I've been having a hard time with genderless language. When I speak, saying he or she, his or hers, him or her ties my tongue in knots. When I write, it clogs my sentences, restricts their flow.
Besides, like my daughter’s college roommate Sara Bellum says, "I'm secure enough in my femininity to know that if I someday become a fireman, people will be able to tell that I'm a girl."
“You just don't get it," my best friend, Golda, sputters.
Golda fell in love with Dr. Benjamin Spock the year he revised his best-selling child-care manual so that the subject of every other infant case study became a politically correct female. That was about the same time Golda began calling her dog His-or-Herman, because she'd just had him or her spayed (or was it neutered?).
Ever since then, she's been on my case. A couple of years ago, she even quit reading my column. "Who cares whether or not the language flows?" she hollered. "It's not like you're Roberta Frost."
I got so mad that day, I almost returned (one by one through the air) the dozen eggs I'd borrowed back in 1976 to bake a huge birthday cake in honor of America's bicentennial year.
All the neighbors came over that July 4, and we sat around listening to Golda, with her lyrical soprano voice, sing "God bless America . . . Land that I love . . . Stand beside her and guide her . . . "
These days she sings that line a little differently.
Still, I have to admire anyone so dedicated to the cause of eliminating gender bias from the English language that she calls her church songbook a hers-or-hymnal. That's why I'm finally beginning to see things Golda’s way. From now on my future stories will read like this:
Through Him/Herculean effort, Farmer Him/Herbert Jones taught fourteen His/Hereford cows to moo and stomp to the tune of a song called "His/Hernando's Hideaway."
Unfortunately, the hooves of the cattle kicked up so much dust that Him/Herbert began to sneeze.
When his anti-her/histamine hay fever medicine did little to relieve the symptoms, there was nothing else for Him/Herbert Jones to do but try sneezing on the beat as those His/Herefords made entertaining hers/history on stage.
