Sexist Language: How to Avoid It

Sexist language is language that is meant to include all people, but that inadvertently excludes either men or women.

Why do writers need to avoid sexist language?

Writers are obliged to cultivate their readers’ trust by presenting a reliable ethos. Ethos “refers to the trustworthiness or credibility of the writer or speaker” (Ramage and Bean 81). Not only do writers wish to appear to be good and trustworthy people, writers also want to appear to respect their audiences. There is no faster way to alienate members of your audience than to exclude them from an intellectual conversation. Language that marginalizes your audience in any way, whether it reflects sexist or racist attitudes, will most likely make your audience stop listening. The end of all argumentation is persuasion, and you cannot persuade an audience when you’ve offended them.

Strategies to avoid sexist language:

1. Don’t assume that a particular job is filled by a member of a particular gender: not only are many doctors women, many nurses and administrative assistants are men. Use terms that can apply uniformly to both men and women. For example, the U.S. Post Office now officially calls the people who deliver the mail “mail carriers” rather than “mailmen.” Talk about “flight attendants” instead of “stewardesses.” Remember, the military is made up of both male and female soldiers, so a discussion about “the men in today’s army” will exclude many soldiers.

2. You can avoid gendered pronouns (like he and she, his and her) by making them plural. For example, the sentence “A nurse needs to care about her patients” could be changed to “Nurses need to care about their patients.” Some instructors and readers object to the use of “they” as a genderless singular pronoun. The sentence “The student wondered whether they would go to war if drafted,” offers an example of this usage. Despite the objections of many instructors and editors, singular “they” does have a historical precedent. Ask your instructors (or your editors if writing for a publication) how they feel about its use before you incorporate it into your prose.

3. Avoid terms like “man” when you intend to include women as well. “Man” (and similar terms like “mankind”) can be confusing as well as inaccurate, since “man” might mean “all people” or just “male people.” Change: “Since the beginning of time, man has worried about death,” to “Since the beginning of time, people have worried about death.”

Ramage, John D. and John C. Bean. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.

Additional Online Resources

UWC Handouts
Writing about People Respectfully

Purdue OWL
Stereotypes and Biased Language