deserves more of a biological lesson in the Darwinian necessity of both sexes than a linguistic response simply baiting her.
Load More Replies...Using an argument that is poorly thought of, and is making the males of the society look bad is not Feminism. The patriarchal nature of society is bad, not the males. This article is misleading as it attributes “feminism” to an act that is otherwise not striving for equity of genders. i suggest that we all (including anyone who sees this) have a better understanding of what feminism is.
(To reiterate) More fundamentally...If men have been able to so totally dominate women for countless millennia that they have forced women to accept derivative pronouns when speaking of themselves, doesn't that fact in itself demonstrate the superiority of males?
More fundamentally...if men have been able to so utterly dominate women for countless millenia that we can force them to accept derivative pronouns, doesn't that fact itself kinda demonstrate male superiority?
By the way the credits on this are wrong. Visual-Poetry is just a tumblr that posts pictures of cool stuff, mitosisyourtosis is the person that said the stupid thing about partriarchy. You can see it here: http://www.pomofo.com/article/feminist-called-out-english-language-being-sexist rhysiare is the user that wrote the linguistics thing, and they aren't even credited in this post. Who wrote this article?
Just an observation, but doesn’t he prove her right with the first one? If he meant here/this and she there/that, it’s using ‘he’ as the rule and ‘she’ is measured against that. It’s othering 101.
Somebody had an opinion, and somebody had facts. One of those is worth something.
"Wer-" began to disappear in the late 13th Century - it is highly likely this was subconsciously part of that period's post-war crackdown on women starting to own things, which had taken an uptick during the early 13th Century and appeared to be developing into a trend.
Just someone else looking for their 15 fkn minutes. Hey ladies who did god make first? Yeah, man, then how did he make a wo-man? A man's rib. LOL, now stop being so damn stupid and find something important to do in your life. You got that Gal? LOL
People have decent points to make sometimes but then many go overboard and overanalyze and blow away potential allies in their struggles.
Her chart makes as much sense as forming the word S**T out of SOMEONE HIT the ball.
She would have to want to be schooled, first! In German the worn for "one", as in 'one person is 'man' as in 'one should consider...' "man soll..." and it has NOTHING to do with sex. It is a SEXLESS pronoun. Maybe the lady forgot that she was formed from sperm and eggs....not dropped to earth by Isis or Osiris.
I'm going off on a tangent now.....the really sexist word is vagina. Why? Because it's a euphemism - it's the Latin for sword sheath. So the word vagina defines female genitalia purely in terms of it being something for a man to put his mighty sword in. The C word is infinitely preferable - it derives from the word for triangle.
This is all quite interesting and valid. Thing is, the use for vagina that you're referencing is so old, and so unknown, that men and women don't ever use it that way. Men tell other men they have manginas when mocking their masculinity. Why? Because they think that giving female attributes to a male is a cutting way to demean their masculinity. They're thinking of vagina as entirely female; not thinking of the word's etymology.
Load More Replies...It also annoys me when people say 'history' has anything to do with 'his' and then try to change it to 'herstory'. It actually comes from the ancient Greek 'istoria - the apostrophe at the beginning is a rough breath sound vaguely equivalent to an h, and it has nothing to do with the ancient greek masculine genitive, 'ou
I find his hypothesis equally weak. He leaves several up to "coincidence" without fully exploring or understanding it. As well the hypothesis of it could be argued the male aspect of self reflection of importance being "here" and "there" being the secondary version. Certainly the english language was created from a male point of view as the latin derivatives of French, Spanish and Italian share an equal male/female base and importance. Co-incident is a word often used haphazardly. It means an incident that happens alongside another having value and purpose. It gives no justification that it was a mistake as he is suggesting. Do I think he roasted her? No, I feel they are equally careless in their assessments and he drops off when it comes to the hows or whys of the reasoning of the English language actually choosing the final version.
As a graduate of a B.A. in Linguistics, I would say his arguments make sense. The word "masle" would be VERY Old French, like around the time William the Conqueror invaded England and the Middle Age. There were no accents in French at that time, and words like "island" in English probably date from that period. Isle became "ïle" later in French. On a somewhat different angle, I came across the English word "coward" being interpreted in novels set in early 19th Century England to mean "cow-hearted". because people thought cows were naturally cowards. Nothing of the sort. The word "coward" comes from the Old French word "couard" which became phonetically assimilated.
This writer is a linguist? Seriously? I see abysmal skill levels in grammar, style and usage. The content is interesting but obscured by error and ambiguity. Don't leave your day job, because you do not have a clue about writing clear, meaningful prose.
O.K. What is desired here? Are us men supposed to lay down and admit we are nothing but a piece of s**t? Furthermore, us, “white men” are the scum of the Earth? I mean, at least so called minority men have one thing going for them? What does a woman like this desire? I have no problem trying to appease her wants and/or needs, just explain to me what it is you truly want? I can’t change history, but perhaps I can make some! Come on ladies, oops, I’m sure you break that down as wrong as it contains “lad” known as a harmless gentleman, or should we change the definition of lad to be a horrible, crime committing, young male, never known to do anything good? WHAT DO YOU WANT, LADIES!
Iveta and the linquist should find career paths that don't require critical thinking or professional writing skills. And based upon some of the comments, I presume that Bored Panda is a site that services anti-intellectual Trump supporters. Am I correct?
I'm all for feminism but seriously, come on! Being a feminist doesn't mean complaining about everything or whatever that lady was trying to do
"You're just trying to confuse me with jabber, a*****e." ~ this b***h immediately after, probably
Hey other bored pandas. Where is the line of feminism and sexism drawn??
While I appreciate the instruction, the feminist is correct about semiotic correlation in today's culture. And while I don't suggest we need to change these words, we do need to understand how meaning is ascribed to modern people using a modern system. Words and what they represent eventually may be co-opted and given new facets, such as queer, etc. Etymology is fine, but how we ascribe meaning and the role it plays in shaping individuals and society is more complex than knowing where something comes from and how it used to apply. Poets play with words to make a point. Her point is valid. The linguist luckily wasn't cunning, just self-important.
Those explanations just show how deep patriarchy got into humankind’s subconsciousness, so even though there’s no connection between the origin of the words, all of these words ended up sounding like they’re “supporting” or “favoritizing” men. And the person who “schooled” that feminist who raised an interesting point of view is so f*****g obnoxious that it literally made me feel sick. Imagining it’s a man. Either way, f**k you. Don’t speak like that to people.
Fortunately in Germany we don´t have this problem haha, "Woman" is "Frau", "Man" is "Mann" etc., and "Son"´s "Sohn", so it has nothing in common with the word "Person" that we use too in Germany...
Oh er and instead of "weiblich" for "female" you can also say "feminin" in Germany, f. ex. for a very much female clothes style...
Load More Replies...I happy I read that because I actually thought that you know wo men, however, I just thought it was so long ago that we could move on I mean it is language so it is not like we were going to go round saying this word was made on a sexist base so we are now banning it
Best thing I've read in a long time. I would like to know something though - when did we become afraid of, or develop a hatred of, the very words that make up our language?
I think it is more the connotation of words than anything else
Load More Replies...Turkish is the best language for universal choice. It includes nothing nor everything. both! amazing huh? :)
She, He: O --> Simple.. for both Man - Woman : Erkek(Oğul) - Kadın --> both of them havent got any lingualistic or another equal sides. so far different! Man has two different kind like English Man/Son. Oğul from our old Turkish so it actually came from surnames Mehmetoğlu which's like Robertson Human: İnsan --> it's actually two arabic words combination which are ''nisyan'' ( نسيان ) and ''ünsiyet'' ( ألفة ) idk which one is which one but one of means ''forgetable'' and the other means ''genuine'' i suppose...So just describe what we are a bit right? İnsanoğlu : Sorry that was a mistaken for sure but yeah that means exactly what 'Person' is. how i said before...neither everything nor nothing :;) so yeah...enjoy it! :) thanks to read
Load More Replies..."Superfluousness" ? .... sounds like someone is calling her issues with men "feminism" to glorify/justify her bitterness.
It's entirely likely that her bitterness is formed from experiences of being abused by multiple men in her life. Women don't just casually decide to develop hostility toward men for no reason at all. It's triggered by bad experiences. That she is terribly unconstructive about her way of responding to it is unfortunate. People don't all choose a rational path in the face of abuse.
Load More Replies..."A Tumblr user, who refers to herself as ‘Feminist Chewbacca" (according to this post) has been blaming other social media users for calling her Chewbacca. It is funny to see how it turned out that Erin Wei Ai Chew ended up proclaiming herself as "Feminist Chewbacca." Yes, she has been very ignorant as the linguist pointed out where she has no understanding of certain subject but cherry picking some of it for her to mold into her personal bias belief to attack men and even a whole culture in her other blogged articles.
Well... In French, every noun has a genre. And it's causing a lot of troubles to people trying to learn French (cuz it's really a pain in the a*s) and now feminazis started a meaningless ridiculous war to transform the whole French language so every word can have a feminine equivalent, something like that. And it's ridiculously tragic, I swear. Or maybe dramatically laughable. In a country where women can vote, drive, enter any shop, buy whatever the f**k they want and dress as they please, candidate to mostly "masculine jobs", etc etc. In a country where 90℅ of the natives can't even talk or type properly in their own language. Hahaha.
Alright but there is no need to be mean and point out the lack of this knowledge. usually people don't know this information. Thanks for telling us and clearing up but no need to be like this.
No need to say that men are "compensating for their biologicsl inferiority" either but that's what the original poster did. Respect is reciprocal.
Load More Replies...That’s the most erotic thing I’ve read all day. I have a crush on mitosisyourtosis.
For a linguist, this guy's writing is pretty sloppy (just assuming it's a guy). In addition, though he was successful in demonstrating (though without citing any actual sources beyond his own linguistic accumen) that the original posters argument was flawed and based on a very superficial knowledge of the English language, he was not successful at all in debunking the claim that patriarchal bias is built into English and other languages. In fact, there is even more to support that claim in the text than in the original poster's short blurb. Example: He/She When an entire population is divided in terms of those who are "here" (he) vs "there" (she), those described as "here" are clearly dominant and designating those "there" (she) as the "other." The linguist continually points out—while being apparently ignorant of the significance—instances where the language is similarly divided along gender lines to favor a dominant male gender.....(1of2)
feminist feminazi hate man. these feminazi are communists,who want to punish man for being man.
I'd argue they hate themselves more. Well adjusted people with good self esteem don't go around attacking people all day long.
Load More Replies...I love etymology, but this guy is just a rude c**t. And who doesnt get that it's not only about etymology, but sometimes about wordplays which can build analogies and reveal things and inspire to think about the world differently. The thing at the start was an arty approach, not a scientific tractatus. Yer man is just a hater, he shouldn't teach children, when he teaches them "to laugh about other people". There is other ways to convey the beauty of language and it's history.
Sure stepped on toes didn't I? Good. Be a real woman and stop trying to be anything else. Get some morals and quit pitying yourself. The word, "feminism" covers the actions of a woman with inadequacies and does not know the meaning of a real woman whose main goals are to be happy, make others happy and live a real life
I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them. Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. Linda Gordon I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig. Andrea Dworkin Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage. Sheila Cronin, the leader of the feminist organization NOW Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Andrea Dworkin The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist. Ti-Grace Atkinson Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state
I don't care about what I'm called as a woman...just as long as you pay me the same for the same work.
"Wrong in so many levels?" I only see one level in this "qualified response": etymology. As a linguist I don't think the actual history of a word determines the way this particular word affects our perception and thinking. Where language comes from has no direct impact on how we use language today. If you are interested in language use you can't restrict your research to the denotation of a word - you must also consider the level of connotation. Of course there never was an actual conspiracy of old men who got together and decided to have their sexism lexicalized by adding words like female or human - but there certainly has been a patriarchal culture that might have favoured certain "coincidences". And there is a patriarchal culture today that is favoured by these "coincidences", a patriarchal culture that knows just how irrelevant the technical etymology of words is in language use and contemporary culture.
So, in other words, coincidences are signs of the patriarchy, you're entire hypothesis is built on the idea that coincidence favours patriarchy, which would actually mean that there isn't a patriarchal culture, unless, of course, you're suggesting that the turn of society somehow wasn't caused by people
Load More Replies..." “Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,” Feminist Chewbacca sets a militant tone that isn’t going to endear her to many people, " It's is not just militant it's down right insulting. It's too bad the author of this article couldn't call out Feminist Chewbacca on that instead of just saying it was " militant"
The rebuttal is unconvincing and simply reiterates the problem being identified.
While I think this woman's point and way of trying to make it is stupid, I do have a "but"... I mean, he's saying, that the fact that these words sound like they all stem from the same root, they have instead evolved from being different words to end up sounding the same. Which kinda sounds, as if the words being used in a male dominated society (no not "men", just what I wrote) has changed the words to sound AS IF they are the same, i.e. that men are the baseline. Because that has been the general idea of how it was considered to be. It may be be without intent, but it's not that much better, not really.
Ignorance is bold. We're far from the post feminism Rilke foretold in Letters to a Young Poet (1929).
any FEMALE or living creature in the animal kingdom this dumb is called, not a female, not a girl, not anything other than dumb b***h or C**T. F**k this c**t, thats a great way to address anyone who thinks this way.
Those explanations just show how deep patriarchy got into humankind’s subconsciousness, so even though there’s no connection between the origin of the words, all of these words ended up sounding like they’re “supporting” or “favoritizing” men. And the person who “schooled” that feminist who raised an interesting point of view is so f*****g obnoxious that it literally made me feel sick. I imagine it’s a man. Either way, f**k you. Don’t speak like that to people.
QUOTE FROM YOUR ARTICLE Firstly, by introducing her post with the words: “Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,” Feminist Chewbacca sets a militant tone that isn’t going to endear her to many people, and she needs to have rock-solid arguments to respond to the inevitable attacks on her position. If all you can find to say critically about this quote from Chewbacca, who hides behind a pseudonym, is that it's a tad too militant, you appear to have missed the truly vile sexism and grotesque misandry of this ignoramus. Were someone to say similarly vile and sexist things about the female gender, you'd have jumped all over them. This woman should not only be schooled- which has happened, thank God - but also excoriated for her pure evil.
There is a far easier way to deconstruct the she/he nonsense: sh is a unit. We do not have a letter for this sound in the Latin alphabet, so every language invented a combination of letters to represent this sound: in German it’s sch, in French it’s ch in Italian it’s sci or sce, in Dutch it’s sj ... and so on. Therefore sh in English represents one sound and is inseparable. It’s H-E and SH-E. S-H makes no sense at all. Apart from that, this Chewbacca person has completely primitive ideas about the biology of males and females. They are not alike, in some respects the one sex is superior in others it’s the other sex.
Superior and inferior what? For every person you cite who is "superior" in one trait, there's another person of opposite gender who is their equal. Sexual dimorphism doesn't mean, for example, "men are stronger" in all cases. There's a very strong element of cultural and sexual selection that defines what features and traits are popular and therefore common to a gender in one culture compared to another. Some cultures have less overt pressures and selection for these traits than others. The differences you're categorizing as inferior or superior are probably not inherently male or female traits. They are what a culture has selected as their preferred traits in their men and women.
Load More Replies...Once upon a time on a very fine morning, all the men sat together and invented the English language to oppress the women more efficiently.
Funniest part is that she's ignoring millions of years of "human" societal development when the cultures were largely, and arguably matriarchal/matrilineal. If she really wants to get outraged, look at the growth of organized religion in relation to the rise of patriarchy.
I think she's more concerned with recent human culture. Understandably so.
Load More Replies...The halfwit who wrote this did so in a very insulting manner, which was totally uncalled for. He (I assume) actually admits himself that #4 is probably right, and while it might be the case that some of the other ones are incidental, one can never rule out the fact that their development was aided by perception of males as the default sex (we simply don't know). For all we know, such perception does exist, and the larger larger point still remains. Take sports as an example - people usually refer to sports like this, e.g. "basketball" for the kind men play and "women's basketball". By playing a know-it-all and acting like an a*****e he commits the error of assuming that if he can rebut a few examples, that indicates that the problem does not exist. It does. Screw his attitude.
Really stupid all around. A stupid Tumblr doesn't mean English isn't sexist ... It is and other languages are even worse.
How can a language be sexist? Give me examples of the English language objectively being sexist.
Load More Replies...Wait until they pull religion into the way we word things! "Good Lord, Have Mercy!" The people who didn't grow their sexual dingly dangly hanging out between their legs weren't even allowed to write nor enter many churches in some cultures. That was then. This is now. We could all beat each other up around these spellings. PLEASE understand the meaning of the words and don't be so bent on speling. Hopefully, you haven't forgotten, we are ALL on this planet. Let's try and communicate it's not about the spelling, it IS about us getting along and taking responsiblity for one this place, ourselves and each other no matter if they have boobs on their chest or hanging little play toys between their legs. P.S. The "Good Lord, Have Mercy" just seemed appropriate to place there. I couldn't resist! Big winks and smiles.
I hate how religious institutions have insinuated themselves so deeply into language.
Load More Replies...American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna God Damn Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm.
still we have he ans she in English. The only language I've seen by far which doesn't have male and female at all is Farsi (Persian), We just have "OU" addressing third person for both sexes.
Finnish and Turkish are two that I know. I am sure there are others, especially in uralic languages.
Load More Replies...Except that his second answer *did* reveal a sexist aspect of our language: that "man" descended from a word meaning "person" whereas "woman" descended from a word meaning "female person". This is what's known as a "marked category", where one side is considered the default, and the other side different and "other". When the linguist says "I guarantee it has nothing to do with patriarchy" he's almost certainly wrong, not because he doesn't understand linguistics, but because he doesn't understand the concept of patriarchy. The fact that he puts it in scare quotes underlines this.
Here's another linguist looking at "man" vs "woman": http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/his-and-hers-wyf-and-wer
Load More Replies...Looks to me like a case of bad logic. This linguist is refuting chewbacca by saying the origins of the terms in OTHER languages a have nothing to do with patriarchy. But maybe it isn't a coincidence that when translated into modern english, priority was given to being a man.
Looks to me like a case of bad logic. This linguist is refuting chewbacca by saying the origins of the terms in OTHER languages a have nothing to do with patriarchy. But maybe it isn't a coincidence that when translated into modern english, priority was given to being a man.
To add to feminist spin on ignorant How about all words mis Add an extra s and we have a conspiracy Missinterpretations Missunderstanding Missunderstood Even words like Manipulate Manipulation R******d to take a word Break it apart And use it in the most ignorant way to serve your self loathing purpose You want to be equal to men Hell You want to be equal to women HuMan Up 🤣
I do not care what you think. I know that the world was happier, children were happier, husbands were happier when the woman was not out running around trying to be a man. I AM NOT OWNED BY ANYONE. I have had a perfect life because I chose to be the best WOMAN I could be with the intent of being happy and making those I love happy. You so called women use feminism to cover your inadequacies and are so busy trying to play ball with the men that you have lost the real value of being happy. So again I say, stay in your lane and continue to believe your misinformed opinion and leave the real women alone. Is there is part of this you do not understand? If so, I will be happy to help you be happy......
You sound like a rotten, miserable c**t. F*****g doubtful someone like you could ever be happy, let alone help someone else's happiness. I'm so glad my wife is a strong, independent women who thinks nothing like you. :)
Load More Replies...LOL...some dude who took an undergrad class and has very vague and lame comebacks...lol...he doesn't even address the fact these words were still changed to be male biased, let alone why...also super abusive. Screen-Sho...aa-png.jpg
There is no male bias and even if there was , it's fine
Load More Replies...English *is* BLACK MAGIC that traps people in the (patriarchal) left-brain. SPELLING casts spells over the masses... Why not listen to an esteemed MALE Dr tell you how it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2QQuD62RxrU The feminist is right, the mansplainer is a parrot.
As usual, a mix of accurate and false. The so-called "Linguist" is right about "person" and "she," but not about human or woman and only partially about female. Look it up, people--don't take their words for it.
I feel grateful learning about the root of words from a linguist. Reading the introduction to it, I wonder about the attitude taken, implying wrongness and stupidity. So far, I have not yet come across anyone who responds well to that, and adapts their mindset, instead it tends to inspire rigidity, resignation, rebellion, or digging our heels in, simply because of how we have addressed. “Omg no, 'you are wrong' on so many levels and as a linguist 'this makes me ache' something terrible. In my linguistics class in undergrad, 'we actually made fun of people' who think like you along these lines and for good reason, because 'you are wholly ignorant' and are choosing to spin narratives about things and fields which 'you know completely nothing about' yet pretend you do.”
Don't know why you were voted down. Have an up vote on me.
Load More Replies...This linguist isn't very good at critical thinking, lol. His own arguments support her thesis. "He" meaning "this/here" and "She" meaning "that/there" actually still does show male subject preference. "He" is the subject and "she" the object. "This" meaning "me/here" and that meaning "her/there." Same with "man" and "woman." "Man" was the default human and "woman" means wife of the default human. Which means females were not even considered human, just the property of other humans (males). It is quite true that historically and even today, we consider males the default human. Whenever there is a protest of mostly men (like in Egypt, for example) the media says "Egyptians protested." But if mostly women protest (like in when Italian women protested their president) the media says "Italian women protested." Males are still used as the default graphic in most anatomical diagrams, even though females are the majority of the human population.
I believe that in Old and Middle English, the word wife/wif/wyf meant a woman in general, not a married woman (as in Chaucer's 'The Wyf of Bath', or the word 'midwife' which means 'with woman'.) So the word 'wifman' which evolved into 'woman' doesn't imply someone's wife. I agree with your point about anatomical diagrams, though - I've also noticed how male bodies are presented as the default when if anything it should be the other way around.
Load More Replies...No offence but, s**t article. Enough polaririzing as it is without encouraging people to label each other man and women haters, or associating feminism and the fight for equality with intolerance because of a difference of opinion over what is more important; language and what certain words were supposed to mean when they originated, or how they have changed in meaning, connotation and impact now. Regardless of where you stand, it's b******t to use as a springboard excuse to jump into your favorite judgmental lecture.
Such a classier way of saying 'B***h, please...sit down an shut the hell up'
To the individual that has a boulder on their shoulder, everything is an insult. Pointing out their pettiness to them only causes them to double down on their anger.
Agreed. This is why it's so important to withhold anger, however justified it may feel or even be, when attempting to inform someone on their ignorance.
Load More Replies...I personally think there are other ways to teach people things without being rude, but I did enjoy some of the stuff I learned.
Load More Replies...OH GOSH. Claiming that languages are sexist is not MISANDRIST. Who ever says this should should be taught the everloving hell out of. Calling out sexism never ever is misandrist. And although I love language history and these are great facts, it does really not mean that the English language is not sexist. Let alone other, gendered languages.
I feel like saying that men are "biologically inferior" and "superfluous" is kinda sorta a little misandrist, don't you?
Load More Replies...I don't understand why you have that impression, specifically.
Load More Replies...Maybe you will like to read this: DECONSTRUCTION, FEMINISM, AND LAW: CORNELL AND MACKINNON ON FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND RESISTANCE https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.facebook.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1092&context=djglp 29Sep2017_...1bb1a0.jpg
People who complain of Sexism are the shallowest thinkers I know of. They are ignoring the most basic binary feature in how the human species preserves itself. Any non-binary deviations in the species is detrimental to the continuation of humanity.
For f***s sake, I hate the people who think adaptation's are mandatory
Load More Replies...twas a feminazi. not a feminist. I am a feminist but I do not believe that there is a patriarchy, I believe that I am equal with the opposite gender. Nothing more.
Oh, so since something seems mean and sexist to you it is? You can't dictate coincidence because you're slightly worried about what people might think the connotations are, and what the broken hell are you talking about with white?
Load More Replies...Your world view is fractally wrong and fundamentally sexist.
Load More Replies...Don't just say it's wrong. What did he say that was wrong?
Load More Replies...So you don't think someone saying "women need to get back in the kitchen" should be downvoted? In other words, you heartily disagree with the feminist stating that men are inferior, but you literally have no issues with anyone saying women are inferior, or less than, and need to be put in their place.
Load More Replies...Yeah, I can understand what you mean by that. Might be a remnant of the generally male-influenced fifties, where they used the term "man" to describe everyone a lot.
Load More Replies...Feminist = someone who fought for your rights, only to have you trample on them and be an ungrateful a*****e.
Load More Replies...Feminist perspectives do not postulate that men are biologically inferior.
Excellent schooling and very interesting information. It's funny that the Old French "femella" is current day's word for female in Catalan ("mascle" = male and "femella" = female).
Many male commenters have erroneously concluded that this clapback proves the patriarchy doesn't exist. The patriarchy is real--the clapback points out only that you shouldn't fabricate evidence to support your view.
Of course patriarchy exists! Unfortunately it's most dumb people who have the most b******t to say.
Load More Replies...Interesting. In my education classes we we never made fun of anyone. Perhaps this why I try to bolster peoples dignity when showing them a new perspective, while keeping my smugness over 'knowing things' in check. But, I could be wrong. Maybe I will try this much celebrated method of educating.
She's malicious, she get slack for being malicious. No need to show respect or care for someone who doesn't show it for anyone.
Load More Replies...It's 'regardless.' Irregardless isn't a word, FYI.
Load More Replies...The linguist might be correct, but can't we be more classy in making arguments? Why do we have to stoop to sounding superior? I love an argument that puts the facts out there without swearing. Of course, language changes over time and swearing is become commonplace and accepted, even among academicians, but I long for academic civility.
if a feminist can act superior with fake notions of language, why can't a reasonable person act superior with facts and evidence?
Load More Replies...Well done! I just wish to add that in Latin the word "persona", besides person (deriving as said from Etruscan phersu), also meant "mask". "Personam tragicam forte vulpes viderat; quam postquam huc illuc semel atque iterum verterat, 'O quanta species' inquit 'cerebrum non habet.'"... Gaio Giulio Fedro, a Roman writer and fabulist (20/15 b.C. ca. – 51 a.C. ca.) A give a very rough translation: Casually a fox found a theatrical mask. After having turned it over and over the fox observed: what a magnificent appearance indeed, but it has no brain... By the way.
I mean, the fact that the word "man" use to mean "human" - says something about how we view gender. We are socialized into understanding humans as men and women only as secondary, and of course this is reflected in how language has evolved. So no, languages are not in themselves sexist - but they are reflections of patriarchal structures that sees men and women differently. I recommend Simone de Beauvoirs groundbreaking feminist theory for those who want to learn more ;)
Too bad he reveals himself as an MRA freak at the end of his little screed. I'm not saying he's wrong, but someone can be right and still be a whiny jackass.
So it's ok to say men are biologically inferior, but not ok to suggest that said statement is misandrist?
Load More Replies...That's what people do when they know they can't win because they know they are wrong. Happens here too. It's called the voting system. Instead of replying and using words. People use votes to hide comments that don't align with their views. It's a really bad system and kind of censoring. It removes a lot of really interesting views and comments. A shame. Then we are left with very few perspectives. So far for freedom of speech here.
Load More Replies...The linguistic etymology of those particular words are pretty well documented and we covered that in high school English. English, like most languages, is a growing and twisted history that often come from unrelated root words. I was thinking of historical mangle of things... "Let's go, it will be gay!" (1918) = "Its effin sick dog, no joke!" (2018)
Or, "You don't have to be happy to be gay!" (Laugh-In, Goldie Hawn)
Load More Replies...Even if it wasn’t the correct way. She’s still right about the fact that we live in a very patriarchal and misogynistic society. Words can be used against women in many ways.
Is she also right about men's "biologic inferiority"? Or can we just agree that that post was indeed misandric and toxic?
Load More Replies...Feminists aren't women who hate men. They can be any gender, and all they want is for equality for everyone. More people need to understand
Not this one. She very specifically states in no uncertain terms that men are inferior. "...to compensate for their biological inferiority...". She's a misandrist cut and dried.
Load More Replies...Yep. English isn't a sexist language at all. If anything, it is a mongrel language with Celtic, German, Scandinavian, and Roman influences all mixed up in such a messy way that spelling and pronunciation are completely unrelated and make no sense at all. A German word with an 'a' in it, is always pronounced the same. In English, words with an 'a' can sound completely different, like 'saw', 'ran', 'raft', or 'hate'. Oh, yes there is even more confusion when you put words with a 'u', who also sound like 'a' in the mix, like 'sun'. Crazy.
I think many words have gained sexist meanings though.
Load More Replies...I bet that in the time-honoured tradition, she engaged in a respectful conversation with him and admitted she'd been wrong. :D
I'd heard about the other words but had no idea people were getting offended by 'person'! That's beyond ridiculous! I want to marry this linguist.
Woah, slow down there. Maybe you should meet the guy first...
Load More Replies...Very interesting. Unfortunately for me, I'll forget every word of it within the next thirty minutes.
As a graduate geochemistry/geology student this amazes me as I am always trying to learn new things, and I love it when someone gets schooled because they choose to oversimplify a system that is much more complicated, and so very much not the system they believed it to be to begin with. Simply spectacular. Oh, and wait, "Stay in your lane..." fantastic.
i hate what she said to begin with, "men fabricated the idea due to their inferiority and general superfluous". As a feminist myself i hate people like her who give a bad name to it. The definition of feminism is equal rights to both men and women. To even the playing field she should work on empowering women not degrading men because in doing so she is no better - in fact worse than the men who degrade women as she hides behind the facade of doing the right thing. Bravo to the linguist
It's also a rotten language to learn. My husband used to volunteer teaching ESL, and said his students were perpetually frustrated because there don't seem to be any real rules, and the rules that exist are completely counterintuitive.
Load More Replies...As someone whose mother tongue is gender neutral I always laughted on these people. Tought it was always funny seeing their head became red when they tryied to apply their theories to us.
Dumbasses calling themselves feminists like this lady just discredit feminism by such nonsense and ignorance. I am really sad how this ideology which originally changed world into much better place for women evolved into total b******t at some point.
My gosh I've so much to say to the linguist guy who clearly seemed like he got the first opportunity to unleash his superpower of....word origins! By no means am I a super feminist to go about defending the lady who got roasted, by I DO remember asking my Mamma when I was very young about 'early woman' (Coz she used to tell me about early man being a collective term for men AND women) . At that point I remember feeling "so unfair!" ... so, maybe I don't agree with the root words being anti feminist, but I DO agree that colloquially, language seems a tad gender biased.
I totally agree! I think with the way words have developed it has begun to sound somewhat sexist, though I get that wasn't the orgins.
Load More Replies...I appreciate his advanced knowledge of etymology and linguistics but that doesn't change the fact that a patriarchal society decided and changed those words to the meanings that they carry today. Dropping stems and altering words based on other etymologies, that he admits to not understanding, may in fact have some patriarchal undertones. Besides, if anyone wants to alter language to empower themselves, that is completely their decision. Americans did that with the changing of pronunciation of words like garage and the spelling of gray and color, etc.
Patriarchal society is fine if it just does stuff like change language
Load More Replies...@boredpanda, please correct the above images: - visual-poetry posted the photo - mitosisisyourtosis is the 'feminist' you were referring to - rhysiare is the 'linguist' you were refering to This is the never ending chain on tumblr - https://dedalvs.tumblr.com/post/141948202482/madmaudlingoes-langsandlit
Good learning opportunity. Too bad this person had to be a snide a*****e about it. Can we just TRY to take the personal insults out of it? Ugh.
Love that you took the time to get the right info out there and not to mention fantastic username mitosisisyourtosis.
Another reasonable response I found and love https://xkcd.com/1562/ (no I in vowels)
People like her are what drive people to thinking feminists are idiots, when that is anything but true.
Just refer to all people as "he", possessive form "her". Problem solved.
Why the hell do misandrists call themselves feminists? Man hating is as anti-feminist as woman-hating!
Can we finally draw a line and stop calling women like that "femists" and call their by their real name, which is misandrist? English is LITERALLY a genderfree language, because it lost the grammatical gender after Middle English. I'm sick and tired of feminazis. As the misandrists they are, they are exactly on the same level as all the misogynists out there.
Actually, they're not. You are equivocating. Sexism is weighted such that, institutionally, men have WAY more power and influence.
Load More Replies...Lol. I think this is pointless. It is like patiently telling your dog that the mailman is not going to kill us all. He will listen, wag his tail, and then tomorrow he will bark all over again. Actually, this is a bad analogy because the feminist will not listen, nor wag her tail, but will definitely continue to bark.
She is not a feminist...she is a misandrist as well as a moron.
theres actually a great podcast on the history of the English language called The History of the English Language. I'm only on episode 7 but this dude's argument is pretty spot on (according to the podcast)
There is a great podcast on the history of the English language called the History of the English Language. I am only on episode 7 but this dude is pretty spot on (according to the podcast)
I read the article and I read many of the comments. I think the middle ground comes from the feeling given by the words in a mysogynistic society. We have made some progress, but have a ways to go. The original meaning and origin of a word may not have much relation to the current connotation. I have noticed with racial groups too. The group is identified by a label. The group is subject to prejudice and belittling. The label then picks up the meaning promoted by the prejudice and belittling. If the label is changed, it does not change the denigrated attitude to the group. The new label usually picks up the same negative connotation as the old label. So while the original poster is incorrect about the origin of the words, the feeling of less than remains and the similarities feel like a deliberate put down. She is expressing her hurt about the situation, maybe not in a way that is clear to others or gathers empathy, but carries an underlying message about her pain.
Loved this - certainly puts things in perspective. Please engage your brain before commenting, it always helps.
THANK YOU for posting this one. I am an old school feminist, and get sooo embarrassed by these modern feminazis.
Genesis 1:27 God created man… male and female He created them. Genesis 5:2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.
Not quite. Those looks like English words, not ancient Hebrew.
Load More Replies...Can I just say that she isn't a feminist. At the start she spoke about men's inferiority towards women, a feminist believes, and potentially preaches the EQUALITY between men and women. They don't get annoyed about stupid little things like all crossing lights are men, they accept that they are people. A feminist gets annoyed when a man isn't allowed to hit a women but the other way round is fine. That's not equality. A feminist gets annoyed when women are bought and sold like possessions. These are true examples of inequality. She has the wrong idea. If you don't believe me then look it up. And we're not all crazy, its people like her who aren't real feminists that come out and give us a bad name. Xx
I suspect the feminists screamed "mansplaining biggot" from behind her screen at home and her IQ remained the same as before, smaller than a plant.
Thank your to the school-er (and scholar) I learnt the word proselytise which I hadn't heard of before, and I intend to use against militant Veganist I have no issue with Vegans, so long as they leave me to my food decisions
The stronger a person feels about a particular perspective or ideology the harder it is to be confronted by the absolute opposite of it. As a vegan myself, I try to gently promote the ideologies of kindness and respect toward all animals, without trying to assault people who haven't come to the same determination themselves. I wasn't always vegan. Just like it annoys me when adults bash teens (don't they remember being bashed by adults when they were teens???), I won't abuse someone for being something I myself had been. It pisses me off when vegans act like d***s. It hurts everyone.
Load More Replies...It seems to me that some people like this linguist are grasping at straws to avoid seeing their own responsibilities to humanity as a whole. Men can be free of feminism when they look at themselves and support women as human beings. All the rest is details.
I really appreciate the time that the responding author took to counter each point, rather than simply labeling the blogger as ignorant and being done with it. It would have also been nice if the responding author - who appears likely has the knowledge to do this - provided the blogger with some facts that may provide a stronger basis for her argument, presuming they exist.
and this is just for ENGLISH!!! in french: woman = femme. man=homme. so nothing to be crazy about
I would bet “this” person will search until they literally pass out attempting to find “something” to justify their paranoia!
Load More Replies...PART 2 of 2: One would think that someone so passionate about linguistics and etymology would have a gentler, more mature approach. But even so, if this linguist can’t find it within her/himself to be kind, they could at least not butcher the english language while trying to prove what a linguistic expert they are. Among my favorites were: “…who think like you along these lines and for good reason, because you are wholly ignorant…” Not only is the above sentence painfully redundant; it also says the same thing twice! And I don’t even have time to go into, all, the, misplaced, commas, and general molestation of quotation marks and grammar. The one redeeming factor in this linguist’s post is the on-line handle: "mitosisisyourtosis." It took me a while to figure it out, but “my tosis is your tosis” is pretty great. That one redeeming gem forced me to raise this sad linguist’s grade from an F to a C minus. mary-milkt...292c1b.jpg
PART 1 of 2: The response written by this "linguist" is so chock full o' grammatical errors, spelling errors, incorrect punctuation and just plain REALLY BAD WRITING that I find it hard to take her/him seriously. The thing that bothers me the most, though, is the punitive, snarky, immature tone of his/her rebuttal. It's hard to know when this linguist says "In my linguistics class in undergrad, we actually made fun of people…” if s/he is a professor, or a student. Either way, it’s sad. If this person is an educator who openly admits to encouraging his/her students to “make fun of people” then it’s no mystery why there’s a bullying epidemic in our schools. And if this linguist is referring to a time when s/he was an undergrad student, it’s still pretty sad that they chose to pass their time sitting around making FUN of people who were simply ignorant or misguided about certain areas of the english language. How about being KIND (or at least civil) when correcting others? IMG_1613-2...89ea64.jpg
For a linguist, this guy's writing is pretty sloppy (just assuming it's a guy). In addition, though he was successful in demonstrating (though without citing any actual sources beyond his own linguistic accumen) that the original posters argument was flawed and based on a very superficial knowledge of the English language, he was not successful at all in debunking the claim that patriarchal bias is built into English and other languages. In fact, there is even more to support that claim in the text than in the original poster's short blurb. Example: He/She When an entire population is divided in terms of those who are "here" (he) vs "there" (she), those described as "here" are clearly dominant and designating those "there" (she) as the "other." The linguist continually points out—while being apparently ignorant of the significance—instances where the language is similarly divided along gender lines to favor a dominant male gender. Whether this division was done by design or was....
(2of2).....Whether this division was done by design or was a more evolutionary result of an already male dominant society is not clear from the text but clearly the separation and bias is there, regardless of our dear linguists arrogant and unsupported insistance that it is not. While the original poster that our linguist is responding to seems to have gotten the linguistic mechanics wrong, their point remains valid and is, in fact, supported in many ways by the information our dear linguist has provided. It just goes to show that citing a lot of scholarly sounding information does not make you right or justify making unsupported claims. Nice try Mr. Linguist.
It's as if some internet commenters think that everything was just thought up in the last few centuries or so. They never consider that words are thousands of year old. Kinda like with pronouns.
he was then promptly squelched and blocked, and his comment deleted. A new tweet went up simply stating that "her post offended a man so much she had to block him because he was so rude"
The only thing worse than being wrong, even ignorant, is being right but also being an arrogant condescending A$$hole. This person had the opportunity to teach, to share knowledge that many people may not have been aware of...but instead just alienates and proves that it is possible to be intelligent (at least about one subject) but totally clueless in other ways that are more important. EQ trumps IQ...look it up while you are cruising in your own, rude, lane.
I'm not a feminist, but to play devil's advocate here... Even if the historical roots of the words, like "person" and "son" have nothing to do with each other, she could be saying the way language is now is a problem. Because the way the words exist now give that impression, even if false.
I am going to throw one more stick in the fire: Chairman, fireman, etc etc. came from the latin "manibus" and later french "Main" which meant hand : The hand of the chair, the hand of the fire - the person who controlled the chair, fire etc., etc. It was meant to be gender neutral. We could have just gone back to using the french "main" to make it so again. People do not know about their own language...
A “simpleton’s way of deduction. This feminist is educationally “LAZY”, and stuck in the victim hood/me too/millennial mindset. Feminism has destroyed the West. Sweden (feminist ruled), is virtually dead
Shame a linguist said "like you are doing off of." You'd think a linguist writing in English could at least speak it. Nonetheless, nice roast.
here's the original post on tumblr: http://rhysiare.tumblr.com/post/138012970426/mitosisisyourtosis-visual-poetry and some more discussion: http://tumblinguistics.tumblr.com/post/142090790851/smallwanderer218-dedalvs-madmaudlingoes Would it have hurt your author to credit where they took this from? It's a 10-second google search ....
The complainant must belong to one of those "Burning Bra Movements". One cannot simply launch into a tirade without doing your homework.
I frikkin hate Feminazis. The idea that anyone would think that idiots like this speak for me makes me sick. I don't need a "movement" to have my back to be a strong woman. I can do that quite nicely all by myself, and I don't have to vilify men to do it.
He could have just explained. Most people would be ignorant of that. He doesn't have to gloat so much about having known it. The first three paragraphs are about how embarrassed she should be. Just get to the point.
Interesting use of pronouns in this article... Nothing that I read would indicate that Feminist Chewbacca was 'she' or that mitosisisyouryourtosis was a 'he' and yet these were the pronouns used without any sense of irony when discussing how a feminist had been 'schooled'
I think that the linguist could be more polite and be above this whole "feminism/masculinism" scenario. Clearly, the main reason for using his skills wasn't to correct the woman but to mock her and humiliate her to show his superior masculinity over her. BUT the woman was calling for it so, who can you blame? BTW That last sentence of the linguist really got me laughing hard. "I will school the everloving hell out of you, STAY IN YOUR LANE." :D :D :D Masculinism level over 9999 :D I think both of these characters may have experienced some bad things from the opposite sexes, but is this really the way to cure it? Maybe temporary relief, but THE EGO is always hungry. KEEP YOUR EGO IN LINE INSTEAD. The lesson has been learned and I hope that the majority of the people watching this case didn't choose any side of those two people and could see through this feminism/masculinism sh*t. Please, stop fighting each other and stop proving what doesn't even exist..... let's have a harmony :) <3
I think that the linguist could be more polite and be above this whole "feminism/masculinism" scenario. Clearly, the main reason for using his skills wasn't to correct the woman but to mock her and humiliate her to show his superior masculinity over her. BUT the woman was calling for it so, who can you blame? BTW That last sentence of the linguist really got me laughing hard. "I will school the everloving hell out of you, STAY IN YOUR LANE." :D :D :D Masculinism level 9999 :D I think both of these characters may have experienced some bad things from the opposite sexes, but is this really the way to cure it? Maybe temporary relief, but THE EGO is always hungry. KEEP YOUR EGO IN LINE INSTEAD. The lesson has been learned and I hope that the majority of the people watching this case didn't choose any side of those two people and could see through this feminism/masculinism sh*t. Please, stop fighting each other and stop proving what doesn't even exist..... let's have a harmony :) <3
Research, research, research. Or .. get schooled by those that have. ANY school will teach you that before graduation. She must have forgotten is all. shiesh.
Someone should check their grammar before an all out language attack. While very informative and enlightening, this article has several typos. Signed, an artist.
A certain person should check their grammar before an all out language attack. There are several typos in this article. Signed, an artist.
And what language is not? Pointless to complain about the language. You should be more focused on how people use it.
While I agree with the writer's comments I must take issue with his/her atrocious grammar. For instance, as a linguist, one would assume the writer would avoid tautology, e.g. .....conspiratorial thinking like you are doing off of. (end of point four) I realise I'm being pedantic but as a lover of the English language I hate to see it misused especially by someone purporting (late Middle English (in the sense ‘express, signify’): from Old French purporter, from medieval Latin proportare, from Latin pro- ‘forth’ + portare ‘carry, bear’. The sense ‘appear to be’ dates from the late 18th century) to be an expert.
Lol. I think this is pointless. It is like patiently telling your dog that the mailman is not going to kill us all. He will listen, wag his tail, and then tomorrow he will bark all over again. Actually, this is a bad analogy because the feminist will not listen, nor wag her tail, but will definitely continue to bark.
So basically she complained about sexism but at the same time she said that men "compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness"...
Oh my god. . . this was interesting enough to perk up even the most bored panda.
This linguist is using 'Proto-Indo-European,' a language that is basically made up by linguists to theorize about what earlier languages may have sounded like, to debase a significant part of this feminists argument which DOES happen to be true, which is that woman and human are derived from the word 'man'. In doing so he is being disingenuous and sexist, trying to shut down someone who is pointing out a very true fact about most languages, which is that they are sexist often at their base. The simple use of 'man' and 'he' as base pronouns in texts about general people is an strong indicator of this. No one should have to think twice about whether the English language is quite often sexist in use.
"She" derived from 'that/there' and "he" derived from 'this/here'... But it's TOTALLY NOT MALE-CENTERED AT ALL! And "man" used to just mean "human"... while "wifman" meant female human and "werman" meant male human. Then through the evolution of language "wif-" became "wo-" but for REASONS UNKNOWN BUT TOTALLY DEFINITELY NOT PATRIARCHY "wer-" was dropped and "man" somehow mysteriously became 'male' and was synonymous with human.
They both sound like absolute jerks. I'll agree to a certain extent with the original poster's second paragraph that it is a patriarchal language, but her first paragraph is so combative and patronizing (inserting herself into that role that she disparages) that it absolutely begs to be challenged. That said, the respondent's post is equally smug, combative, and diminutive, also begging to be challenged. 1) the fact that "He" comes from "this/here" and "She" comes from "that/there" VERY much gives credence to the argument that the masculine perspective is the central/dominant/default first-person ideology. 2) "Man" dropping its "were" (for unknown reasons) again shows that culture simply accepted the masculine as default without question, because of patriarchal society. 3) The lack of "any direct correlation" why the two word would morph into a masculine progenitor-based term again blindly glosses the larger social structure in which it happened.
In the end, the original poster is largely correct that our language does reinforce a patriarchal society. But she's wrong that it was didn't develop naturally, in the sense that culture and language evolved together over time from the same stimuli. There was no intention behind crafting the terms to make up for "biological inferiority" or "general superfluousness," a weak argument that really deserves more of a biological lesson in the Darwinian necessity of both sexes than a linguistic response simply baiting her.
Load More Replies...Using an argument that is poorly thought of, and is making the males of the society look bad is not Feminism. The patriarchal nature of society is bad, not the males. This article is misleading as it attributes “feminism” to an act that is otherwise not striving for equity of genders. i suggest that we all (including anyone who sees this) have a better understanding of what feminism is.
(To reiterate) More fundamentally...If men have been able to so totally dominate women for countless millennia that they have forced women to accept derivative pronouns when speaking of themselves, doesn't that fact in itself demonstrate the superiority of males?
More fundamentally...if men have been able to so utterly dominate women for countless millenia that we can force them to accept derivative pronouns, doesn't that fact itself kinda demonstrate male superiority?
By the way the credits on this are wrong. Visual-Poetry is just a tumblr that posts pictures of cool stuff, mitosisyourtosis is the person that said the stupid thing about partriarchy. You can see it here: http://www.pomofo.com/article/feminist-called-out-english-language-being-sexist rhysiare is the user that wrote the linguistics thing, and they aren't even credited in this post. Who wrote this article?
Just an observation, but doesn’t he prove her right with the first one? If he meant here/this and she there/that, it’s using ‘he’ as the rule and ‘she’ is measured against that. It’s othering 101.
Somebody had an opinion, and somebody had facts. One of those is worth something.
"Wer-" began to disappear in the late 13th Century - it is highly likely this was subconsciously part of that period's post-war crackdown on women starting to own things, which had taken an uptick during the early 13th Century and appeared to be developing into a trend.
Just someone else looking for their 15 fkn minutes. Hey ladies who did god make first? Yeah, man, then how did he make a wo-man? A man's rib. LOL, now stop being so damn stupid and find something important to do in your life. You got that Gal? LOL
People have decent points to make sometimes but then many go overboard and overanalyze and blow away potential allies in their struggles.
Her chart makes as much sense as forming the word S**T out of SOMEONE HIT the ball.
She would have to want to be schooled, first! In German the worn for "one", as in 'one person is 'man' as in 'one should consider...' "man soll..." and it has NOTHING to do with sex. It is a SEXLESS pronoun. Maybe the lady forgot that she was formed from sperm and eggs....not dropped to earth by Isis or Osiris.
I'm going off on a tangent now.....the really sexist word is vagina. Why? Because it's a euphemism - it's the Latin for sword sheath. So the word vagina defines female genitalia purely in terms of it being something for a man to put his mighty sword in. The C word is infinitely preferable - it derives from the word for triangle.
This is all quite interesting and valid. Thing is, the use for vagina that you're referencing is so old, and so unknown, that men and women don't ever use it that way. Men tell other men they have manginas when mocking their masculinity. Why? Because they think that giving female attributes to a male is a cutting way to demean their masculinity. They're thinking of vagina as entirely female; not thinking of the word's etymology.
Load More Replies...It also annoys me when people say 'history' has anything to do with 'his' and then try to change it to 'herstory'. It actually comes from the ancient Greek 'istoria - the apostrophe at the beginning is a rough breath sound vaguely equivalent to an h, and it has nothing to do with the ancient greek masculine genitive, 'ou
I find his hypothesis equally weak. He leaves several up to "coincidence" without fully exploring or understanding it. As well the hypothesis of it could be argued the male aspect of self reflection of importance being "here" and "there" being the secondary version. Certainly the english language was created from a male point of view as the latin derivatives of French, Spanish and Italian share an equal male/female base and importance. Co-incident is a word often used haphazardly. It means an incident that happens alongside another having value and purpose. It gives no justification that it was a mistake as he is suggesting. Do I think he roasted her? No, I feel they are equally careless in their assessments and he drops off when it comes to the hows or whys of the reasoning of the English language actually choosing the final version.
As a graduate of a B.A. in Linguistics, I would say his arguments make sense. The word "masle" would be VERY Old French, like around the time William the Conqueror invaded England and the Middle Age. There were no accents in French at that time, and words like "island" in English probably date from that period. Isle became "ïle" later in French. On a somewhat different angle, I came across the English word "coward" being interpreted in novels set in early 19th Century England to mean "cow-hearted". because people thought cows were naturally cowards. Nothing of the sort. The word "coward" comes from the Old French word "couard" which became phonetically assimilated.
This writer is a linguist? Seriously? I see abysmal skill levels in grammar, style and usage. The content is interesting but obscured by error and ambiguity. Don't leave your day job, because you do not have a clue about writing clear, meaningful prose.
O.K. What is desired here? Are us men supposed to lay down and admit we are nothing but a piece of s**t? Furthermore, us, “white men” are the scum of the Earth? I mean, at least so called minority men have one thing going for them? What does a woman like this desire? I have no problem trying to appease her wants and/or needs, just explain to me what it is you truly want? I can’t change history, but perhaps I can make some! Come on ladies, oops, I’m sure you break that down as wrong as it contains “lad” known as a harmless gentleman, or should we change the definition of lad to be a horrible, crime committing, young male, never known to do anything good? WHAT DO YOU WANT, LADIES!
Iveta and the linquist should find career paths that don't require critical thinking or professional writing skills. And based upon some of the comments, I presume that Bored Panda is a site that services anti-intellectual Trump supporters. Am I correct?
I'm all for feminism but seriously, come on! Being a feminist doesn't mean complaining about everything or whatever that lady was trying to do
"You're just trying to confuse me with jabber, a*****e." ~ this b***h immediately after, probably
Hey other bored pandas. Where is the line of feminism and sexism drawn??
While I appreciate the instruction, the feminist is correct about semiotic correlation in today's culture. And while I don't suggest we need to change these words, we do need to understand how meaning is ascribed to modern people using a modern system. Words and what they represent eventually may be co-opted and given new facets, such as queer, etc. Etymology is fine, but how we ascribe meaning and the role it plays in shaping individuals and society is more complex than knowing where something comes from and how it used to apply. Poets play with words to make a point. Her point is valid. The linguist luckily wasn't cunning, just self-important.
Those explanations just show how deep patriarchy got into humankind’s subconsciousness, so even though there’s no connection between the origin of the words, all of these words ended up sounding like they’re “supporting” or “favoritizing” men. And the person who “schooled” that feminist who raised an interesting point of view is so f*****g obnoxious that it literally made me feel sick. Imagining it’s a man. Either way, f**k you. Don’t speak like that to people.
Fortunately in Germany we don´t have this problem haha, "Woman" is "Frau", "Man" is "Mann" etc., and "Son"´s "Sohn", so it has nothing in common with the word "Person" that we use too in Germany...
Oh er and instead of "weiblich" for "female" you can also say "feminin" in Germany, f. ex. for a very much female clothes style...
Load More Replies...I happy I read that because I actually thought that you know wo men, however, I just thought it was so long ago that we could move on I mean it is language so it is not like we were going to go round saying this word was made on a sexist base so we are now banning it
Best thing I've read in a long time. I would like to know something though - when did we become afraid of, or develop a hatred of, the very words that make up our language?
I think it is more the connotation of words than anything else
Load More Replies...Turkish is the best language for universal choice. It includes nothing nor everything. both! amazing huh? :)
She, He: O --> Simple.. for both Man - Woman : Erkek(Oğul) - Kadın --> both of them havent got any lingualistic or another equal sides. so far different! Man has two different kind like English Man/Son. Oğul from our old Turkish so it actually came from surnames Mehmetoğlu which's like Robertson Human: İnsan --> it's actually two arabic words combination which are ''nisyan'' ( نسيان ) and ''ünsiyet'' ( ألفة ) idk which one is which one but one of means ''forgetable'' and the other means ''genuine'' i suppose...So just describe what we are a bit right? İnsanoğlu : Sorry that was a mistaken for sure but yeah that means exactly what 'Person' is. how i said before...neither everything nor nothing :;) so yeah...enjoy it! :) thanks to read
Load More Replies..."Superfluousness" ? .... sounds like someone is calling her issues with men "feminism" to glorify/justify her bitterness.
It's entirely likely that her bitterness is formed from experiences of being abused by multiple men in her life. Women don't just casually decide to develop hostility toward men for no reason at all. It's triggered by bad experiences. That she is terribly unconstructive about her way of responding to it is unfortunate. People don't all choose a rational path in the face of abuse.
Load More Replies..."A Tumblr user, who refers to herself as ‘Feminist Chewbacca" (according to this post) has been blaming other social media users for calling her Chewbacca. It is funny to see how it turned out that Erin Wei Ai Chew ended up proclaiming herself as "Feminist Chewbacca." Yes, she has been very ignorant as the linguist pointed out where she has no understanding of certain subject but cherry picking some of it for her to mold into her personal bias belief to attack men and even a whole culture in her other blogged articles.
Well... In French, every noun has a genre. And it's causing a lot of troubles to people trying to learn French (cuz it's really a pain in the a*s) and now feminazis started a meaningless ridiculous war to transform the whole French language so every word can have a feminine equivalent, something like that. And it's ridiculously tragic, I swear. Or maybe dramatically laughable. In a country where women can vote, drive, enter any shop, buy whatever the f**k they want and dress as they please, candidate to mostly "masculine jobs", etc etc. In a country where 90℅ of the natives can't even talk or type properly in their own language. Hahaha.
Alright but there is no need to be mean and point out the lack of this knowledge. usually people don't know this information. Thanks for telling us and clearing up but no need to be like this.
No need to say that men are "compensating for their biologicsl inferiority" either but that's what the original poster did. Respect is reciprocal.
Load More Replies...That’s the most erotic thing I’ve read all day. I have a crush on mitosisyourtosis.
For a linguist, this guy's writing is pretty sloppy (just assuming it's a guy). In addition, though he was successful in demonstrating (though without citing any actual sources beyond his own linguistic accumen) that the original posters argument was flawed and based on a very superficial knowledge of the English language, he was not successful at all in debunking the claim that patriarchal bias is built into English and other languages. In fact, there is even more to support that claim in the text than in the original poster's short blurb. Example: He/She When an entire population is divided in terms of those who are "here" (he) vs "there" (she), those described as "here" are clearly dominant and designating those "there" (she) as the "other." The linguist continually points out—while being apparently ignorant of the significance—instances where the language is similarly divided along gender lines to favor a dominant male gender.....(1of2)
feminist feminazi hate man. these feminazi are communists,who want to punish man for being man.
I'd argue they hate themselves more. Well adjusted people with good self esteem don't go around attacking people all day long.
Load More Replies...I love etymology, but this guy is just a rude c**t. And who doesnt get that it's not only about etymology, but sometimes about wordplays which can build analogies and reveal things and inspire to think about the world differently. The thing at the start was an arty approach, not a scientific tractatus. Yer man is just a hater, he shouldn't teach children, when he teaches them "to laugh about other people". There is other ways to convey the beauty of language and it's history.
Sure stepped on toes didn't I? Good. Be a real woman and stop trying to be anything else. Get some morals and quit pitying yourself. The word, "feminism" covers the actions of a woman with inadequacies and does not know the meaning of a real woman whose main goals are to be happy, make others happy and live a real life
I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them. Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. Linda Gordon I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig. Andrea Dworkin Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage. Sheila Cronin, the leader of the feminist organization NOW Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Andrea Dworkin The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist. Ti-Grace Atkinson Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state
I don't care about what I'm called as a woman...just as long as you pay me the same for the same work.
"Wrong in so many levels?" I only see one level in this "qualified response": etymology. As a linguist I don't think the actual history of a word determines the way this particular word affects our perception and thinking. Where language comes from has no direct impact on how we use language today. If you are interested in language use you can't restrict your research to the denotation of a word - you must also consider the level of connotation. Of course there never was an actual conspiracy of old men who got together and decided to have their sexism lexicalized by adding words like female or human - but there certainly has been a patriarchal culture that might have favoured certain "coincidences". And there is a patriarchal culture today that is favoured by these "coincidences", a patriarchal culture that knows just how irrelevant the technical etymology of words is in language use and contemporary culture.
So, in other words, coincidences are signs of the patriarchy, you're entire hypothesis is built on the idea that coincidence favours patriarchy, which would actually mean that there isn't a patriarchal culture, unless, of course, you're suggesting that the turn of society somehow wasn't caused by people
Load More Replies..." “Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,” Feminist Chewbacca sets a militant tone that isn’t going to endear her to many people, " It's is not just militant it's down right insulting. It's too bad the author of this article couldn't call out Feminist Chewbacca on that instead of just saying it was " militant"
The rebuttal is unconvincing and simply reiterates the problem being identified.
While I think this woman's point and way of trying to make it is stupid, I do have a "but"... I mean, he's saying, that the fact that these words sound like they all stem from the same root, they have instead evolved from being different words to end up sounding the same. Which kinda sounds, as if the words being used in a male dominated society (no not "men", just what I wrote) has changed the words to sound AS IF they are the same, i.e. that men are the baseline. Because that has been the general idea of how it was considered to be. It may be be without intent, but it's not that much better, not really.
Ignorance is bold. We're far from the post feminism Rilke foretold in Letters to a Young Poet (1929).
any FEMALE or living creature in the animal kingdom this dumb is called, not a female, not a girl, not anything other than dumb b***h or C**T. F**k this c**t, thats a great way to address anyone who thinks this way.
Those explanations just show how deep patriarchy got into humankind’s subconsciousness, so even though there’s no connection between the origin of the words, all of these words ended up sounding like they’re “supporting” or “favoritizing” men. And the person who “schooled” that feminist who raised an interesting point of view is so f*****g obnoxious that it literally made me feel sick. I imagine it’s a man. Either way, f**k you. Don’t speak like that to people.
QUOTE FROM YOUR ARTICLE Firstly, by introducing her post with the words: “Men fabricated the idea that they are the default sex to compensate for their biological inferiority and general superfluousness,” Feminist Chewbacca sets a militant tone that isn’t going to endear her to many people, and she needs to have rock-solid arguments to respond to the inevitable attacks on her position. If all you can find to say critically about this quote from Chewbacca, who hides behind a pseudonym, is that it's a tad too militant, you appear to have missed the truly vile sexism and grotesque misandry of this ignoramus. Were someone to say similarly vile and sexist things about the female gender, you'd have jumped all over them. This woman should not only be schooled- which has happened, thank God - but also excoriated for her pure evil.
There is a far easier way to deconstruct the she/he nonsense: sh is a unit. We do not have a letter for this sound in the Latin alphabet, so every language invented a combination of letters to represent this sound: in German it’s sch, in French it’s ch in Italian it’s sci or sce, in Dutch it’s sj ... and so on. Therefore sh in English represents one sound and is inseparable. It’s H-E and SH-E. S-H makes no sense at all. Apart from that, this Chewbacca person has completely primitive ideas about the biology of males and females. They are not alike, in some respects the one sex is superior in others it’s the other sex.
Superior and inferior what? For every person you cite who is "superior" in one trait, there's another person of opposite gender who is their equal. Sexual dimorphism doesn't mean, for example, "men are stronger" in all cases. There's a very strong element of cultural and sexual selection that defines what features and traits are popular and therefore common to a gender in one culture compared to another. Some cultures have less overt pressures and selection for these traits than others. The differences you're categorizing as inferior or superior are probably not inherently male or female traits. They are what a culture has selected as their preferred traits in their men and women.
Load More Replies...Once upon a time on a very fine morning, all the men sat together and invented the English language to oppress the women more efficiently.
Funniest part is that she's ignoring millions of years of "human" societal development when the cultures were largely, and arguably matriarchal/matrilineal. If she really wants to get outraged, look at the growth of organized religion in relation to the rise of patriarchy.
I think she's more concerned with recent human culture. Understandably so.
Load More Replies...The halfwit who wrote this did so in a very insulting manner, which was totally uncalled for. He (I assume) actually admits himself that #4 is probably right, and while it might be the case that some of the other ones are incidental, one can never rule out the fact that their development was aided by perception of males as the default sex (we simply don't know). For all we know, such perception does exist, and the larger larger point still remains. Take sports as an example - people usually refer to sports like this, e.g. "basketball" for the kind men play and "women's basketball". By playing a know-it-all and acting like an a*****e he commits the error of assuming that if he can rebut a few examples, that indicates that the problem does not exist. It does. Screw his attitude.
Really stupid all around. A stupid Tumblr doesn't mean English isn't sexist ... It is and other languages are even worse.
How can a language be sexist? Give me examples of the English language objectively being sexist.
Load More Replies...Wait until they pull religion into the way we word things! "Good Lord, Have Mercy!" The people who didn't grow their sexual dingly dangly hanging out between their legs weren't even allowed to write nor enter many churches in some cultures. That was then. This is now. We could all beat each other up around these spellings. PLEASE understand the meaning of the words and don't be so bent on speling. Hopefully, you haven't forgotten, we are ALL on this planet. Let's try and communicate it's not about the spelling, it IS about us getting along and taking responsiblity for one this place, ourselves and each other no matter if they have boobs on their chest or hanging little play toys between their legs. P.S. The "Good Lord, Have Mercy" just seemed appropriate to place there. I couldn't resist! Big winks and smiles.
I hate how religious institutions have insinuated themselves so deeply into language.
Load More Replies...American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna God Damn Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm.
still we have he ans she in English. The only language I've seen by far which doesn't have male and female at all is Farsi (Persian), We just have "OU" addressing third person for both sexes.
Finnish and Turkish are two that I know. I am sure there are others, especially in uralic languages.
Load More Replies...Except that his second answer *did* reveal a sexist aspect of our language: that "man" descended from a word meaning "person" whereas "woman" descended from a word meaning "female person". This is what's known as a "marked category", where one side is considered the default, and the other side different and "other". When the linguist says "I guarantee it has nothing to do with patriarchy" he's almost certainly wrong, not because he doesn't understand linguistics, but because he doesn't understand the concept of patriarchy. The fact that he puts it in scare quotes underlines this.
Here's another linguist looking at "man" vs "woman": http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/his-and-hers-wyf-and-wer
Load More Replies...Looks to me like a case of bad logic. This linguist is refuting chewbacca by saying the origins of the terms in OTHER languages a have nothing to do with patriarchy. But maybe it isn't a coincidence that when translated into modern english, priority was given to being a man.
Looks to me like a case of bad logic. This linguist is refuting chewbacca by saying the origins of the terms in OTHER languages a have nothing to do with patriarchy. But maybe it isn't a coincidence that when translated into modern english, priority was given to being a man.
To add to feminist spin on ignorant How about all words mis Add an extra s and we have a conspiracy Missinterpretations Missunderstanding Missunderstood Even words like Manipulate Manipulation R******d to take a word Break it apart And use it in the most ignorant way to serve your self loathing purpose You want to be equal to men Hell You want to be equal to women HuMan Up 🤣
I do not care what you think. I know that the world was happier, children were happier, husbands were happier when the woman was not out running around trying to be a man. I AM NOT OWNED BY ANYONE. I have had a perfect life because I chose to be the best WOMAN I could be with the intent of being happy and making those I love happy. You so called women use feminism to cover your inadequacies and are so busy trying to play ball with the men that you have lost the real value of being happy. So again I say, stay in your lane and continue to believe your misinformed opinion and leave the real women alone. Is there is part of this you do not understand? If so, I will be happy to help you be happy......
You sound like a rotten, miserable c**t. F*****g doubtful someone like you could ever be happy, let alone help someone else's happiness. I'm so glad my wife is a strong, independent women who thinks nothing like you. :)
Load More Replies...LOL...some dude who took an undergrad class and has very vague and lame comebacks...lol...he doesn't even address the fact these words were still changed to be male biased, let alone why...also super abusive. Screen-Sho...aa-png.jpg
There is no male bias and even if there was , it's fine
Load More Replies...English *is* BLACK MAGIC that traps people in the (patriarchal) left-brain. SPELLING casts spells over the masses... Why not listen to an esteemed MALE Dr tell you how it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2QQuD62RxrU The feminist is right, the mansplainer is a parrot.
As usual, a mix of accurate and false. The so-called "Linguist" is right about "person" and "she," but not about human or woman and only partially about female. Look it up, people--don't take their words for it.
I feel grateful learning about the root of words from a linguist. Reading the introduction to it, I wonder about the attitude taken, implying wrongness and stupidity. So far, I have not yet come across anyone who responds well to that, and adapts their mindset, instead it tends to inspire rigidity, resignation, rebellion, or digging our heels in, simply because of how we have addressed. “Omg no, 'you are wrong' on so many levels and as a linguist 'this makes me ache' something terrible. In my linguistics class in undergrad, 'we actually made fun of people' who think like you along these lines and for good reason, because 'you are wholly ignorant' and are choosing to spin narratives about things and fields which 'you know completely nothing about' yet pretend you do.”
Don't know why you were voted down. Have an up vote on me.
Load More Replies...This linguist isn't very good at critical thinking, lol. His own arguments support her thesis. "He" meaning "this/here" and "She" meaning "that/there" actually still does show male subject preference. "He" is the subject and "she" the object. "This" meaning "me/here" and that meaning "her/there." Same with "man" and "woman." "Man" was the default human and "woman" means wife of the default human. Which means females were not even considered human, just the property of other humans (males). It is quite true that historically and even today, we consider males the default human. Whenever there is a protest of mostly men (like in Egypt, for example) the media says "Egyptians protested." But if mostly women protest (like in when Italian women protested their president) the media says "Italian women protested." Males are still used as the default graphic in most anatomical diagrams, even though females are the majority of the human population.
I believe that in Old and Middle English, the word wife/wif/wyf meant a woman in general, not a married woman (as in Chaucer's 'The Wyf of Bath', or the word 'midwife' which means 'with woman'.) So the word 'wifman' which evolved into 'woman' doesn't imply someone's wife. I agree with your point about anatomical diagrams, though - I've also noticed how male bodies are presented as the default when if anything it should be the other way around.
Load More Replies...No offence but, s**t article. Enough polaririzing as it is without encouraging people to label each other man and women haters, or associating feminism and the fight for equality with intolerance because of a difference of opinion over what is more important; language and what certain words were supposed to mean when they originated, or how they have changed in meaning, connotation and impact now. Regardless of where you stand, it's b******t to use as a springboard excuse to jump into your favorite judgmental lecture.
Such a classier way of saying 'B***h, please...sit down an shut the hell up'
To the individual that has a boulder on their shoulder, everything is an insult. Pointing out their pettiness to them only causes them to double down on their anger.
Agreed. This is why it's so important to withhold anger, however justified it may feel or even be, when attempting to inform someone on their ignorance.
Load More Replies...I personally think there are other ways to teach people things without being rude, but I did enjoy some of the stuff I learned.
Load More Replies...OH GOSH. Claiming that languages are sexist is not MISANDRIST. Who ever says this should should be taught the everloving hell out of. Calling out sexism never ever is misandrist. And although I love language history and these are great facts, it does really not mean that the English language is not sexist. Let alone other, gendered languages.
I feel like saying that men are "biologically inferior" and "superfluous" is kinda sorta a little misandrist, don't you?
Load More Replies...I don't understand why you have that impression, specifically.
Load More Replies...Maybe you will like to read this: DECONSTRUCTION, FEMINISM, AND LAW: CORNELL AND MACKINNON ON FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND RESISTANCE https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.facebook.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1092&context=djglp 29Sep2017_...1bb1a0.jpg
People who complain of Sexism are the shallowest thinkers I know of. They are ignoring the most basic binary feature in how the human species preserves itself. Any non-binary deviations in the species is detrimental to the continuation of humanity.
For f***s sake, I hate the people who think adaptation's are mandatory
Load More Replies...twas a feminazi. not a feminist. I am a feminist but I do not believe that there is a patriarchy, I believe that I am equal with the opposite gender. Nothing more.
Oh, so since something seems mean and sexist to you it is? You can't dictate coincidence because you're slightly worried about what people might think the connotations are, and what the broken hell are you talking about with white?
Load More Replies...Your world view is fractally wrong and fundamentally sexist.
Load More Replies...Don't just say it's wrong. What did he say that was wrong?
Load More Replies...So you don't think someone saying "women need to get back in the kitchen" should be downvoted? In other words, you heartily disagree with the feminist stating that men are inferior, but you literally have no issues with anyone saying women are inferior, or less than, and need to be put in their place.
Load More Replies...Yeah, I can understand what you mean by that. Might be a remnant of the generally male-influenced fifties, where they used the term "man" to describe everyone a lot.
Load More Replies...Feminist = someone who fought for your rights, only to have you trample on them and be an ungrateful a*****e.
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