Language Log

In Wired (2/1/16), Liz Stinson has an article titled "This Little Red Book Confronts Sexism in the Chinese Language" (the text is accompanied by a total of 8 slides).

It begins:

Activism can take many forms. In the case of Women’s Words, it takes the form of a little red dictionary. The tiny book is the work of Karmen Hui, Tan Sueh Li, and Tan Zi Hao of Malaysian design collective TypoKaki. On its pages you’ll find made-up words and phrases—Chinese characters that, through their unusual arrangement and alteration, subvert the sexism ingrained in Mandarin.

Speaking of getting schlonged….

It is well-known that many Chinese characters with a female radical (nǚ 女) have pejorative or negative meanings:

Joe, "Sexist Chinese Characters Discriminate Against Women " (chinaSMACK, 1/28/10)

Koichi, "Kanji Hates The Ladies " (Tofugu, 6/05/12)

Dali Tan, "Sexism in the Chinese Language", NWSA Journal, 2.4 (Autumn, 1990), 635-639

David Moser, "Covert Sexism in Mandarin Chinese," Sino-Platonic Papers, 74 (January, 1997), 1-23.

Karen Thomson, a Sanskritist and antiquarian bookseller living in Oxford, wrote to me to point out the following very significant example of singular they in a Financial Times interview with TV writer and director Jill Soloway:

People will recognise that just because somebody is masculine, it doesn't mean they have a penis. Just because somebody's feminine, it doesn't mean they have a vagina. That's going to be the evolution over the next five years.

You see what makes this not just a dramatic claim in terms of sexual politics but a linguistically very revealing example?

There's a guy with brown hair who has worked as a checkout person at a store I go to regularly.  He's been there for about five years.  Of the 20 or so checkout persons at the store, all of the others except one are female, mostly between 18 and 25.

Over the course of the last year or so, I noticed that this fellow became increasingly girllike.  Finally, last week when I went to the store, there was a new checkout girl with straight, long blonde hair.  It turned out that I was next in line to go to her counter.  She was wearing a name tag that said "Karen".  I really didn't know this person, but when she spoke to me I realized it was that guy, though his / her (–> their) voice was much higher, and manner even more feminine than before, and he / she (–> they) was (–> were) wearing a skirt.  I really didn't know what to do or say.  My overall reaction was to accept her as a new hire.

I want to dedicate a book to a female editor and decided to refer to her in French as "éditeur extraordinaire",  but then had second thoughts because I was afraid I might have the gender wrong.  On the other hand, I was concerned that "éditrice" might have the same sort of connotations as "poetess" or "authoress" in English.   So I asked a number of French friends and American colleagues with native French fluency who have lived in France for many years what they thought it should be.  Here are the results: