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Caught Between Sexism, Anti-sexism and `Political Correctness': Feminist Women's Negotiations with Naming Practices

SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY s.l.mills{at}shu.ac.uk

This article focuses on the complex negotiations undertaken by professional feminist women in Britain with the discourses of anti-sexism,¹ `political correctness' (`PC') and sexism, specifically in relation to their choice of titles and surnames. Rather than seeing these discourses as sets of permissible or forbidden practices or lists of words/phrases, I have preferred in this article to adopt a theoretical position, based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, which tries to see these discourses as hypothesized positions with which many women negotiate (Bourdieu, 1999). Thus sexism, anti-sexism and `political correctness' must be seen, not as separate discourses functioning in isolation from the others, but as all working at the same time to define the limits and possibilities of the others. The pressure exerted by the interaction of these three positions seems to be `played out' on key words or phrases which function as sites of struggle, and which seem to define what can be seen as these women's social identities, constructed as they are within a variety of different communities of practice, each with different alignments with sexism, anti-sexism and `political correctness'. The question of which surname and title to use is one of those sites of struggle for many women who have some affiliation with feminism. Particularly in the present post-modern moment, rather than seeing feminist interventions in relation to discursive practices as concerned simply with reforming sexism, this article argues that, in addition, many feminists are concerned with appropriating practices which might be viewed as sexist and inflecting those practices differently, making them work for them, thus leading to potential changes in the ways that those practices are viewed in general.

Key Words: anti-sexism • feminism • naming • `political correctness' • sexism

Discourse & Society, Vol. 14, No. 1, 87-110 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0957926503014001931


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