Feminine job titles

[Rhythm Thief]

Progress!

When i started my YTS in 1985 as a diesel fitter there was a girl on the course training as a mechanic (long before Charlene on Neighbours) ... people claimed she wouldn't be strong enough to lift a cylinder head off the engine block or perform other heavy tasks. As i worked on the buses everything weighed a ton, so there was nowt wrong with asking a colleague to give a helping hand... so even their, strength shouldn't be an issue (plus I'm a scrawny lanky git and probably no stronger than the average girl)

When I worked for Chep a few years back, there was a female driver on nights with me. The job was quite physical - you may have seen the lorries about the place, they carry 30 stacks of blue pallets up to around 15'10 high, all of which need strapping on - and there was some disquiet about giving her the job. I was talking to her one night and she was saying how for the first six months or so she'd had to really struggle to prove herself. She couldn't ask the other drivers for help throwing the straps over a load as it would be taken as a sign she wasn't up to the job, whereas I could and no one would bat an eye. And I throw like ... well, I was going to say "like a girl", but that wouldn't be quite right in this instance.

 

[Brains]

Bin-person
Post-person
Fire-person
Dinner-person
Char-person
land-person (lord, lady, girl)

Sorry it just does not sound right
If 'Guys' can be girls then men can be girls too

 

[Arch]

Isn't Arch a binman?

Arch is a binman?!?

I am, although my job title is actually Community Recycling Officer. I have no problem with being a binman, it's just a word for a job, the 'man' bit means nothing to me. I wouldn't mind if I was called a binwoman either. I don't care at all, I care more about how people treat me on the basis of my job - snobbishness* and so on.

Especially in winter, when we're all in big thick jackets, people often come up from behind and address me as 'mate', and then get all confused when I turn round.

*We're possibly a surprisingly educated bunch of folk. One of my colleagues was gone a long time on a short trip the other day, turned out he'd got embroiled in a long conversation on 20th century composers with one of our clients.

 

[Adasta]

I think the suffix -ess is generally considered to be pejorative now since it implies a forced or unwarrented segregation by gender alone.

It can be seen to reinforce the gender dichotomy or, perhaps, act to support patriarchy by reifying males' jobs and marginalising or belittling their female equivalents. By assuming the masculine term, the gender element is eliminated (since the female is "raised" to the level of the male job title; they are now equals) and the focus is moved towards the ability of the person in that job.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

... I care more about how people treat me on the basis of my job - snobbishness* and so on.

I get that too. I'm not in the habit of rubbing my postgrad - level education in people's faces, but it's sometimes fun when someone has obviously assumed that just because I'm a lorry driver I'm some sort of mouth breathing pond life whose education is solely from the tabloids.

 

[vernon]

One of my colleagues wind's up his wife's colleagues with his gender specific job titles in NHS.

Male - doctor
Female - nurse

They never fail to bite.

He managed to get his mother wound up to the point of strangling him with his choice of names for his first child and her first grandchild.

Boy - Xavier
Girl - Disappointment

He dotes on his three month old daughter and is a good egg. He just revels in finding people's 'angry buttons' and pressing them.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Bin-person
Post-person
Fire-person
Dinner-person
Char-person
land-person (lord, lady, girl)

Sorry it just does not sound right
If 'Guys' can be girls then men can be girls too

There are perfectly good words for many of those professions like Refuse Collector and Firefighter. And many of the others simply have feminine-sounding names because they were devalued jobs only considered suitable for women because they were so low rated (and poorly paid) - like dinner ladies and charwomen.

What you think 'sounds right' is simply a result of what you are used to, it's not 'natural' or set down in stone somewhere. If we'd used '-person' for every job for a a hundred years or so, then you'd think it was perfectly normal and using gendered words would sound odd.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I think the suffix -ess is generally considered to be pejorative now since it implies a forced or unwarrented segregation by gender alone.

The distinction between prince and princess is important.

 

[MontyVeda]

The distinction between prince and princess is important.

quite, it's no different than mr or mrs

 

[srw]

The distinction between prince and princess is important.

Really? I thought both were shorthand for "feckless inbred ingrate who sponges off the rest of us because of who great-great-great-granddaddy was".

 

[007fair]

Bin-person
Post-person
Fire-person
Dinner-person
Char-person
land-person (lord, lady, girl)

Sorry it just does not sound right
If 'Guys' can be girls then men can be girls too

The female versions are not always the same either
DinnerLady, LandLady.. FireWOMAN does this imply you can't be a lady and a firefighter
Can you fight a fire in a Ladylike way rather than just a brash woman?.. hmm Interesting images springing to mind

 

[Angelfishsolo]

It seems to me that what is actually being discussed is the evolution of language.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

The female versions are not always the same either
DinnerLady, LandLady.. FireWOMAN does this imply you can't be a lady and a firefighter
Can you fight a fire in a Ladylike way rather than just a brash woman?.. hmm Interesting images springing to mind

 

[Oxo]

It seems to me that what is actually being discussed is the evolution of language.

Language is in a constant state ofevolution. It can be driven, for example, by youth/street culture which is 'wicked', by developments in science and technolgy which are 'cutting edge' or as a means of expressing changing public attitudes towards political correctness as have been discussed in this thread.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Language is in a constant state of evolution. It can be driven, for example, by youth/street culture which is 'wicked', by developments in science and technology which are 'cutting edge' or as a means of expressing changing public attitudes towards political correctness as have been discussed in this thread.

Agreed. A static language will never survive. What seems to be happening to English is that multiple versions of the language are evolving. From simple changes such as the use of "Of" instead of "Have" to virtually encoded street slang. I know that this nothing new but it is interesting to note the as I grow older I notice the versions of English more and more. Sorry this is OT but anyway.