War of the words

Abstract

I began giving attention to the art and science of peacemaking in the mid‐1980s. The groundwork for my understanding of how to create safety with one another in the face of violence (as I now operationalize peacemaking) was laid more than a decade earlier, when I met and married Jill Bystydzienski, now an internationally recognized feminist scholar. She rapidly confronted me on my male‐biased choice of pronouns in my writing, arousing my childhood dread of having my English corrected, but I could not deny her point: There was no linguistic need for me to perpetuate a use of language that excluded an already excluded demographic category of people.