Peony Moss Takes On Inclusive Language

Don’t miss this marvelous rant here:

“My personal perspective as a woman, a reader, a mother, and a Christian, is that I hate inclusive language. I hate it because I feel patronized when it’s in use. I hate it because I feel like its promoters, well-intentioned though they may be, are saying to me, ‘O woman, you are not smart enough to know when the words “men” and “man” refer to the whole human race and when they refer to males … I hate inclusive language because it insists that all the places I thought included me were actually excluding me. It seeks to drive a wedge between me and pretty much everything written before 1970. Inclusive language has robbed our language of the little honors paid to the feminine in the tradition of using the feminine pronoun for ships, countries, and abstractions. Inclusive language is the Mrs. Elton in the garden of literature, the tacky boor who wrenches every spotlight towards herself …”