Gender Neutral Idioms

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As Desmund Tutu once said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not one of those useless speeches that won’t be remembered the next day, week, or month. But, this is one that will impact everyone and open the closed up minds that the majority of people have now. I apologize beforehand if this sounds a bit bitter, but this is a topic that has always been swept under the rug and there should’ve been an attempt to change it. Oh, what’s the topic you ask? It’s something that has been like a blister that couldn’t …show more content…

We could decide to go through this pathetic path we’ve been going through or make a right turn and choose to make things better. Starting with using gender-neutral terms like for instance, fire fighter instead of fireman or firewoman and police officer instead of policeman or policewoman. Men are also a victim in this aspect, one example is when we hear the word stewardess or hostess we usually think that only females could have that label. And we usually get shocked to find a male flight …show more content…

Some of those idioms are, ‘every man for himself’ and ‘one man one vote’. Does this mean that a woman can’t be independent? Or that a woman can’t vote? No, this is just something that we people have gotten used to. And just like we have gotten used to that unfair way of living we can also get used to gender neutrality. We could use the word ‘one’ instead of ‘her’ or ‘him’ and we could use the word ‘oneself’ instead of ‘herself’ or ‘himself’. Another method is to make the sentence plural for example: to say “Each student should choose their own paths” instead of using his or her and say “Each student should choose his own path” or “Each student should choose her own