In 9gag.com, I once saw a poster that was so blatantly sexist. There was a picture of a girl taking up Medicine and another one pursuing Law. According to the graphics, that much is accepted in the society. The third picture was a beautiful and “sexy” girl that was an engineering major. And for that someone who uploaded that post, that was an outrage. Well, is engineering solely for boys?
The sad thing is, sexism does not end in pictures or posters. The very form of communication that we, ourselves, devised tends to be sexist. In the article Sexism and Language by Alleen Pace Nilsen, she gave examples which made it evident that language has this propensity to portray sexism. She argued that animal terms usually associated to males and females are biased towards the latter, that the English language glorifies maleness, and that there are words that label women as things – vulnerable and lacking.
It was only when I read the article did I realize that I have heard a lot of sexism in my everyday conversations with the people around me, and that the name of my friends could also be representative of such bias. It’s sad. What made it even more disheartening is the fact that because it is language itself that illustrates it, sexism is a social construct that we unconsciously conform with.
Nilsen’s article can not only help a speaker, but more so, a writer. Because it is also language that is put into letters that gives life to any writing material, it is important that anyone who writes and gets read watch the treatment that he has towards the words that he uses. He can be a sexist even if it is not his intention to be one.
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento