Inclusive language is highly desirable, because its absence can further various forms of discrimination and create false narratives about what is normal in some society. It can erase from conversations and render invisible entire groups of people, entire lifestyles, even entire cultures.
For example, menstrual products are better advertised to “people who menstruate” rather than “women.” Young girls, trans men, and non-binary AFAB people also may need these products. Meanwhile, many women do not need them for various reasons.
If a dietician wants to offer nutrition advice to “people who are planning a pregnancy,” they shouldn’t instead say that this advice is aimed at “reproductive-age women.” Firstly, some AFAB people who choose to have biological children do not identify as women (some non-binary AFAB people and trans men have children). Secondly, most “reproductive-age women” are not planning a pregnancy at any given time: maybe they want to remain childfree, maybe they already have kids and don’t want more, maybe they consider having a pregnancy in several years but not now. “Reproductive-age women” simply refers to people who identify as female and fall within a specified age range. It is wrong to imply that all of these people should nourish their bodies so as to better prepare for an upcoming pregnancy. That would have certain nasty connotations from the not so good old days when women were expected to be barefoot and pregnant at all times.
If a politician wants their election campaign to appeal to “suburban middle-class women,” then they shouldn’t interchangeably call these people “housewives” or “soccer moms” or “white women.” After all, among “suburban middle-class women” there are plenty of people who have full-time jobs, don’t have children, or aren’t white. Of course, a politician is also free to appeal to “mothers” or “housewives” instead, but either way they have to keep their chosen terminology straight and abstain from sexist assumptions that “mothers” equals “housewives” or that “housewives” equals “mothers” (there are mothers with full-time jobs and housewives without kids).
The words people choose to use create narratives about what is normal, how people ought to live, who they should be. In our bigoted society these narratives commonly sound rather cisnormative, sexist, racist, ableist, and xenophobic.
Above I mentioned multiple examples of what I consider non-inclusive and inclusive word choices. Sometimes using the umbrella term is better (“people who menstruate” and not “women who menstruate”); sometimes however it is better to use a more precise or narrow term (“people who are planning a pregnancy” and not “women”), because the wider term encompasses groups of people who shouldn’t be relevant in some context.
Whenever I state that the inclusive or more precise option is preferable, somebody will always complain that I am erasing some dominant group. According to them, when I refer to “people who menstruate” and “pregnant people” rather than “women” and “pregnant women,” I erase women. When I refuse to equate “middle-class women” with “mothers,” I somehow erase middle-class women who have children. I have even gotten complaints from mothers who are upset about the fact that in some generic conversation about parenting I use the word “parents” rather than “mothers” thus erasing their unique experience of being mothers as opposed to being just parents. Oddly enough, my refusal to equate “men” with “fathers” still hasn’t been criticized to this date. I guess that’s sexism—men are allowed to be childfree but every woman has to have children.
In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hypernym. Other names for hypernym include “umbrella term” and “blanket term.” For example, pigeon, crow, eagle and seagull are all hyponyms of bird (their hypernym); which, in turn, is a hyponym of animal. If I refer to “birds,” then I am also including pigeons in the conversation. If I refer to “pigeons,” then I am excluding from the conversation other birds like crows, eagles, and seagulls.
Women are people. “Women” is the hyponym and “people” is the hypernym (aka umbrella term). When I say “pregnant people” or “people who menstruate” or “people who need an abortion” or “people who have suffered from domestic violence,” I do include women within these groups of people. I am not erasing women. Instead I include also girls, non-binary people, trans people, and men.
People who are used to having a dominant position in some context tend to imagine that the whole world revolves around them. They also tend to dislike it whenever these assumptions are challenged. The world is cisnormative. Many cis people enjoy their cis privilege and imagine that trans inclusive word choices somehow discriminate cis people.
Just like some decades ago sexist men imagined that gender equality discriminates men who lose their privileged positions. Just like racists imagined that non-segregated schools and restrooms discriminate white people. When it comes to bigotry, nothing really changes; we have to deal with the same bigoted attitudes and sense of entitlement from the privileged side again and again.
And as always, their arguments don’t even make sense. Choosing an umbrella term like “people” does not erase all those people who are cis, straight, white, and otherwise privileged within some context.
Another hyponym/hypernym issue that gets extensively discussed is “black lives matter” vs “all lives matter”.
One could argue that Black people are not the exclusive victims of police violence, and that the latter phrasing is more inclusive of other races (White or otherwise!). But then major point of contention is whether police violence primarily affects Black people, and “all lives matter” seems to deny that race is an important factor, or deny that police violence is an important factor. On the other hand, when discussing “people who menstruate” vs “women”, I don’t think anyone who adopts the former phrasing is trying to deny that gender is an important factor. I’m sure there’s more to say on this subject, that’s just my initial analysis.
Siggy @#1
Well, J.K. Rowling started her long diatribe against trans people after tweeting that saying “people who menstruate” while discussing menstrual products is inappropriate and the word “women” ought to be used instead.
Of course, as far as I know, no trans person has ever argued against the fact that, statistically, most people who menstruate identify as women, because there are more cis people than trans people.
I perceive the case of “black lives matter” as inherently different.
The phrase “black lives matter” is meant to remind that due to racism people of color are disproportionately more likely to get killed by police officers; this phrase is also meant to encourage everybody to oppose racism. This phrase was never intended to suggest that non black lives matter less. Of course, all people’s lives matter, so technically the phrase “all lives matter” is factually correct, but in this context it totally misses the point that some people are more likely to get abused due to the visual appearance of their bodies.
This, incidentally, happens in all kinds of contexts. For example, when a doctor says that people ought to pay more attention to cancer, they aren’t simultaneously implying that other diseases do not matter. Or when an activist says that human trafficking matters, they aren’t implying that every other instance of human rights abuses doesn’t matter.
The fact that some people oppose the phrase “black lives matter” by intentionally misinterpreting it in its context suggests that they probably have some racist sentiments and they are just looking for ways how to argue against everything done by activists who want racial equality.
I believe that nobody should be killed by police officers except in the most extreme of circumstances, so I do believe that all lives matter in this context. Saying that fewer black people should be killed seems to me to be missing the bigger picture. It should not be acceptable that the police can act as executioners to anyone. You say it totally misses the point about some people are more likely to be abused in this way, but that would not be the case if this form of abuse was totally unacceptable.
In this, I disagree with Siggy who says that ‘“all lives matter” seems to … deny that police violence is an important factor’. I say that “all lives matter” underlines that police violence is the problem.
I do recognize that black lives matter is about more than this context however, so I have no opposition to it.
procrastinatorordinaire @#3
Of course. I agree.
I am not American and I do not follow American politics that closely, so I might be mistaken, but are you really sure that the message was “fewer black people should be killed”? It would make more sense if activists wanted no black people killed maybe except for the most extreme circumstances where killing a person is absolutely unavoidable. Also, when an activist states that “black people shouldn’t get killed,” they in no way imply that they are OK with white people getting killed in the same circumstances. Of course, cops shouldn’t kill any random people.
My kid recently got a written reprimand from school. It was addressed solely to me, despite the fact that the kid has
a) father as well
b) who shares custody with me
c) is living in the same place as me
d) even married to me
Lucky kid that I was way more upset about that than the fact she misbehaved
So this cuts both ways: While it is often preferably to use the more general term “parents” or even “custodians” (teaching in middle school you either become sensitive to those issues quickly or an asshole), in some contexts it is more precise to use mothers (for example when talking about the judgement especially mothers face from all sides). Language offers us many possibilities to carefully choose and define our terms.
I also much prefer “people who menstruate”, following the old idea that feminism is the radical notion that women are people. what I absolutely abhorred was the short lived term “menstruators”. It’s not like it’s a hobby of mine.
Giliell @#5
Thanks for pointing this out. I totally failed to realize about this one.
I agree.
@4 Hi Andreas, I am not American either. I live in the UK where the police do not shoot people as a rule. Despite the rise in terrorist incidents over the past few years the number of people shot by the police each year is in single figures. 3 people were fatally shot by the police last year from 13 incidents where weapons were discharged.
What I was arguing is that in the US the problem is not only a question of disproportion based on race. The US police shoot far too many people every year.
procrastinatorordinaire:
No, it does not. US policing has its roots in slave-catching (among other things). The training of police officers conditions them to see black people as a threat. (This is true even for black officers.) Policing has been used in ways that were designed to create a public perception that associated black people with crime. That’s how you get situations where when the police kill a black person with what looks to me as malice and sadism so many white people respond with ‘but he broke (some minor) law’.
Andreas Avester, Re: the claimed erasure of women: Those who object to gender-inclusive language in some realms where women are over-represented say that by being gender-inclusive we are disguising the misogyny that underlies social attitudes to the issue in question – that by using ‘people who menstruate’ we fail to acknowledge that social attitudes to menstruation are rooted in misogyny, and that menstruation is used to exclude or oppress or discriminate against women. (The discrimination gets a lot worse wrt pregnancy and childbirth.) However, the same people have no problem talking about how teachers’ income is too low relative to the amount of training required of teachers or the amount of work expected of them (including ‘off-the-clock’ work) because the majority of teachers are women and teaching is perceived as a feminine occupation without needing a female-specific word for ‘teacher’.
But their objection erases those men (or people who identify as men) who actually want to be parents involved with their children, as well as erasing those women (or people who identify as women) who don’t want to be parents.
Why do they even say “just parents”? Maybe we need to dig deeper, here.
This is one of those USA-ian language differences — while it’s technically correct that someone other than a parent can have custody, such a person would be called a guardian, not a custodian (and “custodian” would make USA-ians think of a janitor).
Owlmirror @#10
That conversation happened some years ago and in Latvian, so I must rely on my memory and also translate, but here’s approximately what happened.
There was an online article about gender-neutral parenting, basically not forcing gender roles upon kids and letting them explore what they like on their own. The author also tried to choose inclusive and gender-neutral words in the article itself. In the comment section there appeared a very dissatisfied mother. Her statements: “A child needs a mother and a father, each have a very different role in the family and they also must serve as role models so that a child can learn what a healthy family looks like. You cannot replace a mother and a father with “parent #1” and “parent #2,” thus it is wrong to use a word “parent” in contexts where “mother” or “father” would be appropriate, because a mother cannot fulfill the father’s role and vice versa. (She had all kinds of ideas about what mothers and fathers must do, for example, mothers provide love and dinners, fathers provide a sense of security and order and so on.) Moreover, you cannot have a healthy family with homosexual or queer parents, because a child needs a mother and a father not just two parents.”
I don’t think there’s much room for digging deeper, because this is just some plain old bigotry and sexism.