When you write something, see if you are being biased

by Maya J., 6th grader

Hey everyone, what would you do if you saw a woman getting abused by a man? You would stand up for her, right? Now let’s switch the situation, what if a man was getting abused by a woman, what would you do then? Nothing, right? Well, it’s because that’s how we think about gender roles, and using different words for the same situation. Why? It’s because of how our mind is set. We get these types of thoughts from the news, magazines, newspapers, and sometimes even books.

So let me break it down for you. What does “loot” and “find,” and “stole” and “discovered,” mean? Totally different meanings. So all I am saying is that writers use different words to describe the same situation, based on gender, or race. And it’s wrong. So the same thing goes with gender.

You guys all know about Hurricane Katrina, and how it mostly hit New Orleans. There was water waist deep. It was almost like a swimming pool. Anyway, there were this couple who had just gone to the supermarket and had gotten some food (keep in mind that it was a hurricane, and everything was flooded, so nobody had food,clothes, nothing!). Now there was a guy who did the same thing as the couple; he had also gone to the supermarket and had gotten food. News reports referred to the couple as “residents,” and said they had “found” the food from the supermarket. Now the guy who did the same thing was said to have “looted” the supermarket.

Now I didn’t give you all the bits of the story, the guy who “looted” the store was African-American, and the couple was white. Now that I gave you all the bits of the story, what do you think about it? Now just to let you know that type of language is called biased language. Now this is just my opinion, but if two people are doing the same thing, don’t you think you should report just that? If you want to say one person was looting, you have to say the other person looting, too. If you want to call one person finding you have to call the other person finding too, no matter the race. We either all suffer the consequences, or all get praisings. Here’s another example about biased language.

So my English teacher Ms. Gibba picked up a student’s pencil case and started looking through it. During this time the class was reading, so no one noticed her. Now you might think our teacher was a crook, (she just stole a student’s pencil case.)  So when we finished reading Ms. Gibba told us to look at the stuff she had in “her” pencil case. We all said that it wasn’t her’s, it was another student’s. She told us that she didn’t steal, she discovered it. Well of course we didn’t believe her, but then she started breaking it down for us. She said she saw it on a desk and claimed it, so it makes it hers. Now you might say that’s crazy, but if you really think about it, it’s exactly what Christopher Columbus did. He sailed the ocean to find  land and discovered land, and then he claimed it, but there were already Native Americans there.

Now we never really hear that Columbus stole land. We hear that he found, claimed or discovered it. But isn’t what Ms. Gibba did the same as what Columbus did? They both found something and then claimed it. See, it’s biased language, and it’s sort of like the example before; you use certain types of language for certain types of situations. It’s might not be completely our fault, it’s just how we always did things. Again, it’s how our mind is programmed. Now this last example is definitely based on how our mind works, and it’s about something that has been going on for a long time.

It’s about men vs. women. Now in STS we saw this video about how this guy was hitting his girlfriend, and men and women all came up to help and support her. (These people were just actors, so know one really got hurt.) Now they flipped the situation and had the woman hitting the man. So now you would think that everyone would do the same thing that they did for the woman, and stick up for him. Well, that’s not what happened. The women and men nearby started laughing at the woman who was beating her boyfriend. Why, you ask? Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have some ideas.

First, I think that people don’t think that women are as strong as men, so when the lady was beating up the guy people probably thought, “Oh, she couldn’t hurt him.” That is so untrue, 40% of men suffer abuse. That is a lot when you think about it. It’s a little less than half, but it is something. Now I think we get these ideas about how women can’t hurt men from movies and some books. Some movies show women primarily as someone who cooks and can’t defend or fight for themselves. So now in the world that’s how we view these types of things.

I hope we can change these types of biased messages and change the idea that somehow one gender is better than the other. Here’s some tips you can use when you write or read. Always check for biased language, and if you see the writer has done that, you as the reader might want to cross out the word and change it, so it isn’t biased anymore. When you write something, see if you are being biased. Whatever you do, help to try to change these biased ways.