TO THE EDITOR:
In response to Saffa Khan’s column (“Why I’m not a ‘first-year’ student,” Nov. 30): You argued the call for the use of the term “first-year” instead of “freshman” is “irrational,” but you are thinking too narrowly. The impact of masculine terms as gender neutral comes not from the sheer offensiveness of one word but in the combined effect. As our culture continues to discuss the workings of “businessmen,” “councilmen,” and “congressmen,” we are perpetuating a limited view of what people in those positions should look like. What little girl dreams of growing up to be a businessman?
The words we use impact our archetypal definitions of those terms, and thus create limitations on what we believe we are capable of doing.
If everyone agreed to refer to “freshmen” as “first-years,” the term would become just as “homegrown” and “natural- sounding” as you argue is the term “freshman.” What we see as “natural” is only so because we are used to it. If we continue to discuss our lives with masculine terms serving as the gender neutral, we will keep perpetuating the climate of inequality.
No, changing the way we speak alone will not fix the global problem of discrimination and mistreatment of women based on sex, but yes, we can make a difference in our own community just by changing one word-freshman.
Lauren Refinetti
Senior
Political Science and International Studies
