“We are not guys, gents, or fellas!”: Squashing and Smashing the Dominance of Male-Centered Language
The first time it happened, I’m sure I was a little girl. I do remember being slightly horrified and embarrassed. As children, we are often shocked and embarrassed by our parents, whether they are doing the right thing or not. We often feel a bit embarrassed by them. Maybe they look too old, too out-dated, too old-fashion, too not-my-generation. I remember the adolescent feeling that my parents just didn’t get me. My father was from Sierra Leone in West Africa, and had a heavy British/Creole accent, and a PhD in Nuclear Physics. My mother was from rural East Texas. She was a university professor (PhD in Social Work), and had a very proper diction. My mother was almost 40 years old when she had me, which I felt made her less hip and cool. I was raised in an almost all-white community of non-normal, Normal, Illinois, with these very Black parents. I always felt very self-conscious as a Black girl. I just didn’t want “attention” called to me/us, especially in public. I didn’t realize that the mere presence of our Blackness was attention-getting. I wanted to be invisible.
My mother was not aware of my expectations; and if she was, they were irrelevant. My mother, Mildred Pratt, was born in 1928, one of 8 children, the granddaughter of Rosa Hubbard who had been enslaved on a plantation in Alabama. She and her husband, George Thirkill (whose last name had 5 different spellings), had one child in 1898, my grandmother, Eula. Eula had 8 children including my mother – a middle child, who often kept to herself.
I share my mother’s life in a book based on her autobiographical notes and my biographical work that I wrote in 2018: “A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about Race, Class, and Gender in the United States.”
https://www.amazon.com/Womans-Journey-Picking-College-Professor/dp/1433149745/
In that book, I share her journey from Black girlhood to Black womanhood, from picking rows of cotton to walking rows of classrooms as a full professor of Social Work, when Black women representing less than 1% of full professors. (Now, almost 40 years later, I am part of the 2% of Black women full professors, thinking surely there would be more). In that book, I share instances of her speaking up to authority, power, and Whiteness. One of her first memories was as a little girl of 8.
As a little girl, at the age of 8, Mama remembers going to the mailbox to get the mail and the postman said, “Hey boy.” And she said, he knew she was not a boy. She was a girl in a dress with braids. But in the 1940s, just outside of the depression in rural segregated east Texas, and across the south, blacks were not seen as humans, and girls were invisible. Yet, she found her voice. She proudly proclaimed, “I am not a boy, I am a girl.” She ran home, told her mother, who told her to never do that again. Not understanding why, — that in 1940s, speaking to a White man like that could mean death — her life would be spent challenging what we today call “misgendering.” For she knew, she had to always challenge how she was spoken to and to claim if only for herself, her identity, as a Black woman. For she was challenging misgendering that so many of our LGBTQ friends experience, before it was even defined.
And throughout Mildred’s entire life, she would speak up and refused to be silence and silenced. The notion that someone would call a girl a boy was antithetical to my mother’s sense of identity. Her life was defined by both her Blackness and her womanness. Her opportunities were circumscribed by conditions that set limitations upon her ability to be who and what she wanted in the world, based on her race, her gender, and her class.
Her life was spent defying and smashing limitations. She was a real #Blackwildgirl. It was many years before I could really understand my mother. In writing my new book and companion journal, “Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower,” (pre-order now, out April 2, 2024). I developed another level of understanding, appreciation, and respect for Mama.
I don’t remember how old I was, but young and old enough to remember, the first time and now, the many times since over the years. The scene always unfolds the same way. Someone, usually a very unsuspecting clerk at a grocery store or waiter at a restaurant would say, casually and colloquially, and often friendly, “How you guys doing today?” It is a common greeting, a cultural and familiar American use of language to address mixed gender groups. However, they didn’t know Mama. Mildred Inez Sirls Pratt. So, in any place and space where men and women – restaurants, grocery stores, the malls — would casually address her with the colloquial greeting, her voice would rise up and she would always – each and every time – with an anger that never abated, respond, “I am not a guy.” She would often repeat it and glare intensely at the person who called her a guy. My earliest memories of my mother was of her yelling and correcting people. It was as if every time she was reliving the trauma of the White postman.
To me, my mother’s response to being called a guy was cringe-worthy. She was so intense and almost belligerent when it happened. My children, my son and daughter, knew what to expect when they spent time with Mama. We all remember one particular interaction at a local chain restaurant. A happy-go-lucky waiter came to our table: “How you guys doing today?” The children and I glanced at each other, preparing ourselves for the inevitable retort, as Mama’s powerful and angry voice exploded: “I am not a guy!” The nervous and shocked waiter, caught off guard, and having no sense of what happened, would be flummoxed and flushed and flabbergasted: “Oh, sorry, so sorry,” apologizing profusely. Unfortunately, he would commit the crime again, with “do you guys want water?” to which Mama again retorted, “I am not a guy!” and to which the waiter would again profusely apologize. Returning with water, he said: “Are you guys ready to order?” to which she responded “I am not a guy!” And this is how the evening unfolded. The waiter was a creature of habit, unaware and unintentional, and Mama was rough.
My son recently shared his memory of Grandma: “Everywhere…everybody…she was ready….they were never ready. I knew it was the standard operating procedure. It was entertaining. I was waiting for them to mess up. And sure enough, they would say, ‘how you guys doing?’ I was thinking ‘you don’t what you just did.’ And of course, Grandma would say, ‘I am not a guy.’ She was always very proper. The waiter would be confused or shocked, because of her intensity. Grandma was saying ‘put some respect on it.’ Most people don’t think deeply about how they use their language. It felt like a guarantee we would get some good service. She made it clear right away ‘don’t mess with me,’ and the waiter knew, ‘be careful with this table.'”
Mama was rough, but, as I have learned over the years, there was a reason for the roughness and anger of Black women, especially women like Mama. As Mama wrote in From Cotton Picking to College Professor:
“I was born and grew up in an era in rural Texas when Black people were not viewed as human beings entitled to all the rights and privileges as the White people in the state. My life during that period, 1928 to the late 1960s, was characterized by legal segregation. I have protested the treatment of African-Americans and females since I was a child. I could go on and on with examples of my protest on behalf of African-Americans and the shaft that many Black women get. Many of us paved the way for so many who now reap the benefits of our protest. Many Black females protested to open the doors for the current generation. We must remember, that we rode on the backs of those who went before us, and we have a responsibility to be the backs for those who come after us.”
I am trying to heed my mother’s challenge: to be a back for those who come after us, and to have a backbone. My daughter told me that my mother would often tell her (“the same lecture”), after correcting someone who referred to her as a guy, “Don’t let anyone call you a guy; it is a derogatory term.” My daughter now is working in the male-dominated world of sports management. At her job, there is one guy who every now and then addresses a message to “gents and fellas,” and she is the only woman out of 10 guys. She shared with me, “I hate that. I am not a dude. It’s like he isn’t even talking to me. I’m getting ready to ask him to stop that.”
Even in today’s gender fluid world, when we recognize the social construction and fluidity of gender identification, the ubiquitous use of the word “guys,” for mixed gender groups and every day language remains a point of irritation for me. I, don’t, however, like my mother speak up each and every time. Yet, I am trying to speak up more. Recently, my friend and I decided that whenever we go to restaurants, and the waiter says, “how you guys doing,?” one of us would try to speak up. This is what we recently said after the greeting:
“We want to tell you a story. Any time someone addressed my mother as a guy and said, “how are you guys doing?” She would say, I am not a guy.” And of course, we know it is common use, but we thought instead of “guy,” you might try a new word – “Yous.” In the English language, there really isn’t a word for “you” plural, but we thought, “Yous” might be interesting, or of course, “You, all,” is also fine.”
The waiter acknowledged our story, and spent the evening trying to self-correct. I went back to this restaurant a few days later with a girlfriend after this exchange, and had the same waiter, and she saw me, smiled, and said, “How yous doing today?”
For women’s history month, perhaps we can squash and smash the dominance of male-centered language. #Iamnotaguy!
I’m all about women for this month:
Do you want to support women?
Check out our healing hour for women of color next week, Wednesday:
JOIN US for our March WOC Healing Hour with L’Tomay Varlack-Butler!
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
12 p.m. – 1 p.m. EST
Zoom
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https://bit.ly/march24-hh
Participants can expect to experience a healing journey enriched by Indigenous wisdom, music and reflection. This session is designed to center humanity, fostering deep connections to self and others within the restorative embrace of Ubuntu.
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https://www.inclusive.vt.edu/Programs/FWCA.html
Pre-order my new book, Blackwildgirl and the companion journal, out April 2.
www.menahpratt.com/blackwildgirl