One Word Two Words Blue Words Summary

In the article titled, “One Word, Two Words, Pink Words, Blue Words” by Debuk, the concept of gendered language is addressed. The article discusses the gender-marked patterns in language used everyday, the consequences that result from these patterns, and proposes a solution for these consequences. While the ideas proclaimed in the article are sound, there are some issues one could bring up in regards to whether or not the suggested solution would merely reinforce the problem, a fact that the author also addresses in the article. In the article, the author gives two lists, one that contained masculine-coded words and one that contained feminine-coded words.
List 1 contained words like, “active, aggressive, assertive, athletic, boastful, champion, courage, dominant, driven, fearless, force, greedy, headstrong, hostile, impulsive, independent, intellect, lead, logic, outspoken, reckless, self-confident, stubborn”; while List 2 contained words like, “compassion, considerate, cooperate, depend, emotional, empathetic, enthusiasm, flatterable,
One of the main concerns the author addressed was that women tend to be less likely to apply for a job that uses words from List 1 to depict their job as they feel unqualified. The author suggests that there should be an attempt to “even the playing ground” so to speak, by replacing the more masculine terms with feminine terms. However, even while suggesting this, the author realizes that replacing these masculine words with more feminine words would not be a perfect solution to this problem, in fact it very well could escalate it. Instead of bringing everything to an equal, more gender neutral area, replacing the words may instead reinforce the masculinity and femininity views of the