Trivial Things About Sexism

Don't Waste Your Time with Trivial Things
There are some people saying that the language is sexist. Generally, considering the words that are mostly used for both genders such as man, mankind, chairman, or the word history, especially feminist women see this issue as a big problem. Those people may present the famous philosopher Aristotle's utterance "Man is a rational animal" as evidence. However; when looked at the etymology of the word "man", it is easily seen that the original meaning of "man" was "human being". If it was used to mean "human being" in the past, what is wrong with its usage in the present? In addition, "history" might seem as a compound word composed of "his" and "story" at first look, but it is wrong to claim that "history"
is a sexist word. Humour writer Josh L. says in one of his articles that: "History is not a sexist word. The word ‘historia' was created in a time/language that did not have gender specific prefixes". So, "history" is not a compound word composed of "his" and "story" as it seems. Now, forget about all I have said. What I mean is that if people insist on and go on worrying about sexist language, they are doomed to pay much less attention to other more important kinds of sexism like custom violence, domestic violence and sexual exploitation of women.

To begin with, the matter of "custom violence" is one of those important sexism types.
Perhaps, the most obvious one in Turkey is polygamy. Specially, the eastern people maintain the belief that the right of a man is four women as if they are their property or workers. Men of that region see no inconvenience in making their wife give birth to as many children as they can do. Sometimes, one of those people shows up in the news and tells the number of his children proudly even if he doesn't know the names; by the way, they don't feel any discomfort about not knowing. Also, in some parts of Africa, women have no right of inheritance on her husband's property after his death. Once women are left as widows, they are accepted as divorced and they are abandoned on their own with their fatherless children. In addition, there is a tradition called "Sati" in India. According to the historian and writer Dr. Jyotsna Kamat: " ‘Sati' means a virtuous woman. A woman who dies burning herself on her husbands funeral fire was considered most virtuous, and was believed to directly go to heaven, redeeming all the forefathers rotting in hell, by this ‘meritorious' act. The woman who committed ‘Sati' was worshipped as a Goddess, and temples were built in her memory". This tradition is still valid in some parts of India. Women are either voluntarily or by force commit ‘Sati'. They might even be forced to practise this by their
relatives.

Secondly, the problem of ‘domestic violence' cannot be ignored, for it is highly common especially in our culture.
Professor Kerry Carrington defines domestic violence as: "Domestic violence occurs when a family member, partner or ex-partner attempts to physically or psychologically dominate or harm the other." In most cases, the fear of being divorced and let on their own scares the women to take serious actions about domestic violence if they are not able to earn their life themselves. Vice versa, their hopelessness gives the men the courage to treat them as women are their slaves. But the point is that the woman is not the only one who suffers from violence. To illustrate, I am one of the witnesses of domestic violence. When my uncle and his wife got married fifteen years ago, they didn't use to get along well. Instead of overcoming the disagreements between them by speaking, my uncle used to beat his wife at least once a week. He wanted her to be and behave as he wanted but she always behaved as she wanted. First five years of their marriage continued with violence. During the course of this domestic violence, they had two children. Now, one of their children is 15 and the other is 13 years old but they are too shy and don't speak much as normal people because of oppression of their father. So, the effects of violence are not only on the person exposed to it but on the innocent children of the couple in psychological aspect as
well.

Thirdly, sexual exploitation of woman flesh is also on the increase constantly. Nearly all TV programmes use woman bodies as sex symbols. They call models to the programme who wear mini skirts and low-cut dresses. The presenter of the programme barely gives them the microphone to speak, and they are just a part of setting for the male audience. Such programmes try to increase their rating by women exploitation. Also, the common usage of internet smoothed the way of pornography which exploits and uses women as sex objects. Then, there is a new-fashioned tourism type named "sex tourism" which is realised by males or females whose aim is sexually intercourse with prostitutes in poorer countries. Women exploitation is also seen in the form of belly dancing. It is right that belly dancing has been accepted as a formal sport branch in Turkey in recent times but it is obvious that TV programmes that use belly dancers do not spare time to belly dancing just for the sake of sport.

To sum up, in spite of the fact that the women are not given the required value traditionally, domestically and morally, there are people trying to get the attentions on sexist language or whatever trivial. If the women are seen as something to burn, as property or worker, and as something to satisfy men's sexual desire, is it logical to pay attention to sexist language or whatever trivial?

http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y3495e/y3495e06.htm#TopOfPage

http://www.friesian.com/language.htm

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976872683

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_n5-6_v39/ai_21227882 http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/DiscriminationAtWork/DG_10026665 http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/hindu/sati.htm
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/Dom_violence.htm