Today in the Washington Post, postdoctoral fellow Max Lambert and PhD candidate Melina Packer published an op-ed about the practice of using gendered language when scientists identify and discuss amphibians.
In “How gendered language leads scientists astray,” Lambert and Packer urge the scientific community to reconsider its practices and norms around gendered language and calls for a change: “De-gendering our language enables us to learn about the organisms we care about, and which our global ecosystem depends upon, with greater clarity, and without cruelly alienating certain human communities,” they write. “Both science and society need to break free from our heteronormative fetters to better understand, appreciate and coexist with the stunning spectrum of life on Earth.”
Read the op-ed on the Washington Post’s website.