Chances are good that a modern feminist chosen at random would have you believe that certain words in the English language are a derivation from the male root, and make it seem like women are inferior. Words like female and woman seem to be based off of a male root word, with a prefix to indicate the opposite sex.
In anthropology today, I was surprised to learn that this is not the case. We were discussing language, and my professor made a point to stop at this topic. She said that in “Ye Olde English”, man was simply used to indicate a person, regardless of gender. The word human has the root humus, which means earth. The word human means literally “earth person”. The respective words to indicate gender for male and female were werman and wifman. Man was gender neutral. Eventually, the wer prefix was dropped and man was then indication of masculinity. In case you were wondering, the word “wife” comes from the old word, wifman.
The possible reason for this is because England was a patriarchal, or male dominated society. Just because the meaning of a word was changed at some point in the history of a language, does this someone should be offended by its changed meaning? There are a number of other attributes to our language that are sexist. Example: Mother Nature. Vehicles are commonly referred to as female. They are not meant to be offensive. They aren’t meant to demean anybody. The words human and mankind were not meant to refer only to men. They refer to people. Should we alter major words in our language simply because someone is offended by their imagined meaning?
We have the words fireman, mailman, and milkman are called so because historically these jobs were done only by men. Should the language change because a few women choose an occupation that was largely occupied by men when the occupation was created? Some of these words have been changed to gender-neutral variants, such as firefighter and mail carrier. I’m wondering if anyone is offended by the homophonic word “mail”, and would have it changed to “postage”. There are derogatory terms used for men too, you know. Buddy, buster, stud, etc.
Changing words that are deemed offensive by a few people is absolutely ridiculous and excessive political correctness. If we eliminate every mention of men in our words, our language is left butchered. We get herstory instead of history. Disregard the fact that history has nothing to do with the pronon “his”. Vikings? What about the Viqueens?! Thomas Jefferdaughter!? This is incredibly stupid. It’s just like the people in Texas who wanted their official greeting changed from “hello” to “heaveno”. What on earth are they thinking?! Might as well eliminate the word hell from everything–like seasheavens.
There have also been movements to change feminine words that contain imaginary male roots. Womyn is the proposed new spelling of woman, since woman is sexist. If arbitrarily removing vague masculine references from a language isn’t sexist, I don’t know what is. I thought the goal of feminists was to eliminate sexism? The fact is, women and men are different. You can’t alter a language to change that. Men are, in general, more muscular than women. But, there are some women who are stronger than most men. Women are, in general, better at child rearing than men. However, I know of a few men who are better at caring for their child than their wife. That’s reality; it just has to be dealt with.
Besides, there are more pressing issues in women’s rights. In Muslim countries, women are commonly flogged for showing an inch too much skin. They are not allowed to operate automobiles. There is no reason why a woman in the United States should be complaining about their oppression. Granted, there are cases where this does not apply, but the general rule of thumb* is that a feminist is full of herself.
So let’s laugh about it. Offended by those wicked men? Smile. Remember what Stephen Colbert once said, “If we all stopped talking about racism, wouldn’t racism just go away?” When you get pissy because you think something is racist or sexist, you are labeling what’s racist and sexist. Sometimes someone is purposefully sexist, and if you complain you are giving them instructions on how to offend. It’s not always that big of a deal. I will close with a joke that you’ve probably already heard to lighten your spirits. Don’t lie, you know it’s hilarious.
What do you say to a woman with two black eyes? Nothing, you told the bitch twice already.
* About the rule of thumb: what you’ve heard is false. Its origin never had anything to do with domestic assault, and the first recorded case referencing the phrase to domestic violence was in 1976.
I realize that it has been nearly two weeks since my last update. The main reason is that I am just kicking off finals week. Sadly, rugby is over. But on the plus side, I don’t have to dedicate much time to that anymore and I can concentrate on my studies. Finals shouldn’t be too difficult for me this semester. I am only taking twelve credits worth of actual class, but I am also testing out of website design. I still need to finish that website too. Here’s what my finals schedule looks like: