Aspiration Toward Inspiration

One of the topics hot in circles considering religious translations is always the idea of gendered language. Radicals like Mary Daly completely restructure tradition and take feminism to points which can arguably be damaging, but the debate seems relevant.

A lot of people believe that “He” language is simply a reflection of the times which certain documents were written in. This is, of course, true. However, in cases of texts like religious documents which serve as important spiritual sources for many people and of modern writing, is it important to eliminate gendered language?

I admit that I’m often surprised when I see an author throwing a “she” in there in an attempt to be more inclusive. While the fact that it jumps out at me should be cause for me to consider the effects that gendered language has had on me, it generally only seems to me an obvious and conscious attempt of the author to give fair time to the Other. As in forms of positive racism, I have to ask to what extent it’s useful. While using “she” seeks to include the sex generally left out of history until more recent decades, when used in ways that are not direct references to a female, it only contributes to a view of humanity as gendered in circumstances where gender is completely irrelevant. Just like we can’t eliminate racism by continuing to note it in situations of complete irrelevance, it does no more good to note gender.

While that “she” jumps out at me in my reading, I recently noticed that “he” does as well. I’m currently reading America Unlimited by Eric Johnston; upon running my eyes through the words of the first page, “he” could have been bold or underlined, it seemed so overly used. Of course, the book, written in the 40’s, would have made absolutely no attempt to say “Americans” or “one,” and so it didn’t. My mind, accustomed to reading academic books penned in more recent years by scholars progressive enough to use ungendered (is that a word?) language more often than not, my mind now sees uses of “he” and “she” as quite equally ridiculous.

The first page of America Unlimited elicited a knee-jerk reaction in me—What do you mean he? Are we women so incompetent that we can’t understand politics or the economy? (The funny part is that the copy I’m reading was originally my grandmother’s.) While uses of “she” jump out as well-intentioned positive sexism, uses of “he” jump out as archaic and ignorant. My sexist radar soon subsided as I reminded myself of the copyright date on the book, but a little red string in my head reminded me to mull over the implications of that experience at a later point.

While I once thought that a removal of gendered language was a task a little pointless, thinking that simply educating people on the contexts of works prior to shoving them before them to read would remedy the situation, I now think it quite necessary. Regardless of whether I know that language is gendered because of its context or the limits of the original language, the use of unnecessarily gendered language apparently does affect my experience, whether I notice it or not. It’s only been the absence of gendered language that has allowed me to notice this.

So that is my argument for removing unnecessary gendered language from scripture and writing in gender neutral language. Thank you and goodnight.