Does that mean what you think it means? (RIP William Goldman)

I was upset today by something the cashier at Whole Foods said to me. How much did that already tell you about me? White, upscale, probably suburban, earthy in the way people who can afford it are, overly emotional, and I'm sure much more. I should teach close reading...

So I'm loading my stuff up onto the belt and she's checking me out and says, without looking at me, the same as any cashier is likely to say between now and Thursday, "Are you shopping for the holiday?" And I replied, "No, we're having friends over for dinner." And she replies (note that there is no reply necessary at this point. She asked me a question and I answered it in a way that would make sense for someone buying chicken thighs, potatoes, cauliflower and parsley) "Oh yes, I've heard a lot of people are doing Friendsgiving this weekend."

This sent me into a small panic. Friendsgiving? 1. Not only don't I have any of the proper Friendsgiving home and table decorations, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be because 2. I didn't know that Friendsgiving was even a thing.

We kind of take language for granted sometimes but I'm not sure we ever should. Because I've gotten involved in the effort to eliminate sexual harassment and assault from my school, I've gotten very tuned in to the language of patriarchy and how it leads to our making assumptions without consciously doing so. I was at a talk the other day by someone who identifies as genderqueer, or genderfluid. There was no way to know by looking at them whether they were male or female because they were neither. The talk was fascinating and I said to my colleague "This guy is really good." The about 15 seconds later, I restated, "That person is really good." And my colleague said "I was thinking you were going to correct yourself."

"Guy" is a perfect example of a male word often used as a collective noun describing a group of people. "Come on guys! Let's go!" It's language that reinforces the centrality of maleness. Even in the matter-of-fact thing I said in my first paragraph self-description, once I added "overly emotional," if you didn't know who I was you'd probably assume female. The more I've read about this stuff and begun to question assumptions, the more I see, and in the long-term evolution towards gender equality, this is one of the important barriers what we'll have to breach.