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Photo by Roanne Sharp

Last week I was sternly admonished by members of a certain lefty political group on campus.

At the close of a meeting, I offered a simple statement that, unbeknownst to me, would cause great offense.

“I look forward to hearing from you guys soon,” I said.

“Guys and girls,” a member shot back.

Apparently only gender-neutral language is allowed in that particular office.

I had been in this altercation before. As a naive young activist in my first year at UCLA, then unacquainted with the mores of political correctness, I used the word “manpower” at a meeting, only to be fiercely slapped down.

The correct word, I was informed, is “personpower.”

This trend toward the use of gender-neutral language hasn’t just swept activists on college campuses; administrators have changed their vocabularies as well.

Yale, Oberlin and UC Santa Cruz all refer to their incoming classes each year as “freshpersons.”

In this brave new politically-correct world, then, must we really use awkward constructions such as “guys and girls,” which make one’s speech more fitted to a Broadway musical than conversation? Am I doomed in my writing to refer to all first-years with “freshpersons,” a word so clunky it’s sure to bring any sentence crashing straight through a reader’s threshold of boredom?

I think not.

Constructions such as s/he, her or his, and even “personpower” detract from good writing, focusing readers’ attentions more on whatever particular bone you’ve got to pick about gender neutrality than on the issue at hand – the subject you’re writing about.

Bumping up against one of those constructions in an essay is the literary equivalent to finding a fly in your martini. Dash the drink, I’ve got to have a word with the bartender.

Now, gender-neutral language was born with noble intention, and my activist acquaintances did have a point. “Guys” is, in fact, a word with a masculine orientation, and although Webster’s tells me I can use it in reference to “members of a group regardless of sex,” its use does force women to answer to a word traditionally directed at men.

Gender neutrality doesn’t just concern the spoken word either. The use of the general masculine pronoun, as in “the average person is concerned about his health,” contributes to the invisibility of women in our language and in our thinking.

The example above implies that the average person is a male, leaving women entirely out of the picture. Are women somehow not “average” people, you wonder? Psychological studies have even shown that sentences such as these bias our thinking to that effect.

Since gender neutrality is a worthwhile endeavour, I’d like to propose a new micro-campaign for the feminist cause, a cause, I might add, of which I proudly call myself a part.

Call it the “Campaign for Elegant Feminism” and this is our creed:

We will avoid, at all costs, the use of “-person” as a replacement for “-man,” and prefer instead a non-gendered alternative. A congressman is a representative, not a congressperson, a chairman is easily a chair, and, yes, freshpersons are simply frosh.

We will use the plural to avoid s/he, his or her, and the general masculine pronoun. “Each student should hand in her or his paper,” will be “the students should hand in their papers.”

We will avoid the general feminine pronoun too, as “Each student should hand in her paper” is as biased against men as “his paper” is against women.

Above all, we will avoid “guys.” “I look forward to hearing from you,” we know is sufficient and sure to avoid controversy, especially with sensitive audiences.

Want to join the creed? E-mail Reed at treed@ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.