I've been thinking a lot lately about inclusive (i.e. non-sexist) language. I don't know why. It's one of those things that you don't think about it until, to use a 60's term, you get your consciousness raised, and then you can't NOT think about it.

Inclusive language isn't really new to me. I remember beng aware as long ago as elementary school that there was a women's movement going on and they were concerned, among other things, with not calling female law enforcement officers "policemen," and that sort of thing. I realized that it's really more accurate to talk not of policemen, firemen, and workmen, but rather of "police officers," "firefighters," and "workers."

After college, when I became involved with Feminists for Life of America, I had an interesting conversation with the then-President of the organization about the non-inclusive use of inclusive language. She was talking about people who use the terms "chairman" for a man and "chairperson" for a woman. But as she pointed out, both should be know as "chairperson" because men are people too.

More recently, as I become more active in my Catholic parish, I also became more aware of the use (overuse, in my opinion) of gendered language in the church. The limitless God is always referred to as "He." The Nicene Creed recited at Mass by women and men, girls and boys, refers to "us men and our salvation." It was irksome. I found Priests for Equality and bought their inclusive bible translations (the last installment of which is due out this year - woo-hoo!) I embrarked on a quest to de-gender my own God-language and stop projecting human limitations like sex on an infinite divine being.

Today, for reasons I don't know, the subject of revisionist language came to mind. I was thinking about a few of the trendiest examples used by many feminists, including "womyn" (instead of "women") and "herstory" (instead of "history"). Are these linguistic revisions, purportedly based on the sexist roots of the questionable words, valid?

So I decided to do some research at Merriam-Webster Online. This is what I found:

Main Entry: wom·an
Pronunciation: 'wu-m&n, esp Southern 'wO- or 'w&-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural wom·en /'wi-m&n/
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English wIfman, from wIf woman, wife + man human being, man

So "woman" does have its root in the use of "man" in a generic way to denote human beings, preceded by "wIf" (the "I" presumably replacing a lost middle English character) to denote a wife. Which seem like essentially sexist roots to me.

What about "history?" Surely HIS-story isn't the only story worth telling, is it? Merriam-Webster defines it this way:

Main Entry: his·to·ry
Pronunciation: 'his-t(&-)rE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ries
Etymology: Latin historia, from Greek, inquiry, history, from histOr, istOr knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know

Looks like the "his" in "history" has nothing to do with males. In fact, the English word "his" didn't even exist at the time of the original Latin "historia," so it's pretty unlikely that it could have been the root of the word.

Hmmm... Makes me wonder what all the fuss is about, sometimes. Should male Himalayan mountain climbers object to being led by "SHErpas" on the grounds that the male guides should be call "HErpas?" Ought we shun the use of "HERbs" at the exclusion of "HIMbs?" Does justice demand that a certain southern state be renamed "MSissippi?" I hope not.

Poking fun at inclusive language is exactly what I don't want to do here. But I think it is important to point out the ridiculousness of some of it. The English language is complicated enough, and the sexisms therein serious enough, that we have our hands full dealing with the problems that are real without fabricating more from the fibers of etymological ignorance.

Let's demand fairness and equity without checking our common sense at the door.