Word for not liking women

Australian of the Year and former Army chief David Morrison wants Australians to stop using the word ‘guys’ in the workplace because, he says, it is not inclusive of women.

Likewise, groups of women should not be referred to as ‘girls’ at work because it is belittling and offensive.

The message is part of a new Workplace Diversity Council campaign called #WordsAtWork, which aims to spark a conversation about how even seemingly innocuous language can exclude minority groups.

«Exclusive language, gender-based language or inappropriate language, has as much a deleterious or disadvantaged effect as something where you’re saying something blatantly inappropriate to another human being,» General Morrison told ABC News Breakfast.

Diversity Council chief executive Lisa Annese said #WordsAtWork had predictably been criticised for being «too politically correct», but added the campaign simply aimed to encourage people to think about how the language they use in the workplace affects others.

«Is it too much of an effort, really, to say ‘chairperson’ [and not chairman]?» Ms Annese told ABC News.

«There are [gender] neutral alternatives that we can pick. Instead of saying, ‘hey guys’ or ‘hello ladies’, why not say, ‘hi everyone’, ‘hi team’?»

However, ‘guys’ is not the only inappropriate phrase commonly directed at women in the workplace.

Here are a few other phrases that probably shouldn’t be used when talking to or about women in the office. As a rule of thumb, if you wouldn’t use it to describe men, don’t use it when talking to women, either.

Girls

Associate Professor Rae Cooper from the University of Sydney’s Business School said the #WordsAtWork campaign was a positive initiative because it would put the importance of using inclusive language on business leaders’ agenda.

«It’s about challenging stereotypes; it’s about challenging the assumptions we have about who’s a leader or who’s a contributor in the workplace,» Ms Cooper told ABC News.

Referring to women as «girls», Ms Cooper said, was sexist and inappropriate for the workplace because it was often used to exclude and demean women.

«Being ‘girled’ at work … is a way of subtly differentiating women form their male colleagues. It’s about infantilising them, in a way. You’re making them more like children, or they’re somehow less mature than others,» she said.

«You don’t hear [people referring to] ‘boys’ in the same way that you hear [the term] ‘girls’ used in the workplace.»

Bossy

«I’m not bossy,» declared Beyonce in 2014. «I’m the boss.»

The pop star teamed up with Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and Girl Scouts USA to launch Ban Bossy, a public service campaign encouraging girls to throw off negative stereotypes and achieve their ambitions.

«When men and boys lead it goes to their stereotype. When girls or women lead, we react negatively,» Ms Sandberg told Yahoo! News.

«The word ‘bossy’ typifies what is a very serious problem for women, which is we don’t like female leadership … the stereotype that women shouldn’t lead is holding back women in every industry.»

It matters because using words like bossy can negatively impact women’s careers.

In a 2014 study for Fortune, linguist and tech entrepreneur Kieran Snyder analysed 248 workplace performance reviews collected from 180 employees (105 men and 75 women).

Snyder found two things: that women’s reviews were more likely than men’s to contain negative feedback; and that women’s appraisals commonly included negative personality criticisms, for example, comments that described the woman as ‘abrasive’, ‘judgmental’ or too dominating.

«There’s a common perception that women in technology endure personality feedback that their male peers just don’t receive,» Ms Snyder said.

«Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviours when they lead; words like emotional and irrational describe their behaviours when they object.

«Abrasive alone is used 17 times to describe 13 different women. Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.»

Feisty

Please, don’t call women ‘feisty’. In fact, it’s Downton Abbey actor Daisy Lewis’s least favourite word, for obvious reasons.

«Feisty? My least favourite word. Have you ever heard a man described as feisty?» she told the Mail on Sunday in 2014.

«Have you heard a male character described as feisty? I think not.»

Former prime minister Tony Abbott regrettably made the mistake of calling Liberal candidate Fiona Scott ‘feisty’ (along with other troubling things) in 2013.

«They’re young, feisty, I think I can probably say have a bit of sex appeal and they’re just very connected with the local area,» Mr Abbott said of Ms Scott and Liberal MP Jackie Kelly.

Ball busting

Likewise, when was the last time you heard someone call a man a «ball-breaker» or a «ball-buster»?

One glance at Twitter shows US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is regularly described as ‘ball-busting’ or ‘ball-breaking’ — a term frequently directed at women in positions of authority, but never men — simply for doing her job.

And yet women who are not demonstrably assertive are also penalised.

It is a double standard Georgetown University linguist Deborah Tannen calls ‘The Hillary Factor’ — a sexist double bind where women who are seen as ‘too gentle’ or ’emotional’ are considered not up to the task of leadership.

«If a woman speaks and acts in ways that are expected of a woman, she will be liked but may be underestimated. If she acts in ways that are expected of a person in authority, she may be respected but will probably be viewed as too aggressive,» Ms Tannen said.

«Anyone who seeks public office, especially the highest one, must be ambitious, yet that word is rarely applied to male candidates because it goes without saying. And ambition is admirable in a man, but unacceptable — in fact, downright scary — in a woman,» Ms Tannen wrote recently at the Washington Post.

Bitch

This one seems a no-brainer, and yet it’s often thrown about in the workplace, or directed at women in positions of power (former prime minister Julia Gillard was once branded «Bob Brown’s bitch»).

Author and commentator Jane Caro says the intent behind language is usually more important than specific words.

«If you call someone shrill or bitch or ball-busting, you intend to be nasty. Those words are almost used from one gender to another,» Ms Caro told ABC News.

«If someone calls you a bitch in a nasty way, then you have every right to call them on it.»

Even Snoop Dogg — a rapper renowned for being a «bad boy with a lotta hos» — claims to have stopped using the word ‘bitch’ to describe women.

«Definitely, my attitude has changed towards women,» he told Sky News last year.

«I am more sensitive and more vulnerable writing-wise and accepting a woman for being a beautiful person, as opposed to me saying she is a bitch and a whore.»

Shrill

Seattle-based columnist and author Lindy West says she called her new book Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman to point out the «really blatant and egregious double standard» of the gendered word. No-one calls men ‘shrill’, she told Newsweek recently.

«Once I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of the word shrill, then if you use it, you’re being a dickhead,» Ms West told ABC News.

And yet Attorney-General George Brandis has called Labor frontbencher Senator Penny Wong exactly that.

«Shrill and hysterical. I’m well-known for that,» Senator Wong said at conference last year.

«They’re [male politicians are] so blind to it, so accustomed to belittling women it’s just par for the course.

«There’s a long way to go in terms of how people talk to each other.»

Sweetie, honey-bun

Ms Caro also cannot stand being called «sweetie», «honey», or «dear».

«‘Hello, gorgeous’; ‘hi, honey bun or sweetheart, can you get me a coffee?’ No man would ever be called sweetheart, ever, in the workplace,» she said.

«It’s non-professional and sexist language because you’d never call a man that.»

Synonyms

Feisty

“Feisty? My least favourite word. Have you ever heard a man described as feisty,” said Daisy Lewis, who plays the schoolteacher Sarah Bunting in Downton Abbey, in an interview . “Have you heard a male character described as feisty? I think not.” Ah, feisty. It sounds like a compliment – for some reason, it always makes me think of those women in the second world war, wearing dungarees, lipstick and a new-found confidence in changing a wheel – when really it just puts down a whole gender. In their guide to improving the media coverage of female politicians, the Women’s Media Centre lists “feisty” as one of the words that should be avoided (it categorises it with “spunky”, which is surely a word that nobody should use, ever), describing it as “normally reserved for individuals and animals that are not inherently potent or powerful”. The guide goes on to quote Michael Geis, author of the Language of Politics: “One can call a pekinese dog spunky or feisty, but one would not, I think, call a great dane spunky or feisty.”

Fierce

Another of those words that sounds good, but when you think a little harder you can see it’s problematic. A woman is only identified as “feisty” because she isn’t behaving in the way all women are expected to, and the same is true of “fierce”. This one is arguably worse, because it tends to be reserved for women of colour, and reinforces the “angry black woman” stereotype. “The sassy, loud, angry black woman stereotype isn’t just one dimensional; it strips us of our humanity,” Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote this week about a new US reality show in which a white woman is made over by a group of “fierce” and “sassy” black women (tagline: “Trapped inside every white girl is a strong black woman waiting to bust out!”). “It doesn’t allow us to be vulnerable. It doesn’t allow us to be weak, or scared, or worthy of protection.”

In a fantastic blogpost this February, Bridget Minamore wrote: “The synonyms of ‘fierce’ are violent, ferocious, brutal, severe, stern, angry, vicious, furious, intense and strong. If the world believed you had to be all of those things just because you have dark brown skin and like female pronouns, wouldn’t you be upset too? It’s simple: stop referring to the ‘fierce black woman’ inside of you. She doesn’t exist, and the more you want her to, the more you affect the black women – fierce or not – who do.”

Bossy

As the Ban Bossy campaign puts it: “When a little boy asserts himself, he’s called a ‘leader’. Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded ‘bossy’. Words like bossy send a message: don’t raise your hand or speak up.” The campaign to make people think before using the word (and basically stop it), launched this year by Sheryl Sandberg, and supported by lots of high-profile women including Condoleezza Rice, Michelle Obama and Beyoncé, was predictably met with the charge that it was authoritarian and, well, “bossy”. Wrong. Often the simplest and most useful test is: would this word be applied to a straight, white man? In the case of bossy, almost certainly not (Margaret Thatcher was called “bossy”; it would be unthinkable to describe any other British prime minister as “bossy”). See also: “pushy”.

Flounce

A word so feminine it conjures up lace petticoats. You cannot flounce out of a confrontation while wearing “manly” things such as a space suit or a pair of safety goggles. It requires frills, a swishy skirt, and a bouncy hairdo, even metaphorically, which is why it is only ever aimed at women. And sometimes gay men, revealing its user as a sexist homophobe.

Nag

Spotting the potential of the men-with-nagging-female-partners market high-street chain River Island started selling “nag gags” earlier this year – essentially, football-shaped gimp gags. The hilarity. But if women are doing the majority of nagging, surely it’s because women still do around 70% of the housework. It’s just maths. I can report, from the frontline of a household with a broadly equal chore distribution in which I am the member with an approach to housework bordering on the sluttish, that men can be “nags” too. By raising awareness and giving men equal rights to half the domestic workload, they too can be become nags. Perhaps then its gendered pejorative use will decline. There, solved.

Whine

Often used to describe dogs. Or toddlers. I like both (mainly dogs), but I don’t want to be compared to them. Similar to the use of “complain”. In her film Miss Representation, about the ways in which women are portrayed in the media, Jennifer Siebel Newsom highlighted how female politicians are often reported as “complaining” about a policy, whereas men are simply “stating” or “saying” their views.

Hysterical

Just one of a number of terms including emotional, irrational and shrill, all essentially meaning the same thing: “crazy lady” or one who may or may not be on her period. Hysteria was for centuries a handy way of describing a woman who was angry, outspoken or generally behaved in a way that wasn’t becoming. Hippocrates blamed it on a woman’s womb, which had the tendency, he believed, to go roaming about her body, wreaking havoc as it went (a migratory organ in the wrong place will do that, as anyone with basic first aid will know). As a mental disorder, it wasn’t dropped from the DSM, the standardised classification of mental health conditions, until 1980. Yes, 1980. Despite this, countless commentators are happy to continue to diagnose women in public life, if the treatment Hillary Clinton, among many others, gets is anything to go by. During her nomination campaign, CNN’s Glenn Beck noted: “After spending decades stripping away all trace of emotion, femininity, and humanity, Hillary Clinton broke down and actually cried.”

“The words that are most irritating are the ones that are used to subtly undermine a woman who is strong or successful,” says Laura Bates, who founded the Everyday Sexism Project, which catalogues both gross and insidious examples of sexism. “When a man makes a point with passion, he doesn’t risk being labelled ‘hysterical’ or ‘shrill’. When a man is successful in business, he’s unlikely to be labelled a ‘ballbreaker’, as if his success can only have come because he was aggressive and somehow emasculated his colleagues. These words subtly undermine powerful women and send the negative message to girls that there is something unattractive about achieving highly.”

‘Mother of …’

It’s remarkable how relevant one’s history of reproduction seems to be to one’s CV – if you’re a woman in the public eye, that is. And then, having been in possession of a womb that didn’t go wandering around your body and instead housed an actual human being will forever leave you answering questions about whether you can “have it all”. Just this weekend, one newspaper reported that Rona Fairhead – the former chair and CEO of the Financial Times group, and a non-executive director of HSBC and PepsiCo – could become the next BBC Trust chair. But instead of referencing her other credentials, it chose to headline the piece: “Mother of three poised to lead the BBC”. As Claire McCann, who tweeted the piece to the Everyday Sexism Project, put it: “Because this is the most important career info for a woman. Sigh.” The mother-of-three has since been confirmed as the BBC Trust’s new chair. Great. Now it’s just a matter of time before the corporation begins broadcasting wall-to-wall CBeebies.

Everyone knows that there are men idiots out there like HIMYM’s Barney Stinson who give women backhanded compliments with the explicit intention of chipping away at their self-esteem to make it easier to get them into bed. You are not one of them. But perhaps you are the kind of man who wants to give a woman a compliment but is worried that she’ll get offended and isn’t really sure what is or isn’t appropriate to say anymore. Or maybe you want to be better at communicating with women but don’t know how. Or maybe you’ve grown up in a chauvinistic culture that systematically demeans women and you’ve heard men say all of the things on this list and never thought about what their implications are or how a woman might infer them.

We’re not here to point fingers or lay blame. If you’re reading this article, that means you want to be better, which is awesome. So here’s a list of things that women—especially the ones who would likely identify as feminists—are sick and tired of hearing. And if you want more advice on how to be a better man in today’s society, here’s why you should be more like David Schwimmer.

It sounds so flattering on the outside, but it’s really just a way of saying, «Hey, most girls are lame and you’re not. Good for you!» Most women don’t like putting other women down. A nice twist on this instead would be to say, «You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before.»

Margaret Thatcher once said, «Power is like being a lady… If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.» It’s the same rule with male feminists. Women are aware that guys who run around wearing pink hats and boasting about being a male feminist are, more often than not, just trying to use Gloria Steinhem to get laid. Real male feminists don’t need to constantly tell people they’re feminists. It’s just obvious because they, you know, respect women and stuff (which, for the record, Ryan Gosling clearly does).

Women are not here to boost your ego or make your day and if you want me to smile then do something funny.

Again, this is something that seems very flattering but is actually kind of sexist (unless the woman in question specifically asked this). It’s fine to say, «You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen»—or something—but pitting a woman against her friends, as though this were a beauty pageant is not a good way to go about this. As a rule of thumb, complimenting a woman by putting other women down is always a bad choice.

I first heard this from a man whom I had been dating for 6 months when I got accepted to Oxford, and it floored me. I’ve heard it several times since. It’s like, if you didn’t think I was smart to begin with, then what are we doing here? Am I supposed to be flattered that you were only interested in me for my looks? Do you usually date women that you don’t think have any substance at all?

I get this a lot when I complain to men about how much I hate shopping, which I do, because it’s expensive and exhausting and unless you’ve got Emily Ratajkowski’s body, it’s also often demoralizing. A lot of women don’t like shopping. You shouldn’t assume that all women are biologically addicted to shoes. Conversely, if a woman does love shopping, there’s no need to act like it’s flippant just because it’s not a serious hobby, like watching grown men tackle each other for a ball.

In male-dominated fields, it’s common for a man to say something like this, and at first glance it seems innocent and flattering. But what you’re really implying is that there’s no reason for people to have listened to her other then her looks.

It’s kind of understood by now that this is an extremely sexist thing to say in professional environments, but, for some reason, a lot of women that I know who are in male-dominated athletic professions (like skiing or boxing) still get that a lot. Clearly, it’s offensive.

Your girlfriend is not crazy. You’re saying that because you’re trying to create a little secret bond between us in which you are acting like suddenly it’s Us (the normal ones) against Her (the crazy), while also subtly trying to incept the idea of us hooking up. You are not fooling anyone. Women who respect other women do not want to hear about how your girlfriend is being «crazy,» because A) she’s pretty justified in being jealous and B) we’d be doing the same thing if we were in her shoes.

Translation: I cheat a lot, I lie about it, and when a woman catches me and confronts me about it, I act like she’s just being paranoid.

Please don’t tell me how I’m feeling, ever. Please don’t assume that if I tell you I’m not interested even though we’re friends that means I’m «uptight,» or have «daddy issues» (the latter of which men always say with a smirk and a gleam in their eye, like they’re super excited about the prospect of dating a woman who has a bad relationship with her father because it means she’ll probably be wild in the sack). Please assume that I know how I’m feeling better than you and don’t patronize me by acting like you know better. And please just take what I say at face value instead of engaging in some psychobabble to try to get me to do what you want.

Depending on what culture you grew up in, even a seemingly «woke» guy can give off the impression that it’s incredibly crass or unattractive for women to smoke, drink, or curse (but not men, obviously). It’s important for both sexes to be polite and courteous, but the onus is not on women to uphold the moral fabric of society. That’s not our job and if it ever was then we’ve resigned!

Anytime you use the word «girl» as a synonym for «lame» you are not doing yourself any favors.

Anything that implies that women who have sex are anything other than normal is generally not going to go down well.

This is another classic remark that seems like a compliment but is actually wrong on so many levels. First of all, most women go to the gym because they want to be healthy, or because they love the endorphin rush that comes with exercise, or both. It has nothing to do with having an appealing rump. Please don’t assume everything women do in life stems from an effort to make you find them sexually attractive.

This is one of those phrases that men mistakenly think is progressive because it appears to mean that they’re advocating that women don’t starve themselves. But the reality is that men never say this when a woman is overweight. It is only uttered to girls who fit the dreaded «cool girl chic»—the ones who seem to be able to slather their mouths in buffalo wings and conveniently remain a size 2 (PS: those girls are actually working very hard to maintain an effortlessly hot persona).

It’s also why it’s annoying when I order a salad and a man says, «Oh, come on, get a burger. Live a little.» I understand that he’s trying to be nice but it actually really hurts my feelings because I wish I had the kind of metabolism that enabled me to eat junk food and maintain a healthy weight, but I don’t. I work very hard to keep up a good physique and I don’t appreciate a man making me feel like it’s lame that I wasn’t biologically blessed with a superhuman digestive system.

Really, you’re buying into the extremely sexist idea that if a woman is single it’s because no man wants her. If I’m so beautiful/smart/amazing then make the logical assumption that I’m single because I’m picky, because I can afford to be. Because I have choices. Because it’s 2017, baby!

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