TO THE EDITOR:
There is sexism in the world and it’s certainly not defensible, but there is a more immediate problem in Chapel Hill. We must be vigilant against the debasement of the English language in the name of frivolous politics.
To be clear, I don’t mean we should merrily spew derogatory epithets. Those, thankfully, don’t appear much in our newspapers. We live in an incredibly diverse and inclusive town. But it is also a learned town, and a student advocating the erosion of the English language boggles the mind. Some gender specific words are useful and honestly don’t offend anyone. Why does Vera Parra (“We should discuss, debate gender roles and language,” Jan. 26) suggest we waste time arguing over it?
How many words can you think of that have lost their gender connotations over time? Our word “virtue” no longer means “manliness” like its Latin root “virtus” but it didn’t lose its gender connotation because it was debated ad nauseam or censored in newspapers. Must we defend virtue along with any other word exhibiting vestigial gender? Are we also to debate the grammatical gender found in languages like Spanish and German? Does anyone really care? No, we really don’t.
We are here to learn and broaden our thought. The end of legitimate discourse ought to be enlightenment, not censorship. I really don’t see how protesting words with “man” in them will improve anyone’s intellect. Manholes are hardly a worthy subject for debate. Let’s be scholars and philosophers and stop trying to impose some form of Newspeak on the DTH.
William Harris
Senior
History
