Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen

[longship]

20. I apologize for any offense

I am on your side. My argument is strictly rhetorical. But the rhetoric makes a difference. Here, at DU, we all use rhetorical devices to get our point across and I do not disassociate myself from that. I do it, too.

But I have a problem with this particular coinage. The word history has no gender specific root, to gentrify it has no purpose other than to make a gender neutral word into a gendered word.

I am being, as I often am on these forums, a bit of a pedant.

If you take offense to that, I grovel at your feet and apologize. I just think the word is silly, and I firmly believe that if people used it in popular culture it would be received precisely as that.

The more important argument is the lack of accuracy of women's part of history. That is the one battle we should all be fighting. My field is science and mathematics and the story of women there is both compelling and wonderful, in spite of them having to fight against gender bias.

But the history tells the real stories of these women. Like the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes, Marie Curie. Of Henrietta Leavitt who worked for decades at the Harvard observatory and discovered one of the most important astronomical discoveries of all time and was directly responsible for Edwin Hubble, decades later, using her data for finding that the universe was expanding. Of Caroline Herschel, an astronomer of exquisite talent who worked with her brother, William Herschel and made astounding discoveries in the nineteenth century. Just in science, I could go on and on. Try Hypatia, another favorite of mine. Or Hildegard of Bingen. (Both of which were polymaths.)

There are countless women like these, women who have made profound differences in history. We only have to tell their stories, which are compelling and often played out under difficult cultural situations. It is these histories which make the case for feminism, not silly rhetorical games.

Tell the stories, the real stories, their histories. They are all the more compelling because of their gender. Why diminish that by calling it something else, especially something as silly as herstory. This is the real history.

Thanks.