The Language of Reverence, Part 2

Sunday Talks / Random Musings
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Speaker:- Maria Hayward
Worship Leader:- Rachel Mackintosh

A more in-depth look at sexist and racist language and a brief examination of affirming language for other minority groups such as refugees, neuro diverse and disabled communities. Reference to UU values will be made (again!)..

Video to come.

Audio to come

Read below, or download the PDF to come

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Maria Hayward © 11 May 2025


This is part 2 of the conversation on the language of reverence. You may recall from my first talk on this topic, I suggested that reverence may exist both in the feeling of respect that we have towards others, as well as in the language we choose to adopt. I also suggested that reverence might include the welcoming of Te Reo in our kōrero and in the acceptance of changes in language – such as the change to non-sexist or non-racist terms. And I mentioned that learning about reverence in language needs to mostly be about minority and marginalised groups such as the rainbow community – (they are the most vulnerable and anyway, the majority already know how to revere their own group or tribe).

Today I want to consider some other marginalised groups and what reverend language for them might look like: refugees, ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, and neuro divergent individuals. I’d like to add a caveat regarding the latter two areas by saying that I am not an expert on them. It would be good to have a more informed person talk to us in more detail at some point on disability or neuro divergence or mental health, to further lead us in our thinking. I will talk briefly about all the areas mentioned, and, at the end of this kōrero, I’ll add some comments that I think are interesting and rather fun, on some feminist issues with the English language.

1) Let’s begin with respectful language about and to refugees:

This is an area I do know something about, having worked in refugee education for over 30 years. Firstly, the word itself. Many former refugees do not like the moniker “refugee” as they feel it has become a pejorative term. It also is not accurate – the word means: a person who is fleeing, and when a person has ceased to flee, they are literallyno longer a refugee. So, many prefer the phrase “former refugee” (if any determination needs to be made at all). They’re just individuals from different places – like you and me. (Although, of course, they do have a special story and very likely a great deal more trauma than we’ve had or could even imagine).

Some people do like to focus on this trauma – and their language has the potential to be not only pathologizing (i.e. making a person seem ill or damaged), but also patronising, so I’d like to comment on this. Examples of pathologizing and patronising language are phrases like: “the poor refugees”, “highly traumatised people” or even the use of possessives e.g. “We’re helping our Afghan mothers” – but are they ours? The phrase “our refugees” can disempower former refugees and give the helper all the power. I prefer to avoid possessives in these types of contexts.

I mentioned last time, the dangers of generalisations. To avoid racist thinking (in our listeners), we should avoid them and instead to try to be specific about number. We might therefore say: many or some Afghan mothers or even just: the 2-3 that I know. This is better than generalising about a whole ethnicity, and obviously more accurate.

There are other patronising ways of using language. I recall a person at a conference I once helped organise, in introducing a speaker from Somalia, said: “This is so and so. He’s very bright. He has a Masters degree in … whatever”. As if it was such a surprise to him that a person from Africa might have a university degree (and a Masters degree to boot!) – and he had to therefore tell us the person “was bright”. I saw the speaker squirm in discomfort. The keynote speaker from that conference – a highly respected academic from abroad, happened to be sitting next to me, and she said (about the person introducing) “Who’s that wanker?” It was an appallingly patronizing moment.

There are also lots of anti-refugee phrases like: Queue jumpers, illegal migrants, economic migrants. I’ll explain next time (when I talk about former refugees) why these are not only inappropriate, they’re also inaccurate.

2) Ethnicity or race:

Individuals tend to choose their own words for describing their ethnic background. They might say “I’m a kiwi American” or “I’m an American kiwi” – or right now, maybe just “I’m a kiwi”. We may need to ask or at least reverently listen, when individuals or groups say: ‘this is how we want to be talked about’. More on that soon.

Sometimes there are different names for the same country. People from Burma, might use either Myanmar or Burma to name their country, depending on their political perspective. Burma/Myanmar is a country with 135 ethnicities and 111 languages. I recall a young woman from this country saying “I am from Burma; I am not Burmese. I am Mon.” So, listening for and using the lexical choice (=words) made by each person is important. It shows respect, it shows reverence, it reflects our UU values of interdependence, pluralism and generosity.

Something about continents: South America, Africa, Asia and even Europe, are huge continents comprised of lots of different countries, ethnicities and languages. Yet, how often do we hear people say an African man, an Asian woman, or worse, Asians ….etc. It’s Ok if we don’t know the actual country of origin, but language experts say, if we’re going to use a continent as an ethnicity, it’s best to add ‘background’ e.g.: Asian-background or European-background. This helps prevent racial stereotyping.These continents have such very different ethnicities and cultures – an Indian-background person is very different from a person with Japanese ethnicity.

Then there’s this thing of naming the ethnicity of a person when people are about to say something negative e.g. “we had a terrible – ethnic group – uber driver the other day” – when the only information that was needed, was: “we had a terrible uber driver” … the ethnicity is irrelevant – naming it can also feed race stereotyping and prejudice.

3) Moving on to disabilities:

Affirming or reverend language for people with disabilities: I have worked with some amazing special needs teachers, one of whom taught us that ‘placing the person first in the phrase or descriptor, and the disability second is more respectful – so that the person is not the disability. (E.g. you might say: ‘A person with a hearing or vision impairment (not ‘the blind or visually impaired man’ – which is what I always used to do). So, the rule is: the person first, disability second; further examples are: the man who uses a wheelchair, or person with a disability. I found it extremely useful to learn this and now I always try to follow that rule.

Then, there is the question, which term do we use?Disabled/enabled or even person with a disability. Individuals may differ on this one. Perhaps we need to ask or listen to how they wish to be described.

There is a lot more to say on disability – but I’ll leave further comments to an expert.

4) Neurodivergence:

There are numerous presentations and variations of neuro divergence; or of mental health concerns, such as high levels of anxiety or phobias. I’ll just mention a couple of aspects that have been surprising for me. A neurodivergent family member has explained to me how conversations are different for them. They had to learn how to fit in to a ‘neuro-normative’ world, and I think for those of us lucky enough to be neurotypical and to live in a social environment designed by the majority for the majority, I think we should make even more of an effort to engage with others who are different from us – I think we should move at least ¾ of the way! Their lives are difficult enough and they are constantly having to accommodate to our social norms. So, we may even need to learn how to have conversations differently. My advisor says that some neurodivergent people can speak for a rather lengthy time on one topic, but are silent at other times in a dialogue. A reverend person would show patience, just as neurodivergent people do for us.

I noticed after my conversations with this family member, that several of my students started talking more openly to me about their own neuro diversity. My improved understanding and subsequent transformation, (another of our values), must have been obvious in my more inclusive use of language. One student shared with me one day that she felt claustrophobic and anxious when the lecture room door was closed. Others have shared about panic attacks or anxieties or even different learning patterns. Sometimes a short conversation about what the student needed, resolved the issue quickly. One of my students told me recently that she can’t learn unless she’s moving. This is quite common, especially with people who have ADHD. Now, that student’s twitching and writing while I’m speaking don’t bother me anymore. I understand why she needs to do this.

Living in a pluralistic community, teaches us better ways to behave. We’re lucky if we know people from minority groups. Learning about neuro diversity helped me to help my students in better ways. Changing the world, one person at a time. And one person at a time, changing me.

5) In this final section:

I’d like to add some more comments on feminist language and share some thoughts about how the connotations of male and female nouns might tell us something about how women were, or still are, perceived, and about the degree of reverence (or not) for them in our society. I do this as a way of further reinforcing how powerful language is and how it affects the way whole groups live, behave and feel.

Language has been used to denigrate or diminish the importance of women in the past, think about these male and female terms in English: each item in this list might sound petty, but when you look at the whole lot together – you realise it’s not just random … (and I only mention some).

A male dog is called a dog, believe it or not! Or a sire (nice), but a female dog is called a – well you know what … a bitch. And a woman who annoys people is called this.

Last time I mentioned the gender terms ‘master’ (a boss) and its female equivalent ‘mistress’ (not a boss!). Similarly, we could think about: a sir and a madam. Which one would you rather be? And, ‘he’s a gentleman’ and ‘she’s a lady’ (of the night), or a ‘working man’ and then there’s a working woman. He’s a master and she’s a maiden (one is a boss, the other can mean a servant – maid). And then: she’s a slut or a whore – and he’s a … the male term is, apparently, a ‘stud’.

In so many binary gender terms the female word is associated with prostitution and the male equivalent is revered, a word of high esteem or a person in charge.

But it’s not all good for men.

In Aotearoa, possibly in other places too, if a girl acts like her brothers, she might be called a tomboy – a nice word – quite reverend really. But if a boy acts like his sisters, he is a ‘sissy’, or a ‘girl’s blouse’ or ‘gay’ – not reverend, very pejorative – to both parties. And being described as gay is NOT a compliment – that’s the problem with it – it should be! I once told a student who complained someone called him gay: “oh, did you say, thank you for the compliment, but actually I’m heterosexual”.

Woke schools (or let’s call them respectful) – thank goodness, work hard to put an end to this type of gender stereotyping and bullying – and woke parents have also contributed very positively towards this change/transformation – but on the other hand we have two minor – but powerful – NZ political parties having a ‘war on woke’, basically just reading from Trump and Musk’s playbook. This will turn back the clocks for everyone, but especially for women and minority groups. And then, look at Destiny church, they have a men’s group who drive super noisy motorbikes, wear black leather gear and are called: “Man Up” – what does that mean – Man Up? Colloquially, we know it to mean: Be tougher. I don’t think the group is about men being gentle and kind and nurturing. No, they should, as kiwis used to say: “grow balls”, be tough and fearless and, if you have any feelings, the only one you can show, is, anger. And then another aphorism is that women definitely should not “wear the trousers in a relationship”. Luckily nowadays, both partners generally do.

Feminism and the diminution of strongly gendered roles, as you will know, helped both men and women. It was better for men when they lost the gendered stereotype of needing to be tough all the time.

Here’s a couple more gendered terms from the academic world: Think about these: both male and female university graduates get: A Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree. Well, of course, we couldn’t possibly feminise those words – we’d have Spinster of Science or a Mistress of Arts!!! This is what happens when words develop negative connotations. And what about an Academic Fellow??? Who as you know can be either a fellow or a female … I learned on a recent UU course, that a UU church without a minister is called a “fellowship”. Is that sexist? I really can’t think of non-sexist terms for some of these words, maybe we just have to keep them – and think of them as non-gendered, in the same way that guy or guys has become gender neutral.

And, sadly today gender stereotypes continue with new sexist words in social media for young people. In that recent Netflix series “Adolescence”, a 13 year-old boy commits a murder because he has been decimated on social media. He was labelled: Incel = involuntarily celibate. And girls can be labelled ‘bop’ for being promiscuous. So even these new words show society’s expectation of each gender – girls still get criticised for being too sexually active and boys for not being active enough. It’s tough on both! “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they remain the same”, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1849.

I might have stretched things a little, but I hope you’ll get my point, that language manipulates, it can put people down, it can damage, it can make people think in certain ways about themselves or others, it can hurt or demean and so easily exclude.

I need to stop talking, so I’ll conclude now with a summary of our values and how they all align with respectful reverend language:

Reverence as I mentioned last time is what our UU values are all about: pluralism – there are lots of fabulous ways of being and we would wish to include them all. Transformation – changing as we become more aware or better informed. Generosity: make the effort, do the mahi, be generous in our thinking and behaviour towards minority groups. Don’t resent the effort we need to make – embrace it. Interdependence – we gain so much from being in a diverse community – think of diversity as a positive – we need and benefit from knowing one another in all our diversity. Equity – in order to be equal, minority groups sometimes need more (because they usually get less) so this might make them ‘equal’. Justice – obvious – it is only fair and just to value every single person, no matter their difference. And love, the most important value – without this there is only tokenism. But don’t forget action – we need to take action to protect, to love, to ensure there is equity and fairness, and to ensure human rights are met for everyone – especially those least favoured. Right now, the group being most blatantly demonised are transgender women – and we need to start fighting for them and their rights.

Meditation / Conversation starter

  • Share a story of when you yourself (or someone close to you) have experienced racism, sexism, homophobia (or transphobia) or felt diminished because of a mental health or neuro divergent or ability/disability issues.

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