Talking while female: an expert guide to the things you definitely should not say

(the reality is that the misogynists would prefer that we just never speak at all)

Talking while female: an expert guide to the things you definitely should not say

Recent takedowns of women who say things such as ‘I feel like’ and ‘sorry’ got Arwa Mahdawi thinking: what can they utter? Here’s her handy cheat sheet


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Assemble these letters into bold, definitive declarations and you will win at life. Photograph: Alamy



The semantic struggle is real. Every day it gets harder and harder to know whether my vocabulary is inadvertently perpetuating a “growing tyranny of feelings” that threatens the very foundations of democracy. Thankfully the internet is full of vocabulary vigilantes eager to spell things out for the rest of the us – the most recent example being Molly Worthen, who recently published an op-ed in the New York Times urging people to “Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like’”. According to Worthen, the phrase is “linguistic hedging” that evades the civilized conflict on which democracy is premised.

In case you’re wondering why Worthen is qualified to tell people what not to say, she is an assistant professor of history who focuses on conservative Christianity. Her latest book was called Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. I feel like this is an unusual way to become an apostle of linguistic reason, but I’m no expert.

While Worthen explains that “I feel like” is used and abused across generations and genders, she also makes it clear that the trouble all started with young women. And her piece is just the latest example in a long history of unsolicited advice about what women should and should not say. In just the past couple years, there have been millions of words written explaining why “undermining” words or phrases like “sorry”, “just” and “I’m not an expert” are basically upholding the patriarchy while making you sound like a moron. There’s even an app, Just Not Sorry, which helps you remove these words from emails.

Sorry, but this is all getting out of hand. I don’t want to read any more op-eds about what women should or should not say. Let’s just make things easier for everyone by laying down some ground rules that put a stop to the confusion: a Dictionary of WomanSpeak (get 10% off with your Woman Card) that serves as a definitive guide to things you should not say while being female.


We’ve already covered this, but I’ll just repeat it for clarity: every time you say “I feel like”, a small part of democracy dies. So please, reach for more definitive, muscular phrase such as:

• “I have a graph that demonstrates”

• “Statistics suggest”

• “A man told me”

• “A wise man told me” (although this is obviously tautology)

Rather than saying “I feel like it’s going to rain”, for example, say: “A man told me that it is going to rain.” Democracy saved.

. . . .


http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/03/what-women-shouldnt-say-molly-worthen-female-vocabulary