Vol. 4 No. 2 · 4 February 1982
page 17 | 2773 words
Small Boys and Girls
Brigid Brophy
- The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing for Writers, Editors and Speakers edited by Casey Miller and Kate Swift
Women’s Press, 119 pp, £3.25, November 1981, ISBN 0 7043 3878 5
‘Ah, Jane Austen! He is such a great novelist!’ That was said to me by a Hungarian émigré, who, when I mildly queried the ‘he’, explained: ‘I find those English pronouns tiresome. We don’t have them in Hungarian.’ Thus I stumbled on the fact, which I report now in Mario Pei’s words (and on his authority, since mine doesn’t rise to vouching for a syllable of Hungarian), that ‘in Hungarian the same word means “he”, “she”, “it”.’ Unless things have changed since I was there in 1973, the trams in Budapest are driven by women. Otherwise, Hungary is not a discernible jot more sex-egalitarian than Britain or the USA.
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Letters
Vol. 4 No. 5 · 18 March 1982
From Jonathan Grudin
SIR: In defending the use of male generic terms, Brigid Brophy makes a simple, yet serious logical error (LRB, Vol. 4, No 2). She notes that Hungarian is a non-sexist language in a sexist society and concludes: ‘Given that it has no hope of reforming society, there is no useful point in the enterprise’ – of reforming language along non-sexist lines. But the example of Hungarian only demonstrates that reforming language is not sufficient, in itself, to reform society. It may very well be the case that reforming language is a necessary step toward reforming society. That is, sexist language may be one of several aspects of our culture that serve to perpetuate sexual stereotyping and discrimination.
Experimental psychologists have demonstrated, and most writers know, that word ‘selection’ can have subtle influences on readers or listeners. It is not only credible but probable that sexist language is an obstacle to overcoming prejudice. Not all constructions will yield to elegant substitutes, as Brigid Brophy points out, but the attempt to find neutral alternatives is worthwhile. Expressions that do not come to feel comfortable with time will drop away. It is wrong to conclude that writers and editors can ‘accomplish nothing whatever for the cause of sex-equality’ by avoiding biased expressions. By making a good-spirited effort, they can do their part for a cause we all must support.
Jonathan Grudin
Cambridge
Brigid Brophy writes: ‘Logical error’, my foot – an expression that should, by this doctrine, be censored, because that may well be (though it may equally well not be) a ‘necessary step’ towards justice for the disabled (another ‘cause we all must support’).
