Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012): 4--19 © Institute for Communication and Culture E--ISSN & ISSN--L: 2247--4404 www.jcc.icc.org.ro contact@icc.org.ro BRIAN D. EARP Yale University, Department of Cognitive Science Email: brian.earp@gmail.com THE EXTINCTION OF MASCULINE GENERICS Abstract: In English, as in many other languages, male--gendered pronouns are sometimes used to refer not only to men, but to individuals whose gender is sometimes even to females (as when the c of women). These so--called he/man or masculine generics have come under fire in recent decades for being sexist, even archaic, and positively harmful to women and girls;; and advocates of gender--neutral (or nonsexist) language have put forward serious efforts to discourage their use. Have they been successful, and to what extent? In this paper, I review some of the main arguments in favor of abolishing sexist male generics. I then present three studies tracking the use of he/man terminology in academic, popular, and personal discourse over the past several decades. I show that the use of these terms has fallen dramatically in recent years, while nonsexist alternatives have gradually taken their place. We may be paying witness to the early stages of the ultimate extinction of masculine generics. Key words: masculine generics, gender, sexist language, pronouns, discourse Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 5 Introduction The history of the English language is stuffed full of male--gendered terms used in reference not just to men, but to human beings in general, or to persons of unspecified gender. From the New Testament, for instance, we learn that Jesus rebuked his tempter with Man does not live on bread alone... 1;; from Hamlet s existential musings we get What a piece of work is a man... 2;; the US founding fathers held as self--evident that all men are created equal... 3;; and Neil Armstrong famously botched his one small step for [a] man;; one giant leap for mankind 4 remark via live broadcast from the moon. From my own experience, I can report that as recently as the late-- 1990s, at least some students (namely I and my middle--school peers) were still being taught to use he to refer anyone whose sex was unknown, or to hypothetical or generic persons in sentences such as the following: When you meet your new doctor, be sure to tell him about your bad back ;; If a person loses his wallet, he should visit the lost--and--found ;; Everyone should take his seat when the bell rings, and so on. These so-- called he/man or masculine generics5 (or quasi--generics6) as ubiquitous and deeply rooted as they are are instances of sexist language that many have argued are harmful to women and should be expunged from the linguistic repertoire. I am sympathetic with this view;; and I am interested to see whether, in efforts at consciousness--raising and language--change, there is evidence that this expunction is actually taking place. Accordingly, this paper consists of two parts. In the first part, to provide some background, I review some of the main arguments in favor of abolishing sexist male quasi--generics. In the second part, I present three studies, each of which provides empirical evidence that (at least some) he/man terminology may indeed be on its way out. In the first study, I tracked the number of scholarly articles over a thirty--year period (1970-- 2000) in which various gendered pronouns occur, using the popular academic archives service JSTOR.7 I show that instances of the sexist term mankind fall significantly over this period, while instances of the gender--inclusive term humankind and the construction he or she rise dramatically. In the second study, I tracked these terms occurrences (by number of articles) over the same period in The New York Times, with similar results. In the third study, I replicated a survey on pronoun usage first conducted by Miriam Meyers in 1990 in order to compare her results with a more recent sample. I find evidence that pronoun use in the more recent sample may be even less sexist than in the 1990 sample. The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 6 Part 1: The Case against He/Man Language A Very Brief Review The use of masculine terms to refer to persons of unknown gender, generic or hypothetical persons, people in general, or as a synonym for humankind is more than just a grammatical curiosity. As a number of commentators8 have forcefully argued, it may be legitimately harmful to women and girls. One way to understand this harm is to consider how masculine generics (such as mankind) seem to count being a man as the default or prototypical human status, creating what Wendy Martyna calls an implicit equation of maleness with humanness 9 This equation has the effect of devaluing, excluding, or making invisible female human beings a matter of particular concern since, as Michael Newman points out, females not only constitute half of humanity, but are also victims of other forms of marginalization 10 Non--sexist terms such as humankind, that is, terms which embrace both denotatively and connotatively all genders, nimbly avoid this problem and are thus preferable to their sexist counterparts. What does it mean for masculine terms to make women invisible and how could mere word--choice have such a dramatic--sounding effect? Simply put, there is ample psycholinguistic evidence 11 that people encountering he/man generics are more likely to think of male human beings as the referents of those terms. Thus, when a person reads or hears the word mankind, for example, he or she is likely to reflexively conjure up mental images of men (doing such--and--so) as opposed to either women or abstract visions the human race. This has the effect of minimizing women s importance and diverting attention away from their very existence.12 The result is a sort of invisibility in the language itself, in the individual s mind s eye, and in the broader social consciousness. Someone could object that metaphorical invisibility is too gauzy a notion to merit serious concern. But sexist language has consequences in the real world as well. For example, Sandra Bem and Daryl Bem found evidence that sex--biased wording in job advertisements ... discourage[d] ... women from applying for opposite--sex jobs for which they might well be qualified 13 And more recently, John Briere and Cheryl Lanktree found that subjects who had been exposed to various levels of sexist noun and pronoun usage rated the attractiveness of a career in psychology in sex-- role stereotypic directions as a function of degree of exposure to sexist language 14 Far from being gauzy issues, job prospects and career-- choice are of practical concern and paramount importance. Sexist language which may have the effect of limiting a woman's options in these domains, then, is clearly harmful. In this very brief review, I have shown how he/man generics may be considered detrimental from the perspective of several different modes of Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 7 thought: philosophical, sociological, psychological, and practical. On this view, any evidence that such language use is on the decline would be most welcome. I turn now to the second part of my paper, in which I present three studies offering an empirical evaluation of just such a decline. Part 2: Three Studies Since at least the early 1970s, feminist linguists such as Wendy Martyna, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Janice Moulton, and others (see endnote 8) have made compelling arguments against the use of he/man language, advocating its abolition wherever it may be found. Has anyone been listening? Have there been any changes in sexist language use over the past thirty (or so) years? Following are three studies, designed to address this question from three different angles that is, by generating data from three different domains of language--use: academic, popular, and personal. Each points towards a yes in answer to the question above. In the first study, to examine academic or scholarly writing, I tracked the number of JSTOR articles over a thirty--year period (1970 2000) in which the pronouns mankind, humankind, and the construction he or she occur. In the second study, to examine a more popular medium, I tracked these terms occurrences (by number of articles) over the same period in The New York Times. In the third study, I replicated a survey on pronoun usage by college--educated individuals first conducted by Miriam Meyers in 1990 in order to compare her results with a more recent sample. Study #1: Gendered Terms and JSTOR 1970 2000 JSTOR is a popular online digital archive of scholarly articles from a wide array of disciplines. Its archives include over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences and is full--text searchable including search term highlighting, 15 making it an ideal data set for the purposes of the present research.16 Using JSTOR s own search technology, I tracked the number of occurrences (by article count) of a sample of three gendered terms over the period of 1970 2000. Method, Materials, and Procedure Materials used were the archives of scholarly articles located at http://www.jstor.org/ as well as JSTOR s advanced search function. For each term included in the study (mankind, humankind, and he or she), I conducted an advanced search on the following model: [("mankind") AND (YEAR: [1970 to 1971])] The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 8 I then recorded the number of articles returned, and repeated this search paradigm for each year from 1970 2000. Since a number of journals have a moving wall of up to 5 years during which their articles are not available on JSTOR, I selected the year 2000 as a cut--off point to ensure maximum consistency of total available articles per year. While some new journals have been established since 1970, and while some old journals have expired since 1970, an informal survey of the available data suggests that these factors approximately balance out. Before turning to the results, let me give a note on my choice of search terms. I chose mankind as a quintessential he/man generic, and one likely to be found in academic writing of all stripes. I chose humankind as the direct gender--neutral counterpart of this term, to see how these near-- synonyms (one sexist, one non--sexist) would track against each other over the same thirty--year period. Finally, I chose the construction he or she as an additional gender--inclusive term, but one which plays a different linguistic role--specifically by referring to generic or hypothetical persons, and persons of unknown gender, as opposed to abstract entities such as all of humanity (as with humankind). I would like to have been able to track instances of quasi--generic he;; however, JSTOR s search technology is not sensitive enough to distinguish between quasi--generic instances of the term ( When a person loses his wallet, he should... ) and specific instances of the term ( When Bob lost his wallet, he... ). Contrastingly, he or she (used properly that is, excluding instances of hypercorrection) is employed exclusively as a generic, referring to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified, and can thus be reliably tracked via search technology. Results The data show a marked decline in the number of scholarly articles in a broad sample of over 1,000 leading journals in which the sexist term mankind occurs over a thirty year period (1970-- 2000): from 3,149 instances in 1970-- 1971 to only 1,929 instances in 1999-- 2000, or a decrease of 38.8%. Over this same period, instances of the gender--neutral near--synonym, humankind, rose from only 63 articles in 1970-- 1971 to 1,192 articles in 1999-- 2000, an increase of 1,890%. Finally, article--instances of the gender-- inclusive he or she rose in this period from 340 to 4,062, an increase of 1,194%. Below are the data in tabular form (Table 1). Year mankind humankind he or she 1970--1971 3149 63 340 1971--1972 3143 64 420 1972--1973 3099 76 559 1973--1974 3125 128 878 1974--1975 3122 187 1255 Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 9 1975--1976 3158 246 1609 1976--1977 3061 289 1990 1977--1978 2968 314 2265 1978--1979 2986 357 2495 1979--1980 2914 395 2742 1980--1981 2862 440 2811 1981--1982 2883 480 2897 1982--1983 2875 535 3064 1983--1984 2787 635 3205 1984--1985 2732 752 3381 1985--1986 2668 753 3485 1986--1987 2519 714 3557 1987--1988 2548 762 3696 1988--1989 2605 836 3879 1989--1990 2505 939 4118 1990--1991 2469 998 4176 1991--1992 2377 1070 4140 1992--1993 2306 1136 4235 1993--1994 2164 1174 4266 1994--1995 2022 1248 4322 1995--1996 2048 1249 4324 1996--1997 2022 1235 4295 1997--1998 1957 1249 4258 1998--1999 1961 1182 4131 1999--2000 1929 1192 4062 Table 1: Gendered Terms and JSTOR 1970 2000 Discussion These results provide clear empirical evidence that at least one sexist masculine generic mankind has been in steady decline in language--use over the past thirty years, specifically within the domain of academic writing (across disciplines). At the same time, the use of humankind a gender--inclusive near--synonym has grown in popularity quite dramatically, from a mere 63 instances in 1970--1971 (compared to 3,149 instances of mankind during the same period), to 1,192 in 1999--2000. It is important to notice, however, that even as recently as the year 2000, mankind appeared in more total articles (by 38.2%) than its nonsexist counterpart. Nevertheless, one need not conclude that the sexist term is used more frequently than its non--sexist alternatives: after all, humankind is only one of a number of gender--inclusive synonyms (or near-- synonyms): in addition, there are terms such as humanity and the human race which may be used instead of mankind but which were not tracked in this study. Taken together, it is possible that these non--sexist terms are used more frequently. Further research should bear this out.17 It is interesting to note that while humankind has been in use since 1635 18 as an alternative to mankind (dating from 1250 19 ), it was The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 10 nevertheless almost completely absent from academic writing as late as the 1970s, with the sexist term evidently widely preferred. As my data show, however, this trend seems to have undergone major changes within the last thirty years. Finally, notice the explosion in use of the construction he or she after the year 1970. The idea, apparently hitherto only latent, that a person of unknown or unspecified gender might possibly be a female and that such a possibility should be made linguistically explicit seems to have caught on quite suddenly! Let me turn now to my second study, in which I shift from the domain of academic writing to that of a more popular medium, The New York Times. Study #2: Gendered Terms and The New York Times 1970 2000 The New York Times is widely recognized as the newspaper of record for the United States. Thus it is an excellent popular source to track non-- academic language usage. 20 In addition, the newspaper s searchable online archives (from 1851 to the present) located at http://www.nytimes.com/ provides ample and easy--to--access data, ideal for the purposes of the present study. In this study, I tracked the number of occurrences (by article count) of a sample of three gendered terms over the period of 1970--2000. Method, Materials, and Procedure Materials used were the online archives of New York Times articles, located at http://www.nytimes.com/ as well as the site s advanced search function. For each term included in the study (mankind, humankind, and he or she), I conducted an advanced search by typing the term in quotes in the search field, and setting the date range to, e.g., January 1st 1970 to January 1st 1971. I then recorded the number of articles returned, and repeated this search paradigm for each year from 1970 2000, recording the data in an Excel worksheet for later analysis. Results The data show a significant decline in the number of New York Times articles in which the sexist term mankind occurs over a thirty year period (1970--2000): from 461 instances in 1970--1971 to only 159 instances in 1999-- 2000, or a decrease of 65.5%. Over this same period, instances of humankind rose from only 6 articles in 1970--1971 to 76 articles in 1999--2000, an increase of 1,266%. Finally, article--instances of the gender--inclusive he or she rose in this period from 43 to 346, an increase of 804%. These results are shown in tabular form below (Table 2). Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 11 Year mankind humankind he or she 1970--1971 461 6 43 1971--1972 393 6 85 1972--1973 429 16 138 1973--1974 404 15 147 1974--1975 376 21 166 1975--1976 389 36 259 1976--1977 396 29 296 1977--1978 328 24 331 1978--1979 252 26 277 1979--1980 312 30 296 1980--1981 252 26 306 1981--1982 285 48 357 1982--1983 277 53 295 1983--1984 237 32 317 1984--1985 227 44 368 1985--1986 307 58 368 1986--1987 265 60 395 1987--1988 231 49 340 1988--1989 172 40 353 1989--1990 176 46 345 1990--1991 169 51 330 1991--1992 179 45 307 1992--1993 121 46 296 1993--1994 120 59 319 1994--1995 124 46 299 1995--1996 125 53 314 1996--1997 128 62 337 1997--1998 115 66 326 1998--1999 171 81 337 1999--2000 159 76 346 Table 2: Gendered Terms and The New York Times 1970 2000 Discussion The purpose of this second study was to extend the results of Study #1 into a domain other than strictly academic writing, namely the more popular medium of journalism and news articles. In a remarkably similar trend (as compared to the first study), the results of the present study provide clear empirical evidence that mankind has been in steady decline in language--use over the past thirty years not only in academic, but in non--academic writing as well. At the same time, the use of humankind has grown in popularity from a mere 6 instances in 1970 1971 (compared to 461 instances of mankind during the same period), to 76 in 1999 2000. The striking similarity in term--use trajectories (including he or she) between Studies #1 and #2 merits further consideration. On the one hand, The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 12 someone might predict that sexist language would decline in academic usage significantly prior to popular usage, since the former is thought to be more deliberately, philosophically motivated (and thus particularly susceptible to the feminist s arguments coming out of the early 1970s), while the latter reflects more non--intellectual sociolinguistic movements. On the other hand, someone could argue that academic language is more conservative and thus less prone to change, while popular language evolves at a much faster rate, absorbing new terminology (for example, in the form of slang) far in advance of academic adoption of those terms. But seemingly both predictions would fail: the movement towards less sexist (or more gender--inclusive) language seems (at least with regard to the examples tracked by the present studies) to have taken place along a similar trajectory in both academic and more popular writing. Let me turn now to a third study, which attempts to replicate a survey conducted in 1990 by Miriam Meyers on sexist language in writing samples of individual adults subjects. This will complete the picture of this essay s intended scope, giving evidence for language--change on a third and final dimension the personal dimension. Study #3: Gendered Terms in "Personal" Writing, 1990 vs. 2008 The design of this third study departs drastically from that of Studies #1 and #2. It is modeled on a study conducted by Miriam Meyers,21 who was interested in the ways in which college--educated adults approached writing about a person of unspecified gender. In her study, participants were asked to describe their idea of the educated person as part of their student degree plans concerning enrollment at an unreported Minnesota university (probably Metropolitan State, given Meyers affiliation). Meyers then coded responses for their use of various third--person singular generic pronouns. Her results showed that, among writers using a consistent strategy, 34% used the generic masculine (e.g., My idea of an educated person [is of one who] has learned the skills to educate himself in unknown areas... );; 32% used singular they (e.g., I see an educated person as [one who] uses their knowledge... );; 22% used a he or she type construction (e.g., The educated person does not overlook his/her chosen profession... );; 8% used indefinite one (e.g., The educated person [is] one who has a curiosity and open mind... );; and 4% used the generic feminine (e.g., An educated person [is] aware of who she is... ). These results can be seen in Table 3, below. Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 13 Generic Masculine 34% Singular they 32% he/she 22% one 8% Generic Feminine 4% Table 3: Choice of Writers Using a Consistent Singular Approach to the Generic Pronoun, Adapted from Meyers (1990) In the present study, participants were asked to describe their idea of The Moral Individual under the pretense that their responses would be used in a future study on moral judgment (thus concealing the sociolinguistic nature of the actual study). The methods and results for this study follow. Method, Participants, Materials, and Procedure Participants were 64 adults (27 male, 36 female, 1 unspecified)22 ranging in age from 18 to 74 years, with a mean age of 26 and a mode age of 21.23 The majority of participants were college students enrolled at Yale University in New Haven, CT;; all had at least 2 years of college.24 Participants were acquainted with the author of the present study but not with his research aims;; an invitation to participate was sent (via email) to 137 such acquaintances;; the 64 who responded by filling out an online survey were included in the study. These data were collected in 2008. Participants were directed to and asked to fill out an online survey (posted on www.surveymonkey.com describe in 3--5 sentences below your conception of The Moral and to do so in no fewer than 3 and no more than 5 sentences. They were asked to write in complete, grammatical sentences, and to start the first Demographic information was then collected. Participants responses were then coded for pronoun usage according to the same categories used by Meyers, namely (1) the generic masculine, (2) singular they, (3) he or she type treatments (including she or he and s/he), (4) the generic feminine (she standing alone), (5) indefinite one, (6) an inconsistent mix, and (7) other (including the use of no pronouns, pluralization of the subject, and the one--time use of a generic pronoun such that consistency could not be judged). Results 27 respondents (42%) either used an inconsistent mix of pronouns, used only one pronoun such that consistency could not be judged, or avoided the use of pronouns altogether. Of the 37 remaining respondents, 10 used the generic masculine 7 used singular they 13 used he or she type treatments The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 14 5 used the generic feminine, and 2 used indefinite one Of those who used a consistent singular approach to the generic pronoun, then, 27% used the generic masculine 19% used singular they 35% used he or she type treatments 13.5% used the generic feminine, and 5.5% used indefinite one Compare these results with those of Meyers (1990) (my results in bold): Generic Masculine 34% 27% Singular they 32% 19% he/she 22% 35% one 8% 5.5% Generic Feminine 4% 13.5% Table 4: Comparison of Choice of Writers Using a Consistent Singular Approach to the Generic Pronoun in Meyers (1990) and the Present Study Discussion Although statistical significance cannot be calculated across two different populations (i.e., between the sample group used in Meyers study and the sample group used in the present study), an informal analysis of the above data suggests that the more recent sampling of current generic pronoun usage may be even less male--sexist than the sampling taken in 1990, itself almost certainly an improvement over earlier populations (given the data from the 1970s in Studies #1 and #2). One major difference is that in the 1990 study, the sexist masculine generic was the most frequently used construction, while in the present study, the non--sexist he or she treatment was most commonly used. In addition, in the present study, fully 13.5% of consistent pronoun--users employed the generic feminine25 (compared to only 4% in the 1990 study) and 35% used the gender--neutral he or she construction (compared to 22% in 1990). Interestingly, in both studies, approximately 1/3 of respondents elected to use the sexist male generic (34% in 1990;; 27% in 2008), while the singular they thought to be a popular non--sexist choice was used much less frequently in the present study as compared to the earlier one (19% compared to 32%). It should be noted, however, that in the present study, singular they was used in combination with other pronouns in the inconsistent mix category somewhat frequently. Fully 18 out of the 64 total respondents (or 28.1%) used the singular they construction at least once. Furthermore, in the present study, the masculine generic was overrepresented among consistent pronoun users (the sub--group of total respondents upon which the present analysis is chiefly based), while Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 15 among mixed-- and other --pronoun users, only 3 of 23 or 13% used a masculine generic at least once, and fully 20 of 23 or 87% used nonsexist pronoun strategies. Before turning to a general discussion, a potential confound must be noted in comparing the Meyers (1990) study and the present study. The confound has to do with the different primes used to generate the writing samples in each respective study. In the Meyers study, participants were asked to describe the educated person while in the present study, participants were asked to describe the moral individual. Although each of these prompts was designed to test subjects handling of pronouns referring to a hypothetical person of unspecified gender, it is possible that implicit gender stereotypes nudged pronoun usage in different directions between the two studies, on account of the different primes. The educated person is, it could be argued, more likely to be implicitly stereotypically associated with males (given the long history of women s exclusion from schooling), while the moral individual could be implicitly stereotypically associated more with females (given, for instance, the stereotype that mothers are more concerned with the moral upbringing of their children than fathers). Further research would be needed to test this assumption. General Discussion I began by reviewing a number of arguments to the effect that the sexist male quasi--generics typical of he/man language are harmful to women and ought to be avoided where possible. While some resist this view, re and more widely accepted. This acceptance is heavily driven by psycholinguistic evidence which shows that he/man grammar is not a mere curio of convention: these words have measurable (deleterious) effects on the listener, especially females, both in terms of the implicit messages they convey, and the consequences they carry for issues as weighty as choice of career. If masculine generics can be avoided, they should be avoided;; and they can always be avoided with a bit of creative thinking. But to move beyond the abstractions of the academic dispute, what has been the real--world impact of the feminists case on this issue? I presented three studies designed to test empirically whether, over the past thirty years, the use of masculine generics has actually seen a decline. Across three domains academic, popular, and personal the results are clear: he/man language is increasingly less used, and nonsexist alternatives are on the rise. Curiously, so is the use of female--sexist pronouns which can be interpreted in a number of different ways. On the The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 16 one hand, it could be argued that fighting sexist pronoun use with equally sexist pronoun use amounts to hypocrisy, and hence gender--neutral terms hould be used wherever possible. But on individuals, or to persons of unknown gender, can be seen as an important consciousness-- po masculine pronoun use in a particularly salient, to think about it, but given the hundreds of years of lopsided, male-- favoring language use (in a broader context of male--favoring power structures, male--favoring legal doctrines, male favoring social norms, etc.), it seems justifiable to add some weight to the other side of the scale, at least to the point of equilibrium. Whether the trends identified in this article continue, only time will tell;; but if they do, we may be well on our way to seeing the ultimate extinction of masculine generics in the English language. It would be about time. Notes: 1 Matthew 4:4, New International Version. 2 Hamlet II.ii.317. Though this phrase is often cited as a stock example of he/man language in feminist and linguistic texts, it is actually unclear, in context, male quasi--generic. Hamlet males in particular, and not rather than from dust. The matter is further complicated by the fact that in without the article a -- e end of the speech and the ensuing exchange with Rosencrantz: Hamlet: What a piece of work is a man... ...And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. Rosencrantz: My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. Hamlet: Rosencrantz: To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you... [Hamlet II.ii.317--329] It is unclear whether Hamlet intends misunderstood (or is being teased by) Rosencrantz, or whether the contrast with Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 17 ntended 3 The Declaration of Independence. It is a matter of controversy whether Jefferson had all human beings in mind when he penned this phrase, or, given the political disenfranchisement of women at the time, whether he meant just all males. This historical point notwithstanding, however, the term is understood today (both legally and popularly) in its wider that is, quasi--generic sense. It is interesting to note the conscious effort to avoid similar confusion by the authors of t --rights hese is arguably even less sexist than the first, for it does away with a male--first ordered pair. 4 The Houston Chronicle, September 30th 2006, accessed online April 7th, 2012 at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4225856.html. 5 Signs 5 (1983): 482--93. 6 --neutral terms, for This sentence is awkward because of the inescapably masculine connotations of 7 JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/) is a popular digital archive of scholarly articles. It includes back issues of hundreds of the most popular academic journals. 8 --Braggin (Ed.) Sexist Language: A Modern Philosophical Analysis (New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1981);; Wendy Signs 5 (1983): 482-- Feminism and Philosophy, Ed. Frederick A. Elliston and Jane English. (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, and Co., 1971), 124--153. 9 32. 10 Michael Newman, Epicene pronouns: the linguistics of a prescriptive problem (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1997), 4. 11 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philospohy (Winter 2007 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2007/entries/feminism--language/ (accessed April 7th, 2012);; for research into the automaticity of sexist associations, Psychological Science 7, no. 3 (May 1996): 136--141;; for a recent study see Elizabeth Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 18, no. 3--4 (1988): 159--168. The Extinction of Masculine Generics Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 18 12 13 -- Journal of Applied Social Psychology 3, no. 1, (1973): 6. 14 John Briere and Cheryl --role related effects of sex bias in in Behavioral Science 9, no. 5 (1983): 625. 15 th 2012 at http://about.jstor.org/about-- us/organization. 16 Other digital archives would in principle offer equally useful data;; however ular is intuitive and easy to use, and its contents represent the most widely--read journals in a range of academic fields. 17 30,600,000 hits for mankind;; 5,730,000 hits for humankind;; 48,300,000 hits for humanity;; 9,080,000 for human race. Thus, while mankind beats humankind, the aggregate of non--sexist terms (humankind, humanity, and human race) beat mankind by a large margin. 18 th 2012, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humankind. 19 th 2012, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mankind. 20 As an anonymous reviewer on an earlier draft of this paper noted, many other newspapers might have served as an equally good case study;; I chose the New York Times for its iconic status within as well as outside the U.S., and for its easy-- to--use online search technology. 21 American Speech 65, no. 3, (1990): 228--237. 22 That is, 56% 23 Compare to Meyers: n = 392, range = 22 64, mean = 34. 24 Consistent with Meyers. 25 As many have noted, the generic feminine is also sexist but given the long history of masculine generics, it could be argued that the use of generic she is a legitimate part of the campaign to abolish he/man language (see the General Discussion). References Psychological Science 7, no. 3 (May 1996): 136 --141. -- Journal of Applied Social Psychology 3, no. 1 (1973): 6--18. --role related effects of sex bias in Behavioral Science 9, no. 5 (1983): 625--632. Armstrong had not only the rig The Brian D. Earp Journal for Communication and Culture 2, no. 1 (spring 2012) 19 Houston Chronicle, September 2006. Accessed 10 May 2008, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4225856.html. th 2012, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humankind. th, 2012, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mankind JSTOR. The Organization. Accessed April 7, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/organization/index.jsp. c uses of masculine --Braggin (Ed.) Sexist Language: A Modern Philosophical Analysis. New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 1981. language. Signs 5 (1983): 482--93. Meyers, Miriam Watkins American Speech 65, no. 3 (1990): 228--237. Feminism and Philosophy. Ed. Frederick A. Elliston and Jane English. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, and Co., 1971. Newman, Michael. Epicene pronouns: the linguistics of a prescriptive problem. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1997. Saul, Jennifer. Feminist philosophy of language. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2007/entries/feminism-- language/. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 18, no. 3--4 (1988): 159--168.