Columnist notes use of inclusive language in classrooms

Language shapes and forms our impressions of reality. Our use of male-dominated language forces personalities into culturally approved stereotypes, bringing out the feminist characteristics in certain people.

Professors attempt to dissuade students from speaking in gender-limiting phrases, as it pushes personal opinions onto other students in the classroom. By doing this, professors are forcing their own opinions on the students.

Inclusive language is speech that is free from words, phrases or tones that reflect prejudice or stereotypes of particular people or groups. By enforcing this type of language, it limits the students’ rights  to speak about their beliefs.

Some religion professors tell their students to use inclusive language when referring to God and other figures that have a specific gender role placed upon them. This has been a fury-inducing topic for many of the students, not just religion majors, as it forces them to control talking about their own beliefs in the classroom and speak the way the professor wants them to.

“Feminist” is a word that has been thrown around a lot when discussing the professors in the religion school. Many of them stress the importance of speaking inclusively because it allows everyone to believe the way they want in regard to how they see God. Some people see God as a man and some as a woman.

But, they are forcing students to stop referring to God as a male and ultimately influencing students to think of God in a general sense.

It is understandable that professors teach religion students to speak with inclusive language because they are learning to speak to a wide demographic of people as a career.

Students who never have stepped foot into a church or are not religious at all have taken these classes and heard feminist professors approach the topic of religion in a way that ultimately influences how the student thinks.

Professors use this language to attempt to balance our view of the deity, in whose image males and females are created. But, there is a difference between stating that students can use any gender role to believe in God the way they want to, and declaring that students are not allowed to speak of God in any way but inclusively in the classroom.