Generic Masculine Language, Androcentrism, and Exclusionary Thinking

I was interested in learning about generic masculine language and exploring theories about how the use of androcentric language influences thought. For example, in my writing, I am never sure about which personal pronoun to use when I want to refer to an abstract, non-specific individual, whether this person is “he,” “she,” “he or she,” “s/he,” or “they.” The traditionally correct choice is “he,” but it chooses a gender for a generic, non-gender-specific person. “They” is not gender-specific, however, it is third-person plural, and therefore grammatically incorrect for a single person. What influence does an androcentric language—masculine in its generic form—have on people’s thoughts, and does this influence make language sexist or otherwise exclusionary to groups of people? These are the questions that sent my research in this direction.

The first article I found directly addresses “he” as the correct generic pronoun. John Gastil’s “Generic Pronouns and Sexist Language: The Oxymoronic Character of Masculine Generics,” published in Volume 23 of Sex Roles in 1990, asks whether “the generic he possesses a male bias” or “evoke[s] images in the reader’s mind any different than from those brought to the mind by he/she or they” (Gastil, p. 630). Gastil considers research from the previous decades that ended in different conclusions. “A substantial body of research,” he argues, “supports the hypothesis that the generic he possesses a male bias” (p. 630). However, others have acknowledged the “sexist origins of the generic he” while arguing that it does not perpetuate sexism in the present day. Gastil invokes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that “our grammar shapes our thought” (p. 630). If that is the case, then a language that assumes a person to be male creates the expectation that a person is male. Whether or not the generic he evokes masculinity in the reader’s mind is therefore significant.

Gastil designs a study that redoes, to a certain extent, an inconclusive study whose results were “somewhat random” (p. 633). The premise is simple: participants read twelve sentences, six of which have generic pronouns, and describe what images come to mind. In Gastil’s study, the participants are not aware that gendered pronouns and subsequent visualizations are the point, so any images that come from sentences with these pronouns cannot be forced (p. 633). The results showed that “pronoun effects were highly significant” (p. 635). As Gastil expected, for both men and women, “he produces mostly male images with a few mixed images, scant female images, and few images of themselves,” which is quite ineffective for a supposedly non-gender-specific, generic word (p. 639). He/she functioned as a more generic pronoun, though for men still evoked masculinity; they also worked as a generic pronoun, and better than he/she for men (p. 639). Gastil concludes that “the generic he appears to bias the reader toward imagining male referents, clearly suggesting that even when read in passing, the generic he contains a male bias” (p. 639). Whether sexist thought is reinforced is “eminently plausible,” though conclusions on the effects on language on thought and behavior are more theoretical (p. 639).

The next article that interested me in this subject I found in a reader entitled Placing Women’s Studies edited by Roger Adkins et al. “Have we got a Theory for you! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice’” was written by Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman and was published in 1983. The authors’ preoccupation with the effect of language on the reader is immediately apparent in the prologue, which is in Spanish, and to be read “In a Hispana voice” (Lugones & Spelman, p. 25). The point of this is to expand upon the exclusionary “male account of the world” (p. 25). The generic he certainly excludes women. However, if English is someone’s second language, as the Hispana points out, then “when we talk to you, we use your language: the language of your experience and of your theories” (p. 28). Androcentric English excludes women and cannot express their experience; however, the fact that the discourse is in English, to begin with, allows the Hispana scholar only to “succeed in communicating our experience of exclusion.” In other words, even a feminist advocating a new generic pronoun is speaking from a position of power if she is white and a native speaker of English. She is in no position to prescribe what language people should be using, for it will ultimately exclude someone else.

The article continues “unproblematically in Vicky & Maria’s voice,” arguing that a dialogue between theorist and subject may lead to a more honest understanding “of another woman’s experience,” especially if the “insider/outsider” relationship is acknowledged (p. 29). Theories need to be more dynamic, not just “true or false” (p. 30). Theories can instead be described as “useless, arrogant, disrespectful, ignorant, ethnocentric, imperialistic” (p. 30). The problem is not simply misunderstanding someone’s life, it is that accounts of those lives “plainly have nothing to do with illuminating those lives for the benefit of those living them” (p. 30). The form of the essay worked very well in explicating the respectful and friendly way a theorist should seek to understand his/her subject. It was written by two women who took great and compassionate lengths to understand and include the perspective of the other, illustrating that “the learning of the text is to be done out of friendship” (p. 34). You should not understand someone in your language; you should also include the language of whoever you are trying to understand and how he/she understands him/herself.

The third article I found on this topic was written by Peter Hegarty and Carmen Buechel and is entitled “Androcentric Reporting of Gender Differences in APA Journals:1965–2004.” “Androcentrism” is defined usefully and simply as “the implicit conflation of maleness with humanity and the consequent attribution of gender differences to females, often to women’s disadvantage” (Buechel & Hegarty, p. 377). The article describes a study of work published in the four American Psychological Association journals, looking for “androcentric pronouns, explanations, and tables and graphs” that conflate “males with the norm” (p. 377). The second bias that results is that gender difference in communication styles is attributed “to women’s nature more than to men’s nature” (p. 378). Considerations about “men” and “people” are more similar than those about “women” and “people” (p. 378). The question is whether these same assumptions are made by psychologists, if androcentric thinking affects these scientists, supposedly “immune to cultural biases such as androcentrism,” in the same way it does the general public (p. 379).

The authors systematically surveyed writing from the forty years and looked at female versus male authorship and participation in the studies. Female authors went from underrepresented in the first to decades to equally represented by the end of the study; female participants went from underrepresented to overrepresented (p. 381). Androcentric pronoun use was only found in 30 (7.7%) of the 388 examined more closely (p. 381). What was more dramatic was the use of “visuospatial displays of gender differences,” which were found in 282 (72.7%) of the 388 articles (p. 382). Additionally, “explanations of gender differences focus on women more than on men, and visuospatial displays position men first and women second” (p. 383). Men were consistently thought of first, except about parenting, with gender differences assigned to women. The biases of the general public indeed seem to apply to psychologists, even if the generic he is not used.

These three articles have shown me that overcoming gender bias and androcentric language is not simple. It is important to reevaluate how I use language, especially when describing someone else’s experience. Most essential of all, regarding the article by Lugones & Spelman, it is important to be in dialogue with whoever you are theorizing about, understanding how he/she understands him/herself. I should never be convinced I have risen above androcentric language, or that my thoughts and representations of those thoughts do not exclude someone else.

References

Beuchel, C., Hegarty, P. (2006). Androcentric reporting of gender differences in APA journals: 1965-2004. Review of General Psychology, 10 (4), 377-389.

Gastil, J. (1990). Generic pronouns and sexist language: The oxymoronic character of masculine generics. Sex Roles, 23 (11/12), 629-643. Retrieved from http://www.apastyle.org/manual/related/hegarty-and-buechel.pdfhttp://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Gastil_1990.pdf

Lugones, M.C., Spelman, E.V. (1983). Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism and the demand for ‘The Woman’s Voice.’ In R. Adkins, S. Kowalski, J. Rasikin, & K. Sullivan (Eds.), Placing Women’s Studies (pp. 25-34). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.