C. S. Lewis wrote the preface of the book How Heathen is Britain? by B. G. Sandhurst, London: Collins, 1946. In a note to his comments, he said,
"... Throughout this preface boys means boys and girls, and schoolmasters includes schoolmistresses. There is lot to be said for political or economic equality of the sexes: but the claim for grammatical equality of genders is an unmitigated nuisance which should be resisted wherever it is met."
Lewis was not a mysogynist. He loved the English language and the logical flow of discourse. And I agree with him: interruptions in language for the sake of political statement is both distracting and linguistically ugly.
"... Throughout this preface boys means boys and girls, and schoolmasters includes schoolmistresses. There is lot to be said for political or economic equality of the sexes: but the claim for grammatical equality of genders is an unmitigated nuisance which should be resisted wherever it is met."
Lewis was not a mysogynist. He loved the English language and the logical flow of discourse. And I agree with him: interruptions in language for the sake of political statement is both distracting and linguistically ugly.
Comments
Do we not find ourselves in a position - and context is key here - between not offending and not giving into pressure to conform to the world around us? I think of a similar situation, when the Apostle Paul would circumcise one person so as not to offend the Jews he was trying to reach, and then he purposefully would not circumcise someone else, because he wanted to contradict those Jews who were trying to overturn the truth. Paul was not being combative; in both cases he was loving his neighbour - they just had different needs. May the Lord give us the wisdom to navigate through these times well.