Yeah, maybe. But, at some point, all of us are going to have to stop making broad, sweeping generalizations. It’s not helpful. I want to be myself, not a category. [quote=“PFKA_GLSPX, post:21, topic:75512”]
Woman is not an adj.
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Then let’s not gender occupations. Again, language is fluid, especially spoken language.
I personally don’t like occupations being gendered in anyway. And plenty of people use the term “female” derisively. I prefer to not be called a “female”.
Can I go out drinking with your grandma?
I’m unsure why you think you’re the arbiter on this, though?
We can keep this one. But only if dudes use it too.
If someone wanted me to do so, I absolutely would. It’s like zero effort on my part to use the preferred nomenclature people prefer. It’s literally no skin off my nose, so I’d do it. I’m a woman, I identify and understand myself that way, so she/her is fine. If somone asked to use something else, why wouldn’t I?
Imagine that for all your life, but because of your gender.
It would be very frustrating. I well recall female colleagues seething bitterly at being assumed to be nurses when we were more junior and they went to see patients on the ward — only to be asked for help with a bedpan yet again. But now our patients are coming to see a specialist and if they get a woman, then the situation makes her status obvious and it attracts no comment. So they outgrew the problem, as I did mine when my hair went grey — a happy discovery.
I’m not denying your personal experience. Just pointing out that in professions with less of a gender bias your “life-long” experience might not be quite so generalisable.
Welcome to my life. No matter what I do, people will see a woman first.
And those are… ?
The thing is, I’m sympathetic to your being dismissed because you were young. You’ll look older and people will automatically accept your authority. And I’m sure you worked hard to get where you are (med school ain’t easy, yo), so you deserve that respect. But so do I. And, unless there are major changes in our culture, I’ll never automatically get it. It will be an uphill struggle until I retire. So yeah…
You’re suggesting that a certain turn of phrase should not be used, though. If someone asked you not to use a particular word, someone you worked with and knew, would you do so, or would you simply say that you’re not going to do that,because you find it “grammatically incorrect”?
In healthcare, which is my only area of experience in work. I’m sorry that it’s different for you.
And likewise, I’m sympathetic to junior female colleagues who get asked for bedpans*. But that’s a less common occurrence now than back then, as there are now more female than male entrants to medical school (in UK and NZ at least) and public perception of who can be a doctor has changed in response as they move onto the wards. And once they become more senior their authority will be as accepted as is mine now. My department will soon be 60:40 male:female and women may well be a numerical majority in medicine by the time I retire.
*Much less so if their irritation comes combined with demeaning comments about nursing. My wife is a nurse and I worked through medical school as a nursing auxiliary/nurses aide, so I know how hard their job really is.
Wouldn’t that be using an adjective as a noun though? I have heard male and female animals being referred to as ‘males’ and ‘females’, probably because there are many different specific terms depending on the species, including auto-hyponyms like ‘cow’ and ‘dog’.
I can understand that the word has gained a different connotation if you hear it used that way though.
I don’t see why occupations need to be gendered in English, but it’s interesting to see how languages with grammatical gender approach the issue. German job advertisements for teachers might say “Lehrerinnen (female) und Lehrer (male) gesucht” or they might say “LehrerInnen gesucht” with a capital I to show that either gender is welcome to apply.
I miss her every day. She drank a “wet vodka martini up” in the last years of her life in San Francisco. She retired there from her law practice. As a younger woman, she drank dry gin martinis.
Drink either some time and toast an equity feminist troublemaker you know — someone who would probably not describe her politics that way. I will hope that she hears you.
I’m trying to figure out where the lines are in discourse now.
Someone says to use their preferred gender pronoun, even if it is unusual…ok.
Someone says “Don’t use female,” ok.
Someone says…
Clearly, we are not culturally at a place where one half of a conversation gets to dictate what words the other half is allowed to use except, in some cases, we are in certain circles. I’m wondering how far this extends.
If I say, “Only address me as ‘Lord Almighty’,” people are going to laugh and refuse. If I say, “Only refer to me as ‘zer,’” people are supposed to respect that. Where is the line in these things? What if they say “Don’t use gendered pronouns for anyone in my presence”?
It is an honest question because I don’t know. I know for a lot of less progressive people, the whole thing seems stupid and we should just use English as we learned it in school. I’m not of that ilk but I also wince when people make up new pronouns every few years instead of, say, the singular ‘they’ that goes back to Shakespeare and is non-gendered.
I can only tell you what is okay for me, I think. I can’t speak for other people, or other communities, because I’m not them. I am fine with my birth gender. I’m not a fan of female.
Much of this comes from the post-Foucauldian turn, where language and discourse are constructive elements in our social structures. How we talk helps us to understand and structure the world, so for people who are interested in that way of thinking - they see it as taking power over their lives, insisting on what they consider respectful language that speaks to how they identify.
But we can see how language evolves over time. We know that actually happens and those changes often happen because people start using language differently, often to assert their rights to be treated equally. One example I can think of is the term Queer, which used to be offensive, but it was really embraced going into the AIDS crisis in the early 80s. Queer became a marker of rejecting the need to be “straight” and normal and to embrace a non-heteronormanative identity. Not even all LBGT people embrace the term though.
As a slight derail, in the 80’s I read Lord of the Ring. After a dozen or so examples I took my book to my mother and ask Why is he using a word we aren’t supposed to say?
Her answer was just a straight up Some words had different means. They use it as ‘different’.
This was a minor epiphany for me. It felt great to learn one of the Great Truths of language. Shit never stops changin’.
I use the singular they as a gender neutral pronoun. The singular they has been in use since the 14th century and is already common place in spoken language.
I am not going to go into a party and use ey, hu, jee, per, ve, thon, ze and every other non-traditional pronoun because frankly I can’t keep track of them all and who prefers what. If they are in the conversation, I just use their name and if they aren’t, then they won’t know what I’m using anyway.
at being assumed to be nurses when we were more junior and they went to see patients on the ward — only to be asked for help with a bedpan yet again. But now our patients are coming to see a specialist and if they get a woman, then the situation makes her status obvious and it attracts no comment. So they outgrew the problem, as I did mine when my hair went grey — a happy discovery. 
