Kudos to you

Here’s an old riddle. A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that boy is my son!” Explain.

I have copy-pasted those 24 words from an old article you can read here. Why did I choose to share that “riddle” with you? Well, because the answer is obvious now (the surgeon is, of course, the boy’s mother) but it used to be quite mysterious just some years ago.

I believe I was in my late teens when I first heard that story. Back then, it really puzzled me. According to my (limited) worldview, a surgeon had to be a man. Interestingly enough, the English word surgeon is not marked for gender. Yet, many English speakers shared my bewilderment even then. This comes to prove how much the world has changed over the past thirty years.

When I told the story to a class of students in 2006 it felt great to realize that it was no longer a riddle. Every student assumed that the surgeon had to be the boy’s mother. The intriguing question today is... how many of you thought of a third possibility? The surgeon could be a man: the father’s gay partner. I suppose we need another 30 years for that third option to become an "obvious" answer.

Anyway, today is International Women’s Day. So kudos to you, wonderful women out there. You make up 50% of the world and yet... are still underrepresented in way too many areas. In the English-speaking world, whenever the issue of great women is broached, we are bound to remember Amelia Earhart (pioneering aviator), Marie Curie (pioneering scientist)... but how about Hedy Lamarr? She was a Hollywood actress in the 1940s as well as a surprising inventor. How about honoring the memory of Rosalind Franklin? Her fundamental contributions to the research that led to the discovery of DNA have been shockingly overlooked by the academic world. And how about Dorothy Parker, amazing wit in a male dominated world? She belongs with Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen and all the rest of them.

Anyhow, this is a language blog. So allow me to remind you that there is a huge difference between grammatically marked terms like mare or bridegroom and those which are only socially marked. As we know (but tend to forget) a butcher is not necessarily a man. A secretary doesn’t need to be a woman. Therefore the word nurse should be acceptable for both men and women. What does it all mean for you? It means you ought to refuse to use the expression male nurse (which is an inherently sexist retronym). Use humankind instead of mankind, etc. That can be your linguistic contribution to making the world a better place. I can't forget that the overwhelming majority of you (my students) is made up of women.