You know how you hear a lot about ‘global warming’, ‘forest clearing’, ‘habitat destruction’, ‘over fishing’ of the oceans and waterways, the list goes on…
Well in among all of this gloom and doom is a bit of good news. According to media reports, women are not participating in these environmental atrocities. Apparently it’s all the fault of ‘mankind’, or that’s what the media imply when they say “mankind have destroyed the…”
That’s right! Since the media are using the gender typical term, ‘mankind’, instead of humanity, it can be argued that women are freed from responsibility for all disasters, environmental catastrophes, forest fires… everything.
Are you thinking “What is this rant?!?”? I shall explain.
In the 1970s there was a world wide movement called Feminism. Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities, and equal rights for women. It is a movement advocating social change to create a political, social and ethical environment where women are not represented or perceived as ‘lacking’ anything for not being male.
(Every time I write “lack” I think of Freud who wrote many great texts yet had the curious belief that because a woman has a vagina and not a penis she must have some kind of ‘lack’. Freud would have been better served to apply rigorous science, as opposed to spatial propaganda to his studies. An inward space, as in the case of the vagina, is no different to the cylindrical interior of the outward space, as in the case of the penis.
Leaving the ghost of long-dead psycho-analyst to ponder his own ‘lack’…)
There were many different ways in which societies attempted to achieve the social changes associated with feminism. One of them was the use of non-gender specific language. This means that all words that had “man” or “men” as part of the word should have been replaced by more inclusive words like ‘people’ and ‘officer’.
As this quote demonstrates the use of gendered-language, such has mankind, excludes women from being represented in the communication. Gender-neutral Language Matters
In 1972... some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like "Social Man'', "Industrial Man'', and "Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like "Society'', "Industrial Life'', and "Political Behaviour''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes’ use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females.... The authors concluded, "This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female" ([Miller et al. 1980, pages 19-20], quoted by Spertus) (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/style/gender.html).
If one applies the points made in this quote, it becomes obvious that whenever ‘mankind’ is used by news media – and it’s a LOT – women are not included and, therefore, not involved… and therefore not responsible either.
