Historical Perspective of “The Goldfish Might be a She!
by Carolyn Kernberger
May 2021
When I wrote and published “The Goldfish Might be a She!” 30 years ago, the negative impacts of sexist language were just beginning to be reckoned with, but the nonbinary nature of gender was not discussed in the mainstream or well understood. My discussion of children’s understanding of gender was within the common cultural agreement of 1991, and most of my observations still hold.
Now, as I guide my grandchildren in these linguistic waters, there is wide cultural awareness, even if not total acceptance, of nonbinary people, transgender people and others along a gender fluid continuum. And much to my disappointment and dismay, sexism is still very much alive, along with the usage of “he/him” as the all-too-common pronouns for, oh, a driver, an accountant, an animal at the zoo. This male-as-default reference, as discussed in my article, leads to male imagery, and is still a problem in that it leads to invisibility of anyone who identifies as “she/her” or “they/them”.
In writing, fortunately, style guides and dictionaries have slowly but surely endorsed “they” as the best way to refer to a hypothetical single person. The current explicit pronoun preferences expressed by many people outside a binary framework has led to wider acknowledgement that pronouns matter. The preference by many people to be referred to as “they” individually is leading to the wider acceptance of it as a singular. Of course, the use of “they” to refer to one person has been used for centuries, and most of us wouldn’t pause an instant upon hearing “the driver lost control of their car”.
For much of the last 30 years I have taught English, with the premise that accuracy in expression is important. As much as possible, when I hear an adult speaking with a child using male-as-default pronouns in informal settings, such as zoos or parks, I remind them that “the goldfish might be a she”, and that they could just use “they”. Did you notice that I just used the singular “they/them” twice in that sentence in reference to the adult?
I have tried to call out male-as-default in print every time I see it, including just last month, with this sentence on the NPR website: “Years later, when a visitor to Washington asked to be shown the monument to FDR, he would be told simply to look around at the official government buildings visible in all directions.”
If I had read this when I was a she-child, the unconscious messages would have been that I was not expected to be a curious visitor to Washington, or was a less important visitor, and that possibly I wasn’t even allowed to be a visitor to DC (let alone become a Congressional Representative or Senator).
In fact, I did read a lot as a she-child in the 1950s and 60s, and absorbed the subtle messages that I was not someone who did important things, thought important thoughts, and certainly was not expected to assume leadership positions. Mental imagery associated with “he/him” really matters, especially to children as they form ideas about the world, and I cite research from the 1970s and 80s in my original article. The American Psychological Association specifically refers to recent research showing the overwhelming male imagery generated by “he/him” as they endorse the usage of “they” in their widely used style guide.
I’ve reflected a lot about how reading and hearing sexist language has affected me, and continues to affect everyone else around me, especially children. People who don’t identify as “he” (me, for example), but realize that the writer really did intend to include them as a possible visitor to DC, have to do a mental side-step to digest the message. This is more than just an interruption in the continuity of reading -- from a current writer, it is an affront and insult. It is sexism: a message that the writer considers me and others less important. In children it presses the sexist value of males as more important, a destructive social value.
During the pandemic I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction books published many years ago, from the 1970s as far back as Plato. I’m realizing anew how “he/him” rendered women largely invisible, except in certain roles as assigned by the patriarchy. The real-life restrictions on women reaching their full potential were reflected in the English language, which in turn reinforced them.
The grammar, which was codified in times before women could own property or vote or control their lives in any meaningful way, reflects the reality of those times. Men were the actors in society, and writing about important matters used masculine gendered pronouns because that was accurate. In the grammar books in most of the 20th century it was asserted that “man/men” really referred to all people, but those terms were used repeatedly to disempower women in the legal arena. Examples abound, beginning with “... all men are created equal…”. The ambiguous usage disingenuously enabled male dominance in any challenge.
The last part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st have seen dramatic social change, not only with regards to sexism, but also with regards to racism. However, much more is needed for all people to see themselves as equal participants in a family, a community, in a democracy, in the world. Generations of women and girls have endured oppression, and language can be one way in which cultures can redefine value systems. Language is how we communicate values, and I believe that “she” matters.