#gender-specific language

A Mother Teaches Her Daughter About God

The Washington Post yesterday offered a fascinating report of a young mother’s attempt to introduce her four-year old daughter to the notion of god, even though she herself had given it up.  She knew that the “notion” of god was part of the culture her daughter was being raised in and wanted to help her to understand the idea with a broader based viewpoint than she had experienced during her…

The most frustrating thing for me is when I start to learn a language and then I find out that their whole language is based around the idea of male and female (e.g. Thai, Hindi, Arabic), so I would essentially have to pick which one I want to use when I speak.

I couldn’t imagine how irritating that would be to grow up speaking those languages and then realizing that you’re non-binary. Even for binary trans people, you and everyone around you would have to change all of your language in order to accommodate your transition, so it’s probably way less likely that your gender is respected. But I’m just guessing.

During her study, Deborah James concluded that some lexemes that were once gender-specific are being used as gender-neutral.

Women play a dominant role in this phenomenon

The lexeme ‘douche-bag’ has undergone a semantic shift from carrying connotations associated with females to those associated with males.

It was found that out of the 15 studied lexemes the three vocatives rated to be most offensive- bitch, hag and slut- are aimed at women.

The three least offensive- loser, geek, pip-squeak- are mainly used to address males. 

Females are just as likely to use three of the most offensive lexemes as males are.

It was concluded that women do not oppose the use of female-linked derogatory language indicating that they accept the female identity constructed by males in a male-dominant society