Your mouth and Society's Gender Biases

“Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”- Betty White

Back in December 2012, much of the nation's educated urban class youth took to protesting in reaction to the brutal rape of Nirbhaya. As educated and smart and gender neutral supporters of gender rights, we all live in a patriarchal society, making it difficult for us to truly escape gender bias even in our own lingo.

The above quote is a perfect example of this. Friends tell each be courageous, though not always in a serious manner and hence the quote, 'Grow some balls'. Understandably when this is said no-one means any gender bias, but when such a line is being used, the speakers must understand where it is coming from. Grow some balls might as well mean man up, or be a man or to be courageous is to be a man. Once again, understandably the speaker does not mean this gender bias when they say this, but a long time ago this was where the meaning was being derived from. 

The same goes when a person uses the term 'pussy'. The term is usually to call some one a coward. Understandably when the person uses this term there is no gender bias intended, but long ago this term was derived from the idea that girls were weak and cowardly.  

These are only two such example and such lingo is present in our vocabulary and though we do not mean any gender bias when we say it, lingo reflects the biases of our society which we inevitably, adopted because heck society is just too great to resist. 

If we hope to live in a gender neutral society in the future, we need to clean up our lingo too. We need to shed out all things that stem from a patriarchal view.
Sure we can evolve the meaning. The word 'fuck' has evolved and transcended all sorts of meaning and no longer just means sex. 

But understand, we have to shed off gender biases which humans have been developing since we were cave people and to not shed some of those linguist terms that have some background in gender biases is just risky. 

Note: It is understood that balls refers to the male genitalia and pussy refers to the female genitalia.