Modifying Women Politicians
I try to be relatively moderate in what I choose to lambaste as sexism in the media.
Before you snort (or after you finish cleaning the coffee from the screen), it’s true.
There are ugly, glaring examples, but most sexism (as well as racism, etc - general status quoism) is so commonsense as to be unnoticeable. I, along with everyone else, miss the vast majority of it.
I think it’s important to point out the commonsense understandings when we find them, however, because they’re the most concrete ways in which ideologies are reinforced.
For instance, this Bob Herbert’s opinion piece in the NYT today on Sarah Palin has this quote:
Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.
A completely valid assessment - I can imagine few people less qualified - but the formulation is intriguing. This formulation, with only two words removed, has the exact same meaning:
Ms. Palin may be perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.
The words I removed are, of course, ‘a‘ and ‘woman‘.
Given the fact that the sentence gives her title as Ms. and refers to her as ‘her’ and ’she’ - it’s completely unnecessary to include those two words.
Imagine the same sentence written about a man politician:
Mr. Smith may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent man (however troubling his views on evolution and global warming may be), but he is not ready to be vice president.
It’s not wrong, but it feels overwritten. We already know Mr Smith is a man, and there’s a certain… condescension (perhaps the wrong word) to over-modifying him. It’s the same way we say, “He’s a really nice guy, but…”
Horrifically, I know what this is called: overlexification. It’s the use of unnecessary groupings of synonyms and points to preoccupations, often societal and ideological.
I’m not suggesting that Bob Herbert is a raging misogynist; I don’t think he is. The original sentence as written doesn’t feel awkward.
But that’s precisely because women politicians are still considered to be outside the norm. The language we use to describe them more or less subconsciously screams, ‘THAT IS A WOMAN!’
It’s expressed in other ways as well. Because ‘female’ and ‘male’ are social constructs rather than inherent traits, I make an effort to use the term ‘women politicians’ when writing about them.
But ‘man politician’, as I’ve written above, just sounds utterly weird, doesn’t it? The standard is man, so we have to modify the term to apply it to a woman.
Anyway, hope you didn’t damage the computer with your spit-take; you should really be more careful.
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