On Satan and Bianca

In "Real Men Don't: Anti-Male bias in English," August notes the following:

Critics of sex-bias in religious language seldom notices or mention its masculinization of evil: of those objecting to God the Father as sexist, no one--to my knowledge--has suggested that designation Satan as the Father of Lies is equally sexist. Few theologians talk about Satan and her legions.

Since my primary research area (when I'm not studying Composition pedagogy) is religious rhetoric, this passage really struck me.

I don't care to get into the theology of the Fatherhood of God or whether angels can be sexed in the same way a biological organisms--this isn't a theology course--but I think August's comment here highlights one of the biggest problems with attempts to prove sexism in language: too often our political agendas blind us to evidence that might call our beliefs into question.

To take an example from August's essay, I'm not entirely sure what he's proven by pointing out that we're called "mammals" because of something the female of the species can do. Is anybody really bothered by this? I'm just not convinced that this sort of language tilts the political balance in favor of one gender in the same way or to the same extent as does a phrase like "all me are created equal."

Perhaps a more objective attempt to examine our langauge--to adopt an outsider's perspective, to use the terms we've come across in class--is to sit down with the dictionary, as Nilsen does. But even then, I can't say I agree with all of her interpretations of the data she finds because so much depends on connotations that aren't universal. Take the etymologies she gives for some names. As someone who's in the process of deciding on a name for his child, I can't say that I expect the etymological meaning of my daughter's name to matter all that much. I care much more about how it sounds. Most folks don't know what "Bianca" means (that won't be her real name, in case you're wondering); they just respond to its aesthetics and the associations it brings up for them--for instance, other Biancas they've known before.

The bottom line is that I think we do need to pay attention to how we use langauge and how our langauge demonstrates our assumptions about gender. But if we're going to do that, we really need to pay attention to all of what's there, not just to what we think will back up our already-come-to conclusions.