A Feminist Perspective on Language and the Queer Community

Hello, I’m Kirsten Paula from Saint Mary’s University Queer Society (SMUQ). We work towards promoting diversity and resolving any LBGTQIA issues on campus. I’m a second year linguistics student and the Vice president of SMUQ. Today I wanted to talk about how language plays an important role in shaping and expressing our attitudes, more specifically in and towards the feminist perspective and the queer community. I use the term queer here as an umbrella term to be inclusive to all sexual orientations and gender identities.

One example is a regular question I hear people ask of all couples, straight and queer, is “Who’s the man in the relationship?” As an aspiring linguist I’d like to examine what this says about how people perceive gender roles and relationships. This question says a lot about how people still hold relationship and power stereotypes, even if they accept homosexual or hetero couples. It’s not only the assumption that there must be a man in any relationship but also it presupposes what a man is. Conversely it has a lot to say about the unpronounced “woman” in the relationship as well. This type of language is detrimental for both the queer rights movement and feminist values.

First off, what does it mean to be a “man” in the relationship? To wear the pants in the family? The answer you’ll usually get is that person must have strong, dominant and assertive qualities. They must be able to make decisions and be a breadwinner. What people are really describing are the power dynamics within the relationship and who’s more dominant. These dynamics should have nothing to do with gender but unfortunately people don’t describe that kind of person; they instead want to know who fits the description of a “man”. It also introduces the “woman” role in the relationship as the weaker role promoting stereotypical general roles for females as well. This person is meek, quiet and submissive. People don’t bother to ask who the woman is so it stays unpronounced in their inquiries. Overall the male gender role becomes preferred and the female gender role unwanted.  

But don’t people already accept that a woman can be the “man” in the relationship? I would answer yes to this question. Especially with the feminist movement and girl power it’s far more accepted to have strong female roles in couples and families. Women are freer to speak their minds, have professional lives and be equal caregivers. The problem is that it’s still a male gendered adjective that describes female prowess. By using the male term it normalizes those positive qualities in men but makes it a marked and unusual trait in females. It’s something worth special comment if the woman is dominant, but assumed to be natural if a man fills the same position. A woman shouldn’t have to act “manly” to be dominant, that should be a gender neutral attribute.

So how does this affect queer relationships as well? In same sex relationships involving two women asking who the “man” is asserts the need for a male in the relationship. It assumes that two females won’t be able to function together unless one of them acts “manly” undermining women’s abilities to have balanced relationships. In couples with two men it promotes judging men based on how well they fit into stereotypical male gender norms. The one male not passing the bar is demoted to being the “women”, which has negative connotations when used this way. Only the “real” man is worthy of the title. This is also binary thinking when it comes to gender expression, only men and women are considered. For gender queer (which includes people who identify outside of the male/female binary) couples, this extra layer of prejudice will make it that much harder. In any of these situations it also presupposed that one partner must be dominant and one submissive. It’s a generally unhealthy way to think of relationships where the power dynamics are inherently unequal.

A shift in vocabulary is essential to help alleviate all of these stereotypes that persist in our society. There has been a progression from male gendered standards to gender neutral or inclusive terms. For example “All students will hand in his paper this Wednesday” or simply policemen used to be entirely acceptable. Now we’ll find “All students will hand in their papers this Wednesday” or policemen and policewomen more often. We need to continue this progress to how we talk about power dynamics in relationships as well. Removing gender stereotypes could lead to a much more equal, inclusive and healthy way of approaching them for all genders.

Thanks for reading!

Kirsten Paula ~ Vice President SMUQ