This lesson addresses two main topics. The first being the sexism in language and the second being the gender differences in language use. Language is a powerful socializer. You'll recall my making this point in the discussion of sexism in science in the previous lesson. Words are symbols with shared meanings.
Language is used to convey differential power and status between men and women.
Reading 12 in Feminist Frontiers goes into further detail on sexism in language. One characteristic of the English language and many others is the sex-specific pronouns. We don't have general pronouns signifying a person of unknown sex. As a result, you can't engage in conversations without inferring the sex of the subject of conversation. Consequently you must know the sex of whom you're talking to and whom you're talking about.