do a lot of formal letter caption i have some friends and family and colleagues in the audience of this really like a lot of fun and lots of other people that i haven't had the privilege of meeting yet plug in so you can imagine what a weird like this is because i was an english major and all through my mall for graduate school and have never been sorry you did it because they love to read  but then through a series of world events and other events and then up with politics for many decades in my professional life so this is a strange was someone i was married to writing although i don't get to do as much of that reading with were talking earlier this evening because i'm busy reading all the number of things that trashy things but i need to keep up with what's happening in the other part of my life scholars who do work on politics and so forth but this is the very very first time i've had the privilege of introducing the queen when i thought about that i thought that's probably what's happened to you t will and those of us who know her she wired to work at the new yorker and she made it happen and she's now done that for thirty five years and done it so beautifully so significantly that she has teacher and i'm a little intimidated it's not because of commas and semi colons because this is not an exercise in writing tonight for me but more sort of the way those of you were also interested in politics it's more on the short jokes were short term jobs but very interesting ones of those of us who had planned a summer job in the right college and before we ended up doing whatever we did for thirty five years those were rich and interesting experiences that reflected who we are what we were and what the opportunities were in those days and they all said and to what she is witches i used and listening and loved before and  so i'm going to leave the introduction for you to read it is all about my blue collar jobs i drove a milk truck and worked in a cheese factory i worked in a costume company and when i got the job with the new yorker after i moved to new york i was in my first job was in the editorial library and i did permit myself a moment on the status of before i entered the office for the first time so some of you some other people have connections for me here in princeton and one of them is argue lane show walter who is seven has writer and academic and d we've come so far since then that i i think we really have come far and i'm going to read to you from the chapter it's chapter three the problem of each other and i have been dubious i want to know what was and she couldn't give me a reason she tried to get it through my head the language isn't logical or rather that certain idioms are not reducible to logic there's no reason anyone to tell her she couldn't say my most famous resist the gender of not might not change but the meaning of gender brawling with feminists the town hall i spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to work into conversation the phrase norman mailer gore man ma suffrage you would have preferred the drip feed itself held the well intentioned view that as more women found their way into the workplace taking traditionally masculine jobs the need for family designation as  cult would grow but it didn't work out that way authoress had never been obvious from victorian times it sounded patronizing and no female poet i know was ever watch to be called a poet by now ms is well established even ms magazine is still around and in fact in this week's new yorker there was a profile of glorious time they don't cave in to you because i am kind of the usage expert for the guardian proposes that where a person sex makes a difference the words male and female are perfectly adequate and offers as an example granny category best internation best international female artist but there is no agreement even on which adjective to say and some women bristle in certain contexts at being called female it seems to focus exclusively on the reproductive system and makes you feel like a farm which means rich and land lady farmer doesn't have the same effect but lady rancher male nurse male stripper male prostitute are all crossover germs indicating that men are making inroads into females strong and generally in english to have a sex attack on your occupation is unnecessary and even insulting except for the handful of jobs defined by biology like nurse and madam i should sex enter into it there are a few imperishable english words where the phone ending is strong and useful carol from the greek surface and so is the masculine in nineteen ninety three when instead we are he she added the traditional approach has been to use the masculine pronounce he is there to cover all people male and female alike that this practice has come under increasing attack has caused the most difficult problem in the realm of sex springing from actual speech and then as you know title that you can click on when you're buying an airline ticket pronouns are deeply embedded in the language and all these imposed teams are glued more logical they are the more absurd the idea of putting them into practice rather than solve a problem especially when we have when we need to mash up a pronoun with  represent a person instead of a way to say a man homo land and set a man veer man does have a dictionary definition that it's all humans and it is just possible that the childbirth is absurd well there's a little bit about the descriptive is really kind of like well i don't read that into the script i was coming at it with a more upbeat attitude citing all used documentation of there in the authorised version of the bible feels like and what is stopping a man from once in a while throwing in her or she garnered mentions it as anybody can see for herself but mostly to reject it or derided as a gimmick resorted to b i'm going to have to think about that because in fact really is interesting that the widow seems to be the more ominous the worst situation to be right where we're always has lots of what  and and i am so i'm sensitive to gender issues and i know the colleges it's really you know there are just too how trees you can be gender fluid and the the word that's in the language already that they may prefer is they there and it's a problem for some of us because we look up for more than one person you know