Say What?

Inspirational song: Master of the House (Les Miserables)

I've been of two minds about the evolution of language. I like being an early adopter of some slang phrases, feeling artificially young and hip when I do that. However, for some words and some grammar rules, I have been rigid in my determination that they remain forever immutable. For example, I hated the use of the word "impact" as a verb. It drove me crazy. Also, I fought against the use of the pronoun "they" in a singular application, considering it lazy. I resisted that one longer than I should have, to be honest. I have come around to accept that in the absence of a neutral third person pronoun that is not dehumanizing (as the word "it" is in basically every application regarding a living being), they singular is as good a word as any. Knowing someone who prefers that as their pronoun of choice sped up my evolution.

Today we had our monthly roundtable, and learned that a few new twists on language are on the horizon. One of our agents alerted us that, according to her wedding photographer friend, not only has Ms triumphed over Mrs/Miss, but now even Mr and Ms are falling out of usage in some circles, in favor of Mx. This one didn't surprise me all that much, even though I hadn't heard it before, as I was already used to the transition from identifiers like Latino/Latina to Lantinx. This seems like a natural offshoot of that progression. But this was just a tangent off the discussion that I'm still amused by, twelve hours later.

In our annual updates class last month, we were told to be conscious of outdated gender stereotypes in our listing descriptions. The boss did some searches and found actual examples in the MLS of agents writing things like "the man of the house will love the garage, and the woman will love the kitchen." We were steered away from "man cave" and "she shed," towards neutral, inclusive language. Today we caught wind of the next descriptor to fall: the Master Bedroom. Not one of us saw this coming, but one of our agents still does business in Portland, and warned that the change was already happening there. It was interesting, not everyone at the table identified the same problem in the term. Me, I heard it as a sexist holdover, as Master not Mistress. My boss, sitting next to me, heard it as a racist term, Master versus Slave. I supposed there was a third option rooted in classism. Whatever the impetus, expect to see a move to "Main bedroom" or "En Suite" or other neutral terms.