In August 1981,Cyra McFadden wrote “On Language; In Defense Of Gender”, which takes on the over use of non-gender specific titles and suffixes. Although written for the Sunday morning coffee drinkers of the New England Upper Middle Class, this humorous article can be explained to any audience. The audience I will be addressing will be my classmates of an undergraduate composition class. We are currently living in a time where gender is the main topic of many discussions, and should be recognized by my audience as relevant. I will need to address the fact that McFadden is not arguing against gender equality, but is focusing more on the butchering of writing in modern times.
The ultimate message that will be construed in my writing is that, when writing, political correctness is not the answer to gender equality. McFadden points out that “None of this does much to encourage friendly relationships between persons, transpersons or – if there are any left – people.” She is refereeing to using “he/she’s” that are being used to de-masculine the English language, in the fight for gender and transgender …show more content…
As young writers starting our adventure in higher education, learning to put our political agenda aside could be the difference of keeping or losing our target audience. As I wrote in the first sentence of this paragraph “his/herself” may seem like the fair way to identify the reader, but it should not have to break-up the readers flow to identify that I’m writing to all genders in my essay. This topic can and will be argued in both directions until the end of time, therefore the audience should not expect to receive the ultimate answer of what is right way to write. Although focused on collegiate classmates, this essay should be able to assist writers of all professional levels in an age-old debate of whether women can be masculine
The ultimate message that will be construed in my writing is that, when writing, political correctness is not the answer to gender equality. McFadden points out that “None of this does much to encourage friendly relationships between persons, transpersons or – if there are any left – people.” She is refereeing to using “he/she’s” that are being used to de-masculine the English language, in the fight for gender and transgender …show more content…
As young writers starting our adventure in higher education, learning to put our political agenda aside could be the difference of keeping or losing our target audience. As I wrote in the first sentence of this paragraph “his/herself” may seem like the fair way to identify the reader, but it should not have to break-up the readers flow to identify that I’m writing to all genders in my essay. This topic can and will be argued in both directions until the end of time, therefore the audience should not expect to receive the ultimate answer of what is right way to write. Although focused on collegiate classmates, this essay should be able to assist writers of all professional levels in an age-old debate of whether women can be masculine