re: #106 Simply Sarah

You’re facing an entire language where the word ‘Pussy’ is an insult, and ‘wimp’, too. One is a female-biased insult, the other is a male-biased insult. Both only really apply to men.

The problem is not with the language. The language reflects the problem. Fixing the problem is not a matter of changing the language.

One way this can be seen is the ugly joy that racists show in switching terms when they’re not allowed. Instead of saying “porch monkey”— not sure if that’s banned here or not— they say ‘porchmanque’. If you stop them saying that, they’ll say ‘balcony orangutang’, or something else. They love their racist terms, but it’s not like you’re going to run out of people inventing them.

The problem is not that our language is coded for gender, it’s how it became coded for gender.