Gendered Slang and Language

                Is our language gendered? To an extent,  I would have to say yes. When discussing topics of mankind, we often have male focused words, like mailman, policeman, fireman, freshman, mankind, businessman, chairman, fatherland, forefathers, man of the world, manpower, or seaman, these terms used for all people regardless of gender but are still emphasizing men. It is common in English that male pronouns are gender neutral when they are, in fact not. How about the phrases "all men are created equal," "one of the guys," and "you guys?" These are all male dominated phrases. These words and phrases are seemingly benign, but subconsciously reinforce the ides of male dominance.

                Our words tend to exist on a gender binary to identify between men and women. This leads us to words like witch and warlock, sir and madam, mom and dad, monk and nun, lord and lady, duke and duchess, or bride and groom. Also, gendered words often have women's words ending with -ess. Such as mister and mistress, emperor and empress, count and countess, prince and princess, and steward and stewardess. It is seemingly impossible to avoid gendered words. They seemingly go unnoticed, but once you start thinking about gendered words, you start to notice they are everywhere and that gender neutral words, especially nouns, are still uncommon.

                But, at the same time, we are collectively working to make words gender inclusive and get rid of their gendered meanings. We are changing terms like to policeman to police officer or police person, from fireman to firefighter. We are working to change these gendered words by making them more gender inclusive. For example, we're changing waiters and waitresses to the gender neutral term server, or stewards and stewardesses to flight attendants. We do have non-gendered terms like captain, farmer, shop keeper, leader, criminal, and others. While we have non-gendered words, which is fantastic, we still have to work on making our other words gender neutral and inclusive.

                We have words like dude, bro, or player while we have words for women such as whore, chick, slut, or bitch. We have slang terms for anatomy like dick and pussy we use in day to day conversation. As  a way of cursing you may shout "balls!" to get out your emotions. To me personally, these gendered terms are becoming more gender neutral and I apply most of them to all people regardless of gender. Changing gendered terms is not an easy feat. To de-gender terms, you have to start small and alter your own vernacular to be more gender inclusive and gender neutral.  The key to making change is questioning norms.