Language, and How We See Ourselves
I was typing up a response to someone's discussion post for class today (mentally checks that part of this weeks assignment off my to do list) and - for reasons that aren't really important - I ended up talking about a former classmate and using the word alumnae.*
Alumnae isn't a terribly common word, as even one guy in the mix makes it alumni. Yet it's the latter and not the former that I needed to look up to verify the correct term. It's little things like this that make me stop and really think about how we use gender in language and what it really means for male to be the default, and how different it feels like when it's not.
My first job was as a paper carrier - and that was always what I called myself. Never papergirl. Not just because I was a budding feminist who thought having gender in job descriptions was silly and dumb, but also because it was clearly silly and dumb for practical reasons. (Which, you know, would be why I was a budding feminist.) My brothers were paper carriers too - technically we actually shared one single route - and often times I'd be including them when I talked about what I did. Papergirl and paperboy don't lend themselves to easy plurals (paperkids?) - at least not terms that don't clearly exclude me. (and how weird would it have been to talk about my work and exclude myself from it?)
My brothers, however, I'm sure called themselves paperboys quite often. Even though I know they called themselves paper carrier sometimes too, the point is that we all knew that paperboy was the iconic image in people's minds. How often do those ads with kids throwing papers into the sprinklers ever show girls as the paper carriers? So even when I was calling myself a paper carrier and not a papergirl, I still felt like a lesser version of the original.
But with alumnae/alumni it's different. The first time I really heard either term with any frequency was in college - and my college has alumnae**, not alumni. So now it's the boy term that feels odd and the girl term that feels natural. And how rare and strange and wonderful that feeling is, to not feel like the addendum, the afterthought, the one who can be forgotten.
That feeling that other people think you the perpetual newbie and possibly beside the point just adds to why I hate the term "co-ed" to refer to female college students. I am not anyone's late addition. Aside from the fact that no one deserves to be, it's not even accurate to consider myself as something was tacked on after the fact. Nearly two centuries ago a woman named Mary Lyon traveled up and down the east coast of the United States collecting money to start a school. When she had enough to build her school, she built it specifically for me and all my fellow alumnae. At Mary Lyon's school, we are the originals. If Mount Holyoke ever goes co-ed, it will be the guys that are making it co-ed, not us.
Which, of course isn't to say that I feel that anyone should be the "co-" in "co-educational" (or that Mary Lyon was perfect or there weren't and aren't all kinds of other privileges barring many from accessing her school) - just that, well, language plays a role in how we see ourselves, what possibilities and opportunities we see as ours. And it's useful to remember that.
*which, now that I think about it, was technically wrong. It should have just been alumna, as the sentence was "Each alumna she interviewed.." Oh well.
**Actually, we have a few alumnus too, but we still use the term alumnae instead of alumni. Which I like. I think when easily possible the language has been changed to be more gender neutral, which I have mixed feelings about: yay! for being more inclusive of transgender students and ppl who identify as neither, not so great for giving female students that Alice in Wonderland feeling of being the default and not "the other" - which I think is a useful experience so long as women are made to feel like the other outside of school.
Alumnae isn't a terribly common word, as even one guy in the mix makes it alumni. Yet it's the latter and not the former that I needed to look up to verify the correct term. It's little things like this that make me stop and really think about how we use gender in language and what it really means for male to be the default, and how different it feels like when it's not.
My first job was as a paper carrier - and that was always what I called myself. Never papergirl. Not just because I was a budding feminist who thought having gender in job descriptions was silly and dumb, but also because it was clearly silly and dumb for practical reasons. (Which, you know, would be why I was a budding feminist.) My brothers were paper carriers too - technically we actually shared one single route - and often times I'd be including them when I talked about what I did. Papergirl and paperboy don't lend themselves to easy plurals (paperkids?) - at least not terms that don't clearly exclude me. (and how weird would it have been to talk about my work and exclude myself from it?)
My brothers, however, I'm sure called themselves paperboys quite often. Even though I know they called themselves paper carrier sometimes too, the point is that we all knew that paperboy was the iconic image in people's minds. How often do those ads with kids throwing papers into the sprinklers ever show girls as the paper carriers? So even when I was calling myself a paper carrier and not a papergirl, I still felt like a lesser version of the original.
But with alumnae/alumni it's different. The first time I really heard either term with any frequency was in college - and my college has alumnae**, not alumni. So now it's the boy term that feels odd and the girl term that feels natural. And how rare and strange and wonderful that feeling is, to not feel like the addendum, the afterthought, the one who can be forgotten.
That feeling that other people think you the perpetual newbie and possibly beside the point just adds to why I hate the term "co-ed" to refer to female college students. I am not anyone's late addition. Aside from the fact that no one deserves to be, it's not even accurate to consider myself as something was tacked on after the fact. Nearly two centuries ago a woman named Mary Lyon traveled up and down the east coast of the United States collecting money to start a school. When she had enough to build her school, she built it specifically for me and all my fellow alumnae. At Mary Lyon's school, we are the originals. If Mount Holyoke ever goes co-ed, it will be the guys that are making it co-ed, not us.
Which, of course isn't to say that I feel that anyone should be the "co-" in "co-educational" (or that Mary Lyon was perfect or there weren't and aren't all kinds of other privileges barring many from accessing her school) - just that, well, language plays a role in how we see ourselves, what possibilities and opportunities we see as ours. And it's useful to remember that.
*which, now that I think about it, was technically wrong. It should have just been alumna, as the sentence was "Each alumna she interviewed.." Oh well.
**Actually, we have a few alumnus too, but we still use the term alumnae instead of alumni. Which I like. I think when easily possible the language has been changed to be more gender neutral, which I have mixed feelings about: yay! for being more inclusive of transgender students and ppl who identify as neither, not so great for giving female students that Alice in Wonderland feeling of being the default and not "the other" - which I think is a useful experience so long as women are made to feel like the other outside of school.