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In Defense Of Gender By Cyra Mcfeden Summary

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An Analysis of In Defense of Gender The article, In Defense of Gender by Cyra McFadden discusses the issue of gender equality in our language. The article discusses the neutering of masculine terms in our language. Instead of writing and speaking he or himself it became, him/her, himself/herself. Also instead of titles being mailman and waiter, this neutering made it mailpersons and waitpersons. The author writes of how ludicrous it is to completely change the way we write and even speak. The author, Cyra reminisces of a time when she attended a conference and the "chairperson" is reading a text that instead of using masculine words, used he/she or himself/herself. That chairperson decides to speak these as, he-slash-she and himself-slash-herself. This reminds the author of a vocal rendition of the Manson killings with all of the "slashing" being used. Hearing someone speak this way must have been so much more bizarre than just reading it. Imagine having a conversation with someone and they began speaking using this slashing method, how comical would that be? The author discusses this …show more content…

One woman has even went as far as changing the way her married name was written. Beverly Terwoman is a writer and she writes under that pseudonym, but her husbands last name, her married name is actually Terman. The author mocks this by writing, ""Terwoman'' is not ideologically pure. It still contains ''man,'' a syllable reeking of all that is piggy and hairy-chested. Why not Beverly Terperson? Or better, since ''Terperson'' contains ''son,'' ''Terdaughter''? Or a final refinement, Beverly Ter?" According to the article Beverly Terwoman has been asked about her doing this but did not reply. Including this in the article supports the idea of just how far some feminists will go to eliminate masculine terms. I agree with the author on how this action is excessive and

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