Bird is NOT the word

Update 22-10-12: This blog has been reposted on The Good Men Project. Check out their site great articles on a wide range of issues centered around men and identity in 21c.

Today I am looking for help. I need words.

When writing about men and women I obviously find myself referring to people of a given sex by a collective term such as “men” or “women”. In order to avoid my writing sounding repetitive I try and use other words that mean the same.

In the case of men I find this easy and have a bunch of the synonyms at my disposal.

Men, males, blokes, chaps, gents, guys, fellas, dudes, lads, boys.

To my knowledge none of these are considered offensive (please let me know if I am wrong) to anybody.

My problem comes when trying to find words for women. There are certainly several such terms but many are contraindicated for use as they are considered patronising, belittling or demeaning.

Sure we have the basics: - women, ladies, females - but in a lengthy article even these can get repetitive. So what are my alternatives?

To name, or not?

Identifying things to write about is quite easy, working out exactly how to tackle it is proving a touch harder. In the online debate on sexism I see many claims that I consider to be, shall we say, exaggerated, and many that I feel are completely misguided. I have referred to conversations in previous posts but only vaguely, making my anecdote no more reliable than those I wish to address. So my dilemma is whether to directly link, or copy/paste, to the relevant comments and discussions or just to refer to them.  

Despite the reputation of many men in this arena, I am not a nasty person and wish no hurt to anyone and can’t get over it feeling like bullying. A major component of the faction wars in online atheism is an endless rally of abuse and personal attacks between a few key members that is fed by bystanders adding their own, often less diplomatic, asides. This is not a way to reach any form of consensus and only serves to highlight the few differences rather than strengthening the strength of the similarities. What begins as a lack of mutual understanding rapidly converts into opposing sides, both looking further and further afield for ways to diminish their opponent and losing sight of the original point.

Lessons in blogging

So it seems this writing lark is not as easy as it looks.  Sure, I can arrange words in a coherent order on a page, but writing to a theme and sticking with it is not so simple.

I started out my last post with what, in my head, were clear ideas on how I wanted to progress. Even while writing I found new material that agreed or disagreed with me and led me off track, sometimes mid paragraph. This led to me varying the focus of the piece without really seeing how this changed the whole substance of the article

So my first lesson; Write one post at a time. If an idea doesn't fit in here, don't force it, there will be a place for it later, or it may just turn out to be a bad idea.