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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Gender-Neutral Language and the Oppression of Women
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
Back when the wording was "who for us men and for our salvation..." I would say "who for us women and our salvation" and whatever woman was in the pew next to me would startle and grin. Always a big grin, sometimes a quick little hug or hand clasp.
It felt SO GOOD to be included, after decades of being linguistically excluded. (Even if I had to do the including myself, without the church's help. I wasn't excluding males, I was personally affirming the message was also to me, which the official language did NOT affirm.)
Was there confusion back in the old days of male language? Of course! Men weren't confused, when they saw masculine language they knew they were included. Women had to pause at each instance, sometimes ask questions (and get chided for not knowing), and figure out of they were included or excluded this time. (Well, not a lot of confusion because women knew they were usually excluded.) Masculine language is no problem for men because "you know by the context," and the context ALWAYS included the males but only occasionally included women.
What's the context when the word is "chairman", especially back when newspaper job listings were in separate columns for "male only" or "female only", the whole social assumption was important jobs are reserved for males only, women do support work? In my high school a girl ran for chairman of one of the after school clubs, but the boys said no, the word is chairMAN, and the teacher adviser shrugged & agreed that's the word. So she was barred from being chairman or vice chairman, they did let her run for secretary because it was a gender neutral word and a female task.
As to anger, back in the 80s a man explained to me that gender neutral language, claiming that women and men are of equal importance, is demeaning to men.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
@cliffdweller
Thoughtful as always, thanks.
While reflecting on what you said, I caught up with Honest Ron's post. Illuminating - also as always. The truth may lie in between us.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
I've spent a lot of time comparing hymnals and liturgy settings.
There are four areas where concern about gender-specific language arises. In increasing order of difficulty, they are:
1) References to "mankind," "men," etc. where a broader reference to humanity as a whole is more appropriate. Most of these were cleaned up in the 1980s as a basic matter of equality of men and women.
2) Use of the male pronoun for general references to God or to the trinity. In most cases "God" can be substituted for "Him" and "God's" for "his." Most people don't notice except in liturgy that's recited by the congregation every week.
3) Male references to the parent figure in the trinity, e.g. "Father."
4) The use of the male pronoun for Christ.
As Jahlove has noted upthread, the largest and most immediate problem with these last two is that they pose a barrier to worship for people, especially women, who suffered abuse and neglect as children at the hands of their fathers.
I find ambiguity as to the gender of Christ to be at odds with the gospel. Christ was fully human, and was male.
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
The church has always asserted credally that Christ became anthropos - which is to say he became human. . . . If using those words is the best way to do it, then we should do so.
But the pronoun is still problematic, isn't it?
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
The church has always asserted credally that Christ became anthropos - which is to say he became human. . . . If using those words is the best way to do it, then we should do so.
But the pronoun is still problematic, isn't it?
Can you expand a bit please? If the Logos had been made human as a woman we would have to use she. We use she when talking about Wisdom, which the church has often seen as the action of the Logos in history. But we use he of Jesus because he was male as incarnated. Perhaps I missed something, though - ?
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Barefoot Friar
Ship's Shoeless Brother
# 13100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Padre Joshua - so the woman you disagreed with "went on and on", and the one you agreed with "spoke very quietly", eh? Yeah, right. Also, twee anecdotes prove absolutely nothing.
Ok. I'm going to ignore the "twee" comment for now. I don't think it was necessary.
As for the other, I fail to see how I could be more factual. The first woman did speak for what I deemed to be much longer than was needed to make her point. She wasn't saying anything new. She wasn't even rephrasing herself. She spoke for several minutes, and given her angry tone and body language, it struck me as being antagonistic. But I shall give her the benefit of the doubt and simply say that she spoke for several minutes.
As for the second woman, I am simply reporting facts. She did speak very quietly. Everyone had to strain to listen. After the loud, angry-sounding voice of the first woman, the second woman seemed even quieter.
Of course, you could have been at that event and witnessed it differently from me, in which case I would love to hear your version.
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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
In the Eucharistic prayer we used to say:
"... giving him to be born of man.."
Now we say:
"... giving him to be born of a woman..."
The first, previously used formulation could be thought to contradict John 1 ("born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man..."). The second, currently used formulation is clearly a more accurate statement of what the church in fact believes.
But that isn't what we used to say. Which is interesting, don't you think?
When we are talking about Jesus during his earthly life he was clearly a man and should be referred to as a man using the male pronouns. And his mother was clearly a woman and should be referred to as a woman, not as some undifferentiated gender-neutral abstraction.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Posts: 978 | From: Hill of roses | Registered: Feb 2011
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Padre Joshua:
As for the other, I fail to see how I could be more factual. The first woman did speak for what I deemed to be much longer than was needed to make her point. She wasn't saying anything new. She wasn't even rephrasing herself. She spoke for several minutes, and given her angry tone and body language, it struck me as being antagonistic. But I shall give her the benefit of the doubt and simply say that she spoke for several minutes.
As for the second woman, I am simply reporting facts. She did speak very quietly. Everyone had to strain to listen. After the loud, angry-sounding voice of the first woman, the second woman seemed even quieter.
Of course, you could have been at that event and witnessed it differently from me, in which case I would love to hear your version.
I guess the point was the implication that "antagonism" in this case is inherently wrong and is a point against her case. Whereas it could also be interpreted as a sign of passion*, the depth of the pain that she was experiencing. Or, as you suggest, it could be an indication that she is just an angry person, or that she likes to grandstand and play the victim card.
Of course the reverse could be true. The quiet woman may have been speaking out of her own pain, afraid of being shut down as "old fashioned" or "irrelevant". Or she could be simply a naysayer who likes to mutter under her breath without having the courage to speak out boldly and own her position
Or something else entirely. The point is that volume alone doesn't tell us much about the rightness or wrongness of the position or the speaker. You interpretation of the meaning behind the volume "in the moment" though, may tell us something about what the intent of the speaker was, so it's not entirely out of place. But it may also tell us as much about which position you already were most inclined toward.
*(full disclosure: I am a passionate person-- my voice tends to rise when I'm excited in a way that is often misinterpreted, to my dismay, as "yelling")
[ 05. June 2012, 16:30: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
... The class prejudice in "All things bright and beautiful" (the rich man in his castle etc) is probably a good contrast. "Omit that verse" - which is what most folks do if they sing that song - strikes me as just sensible, if it is to be salvaged for public worship. ...
quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
... I would go for 'us humans' except it sounds clumsy. I suppose simply 'us' is OK as long as it is backed up with good teaching. ...
These particular posts have got me thinking about inclusion and specificity in general, not just sex and gender. ATB&B is a clear case of poetry written in a particular context, when human classes were thought to be divinely ordained. We think differently now - liberation theology is the exact opposite.
It would be an interesting exercise to look at all the collective plurals for humans in particular groups of texts, and see what sort of patterns emerge. Does "us men" mean the males of the congregation, all members of the connexion, all Christians (except those weird Mormons & JWs), all monotheists, polytheists and animists ... Richard Dawkins?
My take on "mankind", BTW, is that it just means things (=people) that are like -- kindred, akin, kind (=type, category) etc. -- man. So one still has to define what "man" means, and decide who all is man enough. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) OliviaG
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
In the Eucharistic prayer we used to say:
"... giving him to be born of man.."
Now we say:
"... giving him to be born of a woman..."
The first, previously used formulation could be thought to contradict John 1 ("born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man..."). The second, currently used formulation is clearly a more accurate statement of what the church in fact believes.
But that isn't what we used to say. Which is interesting, don't you think?
Only if you think that what you take it to mean now is what it always meant. But words change their meaning.
Take the word man.
In Old English man word meant human-being male or female. The words for male and female human-beings were werman and wifman.
Wifman changed over to years to woman. In the 13th century the prefix wer was dropped and [man] started to be used for male as well as for the original meaning.
When Chaucer wrote, "Ech man for himself," he meant every person, not every adult male.
The two meanings have gone on side by side for centuries. It is only in the latter half of the 20th Century that people have started to dispute the gender inclusive use of man.
"For us men and for our salvation" was gender inclusive when it was written. But as I said above, words change their meaning. If it were written a quarter of the way through the 21st century then it would be gender exclusive. But anyone saying that the use of words from the 17th century excludes them does not understand the history of the words they are complaining about.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Balaam:
It is only in the latter half of the 20th Century that people have started to dispute the gender inclusive use of man.
Even if that were true, so what. We are alive now. Most of us here lived most of our lives in the second half of the twentieth century. Its who we are and where we are from. What's wrong with speaking our own language?
But its not true. Not quite. You are out by a hundred years or so. Phrases like "he or she" and even "mankind and womankind" start turning up at least as long ago as the early 19th century and became, if not common, not exactly rare by the end of it. And words like "salesperson" were in common use in the early twentieth century, replacing suffix "man" with "person" when either sex could be included.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
In the Eucharistic prayer we used to say:
"... giving him to be born of man.."
Now we say:
"... giving him to be born of a woman..."
The first, previously used formulation could be thought to contradict John 1 ("born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man..."). The second, currently used formulation is clearly a more accurate statement of what the church in fact believes.
But that isn't what we used to say. Which is interesting, don't you think?
Only if you think that what you take it to mean now is what it always meant. But words change their meaning.
Take the word man.
In Old English man word meant human-being male or female. The words for male and female human-beings were werman and wifman.
Wifman changed over to years to woman. In the 13th century the prefix wer was dropped and [man] started to be used for male as well as for the original meaning.
When Chaucer wrote, "Ech man for himself," he meant every person, not every adult male.
The two meanings have gone on side by side for centuries. It is only in the latter half of the 20th Century that people have started to dispute the gender inclusive use of man.
"For us men and for our salvation" was gender inclusive when it was written. But as I said above, words change their meaning. If it were written a quarter of the way through the 21st century then it would be gender exclusive. But anyone saying that the use of words from the 17th century excludes them does not understand the history of the words they are complaining about.
Etymological fallacy.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
The transition of the word man from gender inclusive to gender exclusive is not yet complete, if you accidentally kill a female you will not be charged with Womanslaughter.
As far as liturgical language is concerned I would expect a modern language service to use gender inclusive language unless it is being specifically about someone of male or female gender.
I have no problem with females saying that they feel that the wording of a 17th century rite excludes them.
It is when they state that 17th century word usage excludes them as if that were an established fact. If you want to use 17th century text you have to accept 17th Century language without reading a 21st century meaning into it.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Etymological fallacy.
Etimological dictionary.
Very interesting, but the point is that a word means what it means now not what it may have meant in the past. The etymological fallacy is confusing the etymology of a word with its meaning. Nowadays, 'man' means a male human only, not a female, whatever it may once have meant.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
But the pronoun is still problematic, isn't it?
Can you expand a bit please?
I think I may have misunderstood your point. My point was that if you say that the second person of the Trinity became "human" rather than "man" you are still faced with the problem of which pronoun (and, indeed, possessive adjective) to use when referring to Christ.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
But the pronoun is still problematic, isn't it?
Can you expand a bit please?
I think I may have misunderstood your point. My point was that if you say that the second person of the Trinity became "human" rather than "man" you are still faced with the problem of which pronoun (and, indeed, possessive adjective) to use when referring to Christ.
Christ was undeniably a man (i.e. male human) during his incarnation, so he's the one person of the trinity one can refer to as male without being accused of sexism.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
But the pronoun is still problematic, isn't it?
Can you expand a bit please?
I think I may have misunderstood your point. My point was that if you say that the second person of the Trinity became "human" rather than "man" you are still faced with the problem of which pronoun (and, indeed, possessive adjective) to use when referring to Christ.
Ah, right. No, I was simply commenting on the creedal statement whose intent is to say he took our humanity on himself, not to suggest usage of some other pronoun than "he" when talking about him.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bartolomeo:
In increasing order of difficulty, they are:
1) References to "mankind," "men," etc. where a broader reference to humanity as a whole is more appropriate. Most of these were cleaned up in the 1980s as a basic matter of equality of men and women.
2) Use of the male pronoun for general references to God or to the trinity. In most cases "God" can be substituted for "Him" and "God's" for "his." Most people don't notice except in liturgy that's recited by the congregation every week.
3) Male references to the parent figure in the trinity, e.g. "Father."
4) The use of the male pronoun for Christ.
And what bothers me is the manipulative way in which the goalposts have been moved over my entire adult life. (1) was mooted in the early 1970s couched in assurances that "God language" was a whole other matter and no one wanted to alter it. This is no longer the case. For forty years, the conservatives have given in and given in and given in, and still the changemongers are not satisfied. Meanwhile the whole premise, that we need to do this because women are particularly oppressed, has become increasingly far-fetched.
My worry is not that this petty social engineering will have any long-term effect on the human mind. It is only that the reputation of the church in the world at large will evaporate in a self-absorbed peroration of solemn silliness.
[ 05. June 2012, 18:56: Message edited by: Alogon ]
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
The things I would have said have already been posted, except for one ...
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I don't deny that women have historically been oppressed. But I fail to see how stripping the Deity of father imagery addresses this. Even the most liberated woman has, or has had, father figures in her life. Why can't the Deity be just another one?
Because the Almighty God, Author of the Universe, is not just another father figure.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
quote:
Originally posted by Balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Etymological fallacy.
Etimological dictionary.
Very interesting, but the point is that a word means what it means now not what it may have meant in the past. The etymological fallacy is confusing the etymology of a word with its meaning.
Which is why I said, "words change their meaning." Twice.
quote:
Nowadays, 'man' means a male human only, not a female, whatever it may once have meant.
It is becoming that way, butit isn't complete. See what I said about manslaughter, above.
The problem is that liturgical language, like legal language, is slower to change than language in common use.
I understand that the Greek of the Nicene Creed is not gender or age specific (can a Greek speaker confirm this?). "For us all and for our salvation," or simply, "For us and for our Salvation." ould better fit the modern understanding.
The etymological fallacy is that we can look at an old text such as the Book of Common Prayer or the King James Bible with a 21st Century understanding of the words. This would be a mistake. To understand 17th Century text we must use 17th Century meanings.
The problem comes when services are updated. When a modern language version of the Communion service is produced, with "us men" still in the text the text. The language may be traditional, but the meaning is far from traditional.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
And we actually had Lady Wisdom invoked in our liturgy this past Sunday after the Eucharist.
I find myself looking for inclusive language, or lack thereof, as an indicator of conservative Evangelicalism or fundamentalism. When I see "man" used as default language, it strikes me as a shot across the bow; I immediately assume that the author is so far to the right theologically and ideologically that whatever else s/he says is going to be in the same reactionary vein. And I'm usually correct.
Back to gendered references to God: There's an argument, of course, that if you're in a church with a female clergyperson and females in lay leadership roles, any halfway intelligent person in the pew is going to understand that male-default Godtalk is not intended to dismiss or subjugate women. So if I'm front and center on a given Sunday I don't get too fussed about things like "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (in fact, I tend to insert that into our liturgy's non-gendered invocation of the Trinity, after reading about laypeople's incomprehension of words we church geeks assume they know; that author argued that "Trinity" is one of those words). But I also don't pound people over the head with it all service long, like one of my former colleagues who used to begin every single prayer petition with "Father God" in a way I found oppressive and a little aggressive. (And especially considering that our community went through a recent trauma involving a church member's family's experience of ongoing childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a patriarch, something that wasn't revealed until one of the daughters was well into middle age and finally had the courage to talk about -- I don't think it was very sensitive to that either.)
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Nowadays, 'man' means a male human only, not a female, whatever it may once have meant.
Does it? Since when? Says who?
I'm sure the phrase 'known to man' (such as 'the deadliest disease known to man') is still common currency, at least.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Nowadays, 'man' means a male human only, not a female, whatever it may once have meant.
Does it? Since when? Says who?
I'm sure the phrase 'known to man' (such as 'the deadliest disease known to man') is still common currency, at least.
*Sigh* That is exactly the sort of thing we're talking about: using "man" to mean all of humanity, when, in other contexts, it means males only. Do try to keep up, there's a good chap.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
I may have missed something, but you've asserted that the definition of 'man' has changed towards a narrower definition, but practice suggests otherwise.
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
I give up. You're an idiot.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
Posts: 439 | From: Hemel Hempstead, Herts | Registered: May 2012
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
quote:
originally posted by RuthW:
Because the Almighty God, Author of the Universe, is not just another father figure.
Indeed
The Father is the father of the Son who became incarnate by the Virgin Mary and made human specifically male. The term Father expresses the first person of the Trinity's relationship with the Second person of the Trinity. It has nothing to do with what relationship the individual Christian had with their father. We are talking about the relationship Jesus has with His Father. Don't like the term Father? Don't address God as Father in personal prayer.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
I may have missed something, but you've asserted that the definition of 'man' has changed towards a narrower definition, but practice suggests otherwise.
As a mammal, man gestates his offspring in his womb and then feeds his offspring with his own milk.
Do you think the above sentence is stylistically and otherwise correct?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Give us another 50 years, Dafyd, and medical science will make that statement possible.
Maybe.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Anglican't
Shipmate
# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Do you think the above sentence is stylistically and otherwise correct?
I can see your point, but has that sort of sentence ever been written?
Posts: 3613 | From: London, England | Registered: Nov 2009
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
I give up.
Fine. I know just how you feel.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
You're an idiot.
Wrong. C3 violation. The rules haven't changed since the last correction I gave you just a little while ago.
You've either got a short memory, or a short fuse. I've got a long fuse. Lucky for you.
Don't do it again.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
I'm sure the phrase 'known to man' (such as 'the deadliest disease known to man') is still common currency, at least.
Put the boot on the other foot and imagine the common currency was 'known to woman' - then imagine 'woman' used in every other 'mankind' type expression.
Are you saying that wouldn't feel strange an excluding?
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Garden. Room. Walk
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barrea
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# 3211
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Posted
When Jesus was on earth he always called God Father and expected us to do the same, when He gave us The Lord's Prayer.
Surely if we follow Him we do the same as He did.
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Anglican't
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# 15292
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
[Put the boot on the other foot and imagine the common currency was 'known to woman' - then imagine 'woman' used in every other 'mankind' type expression.
Are you saying that wouldn't feel strange an excluding?
If that was the common currency, then that's what we would have grown up with and consider normal (in the way that phrases such as 'Mother Nature' are commonplace).
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
[Put the boot on the other foot and imagine the common currency was 'known to woman' - then imagine 'woman' used in every other 'mankind' type expression.
Are you saying that wouldn't feel strange an excluding?
If that was the common currency, then that's what we would have grown up with and consider normal (in the way that phrases such as 'Mother Nature' are commonplace).
I don't think so, Anglican't. That may be true of categories external to ourselves. The ones of relevance here are those intended to be inclusive of all humanity, which I think is Boogie's point.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Shipmates, FYI
Further to my above warning.
Please note that Steve H pushed the envelope once too many times today, and was delivered into the Deep on the "Pee" thread in Hell.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by barrea:
When Jesus was on earth he always called God Father and expected us to do the same, when He gave us The Lord's Prayer.
Surely if we follow Him we do the same as He did.
Er...not exactly. Jesus called God, "Abba", which isn't the exact translation of Father in Aramaic.
I suppose the closest translation would be "Dad."
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Bartolomeo:
In increasing order of difficulty, they are:
1) References to "mankind," "men," etc. where a broader reference to humanity as a whole is more appropriate. Most of these were cleaned up in the 1980s as a basic matter of equality of men and women.
2) Use of the male pronoun for general references to God or to the trinity. In most cases "God" can be substituted for "Him" and "God's" for "his." Most people don't notice except in liturgy that's recited by the congregation every week.
3) Male references to the parent figure in the trinity, e.g. "Father."
4) The use of the male pronoun for Christ.
And what bothers me is the manipulative way in which the goalposts have been moved over my entire adult life. (1) was mooted in the early 1970s couched in assurances that "God language" was a whole other matter and no one wanted to alter it. This is no longer the case. For forty years, the conservatives have given in and given in and given in, and still the changemongers are not satisfied. Meanwhile the whole premise, that we need to do this because women are particularly oppressed, has become increasingly far-fetched.
My worry is not that this petty social engineering will have any long-term effect on the human mind. It is only that the reputation of the church in the world at large will evaporate in a self-absorbed peroration of solemn silliness.
The fact that one change begets others is not "manipulative", it's simply the way things happen. Once our eyes are opened to an issue, we're apt to gain more insight as time goes on. That's not a manipulation, it's progress. Of course, not all change is good (although I happen to think this one, for the most part, is). But it doesn't mean the process itself is manipulative.
Again, I disagree that changes in language accomplish nothing. Again, the civil rights movement is a prime example. Changes in racist language were most likely not the primary cause of the progress we've made, but I do think they've had an effect over time. When we speak we imprint things on our minds, things that shape our attitudes and beliefs. I believe that what we say matters-- particularly what we say about God.
The danger to the church's reputation and witness is greater if we refuse to change-- if we cling to archaic language that no longer conveys our intended meaning.
Finally, the issue is not just about "oppression" per se. It's more about the way people of both gender are impacted by the language we use re: God. See examples upthread.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by barrea:
When Jesus was on earth he always called God Father and expected us to do the same, when He gave us The Lord's Prayer.
Surely if we follow Him we do the same as He did.
One of those things that sounds true, but it's not.
Jesus did indeed call God "Father" (or rather "Dad" as noted above), and an argument can be made for the primacy of that
image. But not, as you claim, "always". Jesus uses a wide variety of names for God. In fact, Jesus himself is the source of some of our most "feminine" images for God.
So, yes, we should follow Jesus' example-- and use a variety of names & images for God, including "Father" but also including feminine imagery.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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Leaf
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# 14169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
And what bothers me is the manipulative way in which the goalposts have been moved over my entire adult life. (1) was mooted in the early 1970s couched in assurances that "God language" was a whole other matter and no one wanted to alter it. This is no longer the case. For forty years, the conservatives have given in and given in and given in, and still the changemongers are not satisfied. Meanwhile the whole premise, that we need to do this because women are particularly oppressed, has become increasingly far-fetched.
My worry is not that this petty social engineering will have any long-term effect on the human mind. It is only that the reputation of the church in the world at large will evaporate in a self-absorbed peroration of solemn silliness.
How easy it is to assume that social changes which bring liberation to oneself are right and blessed, but those which benefit others are examples of "petty social engineering."
Measures vary, indeed.
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Choirboy
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# 9659
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Posted
Many things going on here. Just one or two thoughts. It seems to me that it is very important that we continue to refer to Jesus as "he"; having a sex and gender is part of being human, and we should not suggest that Jesus is a purely supernatural being or anything less than fully human.
Secondly, it always bugs me when people try to "fix" things by referring to the Holy Spirit as "She". God is obviously uncreated and beyond the created realities of sex and gender. Our language is deficient in describing God or the three persons of the Trinity, but we don't have to compound the error by suggesting God has male and female parts.
It would rather be the other way around, necessarily. Men and women each reflect aspects of the divine, being made in the image of God. In my view, when Jesus tells us to call God, "Our Father", it is because he is saying the relationship with the divine is _like_ that of an (idealized) Father and his children, not the relationship between us and our earthly father.
Apropos of nothing, perhaps, but the homily on Trinity at our shack made something of the notion that Jesus prays to "My Father", but instructs us to pray to "Our Father" - not "My Father"; the use of the title is communal in this way. Something is lost, the priest said, if one changes all the 1st person plurals to singulars in the Lord's Prayer. If he is Father to us all, then we are something to one another as well.
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Choirboy:
Secondly, it always bugs me when people try to "fix" things by referring to the Holy Spirit as "She". God is obviously uncreated and beyond the created realities of sex and gender. Our language is deficient in describing God or the three persons of the Trinity, but we don't have to compound the error by suggesting God has male and female parts.
So you are equally bugged when people refer to the Holy Spirit as "he"?
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
And what bothers me is the manipulative way in which the goalposts have been moved over my entire adult life.
Aw, diddums.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Regarding 'man': yes, the definition has definitely shifted, and yes it is still not a complete total shift. But there are many contexts where using 'man' will sound like it's referring to males only, and I support using different gender-inclusive language in those contexts to reflect modern meanings of words.
Lest I get an etymological attack from some quarters like the last thread where I raised an interesting aside... I learnt German in high school, and it's often very interesting to see the similarities between German and the English language of a few centuries ago. In German, the word 'man' is like our generic sense of 'man', and often translated as 'one', as in 'a person' ("one must do what one can"). Whereas 'Mann' is a male adult. They've evolved into two separate (though similar) words, so there's no capacity for confusion. English has taken different routes.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican't:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Do you think the above sentence is stylistically and otherwise correct?
I can see your point, but has that sort of sentence ever been written?
Exactly. The reason inclusive language should be used is that the sense of 'adult male' is never entirely absent from the word 'man'. If you could use 'man' to mean 'humanity' then there would be no problem with that sort of sentence and people would have written it.
The reason we ought to use inclusive language isn't in that sort of sentence, where the problem is obvious: it's the sentences where the sense 'adult male' slips by without explicit notice.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Charles Read
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# 3963
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Posted
Quick liturgical geeky comment on the OP:
'it is right to give him thanks and praise in the Sursum Corda (OK - the opening dialogue bit of the eucharistic prayer...)was a 1970's invention. The Latin original (I.e. mediaeval rite, from which this text is derived) says IIRR 'dignum et verum est' and there is no gendered pronoun to refer to God. So the BCP's 'it is very meet and right so to do' is very accurate as a translation and gender inclusive - as is the mediaeval original! Modern versions such as 'it is right to give thanks 'etc.are just going back to a more accurate translation.
Many Bible (and other) texts too are gender-neutral in the original but English translations import a gender reference into them needlessly. (The Nicene Creed discussion above illustrates this well).
In the CofE's Common Worship eucharistic prayers we changed the ASB's 'born as a man' to the more Biblically accurate 'born of a woman'. One person lobbied the comittee to change it back saying the change was 'a feminist plot to subvert the Church of England'. One committee member (Michael Nazir-Ali actually) responded that it was not a feminist plot - it was a quote from St Paul. The complainant replied 'I don't care who wrote it, it's a feminist plot'
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"I am a sinful human being - why do you expect me to be consistent?" George Bebawi
"This is just unfocussed wittering." Ian McIntosh
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
Sorry to suggest this but what about men who have been hurt by women? What about women who have been hurt by their own mothers?
Why is it that the assumption is that only a father can abuse, bully, mistreat, neglect the children?
There are many people whose experience of a mother is that they felt abandoned. I know of men whose mothers were feckless alcoholics but now they are being told that God is their mother?!
Oh that's helpful!
I was abandoned by my father at the age of 7 when he left my mother and went off with another woman.
My mother proved a rock over the next decade but I have never felt that to call God 'Father' was alien to me.
In fact I love calling him Father.
I think it's right that we refer to 'brothers and sisters' in the faith; I think that where scripture allows it we should say 'people' (but never 'humankind'!)
But where scripture speaks of the Fatherhood of God, where Jesus calls him Father, and God has revealed himself to be the Father, then we need to stick to revelation and not one-sided 'inclusive' language.
People have been hurt by other men and women alike.
Should that mean we don't use ANY gender for God and call God 'it' instead?
Mudfrog squares his shoulders ready for the outraged onslaught of those who say that men are always the abusers and that women could never do such a thing!
[ 06. June 2012, 10:44: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Charles Read:
The Latin original (I.e. mediaeval rite, from which this text is derived) says IIRR 'dignum et verum est' and there is no gendered pronoun to refer to God.
Pedantic aside -- it was "Dignum et justum est," literally "It is right and just." The translation "It is meet and right so to do" is much closer to the Latin. The pronoun really had no business creeping in.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
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