(no subject)

[nonethefewer]

Some days, pesky shit irritates me.

Today, it's calling superior officers "sir", regardless of gender.

"But it's a good gender-neutral term to indicate respect towards your superior!"
"It's a gender-inherent term, you ignorant fuck."
"..."

Note: not a real conversation.  Despite my rants here, I try not to get violent during feminism-topicked discussions.

So today, default words (like "sir", or "gentlemen" (I've been reading military fic, shut up), or the like) that claim to be gender-neutral but oddly always seem to be male irritate me beyond reason.

Comments

[antayla.livejournal.com]

That's fine, us girls can start calling all superior officers "Ma'am." (Or even the more formal "Madam.") We see how respected they feel THEN.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Or Dame. Apparently if a woman is knighted, that's the appropriate form of address for her.

[rhya.livejournal.com]

I've always really liked Dame. Dame Dindrane from Arthurian legends...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dindrane

[perich.livejournal.com]

I had a similar discussion with a friend earlier this week. We were casting a play, and I said that only this one candidate "had the ovaries to pull that role off."

She looked at me.

"I would have said, 'had the balls to pull it off,'" I explained, "but I thought it'd be demeaning. 'Oh, congratulations ma'am, you have presence and confidence. You've been promoted to Male status.' So I say, 'she has the ovaries to pull it off.'"

"I'm with you," she explained, "but I find creating gender-specific terms demeaning, too. Like the word 'actress,' which is a female version of the 'actor'."

"Hmm."

So now I'm curious to what other people think.

[rosefox]

actor:actress::testicles:ovaries? I don't think so, either culturally or linguistically.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

I think the comparison doesn't work.  In one, you're trying to find an analogous term for women from one for men -- here, you got "ovaries", as a similar thing as "balls".  The problem as I see it is that "ovaries" doesn't have the same cultural weight and meaning as "balls", in that sort of context.  But, one must start somewhere, &c &c.

Whereas with things like actor/actress, someone appended a feminine suffix to make it specifically male/female.  (Interestingly, "actor" started out being regardless of gender.)  So it's not taking something that linguistically is the sole province of men and finding a way to expand it, it's restricting the original meaning to half the world, then making up a new word for the other half.

I may or may not be making sense.

Quasi-relatedly, why is it "actress", but not "poetess", which is also a word?  /rhetorical

[rachel-swirsky.livejournal.com]

Gender-neutral? Gender-inherent? Come on, you guys know what I mean. :-P

[rachel-swirsky.livejournal.com]

[/sarcasm] if that wasn't an apparent tag.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

*snrk*