On Sexist Language

You can’t win for losing.

When I write my columns, I’m ordinarily pretty sensitive to sexist language.

But I’m forced to use language.

When I refer to the CEO as “he” and the secretary as “she,” my readers are offended: “How dare you assign your fictional carriers their stereotypical roles!  Shame on you!”

So I try something else.

I refer to the CEO as “she” and the secretary as “he” in some later column, but my readers are offended: “I was confused about the reference to the CEO as ‘she’ and the secretary as ‘he.’ I know you’re just being politically correct and all that, but I really stopped and scratched my head to figure out what was going on. Do you have to be so sensitive?”

Sometimes, I mix stuff up: I make the CEO male in the first paragraph, and the judge female in the second, and I alternate through to the end. (You’ll be shocked to hear that readers complain; the column is confusing.)

Occasionally, I start a column by explaining what I’m doing: “I’m making the first speaker uniformly feminine and the second speaker uniformly masculine, just for the sake of variety.”

I got blasted for that a while back. (The column is here. On reflection, I realize that I could (and probably should) have written this entirely using gender-neutral pronouns — the “partner,” the “associate,” and so on — but how much thought do you think I give to these things? Writing for ATL ain’t my day job, you know.) Readers wrote in to complain: “First you make all the people in positions of authority women. And then you have all of those women not say directly what they want. It’s an insult to all women! Women speak just as clearly as men do! Why don’t you write columns insulting blacks and Hispanics?”

You readers are a tough bunch.

(Years ago, a federal judge had certified a nationwide class of plaintiffs. West Virginia plaintiffs’ lawyers later sought to certify a West Virginia statewide class. I argued in the West Virginia state court, among other things, that this would be confusing: “What will class members think when they first get notices asking if they want to opt out of a nationwide class, and later get notices asking if they want to opt out of a smaller, statewide class? Class notices are confusing enough without adding that layer of complexity.”

After the argument, my local counsel criticized me: “You really shouldn’t have argued that West Virginians are stupid.”

“Huh?”

“That bit about West Virginians being stupid — you know, that they can’t understand class notices.”

“But… but… but…”

I can tell you that I certainly wasn’t thinking about the intelligence of West Virginians when I crafted my argument. But West Virginians are obviously sensitive to what people say about their intelligence. ‘nuf said.)

Anyway, I won’t use the construction “s/he,” because that’s an abomination. I do generally strive for gender neutrality, but sometimes that’s impossible. I won’t use “they” when I mean “he” or “she,” because the fact that a word is singular matters more to me than political correctness. And, although I’m pretty sensitive to these things, I’ll screw up again in the future, because I’m human (and for which I apologize in advance).

But if you’re writing in a business setting, be very careful about gender-neutrality. Several women, in response to my column, did complain about having been included in emails addressed to “Gentlemen,” and still remembered that affront years later. And even the most innocuous reference to a judge as “he” (I clerked for a female judge, decades ago), or a Congressman (instead of a Member of Congress), for example, can set you back with your reader — or your boss, or your client.

I’ve made that mistake for you.

You should not.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now responsible for litigation and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].