Merely referring to one’s ‘gay friend’ or 'black coworker’ is a way of tokenizing or otherizing someone. In doing so, the speaker reveals that he or she conceives of race or sexuality as central to identity. Further, in reinforcing this notion, the speaker is making the world a place wherein one’s race and sexuality are somehow more than just that, making these characteristics more relevant to our conceptions of self than they otherwise would have been, central to identity simply because our community deems it so. Which is why such things are not done in polite society. When it comes to gender, on the other hand, the language has traditionally presented no elegant alternative. We are forced to clumsily dance around the matter, or to give in and refer to our coworkers, students and friends as 'he’ or 'she.’ The result is that our language caps our ability to be progressive in this realm, forces us to immediately characterize people as male or female, associates other aspects of their personalities with their sex and, in doing so, makes it an inseparable part of how we perceive ourselves and each other, far more so than any other random biological feature or accident of birth. It is so hard to distinguish words from their potentially sexist intentions or applications because sexism necessarily pervades our language. It is literally impossible to say what, exactly, it is that many of us are 'trying to say.’
Let’s call everyone “they”: Gender-neutral language should be the norm, not the exception | Silpa Kovvali for Salon (via gaywrites)
