Keeping up with the ongoing changes in diversity language has become a matter of lifelong learning. For a near-nonagenarian (I turn 90 on April 6), this means continuous learning as well as relentless unlearning. That is, trying to unlearn old uses of language that decades of repetition have deeply wired into my brain.
Take gender. Growing up in 1940’s Kansas City, Missouri, I learned that men were men and women were women. I inhabited a world of man talk and woman talk, men’s jobs and women’s jobs, men’s clothes and women’s clothes. It wasn’t much different in college during the 1950’s. We were men and women, not cisgender or transgender men and women.
Next stop, the U.S. Army (1957-1959). As a public information specialist at Fort Gordon, Georgia, one of my assignments was to handle public relations for the Officers’ Wives Club. Officers’ Wives Club? Gender neutral language was barely on the horizon, as were female officers.
Serious gender-related changes began a few years later. In the early 1960’s before I left for Brazil to spend 1966 and 1967 conducting doctoral dissertation research, there was a smattering of talk about women’s something or other. By the time I returned and started university teaching in January, 1968, the conversation had moved on. Women’s liberation and second wave feminism were changing the American discourse, as were parallel movements like racial civil rights, ethnic revitalization, gay pride, and rethinking disabilities. I got caught up in the euphoria, serving on the committee that founded Chicano and Black Studies on my campus, the University of California, Riverside, and in 1972 becoming chair of Chicano Studies (not Chicanx).
As the decades passed, the topic of gender increasingly pervaded popular culture, infused scholarship, and influenced college curricula. Much of the conversation was binary: women’s experience this compared with men’s experience that, with the women’s experience often addressed as a monolithic phenomenon of group victimization punctuated occasionally by brief spurts of progress, such as gaining the constitutional right to vote. You learn about one woman, you learn about them all. Almost without notice, white women’s experiences became the default norm, with women of color providing only minor variations.
Then along came the 1980’s with third wave feminism and such ideas as intersectionality. Challenging the normative whiteness of the women’s movement, women of color argued that, although they shared in some generic women’s experiences, the intertwining themes of race and ethnicity could not be overlooked when addressing women. The gender conversation became more complex.
I well remember when the next generational revolution in gender talk caught up with me. I was giving a multicultural education workshop in Minneapolis. As usual, I talked about different dimensions of diversity, including gender. One woman in the cohort interceded. “Dr. Cortés, you’re using gender incorrectly. You’re confusing birth sex and gender identity.” When I asked her to elaborate, she provided a brief, clear explanation of the distinction, for which I thanked her. She had launched me on the next leg of my gender discourse journey.
Over recent decades the topic of gender identity as contrasted with birth sex (or sex assigned at birth) has become a significant part of diversity discussions. For old timers like me, this meant developing new verbal habits and unlearning old ones. Growing up, we could rely on “queer” as a convenient and effective pejorative. Then “queer” became asserted proudly as an identity, with college campuses offering such courses as Queer Theory.
Acronyms were established and expanded, adding initial after initial to the queer identity list. This is mercifully leveling off by adding a catch-all plus, as in LGBTQ+. Preferred gender pronouns appeared in digital signature boxes, while conference name tags offered spaces to announce gender pronouns. As a diversity writer, speaker, and workshop presenter, I began addressing such topics as bathrooms, transgender women in sports, and affirming care (sometimes attacked by others as grooming).
Unlike during my formative years, men are no longer just men and women just women. Now they may be cisgender or transgender. Or non-binary. Or gender fluid. Or gender expansive. As the categories grow, gendered distinctions simultaneously become more refined and sometimes more nebulous, forcing diversity specialists to continuously up their verbal game. But no complaints from me. I revel in gendered lifelong learning, as the messiness of language reveals the messiness of life.
Three years ago I was preparing a conference keynote address in which I was going to use a story I had read about a Chinese immigrant college administrator. Of course, to avoid repeating the name, I planned to also use a pronoun. Then I realized I didn’t know that administrator’s birth sex or gender identity. I asked for help from a colleague, a Chinese Singaporean immigrant professor. He responded that it was probably a man’s name, but that it could also be used by a woman. Having a daughter and son-in-law with unisex names (Merrit and Kelly), I understood. So what should I do? My friend suggested that I use “they” and “them.” As an old-fashioned grammar curmudgeon, I rebelled at the idea of using a plural pronoun for an individual. But as the time for the talk grew near, I decided to give it a try. When “they” came out of my mouth, I felt a sense of liberation. So much better than such abominations as “he or she” or, worse yet, “s/he.”
Time marches on and so do I. That includes keeping up with the language of diversity, even when I consider and then reject some of the new proposals. I now see “senior citizen” appearing as a “no-no” in some misdirected equity language lists. Sorry, language police. I’m proud to be a “senior citizen.” Please don’t mess with my identity. On the other hand, “senile” is another matter.
Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash
He also edited the four-volume Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia (2013).
- Diversity and Speech Part 44: Generations of Gender Talk – by Carlos Cortés - March 1, 2024
- Diversity & Speech Part 43: How 3 College Presidents Flunked Their Speech Midterm Exam– by Carlos Cortés - January 29, 2024
- End of Affirmative Action? A Tale of Two Stories – by Dr. Carlos Cortés - August 8, 2023