Feminine job titles

[ufkacbln]

[QUOTE 1479267"]
I've often wondered why the dismissal of sex is considered ok for equality purposes.

What I mean is, doesn't using the term actor instead of actress do a disservice to the individual?
[/quote]

We had this problem with my wife's employers....


They decided all female employees would be listed as Ms

My wife's title is "Sister" - a Nursing title.

It took six months of correspondence before she was allowed to keep it

 

[ufkacbln]

Isn't Arch a binman?

Refuse and recycling operative surely?

 

[Angelfishsolo]

Refuse and recycling operative surely?

Preused product transport and disposal technician

 

[Yellow Fang]

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.

That's just incorrect though, and that's not just a breaking a bogus rule like double negatives, split infinitives or ending sentences with a preposition. I have done something. I could have done something. You can't I of done something.

Anyway, back on topic.

 

[Yellow Fang]

We had this problem with my wife's employers....


They decided all female employees would be listed as Ms

My wife's title is "Sister" - a Nursing title.

It took six months of correspondence before she was allowed to keep it

Cool, can she keep the title after she retires, like some military officers do?

 

[Arch]

Preused product transport and disposal technician

 

[XmisterIS]

I prefer titles with gender - pretty much all titles in German have gender. They just add "in" to the end of the male version of the word and change the article from masculine to feminine. It makes conveying information so much easier. In English, you have no idea of the gender of the person being written about if they are simply referred to as "the leader", but in German you have "der Leiter" and "die Leiterin". There's also "die Leiter" which means "the Ladder" but let's not confuse the issue!

 

[Yellow Fang]

When the job title refers to something obviously gender specific, for example including "man", "master", "mistress" etc within the title, then that's in my mind where it becomes offensive to use the wrong gender specification.

Would somebody introduce themselves as a repairman over the phone and then turn out to be a woman? No. Most probably not. Unless they were a bit wrong in the head maybe?

How about journeyman as a description?

 

[Yellow Fang]

In the absence of other information, I assumed the author's background was broadly similar to the speaker's. You'd need a lot of endings to describe all those characteristics.

I know it's bad form to quote your own posts, but I was thinking that, interestingly, some other languages do have endings to denote size as well as gender. Strangely, in German, the diminutives 'lein and 'chen are only applied to females, Fraulein and Madchen (can't be bothered with the umlauts). They're used for some small animals too, e.g. Eichhornchen (squirrel) and Kaninchen (rabbit). It seems to be a sort of term of endearment. In French too, the diminutive seems to be used mainly for young females, e.g. fillette for little girl. In Italian, you get diminutives for both sexes. e.g. Topolino (Mickey Mouse I believe), signorina (Miss) . I seem to remember they have endings denoting large size too.

 

[Yellow Fang]

We had this problem with my wife's employers....


They decided all female employees would be listed as Ms

My wife's title is "Sister" - a Nursing title.

It took six months of correspondence before she was allowed to keep it

Nurse is the only female job title that I can think of that has now come to include men. You don't hear the term male nurse so much now. Come to think of it, does stripper now apply to men, or are they still male strippers? Splitting the difference between medicine and the sex industry, should female masseurs still be referred to as masseuses?

Also, what is the professional title of a male nurse?

 

[XmisterIS]

I know it's bad form to quote your own posts, but I was thinking that, interestingly, some other languages do have endings to denote size as well as gender. Strangely, in German, the diminutives 'lein and 'chen are only applied to females, Fraulein and Madchen (can't be bothered with the umlauts). They're used for some small animals too, e.g. Eichhornchen (squirrel) and Kaninchen (rabbit). It seems to be a sort of term of endearment. In French too, the diminutive seems to be used mainly for young females, e.g. fillette for little girl. In Italian, you get diminutives for both sexes. e.g. Topolino (Mickey Mouse I believe), signorina (Miss) . I seem to remember they have endings denoting large size too.

And yet "chen" carries the neuter article. 'tis a strange language ...

 

[John Ponting]

I'd already coloured her in as a white, middle aged, middle class person. I just wanted to know whether it was he or she. It was a story about a new member in a community rather than her profession.

I agree that the information would have helped you visualise the word picture in your mind. A book or story with no descriptions would be as boring as an accountant.

 

[Wednesday]

[QUOTE 1479295"]
Dictionary definition and social interpretation don't always match.
[/quote]

But your social interpretations clearly aren't going to match everyone else's (not all of them). I do interpret "actor" as a gender-neutral term and while it's not a patch on "authoress", "comedienne" or "WPC" for irritatingly unnecessary gendering, if acting was my job I'd consider myself an actor. I don't speak for all women of course; there are probably some who prefer the feminised term.

I'm in favour of neutral terms because I don't think there should be a linguistic obligation to reveal the gender of a person-who-does-things. Being male or female is just one thing about a person which may or may not be important to them or relevant to the situation, and I think privileging that one characteristic as something that should be defined suggests that gender is more important than I'd like it to be.

Even if the "-or" suffix actually does denote masculinity, I don't have a problem with turning it into a neutral, party because the male term is usually used when a neutral is required anyway (if you went to a party with the entire cast of Les Mis, would you tell people that you were out with a bunch of "actors and actresses"?), and I figure you might as well go along with that rather than create a new word.

It annoys me when Captain Janeway won't let people call her "sir", too.

 

[Mr Phoebus]

[QUOTE 1479324"]
As I said, it disappoints me when gender is dismissed for she sake of equality.
[/quote]

May be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret

 

[Davidc]

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.

I had a male drinking partner/ fellow pub quiz team member a few years back whos job title was "Seamstress".

He'd been known as a "Tailor" in previous jobs, but moved into a firm which had always had seamstresses. He said they'd always had at least one male seamstress in the firm since it was founded in the 1870s.