Dale Spender examines the relationship between language, thought and reality in her book. She writes that in order for the women of today to make their own reality, they must understand how the creation of this world is accomplished. According to Spender, the way to achieve this is by "exploring the relationship between language and reality."
Spender writes that males, the "dominant" group, have "constructed sexism and developed a language trap in their own interest." This makes the male view of reality much more dominant than the female view because men have made the symbols and meanings of their world out of their reality, and women are forced to live with these meanings.
Spender also writes that women have played "little or no part" in the construction of the language and reality of the world. She writes that the exclusion of women goes back to early times in the history of the world.
Spender also believes that there is sexism in language, and although circumstantial, it does enhance the position of males. Spender believes that "males have encoded sexism into the language to consolidate their claims of male supremacy." She uses such examples as the Hebrew language, and the fact that there is no word for "goddess," and the use the language's use of the word "man" to describe both men and women, thus being humankind (Stone 1977:7).
Spender also gives another example of an early writer named
Thomas Wilson, who said that it was "more natural to place
man before woman...because males come first in the natural order."
The rest of the chapter deals primarily with the use of "he/man"
language, and what way it is grammatically and sexually correct.
As mentioned before, on of Spender's biggest arguments in this piece is the use of "he/man" language in today's society. Spender does give good examples of this usage, but the examples are gives from 1533 with Thomas Wilson, 1646 with Joshua Poole, and 1746 with John Kirkby. Not many of us were alive during these time periods. It has been well documented that during the Middle-Ages and the Renaissance that sexism was prevalent, and that men were to work and run things while women were to stay in their homes. That kind of unwritten rule is totally different from today. In today's world, women can do anything that men are capable of doing.
Certain grammarians have also looked at the issue of "he/man" language. According to Spender, they believe that when the sex of the person being spoken about is not known, the pronoun "he" should be used. Spender believes that "they" should be used, because she believes that when "he" is used, it makes the males visible while making females invisible (Spender 149).
In 1850, the Act of Parliament was passed" which legally insisted that 'he' stood for 'she'." Spender believes that this Act was passed primarily in order to "promote the primacy of the male as a category." There was no women in Parliament to vote against this Act being passed at the time, so it was passed, and according to Spender, it constructed a male reality for the world that females had to adhere to.
Spender argues that when the term "man" is used to reflect humankind in general, people think "male" instead of "humankind," which is another way of making the female gender invisible. She includes a quote from Elaine Morgan, in which she says that after hearing "man" used in this way, the person who hears it forms a "mental image" in their head of what "man" looks like. Morgan goes on to write that that image is almost always one of a male, not a female (1972: 2-3). Spender also gives another example of Alleen Pace Nilsen, who did a study with small children. Nielsen discovered that when children heard the term "man" used in a sentence, they also pictured a male in their minds.
Spender brings to the fold one final argument give by Shiela
Rowbotham. She is quote as writing "...she represents
a woman but he is mankind. If she enters mankind
she loses herself to he." Rowbotham and Spender
both believe that because of this, women lose their roles in society
because they are considered to go along with the rest of mankind,
not womankind.
© J Mehner, Winona (MN) State University, 30 January 1997. This document may be freely distributed for educational use as long as this notice of its authorship accompanies its distribution.
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