language protector
Jul. 8th, 2009 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSo we're up to the Fangorn Forest chapter in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kate_nepveu's re-reading of The Lord of the Rings.
I don't have tremendous sympathy to the complaint that Tolkien marks the Ents as "default male" by calling the two sexes Ents and Entwives. (Treebeard's built-in sexism - he seems more baffled by the Entwives' behavior than by Saruman's - is, I suspect, far more his than his creator's.) Or for calling the humans-as-we-know-em Men. Sure, it's annoying, especially to younger women readers half a century later, but it is the way the language was used in his time. As well criticize the Declaration of Independence for its Quaint Ufe of capital Letters. The rules of non-sexist language as they now exist were still being codified when Tolkien died.
And given that he lacked our superior enlightenment [this has been an ironical use of the Chronological Fallacy, thank you], I'd say Tolkien deserves more than a modicum of credit for being aware enough of the problems and paradoxes here to have that default assumption turn around and bite the Lord of the Nazgul on the neck. "But no living man am I."
This is of course a variant of the whoops-they-found-a-loophole mythological narrative function closely following Macduff's "not of woman born," but found in other forms all the way back to Baldur and the mistletoe or Achilles and his heel. This is the only time I know of that it's the sex-linked/non-sex-linked meanings of the word "man" that are being played with, though one commenter remembered one from Hindu mythology.
So I give Tolkien credit for being enlightened, by our standards, compared to the practices of his day. But his day is not ours. When another commenter provided a link to an article "Against the Theory of Sexist Language", I wrote this:
Thank you for passing on that truly inane essay. It's good to have confirmation of how bankrupt those arguments are.
While I do not think we should criticize persons of the past for speaking in the language of their time, I also think that language changes. The point of the essay seems to be that language is what people say it is, and in case the author hasn't noticed, more and more people are saying that default male is not the way they're going to use the language. The result: the language has changed. That train has left the station. The "language police" who criticize outdated sexist language (they can't fine you for it or put you in jail, so calling them "police" is hyperbole to begin with) are no different from the "grammar police" who criticize split infinitives or whatever, and with considerably more justification.
I was really, really put off by the opening quote. There's nothing wrong with being a "chair" (it's a perfectly good metonym) if you don't like "chairperson" or if you don't want to vary among "chairman" or "chairwoman" depending on who's there. As for Henry Higgins, there is nothing whatever in nonsexist language rules to prevent him from distinguishing men and women - and, by the way, proving himself a clueless sexist pig with every word he speaks; that's the WHOLE POINT of the song.
kate_nepveu's re-reading of The Lord of the Rings.I don't have tremendous sympathy to the complaint that Tolkien marks the Ents as "default male" by calling the two sexes Ents and Entwives. (Treebeard's built-in sexism - he seems more baffled by the Entwives' behavior than by Saruman's - is, I suspect, far more his than his creator's.) Or for calling the humans-as-we-know-em Men. Sure, it's annoying, especially to younger women readers half a century later, but it is the way the language was used in his time. As well criticize the Declaration of Independence for its Quaint Ufe of capital Letters. The rules of non-sexist language as they now exist were still being codified when Tolkien died.
And given that he lacked our superior enlightenment [this has been an ironical use of the Chronological Fallacy, thank you], I'd say Tolkien deserves more than a modicum of credit for being aware enough of the problems and paradoxes here to have that default assumption turn around and bite the Lord of the Nazgul on the neck. "But no living man am I."
This is of course a variant of the whoops-they-found-a-loophole mythological narrative function closely following Macduff's "not of woman born," but found in other forms all the way back to Baldur and the mistletoe or Achilles and his heel. This is the only time I know of that it's the sex-linked/non-sex-linked meanings of the word "man" that are being played with, though one commenter remembered one from Hindu mythology.
So I give Tolkien credit for being enlightened, by our standards, compared to the practices of his day. But his day is not ours. When another commenter provided a link to an article "Against the Theory of Sexist Language", I wrote this:
Thank you for passing on that truly inane essay. It's good to have confirmation of how bankrupt those arguments are.
While I do not think we should criticize persons of the past for speaking in the language of their time, I also think that language changes. The point of the essay seems to be that language is what people say it is, and in case the author hasn't noticed, more and more people are saying that default male is not the way they're going to use the language. The result: the language has changed. That train has left the station. The "language police" who criticize outdated sexist language (they can't fine you for it or put you in jail, so calling them "police" is hyperbole to begin with) are no different from the "grammar police" who criticize split infinitives or whatever, and with considerably more justification.
I was really, really put off by the opening quote. There's nothing wrong with being a "chair" (it's a perfectly good metonym) if you don't like "chairperson" or if you don't want to vary among "chairman" or "chairwoman" depending on who's there. As for Henry Higgins, there is nothing whatever in nonsexist language rules to prevent him from distinguishing men and women - and, by the way, proving himself a clueless sexist pig with every word he speaks; that's the WHOLE POINT of the song.
