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The Elements of Nonsexist Usage: A Guide to Inclusive Spoken and Written English

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If, like me, you've ever tried to write a story or article in a gender neutral way, you know how difficult that is. A lot of words used in our language today are clearly male-specific, yet in meaning have come to include women as well as men. Why are we using words in our communication that are inaccurate? How can we make sure the message we convey is the one we meant to send?

This short book gives insight into why language has become so male-centered. It uses a few pages to make the reader (more) aware of this bias in words by role-reversal. The bulk of the book is filled with techniques on how to correct sentences that use gender-specific words when talking about gender-neutral things. Each technique is illustrated by at least a few examples. There is a small glossary of alternative terms, and an index, at the end.

I bought this book at a used bookstore. There were two on the topic, one thick book and this pocket guide. I picked the latter to serve as a quick reference.

This is not your ordinary grammar guide. In her introduction, the author explains that the book is intended to help the reader eliminate sexist language, a task she believes to be "very simple to accomplish." Quite understandably, she's disgruntled by the preponderance of gender distinction in the English language and the resulting preferences that men reap (i.e. "he" used as the default pronoun whenever the referent's gender is unclear.) However, she soon undermines her thesis by providing a truly epic example of political correctness gone awry.

Here is a selection of her ideas: do away with such words as "waitress," "heiress," and "shepherdess" altogether; remove suffixes such as -ette and -ess; drop the "e" from blonde. As the list continues, so too does her outrage over the "demeaning" nature of English as we know it. The idea that such words might merely be adding specificity is never addressed. The only bias projected onto any of these words is perpretrated by herself.

Ms. Dumond continues by claiming that women were in fact the real pioneers throughout history, or "herstory" as she calls it. (Is she suggesting that any word containing h-i-s be changed? "This" to "ther"? "Chisel" to "cherel"?) She asserts unequivocaly that women were the inventors of fire and stone tools, despite the obvious lack of historical certainty. Instead of responding to women's long-standing suppression in a male-dominated world by simply offering solutions, she takes it a step further by inventing this and other more convenient pseudo-histories.

Citing unnamed "language authorities" in her defense, she goes on to advise the use of the passive voice over the active form, plural pronouns with singular antecedents and alternative job titles ("domestic engineer" in place of housewife; "sanitary engineer" in place of janitor). No word however inocuous is safe: "my," as in "my wife," apparently denotes unfair "possession."

Overall the book is a misguided exercise which little in the way of viable solutions for a grammatically flawed language.