Since I had to miss last week's lesson because I had an interview, I had to study the lesson's discussion topics by looking through the lecture notes on my own. And it seems like I have missed an interesting lesson!
As an female English user, I have always found the language to be somewhat 'sexist'. When writing reports, I used to construct sentences like, "The employee can do what he/she wishes." But when there is a need for the repeat use of a pronoun, the constant use of terms like 'he or she' and 'he/she' seems redundant. So in the end I find myself just using the pronoun 'he' as a general pronoun.
As the lecture notes have stated, many English words place more prominence on men. Despite the positive changes that have been made, the language is far from favoring both gender equally. An IQ question once told to me by a friend illustrates this point.
Question: An attractive young lady got into a lift with a doctor, a lawyer and a monk. The lift broke down midway and the lights went out. The group was plunged into total darkness. The woman felt someone grope her behind during this time. When the light came back on, she immediately turned to the monk, gave him a slap and accused him of molesting her. How did she know he was the culprit?
Answer: The lawyer and the doctor are both females!
Despite the simple logic behind the question, when my friend posed the question to me and a few other friends, we were unable to guess the reason immediately. I am embarrassed to say that even as an emancipated female in this modern society, my initial assumptions were that the doctor and the lawyer were both males.
Hopefully there will come a day when the use of the English language becomes sexism-free. But I think that this will take a long time to come true...if it becomes true at all!
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Your example is a great one. I used a similar one in my lecture to illustrate the same point.
ReplyDelete"A man and his young son were in a car accident. The father was killed and the son, who was critically injured, was rushed to a hospital. As attendants wheeled the unconscious boy into the emergency room, the doctor on duty looked down at him and said, “My goodness, it’s my son!”
What was the relationship of the doctor to the injured boy?"