Defeating Words

Recently Andrew wrote a post that has created some discussion. Was it sloppy, or just sexist?

Andrew's post contains this promising part:

RE: Women and emerging minstries. Obviously there are more women in leadership and ministry teams, having been decentralized, are more mixed in gender.

However, it ends this way:

I am looking over the coming summer at the people who have told me they are going overseas on pilgrimage or mission, and again, i am looking at a large group of GIRLS! Not much equality there. Where are the men?

That started some controversy! In a follow-up post, Andrew clarified that "girls" referred to " teenage girls", but the damage was already done.

What happened? Let's deconstruct the post, starting with the word "girl". The word "girl" can express two different attitudes, either playful and affectionate or casual and dismissive. It can also imply immaturity or dependency.

Therefore, what Andrew intended to mean:

Even though there's more balance of genders with leadership and ministry teams, there's a lack of men in pilgrimage or mission teams. Why?

could come across like this instead:

There's a balance of genders with leadership and ministry teams, but there really should be more men in pilgrimage or mission teams, since even women can do it.

(See the difference in tone?)

Does Andrew's clarification about "girls" meaning "teenage girls" make any difference? No. The problem is that the word "girl" can be equivocal, depicting either women in general or young women in particular. If his post was exclusively about adolescents, it could have been appropriate. Since the rest of the post refers to women in general, it doesn't eliminate the problem.

If that's not bad already, it gets worse. Andrew uses "girls" here in the context of women being disproportionate with a certain specialty, sabotaging a more positive (or neutral) impression of the women involved. Moreover, there is no usage of the word "boys" anywhere in the post, even where the word "girls" is mentioned.

Ironically, the post's intent was exhorting men to participate in some responsibilities women seemed more likely to do, so there weren't discrepencies between women and men. Yet with writing this uneven, it could be discouraging or frustrating to many women, even if only slightly. What's a women to do when she sees Andrew's post?

Of course, being a guy myself, it's easy to consider giving Andrew some leniency, noticing his good intentions. However, it's also easy to forget that good intentions are not enough, especially when writing about others not like you. That's why sloppy writing by men about women (even indirectly) could be self-defeating for men and alienating for women. It may only be a short slide to sexism.