Gender Neutral Language

Famous quotes containing the words gender, neutral and/or language:

    Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.
    —Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)

    I feel the carousel starting slowly
    And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
    Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
    Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
    Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children’s learning—to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline—an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child’s learning and leave a child’s dignity intact cannot be called discipline—it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.
    Barbara Coloroso (20th century)