In an article in the Dominion Post on 10th March 2010, Janet Holmes explained her reason for being interested in sexist language as follows:

My reason for caring is my belief in gender equity. 

That is a blatant lie.  Various aspects of her article and of her past behaviour prove that.

• Two of the first three paragraphs of her article have nothing to do with language, but with employment issues relating to women only.  As this, and her article as a whole makes clear, she is only interested in sexist language to the extent that it is a women's issue -- particularly as it relates to work.

• About 20 years ago, I gave a talk at a staff/postgraduate seminar in Janet Holmes' own Linguistics department at Victoria University of Wellington, in which I criticised a similar article which she wrote in 1989.  I also gave a similar talk at a New Zealand Linguistics conference, with Janet Holmes in the audience.  I remember that, because she offered to leave, as soon as I mentioned her in my talk.   My basic criticism then, as now, was that she ignored the use of sexist language against men.  So she is well aware of the facts.

• She claims, in her article, that "Derogatory and demeaning metaphors still tend to be more frequently heard for women ... than for men."  She gives no evidence for that claim, apart from citing a few terms like chick.  If she were a competent academic, she would give references and cite statistics.  In fact, with people like her in charge of the academic field of sexist language, there is almost no chance at all that anyone would be funded or given university credit to research derogatory and demeaning metaphors which are used against men.

• Feminists (including Janet Holmes) have long had employment issues as one of their central concerns, but there is no reason to limit the search for sexist language to terms relating to employment.  Anti-male sexist terms such as gunman and manhunt have nothing to do with employment or Feminism, and so Janet Holmes ignores them, despite my having brought them to her attention about two decades ago.

• The title of Holmes' newspaper article, Generic speech does women no favours, is revealing:  Having managed to get a job, she proceeds to use it to try to get favours for women -- the abolition of anti-female sexist language -- while doing nothing about anti-male sexist language.

• Moreover, Janet Holmes is an unprofessional bully:   When I gave my talk at the staff/postgraduate seminar, a Women's Studies lecturer turned up and sat near Janet Holmes, near the front of the room.  One of them asked me a (hostile) question, and then the other one interrupted me, when I was answering, to ask another question.  Feminists -- especially at universities -- seem to see their jobs as a way of pursuing political campaigns, using unfair tactics, when they feel like it.

  Far from being a worthwhile goal, the encouragement of women into the workplace results -- in my experience -- in unprofessional political activities, and should be discontinued, and even reversed.

• Fascist Green-Party Lardball and the Bononofication of the Human Species

• Letters on Feminist Linguistic Sexism