Angry Pronouns

From the sound (perceived from the writing style) of Dennis E. Baron's words, it can be concluded that there is a hint of anger, or at least a sense on personal inaptness towards the use (or non-use) of certain words. I dug deep into my automatically-assumed sexist heart (because I'm a man) and didn't even come close to finding what Mr. Baron had thought about, and wrote about, in his sixteen page article. Personally, I feel that there must have been something that had triggered his brain to write such an article.

Aside from my personal feelings of Baron, I still have a difficult time in believing that it is 100% masculine 100% of the time. One can break apart the speech patterns in "American Speech" and if they (no gender intended) dig deep enough, I guess you can conclude whatever you desire, or whatever your motive may be. The phrase "Joseph took the young mother and the child by night, and fled with them into Egypt," is just one example of Baron determining masculinity by surgically examining "sexist" words. In my opinion the average person is not going to look at this and say "this needs to be more feminine." Not because it isn't feminine enough, but because the pronouns used to describe the situation mean certain things to each beholder.

Women as "Open Persons"

It's difficult to disagree with the section "Not-so small insults: Street remarks' and verbal violence against women." More specifically, there are certain unwritten rules, a "norm of civil inattention" that people utilize while in public places.

Being a man, I will never fully understand what a woman must go through when she has to balance her reactions against her replies. She must decide against fully accepting a compliment that will then classify her as an open person, or ignoring a compliment in which then she might be accused of rudeness.

This behavior can cause a woman to be perpetually self conscious about herself when she is alone, or even with another person or persons. Women are aware they are being looked at, and that is what creates this self consciousness. It doesn't really matter if the woman being watched likes or dislikes the attention, this behavior can cause a women to act in a different manner than most men in public (such as a homosexual type of setting).

It's unfortunate that women can be construed as sexual prey, but it looks like these street remarks may be more difficult to avoid than meets the eye.