Going against the grain and linguistic sexism

Words reflect and create expectations beyond their immediate meaning. In the case of certain professions, they bring into mind a picture of a man or woman often based on historical patterns. This prejudice requires the minority gender to define itself against the established term.

One way is to add the gender definer to the profession.  In reality, there are many male nurses, male prostitutes and male secretaries. They are obliged to add the descriptive word to provide an accurate image of themselves.  Otherwise, without a picture, the reader would assume a woman. Likewise, the terms driver, pilot and judge have their feminine version, i.e. woman driver, female pilot and, in French, Madame le juge. Despite the number of women in these professions, the image remains male.

In some cases, languages change the term to break the stereotype. Policemen and police women are collectively referred to as law enforcement officers, a completely gender-neutral term. Firewomen are included in the term firefighters. All meetings have a chairperson to reflect the number of women in management.  Finally, to deal with a very complicated situation, the terms father and mother in school registration forms are slowly being replaced by Parent 1 and Parent 2 to allow for single sex couples with children.

Some languages, especially Arabic and Hebrew, cannot always gracefully solve the issue. At the elementary school level in Israel, the fast majority of the teachers, 95 per cent, are female. Yet, if there is one male teacher at a staff meeting, should they be addressed as morot, the feminine plural form, or morim, the masculine plural form? The rules of grammar suggest the latter while common sense would imply the former.  The only elegant but wordy solution is to say morim and morot, yes with the masculine form first as placing the feminine form first sounds a little odd in Hebrew.

So, those pioneers that desire to break the gender barriers to certain profession not only have to cope with prejudice and lack of confidence but also with linguistic stigmas.  They must verbally define themselves in opposition to societal expectation.

California Hope

Recently, I have spent time in the hospital with close family members suffering from UTI’s (Urinal Track Infection) in Israel and California. I will relate the differences in the hospital environment as the Japanese treat height differences: the person next to the tall one, i.e. accentuating the positive.

California, with all its problems, often is willing to invest in a vital need even if the budget is tight.  For example, under current California law, a nurse in a regular ward takes care of no more than four patients.  In practice, this meant that the nurses treating my father were attentive and patient. They were able to use their sense of humor to lower high tension situations.  Not only that, the fact that the ward was equipped with electrical IV pumps meant that they did not have constantly check the IV flows of their patient.  This meant that even at the end of their 12 hours shifts, they were pleasant and professional.  As has been said about going to prison, the punishment is being to the hospital; no more is needed.

On the same note, it should be noted in California’s favor that, albeit imposed by the judicial system, the prison system is finally starting to try to treat the sources of problems of its inmates instead of just incarcerate them.  Granted, there is a large disproportion between the amount of available resources and scale of the problem. However, there is no doubt some prisoners are not born criminals but instead people that need help. 

Alas, nothing is perfect. The condition of LA roads continues to shock and distress.  The veins and arteries of Los Angeles are truly clogged by cholesterol of awful surfacing (as well as cars of course).  The state government could clearly do a better job maintaining them.

California is well known for being ahead of its time in terms of seeking solutions. The development for electrical cars began as a mandate from California decades ago when it realized that it could never really “beat” air pollution over the long term. This attitude is clearly preferable, as an example, to that of the government of Venezuela, which has decided to deal with the problem of high inflation (68% annually) by not publishing inflation data. It would be funny if it was not tragic.