Introduction

Language is one of, and probably, the most important pillars of any culture. Hence, language is one of the most powerful means through which sexism and gender discrimination are perpetrated and reproduced. Considering that our society is erected upon 12K years of patriarchy, this is rather intuitive.

Gender discrimination is so deeply engraved on all cultural institutions. Yet, the Linguistic objects have a singularity that turn them into a very particular resource used to propagate gender discrimination. Gender biased language is still perceived as neutral and as normative (see Hamilton,1988; Ng,2007; Stahlberg et al.,2007). A speaker can discriminate without and intention or even awareness that this linguistic behaviour has discriminatory results.

Language discrimination is very subtle because it is indirect. Words are mere sounds they don't inflict a damage by themselves. They do however shape the perception of how the world is, or should be, and this perception shapes our reality.

To better grasp how apparently neutral language objects discriminate, let's observe the following mechanism.

#### It all starts at the end...

Language with grammatical gender (ex: French, German, Hebrew) often display longer suffix for women than men. Linguistic objects describing females are grammatically more complex than those referring to males. A common usage is adding suffix to the corresponding masculine terms. Professor/Professoressa (Italian), arriv\u00e9/arriv\u00e9e (Frnech), katib/katibah (writer in Arab). This applied also to the "genderless" language like English, hero/heroine, actor/actress.

The female name is often derived from male name. This is created by adding the suffix as -E, -ie, -ine form, for example, Louise and Stephanie were respectively derived from male Louis and Stephen. Even the name 'female' is derived from male.On the contrary, male name based on the name of the female name is rare.

This mechanism of suffix is applied only to women. Hence, it reproduces the convention that the prototypical human is a male. The phenomena that female nouns are derived from male nouns places the man at the center suggests that the woman is his orbit. The same as Earth is part of Solar System and that the later is part of our Galaxy.

This reproduce the convention that the prototypical human is a male. Therefore, when one uses the generic term to apply to people, it is assumed to be male unless otherwise indicated (Silveira,1980). Establishing men as the default exclude women, even if one has no intention to. Men are established as the norm against which everything is judged, and women are treated as deviant from this norm.

#### Asymmetries:

While the sun is an arbitrary choice to refer to the group, this isn't the case with genders. Asymmetries in vocabulary of many languages also result in a lack of terms referring to one sex. Due to gender stereotypes that want women to be pure and family oriented, there is no male counterpart in current language use for terms such as virgin, working mother, or career women (cf. Maass & Arcuri,1996).

Spinster, for instance, is an offensive term for \u201ca woman still unmarried beyond the usual age of marriage,\u201d but we don\u2019t have a similar insult to describe an unmarried man. Unmarried men are calledbachelors, a word that conjures images of hunky male celebrities and is often preceded by \u201cmost eligible.\u201d

Women who are perceived have sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis\u2014have often been referred to assluts,whores, andtramps.\u00a0Yet there is no equally disparaging term for men.