"Griffith, Nicola - Alien in Our Own Tongue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Griffith Nicola)
Alien in Our Own Tongue
by Nicola Griffith
Essay originally appeared in Terra IncognitaImagine being six years old and reading an anthropology primer about Stone Age Man:
"After a hard day's search for food on the veldt, stone age man was probably glad to get back to the warm cave. No doubt he was comforted by the same everyday activities we are today: the heat of the fire, good food, his family about him. Can you imagine him laughing and tousling your hair? Can you see him picking up your six month old baby brother and breast feeding him--"
At this point, the six year-old might burst into tears in sheer confusion. He? Breast feed? "Don't cry," says the teacher. "It's all right. We all get confused at first. You just have to remember that *he* really means *he or she*. See? It's easy!" But it's not easy. It makes no sense to her. Why say "he" when you mean "she?" As she grows older, she will keep asking. No one will give her an answer she understands. Her tears of bewilderment will become ones of rage. She will get tired of reading about Man the Hunter, mankind's outward urge to the stars, the exogamous impulses of man, the man on the street, one man one vote.... She will be sick to death of continually being excluded.
"No, no, no," you might say gently, "she's not being excluded. *He* is inclusive. *He* means us all. She'll learn. After all, *he* is the generic pronoun in English."
If that truly were the case, if "he" and "man" really did mean "he and she" and "man and woman," our six year old would not have been confused. But at age six, she has already internalized the real architecture of language; she *knows* that he means he and she means she. The only thing she doesn't know is how to pretend otherwise, the way grown ups do. She doesn't understand why she shouldn't point out what seems so obvious to her: he-man language isn't wearing any clothes.
Before you start to sputter, answer the following question honestly. How comfortable would you feel reading this next sentence aloud from our hypothetical anthropology primer: "How long ago was it that man found himself available for sex throughout the whole of his menstrual cycle and not just during a clearly defined oestrus?"
Grammarians may tell us that when we read "man, mankind, or he" we are supposed to imagine "people, humankind, or he and she," but we don't. In our mind's eye we see men, or boys.
When we are toddlers we know little and care even less about the generic he. We say them/they/their quite happily. "The person in the blue hat looks happy, they're smiling!" Everyone knows what we mean. Then we get to school, and the rule books take over. It is dinned into us that he is the generic pronoun; it must be used. Anything else is sloppy, incorrect, bad grammar. At the same time, everything we see and hear contradicts this. In the written form, for example, we would never see a primer such as the one I have invented. Oh, we would read about Stone Age Man, about him hunting and protecting and inventing fire and all that, but as soon as the authors have to talk about things that only women can do (and no matter how hard they try to make it otherwise, they have to mention women occasionally), they switch pronouns. He, it seems, is only generic insofar as it means "one of us," and "one of us" means "one of us boys."
When we lift our head from our text books for a little conversation, we find that our parents, our friends, and the teachers themselves--even at the university level--do not use the generic he in conversation. Person to person, in every day speech, we all understand that "he" does *not* really mean "he and she."
This dichotomy of oral and written form originated three or four hundred years ago in the first English grammars. These grammars were designed for boys preparing for school (girls, of course, did not get any formal schooling). All the examples in the books were for and about boys. The pronouns were all male. They were all male not because it was understood that he meant both male and female, but because women simply did not enter into the equation. These teachers and students were men and boys in a male world, with a male viewpoint and male-centered attitudes.
It was not until the eighteenth century that some grammarian had a brain cramp and decided to make this very specific use of the male pronoun a general rule. Less than a hundred and fifty years ago, in 1850, the "rule" was still uncertain enough to need mention in an Act of Parliament: "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females." And then it was cast in stone.
Ah, but women are the ones who teach the children to talk. We're not about to collude in our exclusion from humanity. We all grow up saying "them" and "their." I shudder to think what might happen if that were not so.
Language is an institution--like family, or education system, or church, or peer group--and is one of the prime agencies of socialization. That is, it's one of the means whereby an individual learns the culture of their society. Language tells us what is possible, permissible and expected. It is through language that we meet, explore and understand our world. Our understanding of the world is shaped by the words we use to describe it. Those words we use are born from existing words. Those related words are informed by the very concepts and objects they describe. Words do not exist in a vacuum. They do not inhabit the rarified atmosphere of a grammarian's sterile rule book. Words have weight, texture and form. They have provenance.
When our eighteenth century grammarian made man the generic noun, "man" has already existed as a noun for a long, long time. It meant then and means now "an adult male person." Unless we find a new word for adult male person, *man* as a generic will not work. Its provenance is irreparably male. We may genuinely try to use *man* as a generic but our attempt will be subverted by the implicit values and attitudes attached to the word.
#
Language shapes our thoughts and therefore our imagination. When we read
science fiction, or watch it, or listen to it, we are absorbing one person's
vision of the future (or present, or past). Whether we like it or not,
television now provides visions of the future for more people than all the SF
novels put together. Of all the women who grew up on the original Star Trek, I
doubt there is a single one who did not get a thrill, a frisson, the urge to
shout "Yes!" when she saw the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation and
heard Captain Picard saying they were all going to boldly go where no *one* had
gone before. The future opened like a flower: women could think that maybe in
the twenty-fourth century we were a bit more important than we are now. That is
a very powerful imaginative tool for a young girl. She will watch that series
(and Zena, Warrior Princess; and Lois and Clark) and know deep in her bones that
women *can*. She will probably stay loyal to the series, the spin-offs, the
novelizations. She will make the bottom line a lot more healthy for the
producers. I suspect that Babylon Five's audience would increase significantly
if they changed "The Third Age of Mankind" to words that included us. To me it
doesn't matter if the second in command of B5 is a woman, we are still slapped
in the face every time we hear those opening credits. Such a slip with the old
he-man language, even once, indicates a certain lack of thought on the subject.
It means the writers have not sat down and properly examined their attitudes to
gender. It makes me wonder: Where else will they slip up with women's roles? Is
this series worth my time and effort? It is such a little thing, the "Third Age
of Mankind," but it sits like a rock in the road. People like me will be tempted
to point the car in a different direction. [Two months after writing this, I
discover that the opening sequence *has* changed. It will be interesting to see
what happens with the ratings.]
Science fiction novelists and short story writers don't do much better. It
seems that many SF writers can see men fairly clearly in their crystal ball, but
women are obscured by a veil. When the spaceship is manned by cadets with IQs
matched only by their height in centimeters we think: oh, did the women all die?
When we read of the extinction of mankind, we think: oh, well maybe it was only
the *men* who died...but in that case, where are the women? When we hear of man
being in a death struggle with some alien species, we wonder: which side are the
women on? Always: where are the women? What are we doing? How do we fare in this
imagined world? It matters. Women need to be see their reflections shining back
at them from the future.
After all, our six year old as she grows up will not see many images of
herself in her science text books.
A while ago I was invited to go talk to a class at the Georgia Institute of
Technology who were studying AMMONITE and Russ's THE FEMALE MAN. Students do not
go to Georgia Tech to study the classics. They generally do not care much for
gender studies, or literature, or the humanities. They go to learn about nuclear
engineering, mechanical engineering, computers and other hardware-related
subjects. But here they were, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of what I was
trying to do in my fiction. The marvelous thing was: they got it. One man who
was studying digital video something-or-other said to me, "I was a third of the
way through AMMONITE and it was making me more and more uncomfortable and I
didn't know why and then I realized: all the characters are female. It's all
'she' and 'her.' There were no pronouns for me. It made me feel weird, as though
I didn't really matter. And I realized that this is what it must be like for
girls growing up, reading their physics books or whatever."
Exactly. Women and girls feel like that a great deal, and not just while
we're growing up. I can't blame men for feeling uncomfortable when they get a
taste of it. It's not very pleasant. It would be nice, though, if men could take
a lesson from the feeling.
I was at a party recently and a man I had never met before buttonholed me.
"When I got half-way through AMMONITE I got really pissed off!" he said. I
sighed and asked why he thought that was. "Because I was lied to!" By whom, I
wanted to know. "The publishers! The back cover copy never said a word about the
book being about women!" He was pretty het up. I asked him if he had finished
the book. "Yes, I liked it. It's just that, well," he looked vaguely puzzled, "I
was misled..." I pointed out patiently that the only person doing the misleading
had been himself: the back cover copy did not lie. It talked about security
forces, and natives, and deadly viruses. The only pronouns used were "they" and
"them." If he went ahead and assumed that meant men, he had no one to blame but
himself, had he? After all, women are human. We are people, too.
That man wandered off, not terribly convinced. Deep inside he knows--though
he may not know that this is what he knows--that people are really *men*. Women
are just, well, women: the also-ran, the other, the alien. This is what he-man
language does, this is how it survives today when it is demonstrably unfair,
inefficient and unnecessary. It forms part of a feedback loop: men (and women)
condemn women as Other every time they say *mankind*. They may not mean to, but
motivation doesn't matter. The result is the same. What we hear is: less than
human. The very words we all use build a hierarchy in our heads and women always
come in second. As a result of that internal hierarchy, we find it harder to
point to the naked ridiculousness of he-man language. Which reinforces the
hierarchy. Woman as Other becomes embedded in our very language. We become alien
in our own tongue.
Return to the Nicola Griffith Home Page Last modified on October 25, 1996 by Dave Slusher [email protected]
Alien in Our Own Tongue
by Nicola Griffith
Essay originally appeared in Terra IncognitaImagine being six years old and reading an anthropology primer about Stone Age Man:
"After a hard day's search for food on the veldt, stone age man was probably glad to get back to the warm cave. No doubt he was comforted by the same everyday activities we are today: the heat of the fire, good food, his family about him. Can you imagine him laughing and tousling your hair? Can you see him picking up your six month old baby brother and breast feeding him--"
At this point, the six year-old might burst into tears in sheer confusion. He? Breast feed? "Don't cry," says the teacher. "It's all right. We all get confused at first. You just have to remember that *he* really means *he or she*. See? It's easy!" But it's not easy. It makes no sense to her. Why say "he" when you mean "she?" As she grows older, she will keep asking. No one will give her an answer she understands. Her tears of bewilderment will become ones of rage. She will get tired of reading about Man the Hunter, mankind's outward urge to the stars, the exogamous impulses of man, the man on the street, one man one vote.... She will be sick to death of continually being excluded.
"No, no, no," you might say gently, "she's not being excluded. *He* is inclusive. *He* means us all. She'll learn. After all, *he* is the generic pronoun in English."
If that truly were the case, if "he" and "man" really did mean "he and she" and "man and woman," our six year old would not have been confused. But at age six, she has already internalized the real architecture of language; she *knows* that he means he and she means she. The only thing she doesn't know is how to pretend otherwise, the way grown ups do. She doesn't understand why she shouldn't point out what seems so obvious to her: he-man language isn't wearing any clothes.
Before you start to sputter, answer the following question honestly. How comfortable would you feel reading this next sentence aloud from our hypothetical anthropology primer: "How long ago was it that man found himself available for sex throughout the whole of his menstrual cycle and not just during a clearly defined oestrus?"
Grammarians may tell us that when we read "man, mankind, or he" we are supposed to imagine "people, humankind, or he and she," but we don't. In our mind's eye we see men, or boys.
When we are toddlers we know little and care even less about the generic he. We say them/they/their quite happily. "The person in the blue hat looks happy, they're smiling!" Everyone knows what we mean. Then we get to school, and the rule books take over. It is dinned into us that he is the generic pronoun; it must be used. Anything else is sloppy, incorrect, bad grammar. At the same time, everything we see and hear contradicts this. In the written form, for example, we would never see a primer such as the one I have invented. Oh, we would read about Stone Age Man, about him hunting and protecting and inventing fire and all that, but as soon as the authors have to talk about things that only women can do (and no matter how hard they try to make it otherwise, they have to mention women occasionally), they switch pronouns. He, it seems, is only generic insofar as it means "one of us," and "one of us" means "one of us boys."
When we lift our head from our text books for a little conversation, we find that our parents, our friends, and the teachers themselves--even at the university level--do not use the generic he in conversation. Person to person, in every day speech, we all understand that "he" does *not* really mean "he and she."
This dichotomy of oral and written form originated three or four hundred years ago in the first English grammars. These grammars were designed for boys preparing for school (girls, of course, did not get any formal schooling). All the examples in the books were for and about boys. The pronouns were all male. They were all male not because it was understood that he meant both male and female, but because women simply did not enter into the equation. These teachers and students were men and boys in a male world, with a male viewpoint and male-centered attitudes.
It was not until the eighteenth century that some grammarian had a brain cramp and decided to make this very specific use of the male pronoun a general rule. Less than a hundred and fifty years ago, in 1850, the "rule" was still uncertain enough to need mention in an Act of Parliament: "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females." And then it was cast in stone.
Ah, but women are the ones who teach the children to talk. We're not about to collude in our exclusion from humanity. We all grow up saying "them" and "their." I shudder to think what might happen if that were not so.
Language is an institution--like family, or education system, or church, or peer group--and is one of the prime agencies of socialization. That is, it's one of the means whereby an individual learns the culture of their society. Language tells us what is possible, permissible and expected. It is through language that we meet, explore and understand our world. Our understanding of the world is shaped by the words we use to describe it. Those words we use are born from existing words. Those related words are informed by the very concepts and objects they describe. Words do not exist in a vacuum. They do not inhabit the rarified atmosphere of a grammarian's sterile rule book. Words have weight, texture and form. They have provenance.
When our eighteenth century grammarian made man the generic noun, "man" has already existed as a noun for a long, long time. It meant then and means now "an adult male person." Unless we find a new word for adult male person, *man* as a generic will not work. Its provenance is irreparably male. We may genuinely try to use *man* as a generic but our attempt will be subverted by the implicit values and attitudes attached to the word.
What I do not understand is why we even try to use male nouns and pronouns as generics when we already have perfectly serviceable alternatives: Humankind, they, their, them. Why cling to an eighteenth century rule which is confusing and contradictory and which, with its every use, further excludes, alienates and reduces the importance of more than half the human race...all to no apparent purpose? Ah, but perhaps there *is* a purpose. Language, sociologists tell us, is the most profound and effective means of control society exerts over us. The words we use structure our thought and our reality, they help form our opinions and mould our attitudes. The only explanation I can think of for continuing to use this he-man language is because we actually *want* women to feel excluded, alienated and unimportant.
#
Language shapes our thoughts and therefore our imagination. When we read
science fiction, or watch it, or listen to it, we are absorbing one person's
vision of the future (or present, or past). Whether we like it or not,
television now provides visions of the future for more people than all the SF
novels put together. Of all the women who grew up on the original Star Trek, I
doubt there is a single one who did not get a thrill, a frisson, the urge to
shout "Yes!" when she saw the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation and
heard Captain Picard saying they were all going to boldly go where no *one* had
gone before. The future opened like a flower: women could think that maybe in
the twenty-fourth century we were a bit more important than we are now. That is
a very powerful imaginative tool for a young girl. She will watch that series
(and Zena, Warrior Princess; and Lois and Clark) and know deep in her bones that
women *can*. She will probably stay loyal to the series, the spin-offs, the
novelizations. She will make the bottom line a lot more healthy for the
producers. I suspect that Babylon Five's audience would increase significantly
if they changed "The Third Age of Mankind" to words that included us. To me it
doesn't matter if the second in command of B5 is a woman, we are still slapped
in the face every time we hear those opening credits. Such a slip with the old
he-man language, even once, indicates a certain lack of thought on the subject.
It means the writers have not sat down and properly examined their attitudes to
gender. It makes me wonder: Where else will they slip up with women's roles? Is
this series worth my time and effort? It is such a little thing, the "Third Age
of Mankind," but it sits like a rock in the road. People like me will be tempted
to point the car in a different direction. [Two months after writing this, I
discover that the opening sequence *has* changed. It will be interesting to see
what happens with the ratings.]
Science fiction novelists and short story writers don't do much better. It
seems that many SF writers can see men fairly clearly in their crystal ball, but
women are obscured by a veil. When the spaceship is manned by cadets with IQs
matched only by their height in centimeters we think: oh, did the women all die?
When we read of the extinction of mankind, we think: oh, well maybe it was only
the *men* who died...but in that case, where are the women? When we hear of man
being in a death struggle with some alien species, we wonder: which side are the
women on? Always: where are the women? What are we doing? How do we fare in this
imagined world? It matters. Women need to be see their reflections shining back
at them from the future.
After all, our six year old as she grows up will not see many images of
herself in her science text books.
A while ago I was invited to go talk to a class at the Georgia Institute of
Technology who were studying AMMONITE and Russ's THE FEMALE MAN. Students do not
go to Georgia Tech to study the classics. They generally do not care much for
gender studies, or literature, or the humanities. They go to learn about nuclear
engineering, mechanical engineering, computers and other hardware-related
subjects. But here they were, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of what I was
trying to do in my fiction. The marvelous thing was: they got it. One man who
was studying digital video something-or-other said to me, "I was a third of the
way through AMMONITE and it was making me more and more uncomfortable and I
didn't know why and then I realized: all the characters are female. It's all
'she' and 'her.' There were no pronouns for me. It made me feel weird, as though
I didn't really matter. And I realized that this is what it must be like for
girls growing up, reading their physics books or whatever."
Exactly. Women and girls feel like that a great deal, and not just while
we're growing up. I can't blame men for feeling uncomfortable when they get a
taste of it. It's not very pleasant. It would be nice, though, if men could take
a lesson from the feeling.
I was at a party recently and a man I had never met before buttonholed me.
"When I got half-way through AMMONITE I got really pissed off!" he said. I
sighed and asked why he thought that was. "Because I was lied to!" By whom, I
wanted to know. "The publishers! The back cover copy never said a word about the
book being about women!" He was pretty het up. I asked him if he had finished
the book. "Yes, I liked it. It's just that, well," he looked vaguely puzzled, "I
was misled..." I pointed out patiently that the only person doing the misleading
had been himself: the back cover copy did not lie. It talked about security
forces, and natives, and deadly viruses. The only pronouns used were "they" and
"them." If he went ahead and assumed that meant men, he had no one to blame but
himself, had he? After all, women are human. We are people, too.
That man wandered off, not terribly convinced. Deep inside he knows--though
he may not know that this is what he knows--that people are really *men*. Women
are just, well, women: the also-ran, the other, the alien. This is what he-man
language does, this is how it survives today when it is demonstrably unfair,
inefficient and unnecessary. It forms part of a feedback loop: men (and women)
condemn women as Other every time they say *mankind*. They may not mean to, but
motivation doesn't matter. The result is the same. What we hear is: less than
human. The very words we all use build a hierarchy in our heads and women always
come in second. As a result of that internal hierarchy, we find it harder to
point to the naked ridiculousness of he-man language. Which reinforces the
hierarchy. Woman as Other becomes embedded in our very language. We become alien
in our own tongue.
Return to the Nicola Griffith Home Page Last modified on October 25, 1996 by Dave Slusher [email protected]
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