Abstract
This chapter responds to the issues of institutional language outlined in Chap. 5 by looking at the questions of “political correctness,” language, and “dogma,” and respect in patriarchal environments. Mayock makes recommendations about how to employ institutional language without gender bias.
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- 1.
See Linder and Nosek’s “Alienable Speech: Ideological Variations in the Application of Free-Speech Principles” for a full discussion of the links between social and political tolerance regarding Constitutional protections. As Nielsen has stated (10–11), we might see this, in the case of race, as a battle between the First and Fourteenth Amendments. I would add that, in the case of gender, this issue begs further analysis on the at times contradictory protections of the First Amendment and Titles VII and IX.
- 2.
For an excellent history of how the question of sex and gender was challenged in Title VII law, see Chapter 4 (“Women Challenge ‘Jane Crow’”) of Nancy MacLean’s book Freedom is Not Enough. The Opening of the American Workplace.
- 3.
See Robin M. LeBlanc’s brilliant essay, “Teaching to Spite Your Body,” for an examination of the implications of the students’ use of the word “cunt” in the university-sanctioned student publication.
- 4.
Nielsen later discusses how to understand hierarchy, power, and privilege from a socio-legal perspective: “It [contemporary social theory] suggests that a phenomenon like street harassment and the hierarchical systems reinforced by it are accepted as ‘social facts’—real, uncontestable, and inevitable. In this framework, assumptions and ideologies about gender relations, the law, and street harassment become naturalized and taken for granted. Social norms about law, gender, and public interactions work together to create and reinforce these interactions as ‘normal.’ Law works with existing systems of hierarchy (based on race or gender) to render these interactions invisible and uncontestable” (33). Although Nielsen’s focus is street harassment, her statements about how laws interact with social assumptions to influence speech acts are an important element of how institutions determine what is “allowable” speech within their walls and on their grounds.
- 5.
Kathy Hotelling signals how the organization and campus climate of colleges and universities make these types of workplaces, despite their reputation for being different from the outside world, “potentially ripe ground for sexual harassment to occur. According to Dziech and Weinter (1984), the complexity of the issue, however, extends even further in that other factors converge to delay, ignore, or refute any sexual harassment charges that are reported. The diffused institutional authority can result in a lack of accountability and role conflict at all levels of the university that allow one to deny authority and responsibility. The concept of professional autonomy or academic freedom is sometimes used to defend behavior and avoid responsibility; eccentric behavior is tolerated (i.e. the absentminded professor). In an environment where politics are harsh and segments of the university openly vie for power, collegiality may be used to be “supportive of colleagues and unsympathetic to women complainants and their advocates’ (p. 49).” (499).
- 6.
See Kelly J. Baker’s “Writing About Sexism in Academia Hurts” for a description of the overwhelmingly convicting data and narratives on gender bias and sexism in higher education that she has encountered in her research and for an understanding of the “activist fatigue” that sets in when individuals confront microaggressions and gender shrapnel in the workplace.
References
Linder, Nicole M., and Brian A. Nosek. 2009. Alienable speech: Ideological variations in the application of free-speech principles. Political Psychology 30(1): 67–92. Print.
The Urban Dictionary online. http://www.urbandictionary.com/. Accessed 20 Oct 2011.
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Mayock, E. (2016). To Be PC or Not to Be PC, That Is the Question. In: Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_9
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