浅析英语中的性别歧视现象

　　This also reminds people of the famous saying from the USDeclaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”

　　Should people argue that the “men” does not include womenbecause women were not given the right to vote in theeighteenth century America? [5] A clear explanation of thisphenomenon may be found in sentence like:

　　(1) Man is a social animal.

　　(2) Men remake nature.

　　When seeing the three sentences, speakers of English are ableto readily interpret “man” and “men” as meaning “the humanrace”; “humankind”. If not, the two sentences could be changedinto(3) Woman is a social animal.

　　(4) Women remake nature.

　　Of course, they are grammatically well formed; semantically,however, the third sentence has the defect of being partial,and the fourth sentence is very ridiculous.

　　From above, one can know that in English using “man” or “men”

　　to indicate “the human race”, neglects the fact that men andwomen are equal in the society. By contraries, they treat manas the center of society, an embodiment of criterion andtotally ignore the existence of woman.[6] There are many othergeneric masculine terms such as man-to-man, prehistoric man,brotherhood, chairman, and policeman.

　　3.1.3 Women being attached to menThe English language distinguishes women’s courtesy titles onthe basis of marital status, but not those of men. There isonly one form of address for men, Mr., regardless of martialstatus. However, the martial status of women is distinguishedby Miss and Mrs., reflecting the notion that whether or not awoman is in a marriage. This discriminatory practice is saidto mark the availability of women in terms of marriage (sex)and reinforces the view that a woman is the property of a man(either her father or her husband). When a woman has beenmarried, people address her as “Mrs. plus her husband’ssurname”. That is to say, if a woman is married to somebody,she has no right to be treated like an unmarried lady. As to aman, that’s a different matter. For example: InEnglish-speaking countries, you can often hear someone callthe wife of John Smith “Mrs. John Smith”. There is noexception of famous Madame Curie, Mrs. Thatcher, and Mrs.