There was a recent letter to the editor in one of my nursing journals from a male nurse. (The thoroughgoing tone of entitlement convinces me that he was also white.) The letter writer was upset because nursing journals generally use the pronoun "she" to refer to nurses as a whole. He felt excluded as a male: after all, about 5% of nurses are male these days, and it is wrong of us as a profession to use a female pronoun which makes him feel like an outsider in his own profession! (poor baby was my immediate and unsympathetic internal response.)
 
As has been asked by others before me, if it is okay to use MAN to refer to all humans, then what is so offensive about WOMAN? Of course, I know the answer to that. Using MAN to refer to all of us is seen as elevating the status of we lowly females. Men refuse to be called SHE because it is an insult. My own dear father, when wishing to be critical of my brother, would tell him "quit acting like a girl!" and the highest praise for any deed I accomplished as a child was to be called "manly" or to have done a thing as well as a boy.
 
Five percent. Five percent. But that five percent is MALE, so must be seen as vastly more important than the other NINETY FIVE PERCENT of us. Give me a break. I just want to weep. And then I think of my brothers and sisters who are at least 30% of our population who face this kind of exclusion daily.... whose cause is much more dear to my heart than this poor white man... Oh Goddess, will we never learn?
 
Words are so powerful. By thinking things, saying things, writing them, shouting them, singing them -- we bring them into being. How we say things and the way we use words reveals so very much. I cringe whenever I hear someone say "It's only words" because words are the stuff of spells and witchery and easily misused to the detriment of us all.
 
I really don't want that male nurse to feel excluded or unimportant in our profession. But I don't want him to feel INcluded at my expense or that of my sisters. I think sometimes that is a very male problem -- they can't WIN unless someone else loses. They don't want to stand arm in arm with you, they have to be in front or life isn't good.
 
I would like there to be a pronoun that really includes all of us. I would like to learn to be a real sister to all other humans. I would like my brothers to not feel insulted, or perhaps to even feel flattered, if called she. I would like to be rid of my own feelings of inferiority over being female.
 
I have just finished reading a book by Derrick Bell called Faces at the Bottom of the Well. It is an extraordinary treatise on the permanence of racism in the United States. I highly recommend it. And I think that is what got me off on the subject of sexism. There are injustices so deeply rooted in our social and political system, that I think it is nearly impossible to even SEE them. But we must look, search, seek and resist. We must use our own experiences as the basis for trying to understand the experiences of others, and hopefully one day to unite, under a common pronoun, that leaves no HUMAN behind.
 
Peace.