For those who have any doubts about whether words of gender have power --
let's say you are at a party or a board meeting that is going nowhere, and you
want to get the juices flowing again -- rest assured, the following will
definitely create a lively change in the group weather:
"(As an exercise) try putting the powerful in the place of the powerless (as) a great reality check. …
Many women feel
invisible or aberrant when they are subsumed under a masculine term that is supposed to be universal; yet they are
often made to feel trivial and nit-picking if they object. But look at it this way:
Would a man feel included in
"womankind"? Would he refer to himself as "chairwoman," "Congresswoman," or "Mr. Mary Smith"?
If a male student
earned a "Spinster of Arts" degree, a "Mistress of Science," or had to apply for a
"sistership," would he feel equal in
academia? If men had grown up seeing God portrayed only as Mother and She, would they feel an equal godliness within themselves?"
-- Gloria Steinem
[Revolution from Within]
A little experiment is in play on Ahhh-theLIGHT, which has to do with
articulating gender in such a way that a neutral balance or equality is
expressed as much as possible, with this exception: When people are quoted,
their gender language is left intact. The masculine bias in language, probably
from the get-go, has been fairly unconscious and certainly without deliberate
intent to harm or demean -- it's just how we learned from our elders and they
from theirs and back to the days of grunts and growls . . or, as some
hirstorians suggest, perhaps to the time following the decline of more
matriarchal cultures.
It's just that over the course of the last century and a
half, our society has been waking up to these kinds of disparities and
oversights in the world, and as a
natural part of its nobler development, it's been confronting them and seeking
to resolve them -- racial prejudice, religious intolerance, class distinctions,
and yes, a growing sensitivity to gender issues was inevitable. Even
so, it is useful to
remember that in some of our previous ages and cultures, genuine respect for both genders was largely taken for granted
even as this was expressed in such one-sided terms as "man" and
"mankind" and "he" for the [smile:] "everyman." But in the last few decades, we have become
even self conscious about this blatant bias that appears to speak for one gender
more than or even to the exclusion of reference to the other. And, yes,
this is indeed changing; the general vernacular these days [at least in the USA]
tries to be much more gender-neutral.
Exceptions that make the point, however, pop up all the time to remind us just
how unconscious this still is. Here's a telling example: I was
recently looking in the FrontPage software program's thesaurus for an inspired
neutral replacement for the word "fellow." The initial options
were "man," "member," and "colleague." I
clicked "man" to see what it might have associated with it, and the
only suggestion was "guy." .... sharp elbow to the next
"guy's" ribs [very punny!]. So much for the
"universal" concept, O Man!
All to say, there's been a bit of understandable grumbling on
both sides of the issue, which is always a consequence of our having to
reconsider old habits, but one outcome of this new awareness is, growing
numbers of us strive to use a more gender-neutral approach in our
communicating. I can tell you as a woman that I
find the efforts toward this effect to be instantly captivating and remarkably healing.
Habits can be
kind of cute when they're not annoying. Psychologists tell us we
tend to revert back to earlier developmental stages when we're under
duress. All the grousing and occasional "attitude"
about gendered language brings this irrepressible image up of two half-asleep
toddlers -- one's a girl and one's a boy, of course -- who have managed to bang into each other unintentionally on their
little, unsteady feet and there's a mutually offended stand-off, and for lack of articulate finesse, they stare each other down with a mirror-perfect
thumb-in-mouth glare. So here we are!
I can't help
wondering about the power of just plain old habit. And so I decided
to try out a playful idea on this website and let the chips fly where they
may. I "thought up" these little 3rd-person pronoun
options, or so I imagined, only to hear that actually a linguistic
scholar or communications expert, something like that, at -- I want to say the
University of Pennsylvania (?) had already come up with just about the same
rendition suggested here, Robert Monroe's contribution ['heshe']
notwithstanding!
The language
shift is fairly extant throughout the website. The
awkwardness of unfamiliarity can feel annoying at first, as with anything new, but I
hope you will enter into the usage in the spirit of what John
Heron [highly recommended book: Sacred Science]
calls "participatory research," as a playful
challenge and experiment. As a male or female how do you feel using
language like this? What is your take on how the other half might
feel?
Just
imagine: at the cost of a little effort to learn something slightly
different than what we're accustomed to, so much GOOD can result, i.e., a kind of psychological
inclusiveness that actively acknowledges
both genders in this important way. I want to think that overall, both
genders will experience positive feelings as a result.
My
bet
is, the repercussions for our children and theirs can border on
extraordinary!
Life
with White Dolls and White Elephants
I've been playing with this idea in a local study group, which led to quite an
animated and revealing discussion that unexpectedly spanned two weeks and drew
2-3 times the number of people who usually came to this event.
Our ignoring this continual immersion in literature so implacably
one-sided must have a deeper influence on the psyches of both sexes.
Here is a slightly other example, but you will see my point.
Two teenage girls did a class project.
They had dolls representing black and white ethnicities.
They were giving the dolls away to young girls. Surprisingly, the
African-American kids much preferred white
dolls. Asked why they picked white,
they said in effect that whites were better!
This did not take place 40 years ago, by the way, but quite recently.
Needless to say, our children are our best barometers
about what our deepest challenges are. I
suspect we would be similarly shocked by the influence of gender language.
Back to my study group where the harm has already long been in
effect: The grumbling
about the gender language in our group was sometimes a conversation filler, kind
of down there with complaining about the weather, but basically it was an
unacknowledged, decades-long presence of the white elephant variety.
This gathering of nearly all women, ages 40s-80s, read mostly
pre-seventies literature loaded with words like 'O man' about every other
sentence. Potentially combustible as the
confrontational sessions were, the whole adventure turned out to be a thoughtful
learning experience for all of us as we really listened to each other's feelings.
Every person in the group had very strong feelings about this, which stretched
across a spectrum of tolerance. Thank heaven, in our mutual regard and
open listening we didn't make this into an either-or issue, which definitely
would have severed the group. We Listened and felt each other's
feelings. We each had powerful, personal stories to share about how
our male-dominant society had impacted our lives and how we had or had not fully
come to terms with the constant wounding. Some walls came down, and we
felt closer to and more empathetically understanding of each other as a
result. Alas,
there was one casualty. Sadly, one
of the few men in the group took this personally [!!] and refused to come back
to the group. So it's not just the feminine gender that has a lot of
tender healing to do.
One
Additional Thought
We are first and last and eternally Spirit Beings. Over and over, no
matter what kind of spiritual experience being referred to, people have
frequently observed that we eventually reach a stage of development or being on
the Other Side for which gender as we know it does not exist. Some
describe such entities as being without gender, with characteristics of both
genders, or even as amorphous or without form at all. Read, for example,
remarks made in [NDEers] Dannion Brinkley's Saved by
the Light, PMH Atwater's writings; [OBEer] Robert
A. Monroe's remarks about what he calls INSPECs ("Intelligent
Species"). Also see the writings of such mystics as David
Spangler, Mother Meera [also see Adilakshmi:
The Mother], Sri Aurobindo [also see Satprem],
Rudolf Steiner, Jane Roberts.
If this is less remarked in traditional religious writings, that is because our
conscious or unconscious expectations may dictate to a great degree what and who
we witness in our otherworldly encounters with light beings. E.g., it is
more likely a Christian would see Jesus [and as a male], or a Hindu might
see Mother Kali [as a female]; some Buddhists might see Avalokateshwara [as
either male or female, depending on their beliefs]; same with Quan Yin [male or
female, depending on personal beliefs]. Also Suki Miller,
Kalweit Holger, Reginald Crosley,
and Joan Halifax have noticed similar descriptions of
light beings without gender as we understand this among shamanic
traditions.
We are spirits temporarily in bodies, not physical beings aspiring to be
"spiritual." The gender-neutral languaging is another way to
remind us of our most fundamental identity as spirit. Not to downplay the
special vibrancy gender provides, but to honor that which is universal in all of
us, that which is most fully what we are.
Our individuating differences, gender being one, are essential to our
development as spirit beings. We are beginning to realize that our
differences deserve unstinting [and equal] loving acknowledgement, empathy,
delight, and celebration, a consequence of this Great Awakening we are currently
witnessing together. This awakening is being expressed so clearly through
social and ecological concerns and movements, urging us to realize fully we are
truly ONE -- 'I am you / you are I in another body.' If one suffers, we all
suffer.
So the grumbling all 'round. You know how when you have an I-love-Lucy
moment, or something truly angering happens. Two weeks or three months or
four years pass, and one day you are sharing that story with someone who was
there, and suddenly you are both laughing about it. You have distanced
yourselves enough to see the incident in the perspective of the infinitely
generous Largess of Life, and that now 'little thing' just doesn't have the bite
it once had. Imagine what it could be like when we have worked through our
current socio-ecological pathos -- not to trivialize our very real challenges;
quite other! -- but we have come out the other end of all this far for the
better as a species. .. WHAT WILL LIFE BE LIKE WHEN OUR NOW WOUNDS, SO
ANCIENT IN ORIGIN, CARRIED FOR SO LONG, ARE ALL HEALED?
Below is a table
identifying the gender-neutral terms you will find on this website. Instead of tiptoeing around or ignoring altogether the he- or she-type choices, except of course
where a specific gender refers to a particular person [he or she], particularly regarding 3rd-person,
on this website, you will see these words:
Examples:
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Heshe that hath ears to hear, let hir hear.
The meaning of man's universe, his very being …
The meaning of one's universe, hir very being …
or
The
meaning of our universe, our very being
Note: Some
special words come up from time to time, also, such as hirstory/hirstorical for
history/historical and
the recently popularized herstory. Translated to imply "his
story," "her story," -- and now: "hir story."
Here's another
one: Kingdom, as
in the Kingdom of Heaven. My proposal is Queen / King yields "Quing,"
as in Quingdom.
Please share your ideas, your thoughts and feelings. Your responses to this experiment
are important to all of us. As this takes on a life of its own, we will begin to
pass on the feedback to you. When I can get to it, I will add a survey or
forum devoted to this topic and also pass on many of your comments.
Maybe
in part it should be a wide open graffiti event! There are some
very strong feelings in the closets of every gendered human being.
Hmmm, so where did I get this one--we have one mouth but two ears, or in
internet-speak, it's possibly more appropriate to say, two eyes.
When we feel/hear/see/know each other's feelings because we ourselves
have experienced those same feelings of outrage or hurt or being put
down or rejected, made to feel less-than -- all that! We in our
hearts know because we have been there. May have
been an entirely different issue, but the feeling is what relates us as
fully human. What makes us shine as MORE Human is
empathy.
