‘Our colloquialism is bursting at the seams when it comes to sexism’
Patricia van Liemt is a radio host, writer and mother of Maria (12) and Phaedra (9). Every Friday she writes accurate, honest, funny and above all recognizable columns about her life and motherhood.
So I was very excited about my oldest daughter learning French using sign language*. Until she came home yesterday and told me which gestures were for ‘boy’ and which for ‘girl’. To indicate “boy,” she made a bold gesture with a fist on her head and a fist on her heart and said “garçon” in a deep, authoritative voice. The gesture for “girl” was that you imaginatively put your hair behind your ears like a little shy girl. The intonation of ‘fille’ was in a soft, almost sheepish tone. Well you can already feel it coming, my stereotype radar went out red hot. And that immediately brings me to the next thing, because our spoken language is also bursting at the seams when it comes to sexism.
‘To stand your ground’
I am annoyed by our language anyway. You know what I think is the worst? ‘To stand your ground’. meh. Dear women, unite and please tell our fellow man that we must no longer use this language. Well, maybe we don’t use ‘busy’ anymore, but that aside.
Good. Sexism is also often hidden. Take the following example: a cautious woman is often seen as someone who does not dare, and a cautious man as someone who makes informed decisions. And we laugh a lot too, because we women would rather laugh than be difficult. have a good laugh and one of the guys being is a form of maintaining control.
Effects of our language
In recent years, a lot of research has been done into the effects of our language. I was shocked by the example of job descriptions that often refer to ‘the applicant’ or ‘he must be able to do this or that’, as it turns out that people are more likely to choose a man. Purely because those masculine words were used in the description. And it turns out that this also means that women are less likely to apply for jobs. So that small difference in reading behavior has major consequences.
Back to my daughter. You understand I told her straight away that I think it’s ridiculous that a boy is portrayed as tough in this French ‘sign language’ and the girl as – and I almost wanted to fill in ‘girlish’ here – and that’s exactly what I mean. We still have a long way to go dear ones.
* AIM stands for Accelerative Integrated Methodology. This innovative didactics by Wendy Maxwell from Canada, designed for the French subject, assumes that children learn a language much faster if all language expressions, including grammatical ones, are supported by gestures.
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