The Language of Sexism: A Big Fuss Over Nothing

NB: I have been reliably informed from a number of sources that I come across in a sexist light from this post. I would like to reference my lecturer again to rectify this issue; feminists are not exclusively women, everyone should be feminists as the concept of feminism is equality between men and women.

This post does not attack women, or even feminism, it simply attacks one small area of one of feminism's arguments. I am not a sexist and I would not like people reading this to make that assumption.

Thank you.

Gender & Sexuality is the newest wonder to glide so effortlessly into my life and cause me yet more frustration and petulance in the face of getting this bloody degree.

In a recent lecture, feminism reared its foul head and began to approach my disinterested notepad. I’d seen it as it clambered over the horizon and begun its fetid journey towards me, yet its arrival was still greeted with a steely gaze and a smattering of unrepeatable phrases.

One such point made in said lecture was one of the word ‘mankind’ being inherently sexist as it assumes that ‘man’ is the focus and therefore more important. I see the point and, unsurprising, would like to challenge it. Our lecturer suggested that ‘humankind’ would be a more ambiguous, and therefore less sexist, term to use in this context.

I can only, in my ignorant and heavily prejudiced male brain, imagine that the offending articles in the word ‘mankind’ are the three little, generic symbols m, a and n (in that order). If my assumption is correct, why are they ignored in the supposedly-acceptable ‘humankind’? Surely they hold the same potency, here, as they do in the aforementioned frowned-upon word choice.

It seems to me that so-called feminists are ignoring the fact that adding letters to words does, in fact, allow the newly-born lexicon to disregard the previously associated meaning of the former word. Although they do embrace this rule with accepting ‘humankind’, is it suggests they approve of the word ‘human’ which has had its meaning changed by ‘hu’.

The power afforded to the humble ‘hu’ by these feminists is pretty powerful, although one ought not be surprised as the letters ‘man’ manage to conjure up such potent and uncomfortable meanings for subscribers to this line of thinking.

The claim that the word ‘humankind’ is less sexist than ‘mankind’ utterly ignores this linguistic (and simply logical) fact, that there only a finite number (26 in modern English, for those of you unbeknownst of this fact) of letters, so repetition is fairly likely when a language reaches the lofty heights of containing a dictionary with the wealth of upwards of 700,000 words to its arsenal.

I am not so ignorant assume the occurrence of ‘man’ in ‘mankind’ is random and is not inherently linked to the meaning of a male Homo Sapien, I realise the relationship they have. But, in terms of the evolution of language, the creation of ‘mankind’ is not a sexist attack on women, it is merely a description of the entirely of highly evolved apes on this little planet.

It is fairly obvious in the currently linguistic climate that words and phrases are no longer (not that they ever were) stitched irrevocable to the meaning they currently have; ‘gay’ once meant joyous, ‘wicked’ once had the connotation of evil, and sick used to mean both vomit and disgusting. Nowadays, these words can mean drastically different things – their original meanings still drifting around somewhere in the ether – as the new age of language architects and engineers – namely the youth generation (as it seems to have been for many generations) – craft new meanings and significances for previously familiar words.

I often hear people of my generation using words that I simply have no grasp of, I believe the (unjustly) popular TV show The Only Way Is Essex has managed to cast a handful of new words into circulation. This is simply what happens as language is very malleable and adaptable to the wants and needs of its users. ‘Ream’ now means sexy and good (at least I think so), when it used to be a bundle of paper. Things can change dramatically; it’s the nature of the unnatural construct of language.

This is why I feel the claim that ‘mankind’ is sexist is madness, by stitching ‘kind’ onto the arse-end of those arbitrary, yet ‘offensive’, letters changes what it means and uncovers an entirely new meaning for those of us open and accepting of the phenomenon of change.

I have asserted than youth culture tends to drive linguistic change, yet the majority of the most uttered words in normal conversation (those naughty swear words) were invented by adults. The secret language of cursing was conceived to discuss wholly adult topics whilst children’s delicate ears were present.

It is this ability of mankind – yes mankind – to create words and hidden meanings for personal use that shows both the weakness and brilliance of words; they both mean nothing and everything at once. They can be split down into their most raw building blocks and shuffled into new shapes to transform an abstract verb into a concrete noun, language is not – and never has been – fixed.

The meaning of the letters l, i, v & e, can mean ‘live’ as easily as they can ‘evil’. And yet, before they are interpreted by the understanding human mind, those letters are simply the sum of their parts and hold no meaning. It is in the decoding of letters that the power nestles, and not in the words themselves.

This seems to be drifting evermore towards the concept of language in the brain and away from a discussion of feminism. Well if that’s the road it has chosen, then so be it.

Language and meaning is literally (in the ‘proper’ meaning, not the overused and undervalued common use) nothing without man (meaning people, not just men. I’m sure I don’t need to point that out, though). A) It would not have emerged without people, culture and civilisation, and B) without man (you know what I mean) to decode the arbitrary combinations of symbols they would remain exactly that – arbitrary and meaningless.

Therefore, the only reason for feminists to decide than ‘mankind’ is a sexist term is simply for the sake of creating a sexist term to allow them to decode it as sexist and thus make a fuss about it. Language tries to bridge gaps between people and the chasm that exists between individuals’ minds, but it falls down in that we all attach our own meanings to words. For example: I, for years, believed the word ‘vivid’ meant vague and weak – the polar opposite of its ‘true’ meaning, yet in my head that word fitted my meaning exactly and I was sure of that.

No matter how hard we try to tap into the relationship between words and cognitive meaning, language will probably never reach the goal of full and proper correlation between what is said and what is meant.

‘Mankind’ is fine, 'humankind' is also good. I will continue to use them interchangably, as is my wont.