HotsPots

As I read through the first reading assignment "Real Men Don't: Anti-Male Bias in English," I was surprised to find two extremely hot hotspots. The first being the part where Eugene August states that "During the past thirty years, anti-male bias in English has been greatly fostered by misandry, hatred of men, that is acceptable sexism of the media, the educational world, and the entertainment industry." I found such a passage intriguing because I see it as a proposition that goes largely unheard of. Throughout most of my life, I seem to have only read or heard about sexism against women in these institutions. The second hotspot was so hot I sensed hyperthermia. "A woman who kills her male partner can plead the Battered Woman's Syndrome, a man who kills (or even defends himself against) a violent female partner cannot plead the Battered Man's Syndrome." The flames were uncontrollable, how could this be legal? Equality should go across the board every time no exceptions and I feel I may take this one all the way to the Supreme Court. In the second essay titled "There is No Unmarked Woman," I came upon a hotspot when I read " Women can't even fill out out a form without telling stories about themselves. Most forms give four titles to choose from. "Mr." carries no meaning other than the respondent is male." Although I don't think this is a big deal, it still is interesting to note that men really don't have to reveal much about themselves just by saying there name. Women, on the other hand, are open to a whole list of interpretations. The final hotspot was looking at how Fasold points out that " if language reflected biology, grammar books would direct us to use 'she' to include males and females and 'he' only for specifically male referents. But they don't. They tell us that 'he' means 'he or she,' and that 'she' is used only if the referent is specifically female. This use of 'he' as the sex-indefinite pronoun is an innovation introduced into English by grammarians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, according to Peter Muhlhausler and Rom Harre in Pronouns and People. A hint of erie sexist conspiracy is subtly noticed in this passage and it makes me wonder why this change came about.