Quotes from Rosalie Maggio

Although we have not assigned God a sexual orientation, a height, or eye color, we have thought nothing of assigning a gender and a religion (God always belongs to the same one we do).

Sexist language promotes and maintains attitudes that stereotype people according to gender while assuming that the male is the norm—the significant gender. Nonsexist language treats both sexes equally and either does not refer to a person's sex when it is irrelevant or refers to men and women and to girls and boys in symmetrical ways.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. Anna Jameson

To ensure gender-fairness, ask yourself: Would I write the same thing in the same way about a person of the other sex? Would I mind if this were said of me? If you are describing the behavior of children on the playground, to be gender-fair you will refer to girls and boys an approximately equal number of times, and you will carefully observe what the children do, and not just assume

Thank you for inviting me to speak at the Chang-Ch'un

Gender-specific words (councilwoman, businessman, altar girl) are neither good nor bad in themselves, but they sometimes identify and even emphasize a person's sex when it is not necessary (and is sometimes even objectionable) to do so. Male and female versions of a root word are also likely to be weighted quite differently (governor/governess, master/mistress).

One problem with gender-free terms, however, is that they sometimes obscure reality. Battered spouse implies that men and women are equally battered; this is far from true. Parent is too often taken to mean mother and obscures the fact that more and more fathers are involved in parenting;

the story of teachers who took two groups of children to opposite ends of the playground: one group was told they were going to build "snowmen"; they made 11 snowmen and 1 snowwoman. The other group was told they were going to build "snow figures"; that group made 5 snowmen, 3 snowwomen, 2 snow dogs, 1 snow horse, and 1 snow spaceship.

Words like "everyone" are often used as if "everyone" can afford a new television, celebrates Christmas, can walk up stairs, is married or wants to be, can read, gets enough to eat, worries about a sunburn, and so on. Pseudogenerics are thought to include everyone because the people who use them are thinking only of themselves and their immediate world.