April 25 - May 01, 1996 / Volume V, No. 17

'Thoughts of men?' I thought to myself. What about the thoughts of women? Great documents have been written by women, ranging from the Seneca Falls Declaration to Attorney General Janet Reno's Waco Orders. Reticent at first to mention it, I eventually couldn't stand it anymore and blurted out to the clerk, indignant, "This sign is sexist!" I read it back to her, explaining that the thoughts of any person so inscribed would constitute a document.

She was taken aback, left momentarily speechless, while the clerk standing next to her said, "Political correctness. Ugh," and his Ugh was more of a nauseous, gurgling sort of noise, as if the idea sickened him profoundly, "I hate that."

The woman, given the support of her colleague and a moment to regain her composure, added, "It's not sexist - it's from the dictionary!" She invited me to check it out, pointing to a large dictionary sitting on the counter about 50 feet away.

Without concern for the actual contents of the dictionary, and having lost some of my sense in the emotional upheaval that was growing more intense by the moment, I replied, "Didn't you know? The DICTIONARY is sexist!"

Probably then they thought I was crazy, and other customers in the store were becoming not only interested, but began assuming hostile body language. I was outnumbered and outgunned, and I hit the road.

A couple days passed, and the scene replayed itself in my mind countless times. Each time, my interpretation was the same. Those sexist pigs not only placed a sexist sign at their counter, but staunchly defended its merits. Moreover, they had invoked the supposed integrity of a dictionary written by white male, upper middle-class, mid-40s college professors.

I went back to the scene of the crime, mostly because I felt that checking the dictionary was in order. It turns out that by 1988, the New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary (deluxe encyclopedic edition) sitting on the counter, had cleared up any sexism in their 'document' definition that may have once existed.

Their definition reads: "document: n. an official paper, a certificate. Anything written that gives information or supplies evidence." Now that's a definition. It has the ring of 'that's what a document is' about it. The first one is vague enough to make one ponder, but the second paints a much clearer picture. I consulted a couple other dictionaries. They were all non-sexist, and similar to the Webster's definition cited.

And then I got to thinking. This placard is designed as marketing hype, no doubt by some copier manufacturer, to keep customers in line entertained. "Material substance"; "mark or symbol"; "thoughts of men". The definition hearkens back to the good old days of human prehistory, where the men were men and the women were raped - where documents were made of stone and inscribed with mysterious runes.

I imagine myself in a Flintstones cartoon, waiting at the copy store where a dinosaur-machine waits to peck my letters into sandstone with its beak. I imagine Hammurabi writing his code of laws in cuneiform; Egyptian high priests painting hieroglyphic runes on papyrus. All men, of course - because women in those times were rarely given the privilege of a literate education.

Things have changed a bit in postmodern times. We know that language is an important foundation for cognition, and that the subtleties of our language profoundly influence our culture, individual thought and behavior.

Is it really worth the cheap thrills this marketing tactic presents? Couldn't we just have said, "representation of thought"? I understand that freedom of speech must not be abridged. After all, from their perspective, I was the one offending them with my speech.

My intention isn't to single out any particular store - this is the type of minor sexist thing that happens all over the place - in homes and businesses throughout the Anchorage bowl, and the planet at large.

A minor symptom of a much larger problem, this microcosmic event demonstrates that our cultural biases permeate every facet of our lives. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword. Let's continue our efforts to use words wisely and with strong moral conscience.