Language often speaks for itself. You hear the words ‘Doctor’ and ‘Professor’, and for most, those terms conjure the image of a man, due to the traditional lack of women in those fields. On the other hand, you hear the terms ‘Nurse’ and ‘Teacher’, and most assume it’s a woman. The woman is not a ‘doctor’ or ‘professor’ because those roles are seen as complex, intellectual and related to authority. The man is not a ‘nurse’ or a ‘teacher’, because those roles are seen as nurturing, caring, requiring patience and compassion. We undeniably live far from equal values, excluding men from roles that seem as too ‘feminine’, and women from roles that are seen as too ‘masculine’. Our language has forever been a reflection of these toxic concepts of femininity and masculinity. For instance, manslaughter, manpower and chairman are all words integrated in our vocabulary. It’s interesting to take a second to realise how ingrained sexism can be.
Orders such as husband and wife, brother and sister, king and queen often seem natural to use. In most UK secondary schools, we are expected to call teachers that are female, no matter their age, ‘Miss’, and male teachers ‘Sir’. Those aren’t equivalent terms. Is that really the lesson we want to drill into the youth?
Now we get to “Mansplaining”, finally, women have a term that works in their favour - it comes as no surprise then women are partial to using the term, sometimes purely to aggravate men. Feminists have been arguing against gendered terms for generations but with “mansplaining” women finally have a word that works for them. However, as feminists, we must not be hypocrites - we have to lead by example, and become the bigger person. We must move on from using gendered terms altogether.
Written by Brishti and Noah
Media by Ben Hyland
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