Male Sexist Under-Language
Male Sexist Under-Language
(OP)
The "to Whom it may Concern" post by CajunCenturion
confirmed there is common use of the phrase Dear Sir/Madam. Various dictionaries interestingly describe madam as a refined woman, elderly lady, married woman, even brothel-keeper! Nowadays, there is a (fashionable?)trend to refer to a female president as Madam President yet the male equivalent of Madam is Sir! A male president is certainly not greeted as Sir President, although I have heard Mr President, Sir!
Just plain Mister President is good enough. Even though they are regarded by some as equivalent, conventionally, we do not use Mr/Madam as a dual form of greeting in a letter. It occurs to me that Sir, used politely or deferentially does not have the same amount of baggage or under-current that Madam does.
Dear Sir infers to the reader that the writer expects to address a male adult gentleman of any age and marital status.
Dear Madam might infer, depending on a reader's perception, that the writer expects to address a refined older and probably married woman who might even be running a brothel.
confirmed there is common use of the phrase Dear Sir/Madam. Various dictionaries interestingly describe madam as a refined woman, elderly lady, married woman, even brothel-keeper! Nowadays, there is a (fashionable?)trend to refer to a female president as Madam President yet the male equivalent of Madam is Sir! A male president is certainly not greeted as Sir President, although I have heard Mr President, Sir!
Just plain Mister President is good enough. Even though they are regarded by some as equivalent, conventionally, we do not use Mr/Madam as a dual form of greeting in a letter. It occurs to me that Sir, used politely or deferentially does not have the same amount of baggage or under-current that Madam does.Dear Sir infers to the reader that the writer expects to address a male adult gentleman of any age and marital status.
Dear Madam might infer, depending on a reader's perception, that the writer expects to address a refined older and probably married woman who might even be running a brothel.





RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Actually, "Sir" is a title that, historically, belonged to British gentry - specifically, knights and higher - not just your average guy with a pitch fork...
As for "Madam", no, it definitely does not point out she DOESN'T run a brothel, but what would you use to equivalent it with a Sir...? "Lady"? :)
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
The pointy end of my post is to draw attention to a kind of left handed acknowlegement of women that they apparently are willing to accept. C'mon Ladies...........
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Remember that “President” refers to the position held and NOT the person. The correct phrase is Mr. President or Madam President. The same holds true for “Chairman”. Because the title or position held is gender neutral there is no English word such as “Chairwoman” or “Chairperson”. The correct phrase is Mr. Chairman or Madam Chairman.
My dictionary gives the following for madam:
1. used to address woman in letter: used at the beginning of a formal letter to a woman, especially one whose name is not known (formal)
2. used to address woman official: used before the name of a woman’s official position as a term of address
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Yes. Gender neutral. Why not address the president as exactly that eg:
"I wish to ask thePresident." "Will the president allow the formal adoption of ......" Mr President, imo is bumbling sycophantic crap.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
corus
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
She rejected: Miss, Ms, Madam, Lady, and anything else I could think of until SHE told me the only way to address a female (she rejected that word too) was Sister.
Sigh.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
The Roman Catholic church was one of the many institutions she used to bash regularly in the lunch room as a symbol of sexist dominance. All of the other women (I mean sisters) who worked with us also thought she was out to lunch.
I could only imagine suggesting that she might be married to the church (directly after doing so, I would duck).
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
With that in mind, what's with all these languages around the world that dare have masculine and feminine words? How offensive!! That needs to be addressed also. How can you possibly speak of refining the sexism in our languages when the very words we use have their own gender?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
In my neck of the woods, the pronunciation is different for a madam of respect (Madem/Mad'm) and a madam of less respect (Madamn). Although the pronunciation doesn't come across in writing, the Madam reading the greeting knows which one she is.
NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
I think "Sir or Madam" is fine too - I also like ladies and gentlement (instead of Lords and Ladies).
Is it sexist that "ladies" flows before "gentlemen"?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
I took a computer programming class in Pascal and the text used the female pronoun in place of where a male pronoun with no gender intended would usually appear. This was very distracting. I wonder if females are distracted by male gender pronouns?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
I don't see how Dear Sir or Madam (or Dear Madam or Sir) could offend anyone for a good reason. Men and women ARE different after all, as we all discovered at 3-4 years old.
What is strange, though, is that married women are addressed differently than "free" women (in France a formal letter to an unknown person is addressed to "Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur" - ladies first as always). Apparently it's very important whether a lady is still "zu haben" (just to use yet another language), while for men it's not relevant whether they're married or not.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Mrs. Beans accomplishments improved life for all man.
Vs.
Mrs. Beans accomplishments improved life for all men and women.
Personally, I find using both genders to be superflous and akward. For hundreds of years the male pronoun was used when gender was unkown or both genders were being refered to. Why has this only been a problem for the last 20-30 years?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Mrs. Beans accomplishments improved life for all homo-sapians.
NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
If we keep taking offense to what has become common speech tools, we will get ourselves so twisted up in semantic predeterimnations that we cannot get our main points across. Just use it and move on with it. People who take offense to trivia like that will take offense to most other alternatives as well, case in point being justkeepgiviner's example.
Side note:
Whenever someone addresses me as "Sir", I turn around and look for my father!
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RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Mrs. Beans accomplishments improved life for all man.
Vs.
Mrs. Beans accomplishments improved life for all men and women.”
The word “man” (as in “mankind”) is gender neutral representing all men and women so it requires no further division.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Sorry, couldn't resist
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
No I tell a lie, it was "Yuman Beans" he always referred to. Perhaps I'd better get some more coffee.
Anyway, is bicyclette the feminine of bicycle? so is it sexist to always write bicycle? (one of the few (only?) machines available in male and female forms (mostly unisex now though)... just kidding (emoticons don't seem to work)
and if I read much more I'll be back to my popular topic of who determined which gender applies to windows, doors, towns rivers etc. Its Ok if you are in France or Germany with the la fenetre or die fenster (don't take my word for it, I always get the genders wrong in both languages) but when looking at a French map of the UK, who decided the Thames was masculine (or was it feminine?)?
Another conundrum, and one that seems more fussily adhered to in the USA, is why refer to a married lady as Mrs John Smith and not Mrs Ann Smith? but apparenty one means she is married and the other a widow.... or did I get that wrong? (too).
But, back on topic, If you have a problem remembering which Francis/Frances is which, then like me, you will be in real trouble and when it comes to "foreign" names i have no clue but I have noticed that some people i.e. foreigners (to me) usually have the courtesey to use the MR or MS or MRS tag in their communications just to help me out (except an Irish lady called Peta). But I don't notice those (including me) with anglo saxon style names providing the same courtesey when responding to people in other countries, I must do something about that....)
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
See discussion in thread thread1010-140243. Follow the Hofstadter link therein for an interesting perspective on language bias.
Objections to supposedly generic masculine don't just go back 20-30 years. They go back 30-40 years. Why only in the last few decades? Because only in the last few decades has sexism itself, let alone sexism in language, been unacceptable.
One could argue that the word "man" and the pronoun "he" started out generic, but 800-year-old etymology is irrelevant if it isn't reflected in current meaning. "Man" means "male adult", not "person". It's the equivalent of "stallion", not of "horse". Most English speakers wouldn't say something like "I saw a man lurking in the alley but I couldn't tell if he was male or female." The generic sense of those words is reduced to a few very indefinite contexts and even that use is fading.
There is research going back to the 1970s showing that supposedly generic masculine terms do in fact tend to evoke a male image in the mine of the listener/reader. I don't have access to any of my linguistics material at the moment but I found the following list of cites online (compiled by Deb Hume of Stephens College):
In other words, just because your grammar book declares something to be neutral doesn't mean your brain really sees it that way, and the same applies to your listener.
I used to believe quite firmly in grammatically gender-neutral use of masculine terms. I changed my mind. (The Hofstadter piece mentioned in the other thread contributed to that, as did the psycholinguistic research.)
I used to believe, even after I started to come around on the generic masculine issue, that it was not possibly to write fluently and fluidly only in gender-neutral terms. So I tried it. When I found myself able to do it on timed essay exams, I had to change my mind on that front as well.
This does not mean that all of you must immediately change your speech and writing patterns to use only gender-neutral language for all gender-neutral situations, but there's no call for ridiculing those who do recognize sexist language for what it is.
Hg
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RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Maybe I missed something or forgot. Was there ridicule of that sort in this thread? Maybe the 'parental unit' one? I did not take time to re-read all of the posts in this thread so could be I forgot.
Or maybe you are referring to usage in general unresricted to this thread.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Worry not.
By the way, my point about etymology vs. actual use by real people also addresses the "Sir or Madam" question. In a title or salutation, "Madam" has never had anything to do with either prostitution or marital status, so neither of those can be the basis for objections to the term. The fact that "Sir" elsewhere in the language has different social standing than "Madam", on the other hand, could be valid, except that in the US most people are not all that familiar with the subtleties of titles of nobility, so over here it's also probably more of an argument to etymology rather than real-world connotation.
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
However, the land of the Poms being what it is these days, I doubt it is used overmuch.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
I forgot razors were also available in male and female, not just bicycles.
But, TurbulentFluid, is it a problem to buy mens razors/shavers? or am I missing something, is there a restriction on who can buy which version?
Or is there some genetic compulsion to buy impractical things?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
When I tried the opposite though, the day after I had forgot my razor in a hotel bathroom (not the first time), I discovered that female razors are hopelessly inadequate - design appears to prevail over performance. Not sure if razor designers do this deliberately...??
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
There have been several comments comparing womens vs mens (should that be women's vs men's? Sometimes I get confused with plural vs possesive and whether the ' comes before or after the s. Like which is it plural or possesive which in the above instance I would think both and in which case does the comma come after the s?). If you think that sentence is confusing then you have a clue as to how confusing that grammatical rule is for me. I actually thought I understood it for a time but now I am not so sure. Anyway, have any of you made an exaustive or at least comparative study of different ladies shavers? We need some quantitative data here!
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Dang right. Today I was looking at some promotional material for a new electronics store that is to be placed inside existing Best-Buy stores. This little store within a store will sell higher end home AV/theater stuff. So anyway, the full color brochure for this endeavor featured several pictures of couples and families enjoying/viewing various modern wide screen television formats. What struck me was that in 4 of these pictures the female of the couple/family was holding the remote control and in another picture the male was actually handing the remote control to the female. Now how ridiculous is THAT!
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
probably a different thread...
"plural" never requires an apostrophe, although it can affect where it is placed (and adding it in an abbreviation sometimes helps, like when you say "I need two s's, you SOB's," but I think s's and SOBs look better). If the plural of a word ends in s, and the possessive form of the word also ends in s, instead of putting two of them at the end of the word, you put in one with the apostrophe behind it. In this case, since men is plural, men's is plural and possessive. If you had those boys' candy, it would be a different story (those boys' not those boys's). Never get caught with a bucket of apple's, unless the bucket belongs to a famous actress's son.
http://w
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Thanks to all for the input. I would like to give everybody a pink star for their contribution and HGTX five stars for his five star post but the rules being what they are, preclude that.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
oh the irony...
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
My dear anathomically uneducated Jimw friend,
The "genetic compulsion" is that when a woman shaves, she shaves some signifficantly MORE sensitive bits of her body than a man's face is. In order for this (VERY important bodypart, at least to us) tio remain undamaged, women's razors have special protection in form of wires or something simmilar covering the blades to avoid direct contact of the blades with the aforementioned, sensitive bodypart that I'd rather have undamaged (it'd look funny to put a bit of cigarette paper THERE, too.)
Since you apparently NEEDED a very graphic description of just WHY did engineers think there should be a distinction between the two.
That said, I use red Mach3 for men and never borrow anyone's razor. Sexism I care little about, generalisation pisses me off.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Hg
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
So, out with it metman, Don (what's his face)Johnson looks like Box-Car-Bon? a considered explanation please. Also what is the difference between people and people
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
When I sported that look a time or two on the week end, I never understood why my wife and daughter saw it as anything but sexy.
NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
saludos.
a.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
.......so you DO know me, LOL
NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
I have never seen one these safety features but visulaized a device that would keep the cutting blade(s) away from the skin leaving a stubble.
ivymike and rnd2: Box-Car-Bon is a cartoon character out of the mid 20th century circa 1950. He had a perpetual 4 day stubble which outclasses Don whats-his-face 2 day stubble. BCB rode the rods or sometimes inside the railroad box cars. Sorry, guess my age is showing.
People vs people? hmmm -- I do not know how to answer that. It is something that was bouncing around in my head about all the political correctness stuff. I will leave it up to you to consider what sort of people would think stubble is sexy. Was I being politically incorrect by italisizing the word people?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
One is dark blue, and one is pink. The pink one has a "lubricating strips", but those come on men's razors too.
The blades are the same width. The angle between handle and blade appears to be the same. They all have a similar piece of plastic in front of the blades. If there's a difference in blade spacing or angle within the head, it's too subtle for me.
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Just how sensitive is the bony part around the ankle?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
BTW, if the female part is more sensitive, why do men use cream while women don't?
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Hg
Eng-Tips policies: FAQ731-376
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
Introducing the Gillette 3000 - The first shaver with 16 blades:
The first blade distracts the hair, while the second and third blades sneak up behind it, cutting off any escape routes. The fourth and fifth blades attempt to coax the hair from its hiding place using modern modern counselling techniques while the sixth blade, posing as a passing motorist, acts as a decoy, allowing the seventh and eighth blades to swoop down and quickly overpower the hair. The ninth blade, disguised as a postman, administers a small dose of chloroform, allowing blades 10 through 13 to remove the hair and escort it away for further questioning. The 14th blade informs the hair of its rights. The 15th blade handles the paperwork and the 16th blade, well, it's just along for the ride.
Also available, the Gillette 3000 Ladyshaver. Same product, but with a more girly voice-over.
LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.
RE: Male Sexist Under-Language
thread338-53716 How to keep razor blades sharp.
Hg the cheap Bic disposables are more expensive than the cheapest of the disposable head variety.