I’ve long had a rule—that, upon consideration, I admit I haven’t followed for several years—that I avoid mentioning gender and race and similar when describing something or telling a story unless that fact has specific relevance.

This may seem excessive, and avoiding mentioning gender is difficult, but most of us are so culturally sensitive to these kinds of things and are biased with stereotypes, that it’s helpful to explicitly go against the grain.

I had a friend/roommate who I had been complaining/venting to for weeks about a coworker. One day, my friend visited my work and met that coworker. Later, he told me how astonished he was to discover that my coworker was black. Why hadn’t I told him, he asked me, with an incredulous tone. This was in the eighties.

In the same sense that most of us, today, rightly recognize that my friend was at least a little bit racist and this was revealed by the obvious fact that he thought that knowing the race of my coworker was perhaps one of the single most important things to know about him (and thus he couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t mentioned it), it’s worth considering that the very same dynamic applies to the almost universal need to know the gender of someone as a key fact. When we insist on knowing the gender of someone second-hand, we’re doing so because our thinking is very sexist and knowing this fact establishes in our minds a huge range of assumptions about them. This is the very foundation of sexism.

It’s good to work against this. It’s good for people to discover that they merely assumed someone was male simply because gender wasn’t specified.

I think a certain university was happy that I chose a different institution for a number of reasons. At the time I was living abroad doing some political organizing and broke. The booz was flowing at the university hoasted event. So I enjoyed myself, which means I got a little, well, wasted.

Then, I ended up playing Tom Waits songs on the piano and telling a few jokes (not off color but maybe low brow). We had a good time, but the next morning I remember thinking that there were a few people who thought “fun now, but six years of this would be hell”.

Good policy. Who knows who you might accidentally offend by using crazy words like “wife” or “husband”. Truly that sort of behavior has to be stopped.

Lighten up francis.”

Sigh. Someday, somewhere, someone is going to be able to point out an instance of sexist language without being told immediately to “lighten up”. Thank you, Mitchell Rowe, for the implication that I should worry my little head about something that is “just a joke”.

And yes, klk, I am aware that it was probably a specific instance. I don’t see anything to prevent the use of the word “spouse” to accurately tell the story and simultaneously cover all the bases and prevent excuding a significant chunk of your audience.

Around 1525 Jagiellons ruled Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary, though the realms weren’t united. This despite their famously late marriages and low fertility.