Does Vivian not like men?

Is that why she’s working to take ‘he’ words out of English?

Dear friends:

I understand your question and let me put your mind at ease. I like men; I like all of us, generally speaking. What bothers me is that English prefers men and doesn’t have any real or even nice words for those of us who aren’t men*. We’ve talked about that in prior blogs.

It’s English that needs a little tweaking because IT has thousands of words that celebrate men, but we might as well not exist. English ignores us. I know of no other language that so disregards us!

Besides, it’s so easy to fix that I want to launch a campaign to change a few words, especially ‘THE’. It’s our most common word, used far more than any other words in English and it’s always spelled with an ‘he’, which is really an incorrect spelling. All of us most commonly say ‘THA’. Wouldn't it be nice to take one ‘he’ word out of English and make it neutral?

*******FAVORITE ENGLISH WORDS

Now, I’d like to take a minute to share some of my favorite English words because words can also have uplifting power. We could all use more of that! Here's a short list:.

ALL (Even if it’s spelled with only one ‘L’) because it includes everyone/everything. For instance, ‘magical’. Isn’t that a wonderful word? If you put it through a ‘word split’ in our Word Collider, you get ‘Magic-al’ or Magi-call. I believe we all have a magical part inside–we just need to be willing to share it!

US: Whether it’s spelled as ‘-us’ or ‘-ous’ we again have lots of wonderful words: wondrous, marvelous, stupendous, hilarious, etc. These ‘us’ words draw us together which is where I’d love to focus English to make it more inclusive..

WE Very similar to ALL. WEL-COME; WE-AL-THY: WELL; and WELL-NESS.

If we take time to study words that we speak and choose more uplifting ones, I believe we can change our experience of life.

E-mail: vivian@vivianprobst.com

wenglishforwequality.com

*Those of us who aren’t men by birth or preference

At last? Credit where credit is due!

You might have seen our recent post of the ‘Brilliance Gallery’, artwork by Caroline Criado

Perez, a humorous but stern cartoon about leaving brilliant wimin* out of our worldview.

Sad but true, we are generally invisible. If you don’t think that’s true, pick up a copy of ‘INVISIBLE WOMEN

by Caroline Criado Perez. I’d add that our world is designed ‘by men, for men’ but I think we generally get it. It’s been a man’s world for far too long. (Insert Book cover)

But what to do about it? Can we really make our world more inclusive? More equal? You bet! Oh, there’s so much going on to equalize our two sexes (most people use tha word ‘gender’ instead of ‘sex’ but when it comes to equality, we simply must acknowledge that those scales have been tipped toward men and it’s time to bring wimin in to balance it. Even men are on board.

Did you know The United Nations has created a ‘HeforShe’ campaign (started in 2014) that invites men (world and large corporate leaders) to join forces to acknowledge our amazing contributions without which our world would be a much different place?

Did you know wimin played a major role in winning WWII because, behind tha* scenes (as was sadly normal), besides all the other marvelous tasks we undertook, we also handled code breaking so that our fighters could know what military plans our enemies were making? Men got the credit and yes, it was earned, but we were right there, lots of us, deciphering messages that affected the outcome. If you want to know more, read ‘The Woman Who Smashed Codes’ about Elizabeth Smith Freidman, by Jason Fagone.

Now the U.S. Post Office has a stamp labeled WOMEN CRYPTOLOGISTS OF WORLD WAR II. Feel free to buy lots because it’s so important to acknowledge.

Of course we also now know about those amazing wimin in the movie ‘Hidden Figures’ and tha critical role they played in spite of outright discrimination against them. Truly ‘wonder wimin’! There’s information coming out from all over about true geniuses who were ‘wimin and hidden’. Can you feel our world tipping ever so slightly into equality? Expect more to come and…now it’s time to take on our English language which is highly masculine.

Coming soon (we hope), ‘Breaking the Bias of English’. If you’re on our e-mail list, you’ve been receiving content that will be in that book, we hope, by summer. Think English isn’t a man’s language? You might think differently after reading our posts and that book! And it’s so easy to fix!

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Really? Can we change tha world by changing a few words? Stay tuned, because YES WE CAN!

*Note how we’ve changed a few words to give wimin some of their own.