Quotes & Sayings About Sexist Language

Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas. — Toni Morrison

Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision. — Adrienne Rich

(To be read in context!!!) People who are "cognitively busy" are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but if course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. — Daniel Kahneman

Not only is the actual word "hysteria" gendered - it once referred to an exclusively female disease, a mental illness thought to be caused by a malfunctioning uterus - there is a very long history of critics using accusations or innuendo about women's mental health or emotional stability in order to shut down their political voices. — Sady Doyle

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. — Daniel Kahneman

Sexist language promotes and maintains attitudes that stereotype people according to gender while assuming that the male is the norm - the significant gender. Nonsexist language treats both sexes equally and either does not refer to a person's sex when it is irrelevant or refers to men and women and to girls and boys in symmetrical ways. — Rosalie Maggio

To every guy who tries to say that we have already achieved equality for the sexes, if this were true, you wouldn't be told to "man up", "be a man", "stop being a p*#%y", "harden the fuck up", "toughen up", "boys don't cry", "don't be such a girl", "stop being a wimp". As long as this type of language still exists in our society, then gender equality, my friends, has in fact not been achieved after all. — Miya Yamanouchi

Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it. — Neil Postman

Ms. Lessing points to a current dogma: political correctness. "It's a continuation of the old Communist Party. It is! The same words, the same attitudes ... 'the Communist Party has made a decision and this is the line."
At first, she says, political correctness had a good beginning; she remembers saying that the language that we use is sexist, racist and so on. But then, "that became a dogma. Because we love a dogma,you know, we really do. We can never just let things develop easily from an idea, it seems to me there's always a group of fanatics who grasp it and make it a dogma. — Doris Lessing

Whether consciously or not, sexist God language undermines the human equality of women made in the divine image and likeness. — Elizabeth A. Johnson

Sexists refer to every female political opinion as "hysterical," just like they refer to every word a woman says when she opens her mouth as "shouting," and for the same reasons - not because the women are actually being loud or unreasonable, but because women are not supposed to have opinions or voices at all. — Sady Doyle