What’s in a word? Quite a bit of sexism

The Berkeley City Council has adopted an ordinance to replace gendered language in the city code with neutral terms.

Some of these swaps will be simple. In keeping with contemporary awareness about gender identity, the city code is doing away with personal pronouns like “she/her/he/him” in favor of “they/ them.”

That’s sensible, inclusive and reasonable. There will always be whiners who stamp their feet at having to imagine language inclusive enough for everyone, but in 2019, they can be ignored. “They” has made major inroads as a universal, genderneutral pronoun; even the notoriously slowmoving Associated Press stylebook updated its guide to include it in 2017.

But the code updates get much more complicated — and awkward — from there.

“Manpower” will be swapped for “human effort.”

“Sororities” and “fraternities” will become “collegiate Greek system residence.” (Try saying that three times fast.)

At first glance, this whole story is classic Berkeley — in the sense that the jokes write themselves.

The ordinance was sponsored by Rigel Robinson, a 23yearold council member who graduated from UC Berkeley last year. It was approved unanimously by the same City Council that delays housing development — despite a 13% increase in homelessness over the past two years — when a neighbor shows up with a zucchini, complaining that a new building would shadow her garden.

The Berkeley City Council once approved a customershaming climate change label for gas pumps, while shrugging at the reality that more than half of its greenhouse gas emissions come from cars and trucks (likely because the workers who make the city function can’t afford to live there.)

No one seems to be sparing a thought for the poor front desk workers who will have to explain to the public the meaning of completely chaotic sentences that could result from this change, either.

Imagine the confusion as they try to explain possible sentences like “The journey met their collegiate Greek system residence sibling at the human effort office.” (The journeyman met his fraterni

ty brother at the Manpower office.) The jokes are actually too easy, which is why I started thinking about what it would mean to take this seriously.

Linguistic research is piling up evidence that language, including gendered language, affects the way we live, think and act. One of my favorite studies on this topic was done by Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist who found that people who speak gendered languages, like Spanish or German, tend to attribute gendered adjectives to inanimate objects.

For example, bridges take a feminine article in German, and those speakers are more likely to refer to a bridge with stereotypically feminine descriptions like “elegant.” In Spanish, where bridges take a masculine article, speakers are more likely call them “strong” and “sturdy.”

All of this is sillier than Berkeley’s attempt to strip gender out of its official documents. But we’re so used to gender stereotypes, we don’t even recognize how ridiculous they can be.

The research also shows that people who speak gendered languages tend to hold more sexist attitudes. We’re fortunate that English shed most of its grammatical gender during medieval times, but as Berkeley has found, we’ve found plenty of ways to invent gender specificity in our language since then.

As I read through Berkeley’s official list, I also felt the full weight of how retrograde some of our everyday words are.

“Manmade,” really? What do people think women do all day?

“Heirs?” Thanks for reminding me that men make more money than women simply for being alive.

“Manhole?” Again with the inanimate objects — as if an opening in the street should have a gender. What pathetic, insecure guy made that decision? Berkeley’s substitution, “maintenance hole,” is not only less moronic, it’s more accurate.

If the research shows that gendered language leads to more sexist thinking, common sense would suggest that using more genderneutral language would lead to less sexist thinking and, hopefully, less discrimination. Unsurprisingly, linguists have some evidence that it does. So as easy as it is to laugh at Berkeley — and as dearly as I wish that city would tackle some of its thorniest problems for a change — this ordinance will likely have a positive, realworld impact.

Berkeley took up the challenge of shedding its official gendered language at the behest of the League of California Cities, in the interest of creating more inclusive workplaces for LGBTQ employees. It’s commendable for Berkeley to enact the League’s guidance.

And as so often happens when one marginalized group pushes for social change that will make their lives better, there are benefits for everyone. Getting rid of official language that suggests — however subtly — that men are better and more powerful than women will be good for us all.

Research is piling up evidence that language, including gendered language, affects the way we live.