Alphabetical Entries: V

as Francine Frank and Frank Anshen point out (Language and the Sexes), both girls and boys may have lively personalities, but when did you ever meet a "vivacious" boy? Two-thirds of the American Heritage Book of English Usage's panel on usage felt that "vivacious" could be used only of a female subject. You could either begin describing appropriate men as vivacious or use more inclusive substitutes: spirited, high-spirited, full of pep, breezy, animated.

has always been a man.

a volunteer can be either a woman or a man, of course, but volunteer work has traditionally been apportioned along sexist lines: "For men it usually means serving in prestigious policymaking or advisory capacities, with the encouragement of the employer to take time off from work to serve as the company's 'goodwill ambassador' to the community. For women, volunteerism means providing direct services at their own expense (transportation, lunch). Second, because women volunteers work almost exclusively at the lowest levels of the volunteer hierarchy, they obtain little valuable work experience or training. Popular mythologies to the contrary, displaced homemakers have been continuously frustrated to find that their résumés, which have meticulously translated fifteen to twenty-five years of volunteer activities into marketable skills, elicit ... negative responses from prospective employers" (Nijole V. Benokraitis and Joe R. Feagin, Modern Sexism).

as used in expressions like "voodoo economics," the word disparages someone else's religion.

history records only male voyageurs.

although the term is inclusive, factually voyeurs are much more likely to be male, and recent studies indicate that far from being the relatively harmless deviants they were once thought to be, many voyeurs graduate to rape and other sex crimes. Use of "voyeur" should reflect the gravity of the behavior.