Gender Neutrality Mark Twain and Deborah Tannen Essays Discussion Each of three readings for this module’s discussion (McWhorter/Tannen/Twain) introduced a

Gender Neutrality Mark Twain and Deborah Tannen Essays Discussion Each of three readings for this module’s discussion (McWhorter/Tannen/Twain) introduced an author who made clear distinctions between two things that otherwise might be seen as equal — equal terms, equal genders, and equal animals. Yet the emphasis of each article is on the differences between those two nearly-equal concepts or objects.

Consider any two of the three readings and examine the differences between the approaches the authors took. (McWhorter/Tannen/Twain)

Discuss their arguments, styles, conclusions, or other factors about what they wrote. How are the two authors’ articles working differently?

**See Ask Your Instructor on Gender Neutral Language info.

Your answer should consist of well-developed paragraph or two, which means the first sentence should answer the question(s) (i.e., topic sentence), and the following sentences should support the topic sentence. The paragraph(s) should be unified and coherent with specific supporting details or examples from the story. The sentences should be clear, concise, and arranged in a logical order. Transitions, pronouns, and repetition should be used to provide coherence. The paragraph(s) should follow a compare and contrast format.

Word count: minimum 250 – maximum 280

Gender Neutrality is more important than ever in academic writing (and all writing, ideally).

Here is a handy list to help ensure gender neutrality:

http://www.writinghelp-central.com/gender-neutral.html

Twain writes in the sensibilities of his times; however, the sensibilities of the present must be used in our academic discourse.

The result is that students’ writing about Twain should not employ the gender forms of the mid-to-late 1800s. Only cited material from his essay would contain that. The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain
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The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain
“The cat is innocent, man is not”
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By Richard Nordquist
Updated April 27, 2019
Fairly early in his career – with the publication
of numerous tall tales, comic essays and the
novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn –
Mark Twain earned his reputation as one of
America’s greatest humorists. But it wasn’t
until after his death in 1910 that most readers
discovered Twain’s darker side.
Composed in 1896, “The Lowest Animal”
(which has appeared in different forms and
under various titles, including “Man’s Place in
PhotoQuest/Archive Photos/Getty Images
the Animal World”) was occasioned by the
battles between Christians and Muslims in
Crete. As editor Paul Baender has observed, “The severity of Mark Twain’s views on
religious motivation was part of the increasing cynicism of his last 20 years.” An
even more sinister force, in Twain’s view, was the “Moral Sense,” which he defines
in this essay as “the quality which enables [man] to do wrong.”
After clearly stating his thesis in the introductory paragraph, Twain proceeds to
develop his argument through a series of comparisons and examples, all of which
appear to support his claim that “we have reached the bottom stage of
development.”
The Lowest Animal
by Mark Twain
I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the “lower animals”
(so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the
result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the
Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now
seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer
one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher
Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated
or conjectured, but have used what is com​monly called the scientific method. That
is to say, I have sub​jected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of
actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. Thus I
verified and established each step of my course in its turn before advancing to the
next. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and
covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.
Before particularizing any of the experiments, I wish to state one or two things
which seem to more properly belong in this place than further along. This in the
interest of clearness. The massed experiments established to my satisfaction
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certain gener​alizations, to wit:
1. That the human race is of one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations
(in color, stature, mental caliber, and so on) due to climate, environment,
and so forth; but it is a species by itself, and not to be confounded with any
other.
2. That the quadrupeds are a distinct family, also. This fam​ily exhibits
variations – in color, size, food preferences, and so on; but it is a family by
itself.
3. That the other families – the birds, the fishes, the insects, the reptiles, etc.
– are more or less distinct, also. They are in the procession. They are links
in the chain which stretches down from the higher animals to man at the
bottom.
Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had
come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains
organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had
charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one
of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the differ​ence
between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned
into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and
swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves,
and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas;
always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an
earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t; and that the
earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. This
seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also
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seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a
good deal in the transition.
I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than
they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to
cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially
appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame
animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would
do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped
when they had gathered a winter’s supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it
either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputa​tion the ant
pretended to store up supplies, but I was not de​ceived. I know the ant. These
experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher
animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.
In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is
the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance
offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher
animals.
Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concu​bines; therefore no wrong
is done. Men keep harems but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws
which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a
far lower place than the rooster.
Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the
cat, has brought the cats looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness
behind (the saving grace which excuses the cat). The cat is innocent, man is not.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented
them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they
are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter
a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to
indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as
Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing
jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has
occasion to.
At the head of this article we see how “three monks were burnt to death” a few days
ago, and a prior “put to death with atrocious cruelty.” Do we inquire into the
details? No; or we should find out that the prior was subjected to unprintable muti​lations. Man (when he is a North American Indian) gouges out his prisoner’s eyes;
when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot
iron; when he is a reli​gious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins
his captive alive and scatters salt on his back; in the first Richard’s time he shuts up
a multitude of Jew families in a tower and sets fire to it; in Columbus’s time he
captures a family of Spanish Jews and (but that is not printable; in our day in
England a man is fined ten shillings for beating his mother nearly to death with a
chair, and another man is fined forty shillings for having four pheasant eggs in his
possession without being able to satisfacto​rily explain how he got them). Of all the
animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for
the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat
plays with the frightened mouse; but she has this excuse, that she does not know
that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate – unhumanly moderate: she only
scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its
skin, or drive splinters under its nails – man-fashion; when she is done playing
with it she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel
Animal. He is alone in that distinction.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized
masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is
the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and
with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid
wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolu​tion, and as the boyish
Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own
species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country – takes
possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all
the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its
rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after
cycle, by force and bloodshed.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who en​slaves. He has always been
a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under
him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man’s slave for wages, and
does that man’s work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages,
and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their
own work and provide their own living.
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own
flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins
on hand at heavy ex​pense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them
from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between cam​paigns, he washes the
blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his
mouth.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Ani​mal. He is the only animal
that has the True Religion – several of them. He is the only animal that loves his
neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a
graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to
happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in
Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a
couple of cen​turies, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever
since he first saw the light, he is at it today in Crete (as per the telegrams quoted
above), he will be at it somewhere else tomor​row. The higher animals have no
religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I
wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.
Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal.
Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is
not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider
that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record
back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his
own standards he is the bottom one.
In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily
learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I
taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught
them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a
goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace;
even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as
he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from
Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the
wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a
Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When
I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the
other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids
and bones – not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a
theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to
approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is
constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally
afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is
manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable.
I find this Defect to be the Moral Sense. He is the only animal that has it. It is the
secret of his degradation. It is the quality which enables him to do wrong. It has no
other office. It is incapable of performing any other function. It could never hate
been intended to perform any other. Without it, man could do no wrong. He would
rise at once to the level of the Higher Animals.
Since the Moral Sense has but the one office, the one capacity — to enable man to
do wrong – it is plainly without value to him. It is as valueless to him as is disease.
In fact, it manifestly is a disease. Rabies is bad, but it is not so bad as this disease.
Rabies enables a man to do a thing, which he could not do when in a healthy state:
kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite. No one is the better man for having rabies:
The Moral Sense enables a man to do wrong. It enables him to do wrong in a
thousand ways. Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No
one, then, can be the better man for having the Moral Sense. What now, do we find
the Primal Curse to have been? Plainly what it was in the beginning: the infliction
upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it,
necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence
of consciousness of it in the doer of it.
And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor
(some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of
a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile,
down the long highway of smirchless innocence, till we have reached the bottom
stage of development – nameable as the Human Being. Below us – nothing.
Nothing but the Frenchman.
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Democracy Dies in Darkness
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By Deborah Tannen
June 24, 1990
IWAS ADDRESSING a small gathering in a suburban
Virginia living room — a women’s group that had invited
men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had
been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and
anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the
couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that
women frequently complain that their husbands don’t talk
to them. This man quickly concurred. He gestured toward
his wife and said, “She’s the talker in our family.” The room
burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. “It’s
true,” he explained. “When I come home from work I have
nothing to say. If she didn’t keep the conversation going,
we’d spend the whole evening in silence.”
This episode crystallizes the irony that although American
men tend to talk more than women in public situations,
they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking
havoc with marriage.
The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew
Hacker in the late ’70s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler
Riessman reports in her new book “Divorce Talk” that
most of the women she interviewed — but only a few of the
men — gave lack of communication as the reason for their
divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50
percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United
States every year — a virtual epidemic of failed
conversation.
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In my own research, complaints from women about their
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husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities
such as having given up the chance for a career to
accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their
share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking,
social arrangements and errands. Instead, they focused on
communication: “He doesn’t listen to me,” “He doesn’t talk
to me.” I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most
wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost,
conversational partners, but few husbands share this
expectation of their wives.
In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is
the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the
Trump must be
removed. So must
his congressional
enablers.
We saw it with our
own eyes: Trump
wants to go to war
against America
This is the
consequence of
Trump’s reign of
rage
Trump is in a free
fall — for now
How Western media
would cover
Minneapolis if it
happened in
another country
breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his
face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to
talk. Linguistic Battle of the Sexes
How can women and men have such different impressions
of communication in marriage? Why the widespread
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imbalance in their interests and expectations?
Anger and anguish across
America
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In the April issue of American Psychologist, Stanford
University’s Eleanor Maccoby reports the results of her
own and others’ research showing that children’s
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development is most influenced by the social structure of
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peer interactions. Boys and girls tend to play with children
of their own gender, and their sex-separate groups have
different organizational structures and…
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