Damn, did I miss discussion-based classes.
What I love about them is that they stretch across multiple disciplines. In a lecture-style class, everything stays in that room. What went on the whiteboard last year in math or physics classes was a conversation from professor to student. Here is what you need to know, and find a way to know it. This is something completely different from my Gender & Sexuality Studies class, which is turning out to be my favorite class of the semester. One of the readings we had for today included the phrase "language belongs to those who use it." I immediately fell in love with this sentence. Wrote it in my response paper, talked about it in class, and I might adopt it as a life outlook. Language belongs to those who use it.
Historically speaking, our society has been male-dominated. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." We can no longer ask him, but I'm curious what Neil Armstrong was thinking when he said those words upon landing on the moon. I'm guessing nothing - I'm guessing that that was what came to him. But think about it. One small step for man. Spoken by a man landing on the moon. In Hamlet, Shakespeare claims "to each his own." Again, as a male author...to each his own. We talked about a lot of these examples in class. Firemen, mailmen, busboys, all of these have male-oriented names. A nurse is a nurse is a nurse, yet we often find ourselves referring to a male nurse as a male nurse, despite the fact that "nurse" has no gender bias (at least linguistically). A group of people, perhaps all male, all female, or a mix, is usually referred to as "guys." Pronouncing two people "man and wife." Wife is contingent upon another person (that of a husband or wife), whereas man implies standing alone, not requiring another for definition. I'm sure you can think of more examples, but the point is, our language is still stuck in the roots of the patriarchs.
One final point about my new favorite quote is the world of mathematics. I actually attended a Philosophy of Math presentation when I was in San Diego for the Joint Mathematics Meetings, and this question was brought up there, too. Who's to say anything about math? Is 2+2 equal to four because it is four, or because enough people have claimed that two and two makes four, and enough people have believed it? In my GenEd Philosophy class, we talked about what would happen for 1+1 to equal 10. Clearly it's not, but what if enough people started saying that it was 10? If our society accepted one and one as ten, then wouldn't it be? Language belongs to those who use it.
Interesting idea. Check out some of John Green's comments on a similar issue. He's an author who often recives questions about what happens to his characters after his books end and he flat out refuses to answer them, saying that his opinion on what happens is no more accurate then the readers. His answer to this is often "books belong to their readers"
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