If Women's Studies is renamed Gender Studies to attain gender neutrality, will Anthropology also be renamed?

Question

Shouldn't History also be renamed to something neutral?

Answer 1

Good question, good points all around. Although I am an agent of active social androgyny, I think Women's Studies are necessary for precisely the reasons you've listed: man is considered the default gender. People take issue with a 'Women's Studies' major,etc., but not with the 'anthro' or 'his' studies because, as de Beauvoir put it 'Men are considered both the positive and the neutral, while women are considered only the negative'. Removing the 'negative' gender notation from 'Women's Studies' and replacing it with the 'neutral' 'Gender' while leaving the 'positive' notation in 'anthro'pology and 'his'tory wouldn't do us any good in achieving neutrality - because it would only reaffirm the male as both 'neutral' and polar... and thus it would also reaffirm the female as solely polar. That would do nothing to aid the cause for androgyny/gender neutrality in our society.

Answer 2

The English word "History" contains the letter h, i, and s, but that doesn't mean that every time those three letters appear together in any word it's a gender reference (e.g. "this," "whistle," etc). That's overreactionary! "History" comes from the Latin "historia," which in no way reflects the Latin pronouns of male gender. Changing "history" to something else would not accomplish androgyny; it would only be demonstrating our ignorance of the Latin.

Likewise, in the Greek, the term "anthropos" is not heavily gender specific. There are more masculine terms for men than that.

Answer 3

The problem lies in the English Lexicon, the word woman is derived from the word man, as the word human is derived from the word man. We have simply placed the meaning of man to be the male sex, humans or person of a certain role (mailMAN, fireMAN,policeMAN). Technically speaking, a woman is also a man (as in a human).

The entire argument is ridiculous semantics, no one consciously thinks that women are lesser people because the nouns that describe them are derived from those that describe men. Would you really want our species to be called Hupeople? or Huperson? Huwoman sounds a bit gruffer, and needless in its own right.

Answer 4

i don't think we need to rename anthropology...sure it's the study of MAN, but more specifically homo sapien, not an exclusion of women...it wasn't until you pointed out history that i even noticed.

should we also call ourselves womyn?

i just think it's archaic and pointless. i would hope few people really think along those lines anymore and if they do then they're not worth your time (they're definitely not worth mine)