Week 9

Hello classmates! I had a really interesting experience this week as I read through the assignment in “When Words Collide,” and the briefing on Media Law in the AP Stylebook. I genuinely had no idea how much harmful language I was using on a daily basis, nor how prevalent such language is in the world. It took a while to train my eyes to see these “isms” and to remember them, but as I went through the week I was able to pinpoint a few. 

I saw an example of sexism in a book I was reading. In the book, a character said something along the lines of, “I have a message for all of mankind.” Of course, the proper way to convey this idea would be to say, “I have a message for humankind.” It was very interesting for me to learn that “man” does not actually include “woman.” I was always taught that man, or men, could be used as a term to describe all people. Evidently, I was incorrectly taught! 

It is generally easy to find examples of heterosexism around, but this week, I focused on ads about families. All the ads that I saw in clothing stores representing families pictured a man and a woman with their children. 

Ageism stuck out to me this week when a friend on Facebook posted, “My grandma just turned 80 years old, but you’d never know it! She’s alive and kickin’!” Obviously, this creates the expectation that aged people are generally decrepit and frail. 

Finally, I saw an example of racism at work when I was pointing out one of my coworkers across the store to a customer. I was describing him by his clothing when the customer said, “Oh, the black guy?” This is not overtly racist, nor did the customer mean it offensively, but he did immediately classify and identify my coworker by the color of his skin. 

It has been interesting for me to rework my writing to eliminate poor or defamatory writing. I hope you all enjoyed learning this week as much as I did!