Ok, so right now all the comments should be at the same level. I'll try to put in something if they're a response to something a ways back, but in general it should make sense, I hope.
Possibly relatedly
When did "women" become an adjective? Am I nuts, or does it bother anyone else to see "women college grads" or "women lawyers"? I mean, is "men lawyers" also now grammatical? Possibly worse is when someone is going for that but goofs the spelling, and you get "woman lawyers" (definitely worse is "lady"!). What's wrong with "female" anyway?
Definitely relatedly, I am cranky all over your friendspage. Uh, lol? Do let me know if I need to create a filter or another blog or something so you don't have to see it. In the meantime, I shall continue to pretend that everything I do is seen as endearing by my wide readership, because that's lots of fun and sometimes even true. If you take "wide readership" to mean "my housemates". Ok, "msbunburyist and my boyfriend".
mela_4_me
2007-04-25 06:22 am
When did "women" become an adjective?
I agree completely with you. People have become so extremely oversensitive to being politically correct that they have gone overboard. The Women's movement has been screaming for recognition for women to the point that it has become an insult to women. Yes, I agree, it is ridiculous....Why say "woman lawyer" if you don't say "man lawyer"? Just as ridiculous is the extreme political correctness people are insisting on for long-standing words. "Postman" now has to be "Mail Delivery Personel", a "Manhole cover" is now a "Personhole cover", and the "Trashman" is now an "Environmental Waste Engineer".
People are creatures of habit....and once they are forced into a habit, whether it is ridiculous or not, they will stick with it.
flawlessnight
2007-04-25 09:33 am
No! Feminists hate it too! It's an outgrowth of things like "lady doctor", which a long time ago actually differentiated you from a real doctor. This is the patriarchy, not the women's movement at all.
kestrelct
2007-04-25 09:46 am
Good point, thank you for mentioning that.
I also agree that the over-PC movement is both annoying and a bandaid on the sucking chest wound that is actual gender discrimination. Just because they're now "waitpeople" doesn't mean that right now, a waitress is not getting her ass grabbed by a trucker who thinks he can get away with it.
mela_4_me
2007-04-25 10:01 am
Agreed, completely.
mela_4_me
2007-04-25 10:01 am
*nods*
Yes, you are right, I agree with you completely. The political correctness in differentiating did begin, as far as the feminists went, (I hate word Feminists, it has been given such a negative connotation because of a few fanatics that made it look like a bad thing) with stuff like "Postal Employee" or "Mail Delivery Personel", but it did begin in a negative way with "lady doctors", etc. One way or another, whether it began as changes for the positive, or people trying to differentiate in a negative manner, it is still a habit for most people. And it has definitely gone overboard, no matter which way you look at it.
msbunburyist
2007-04-25 08:15 am
Awww, you're so cute.
;)
kestrelct
2007-04-25 09:46 am
Rar. Fear me.
Blame katealaurel, she started me reading Feministe.
katealaurel
2007-04-25 12:10 pm
Bwahahahaha!
<3.
...and ditto msbunburyist.
kamili
2007-04-25 08:50 am
We love your cranky.
azurelunatic
2007-04-25 09:15 am
Yep!
flawlessnight
2007-04-25 09:36 am
1. Bitchiest LOL EVER. *awards a prize*
2. It REALLY bothers me. It's like, why do you need to qualify that? Can't I be a competent professional AND a woman? Is that so damn hard?
3. The physics department has a poster up honoring "women scientists". *headdesks*
4. On a related note, the physics department [Allie sez: at a small liberal, liberal-arts college in the Pacific Northwest, where a number of these commentors attend or have attended and from which I am on leave; following talk about "the biology department" and such is also referring to this colllege] from has hired only two women EVER. Mary J---- in 1988, and Danielle B--- in I think 2004 who left after one year.
kestrelct
2007-04-25 09:43 am
Danielle B--- in I think 2004 who left after one year.
...because she couldn't deal with the misogynists in the rest of the physics department.
flawlessnight, I think you have an obligation to be famous as a physicist, and more than just the token chick on staff. Girls can be hardxcore science nerds too!
dragonmagelet
2007-04-25 10:15 am
To continue bitching out the science department, they won't let us bare our shoulders in Chem lab (allegedly because it's unsafe, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with not distracting our more serious male colleagues) :P
I think this dilemma becomes slightly more complicated when compared to other languages, like German, which have gender built into them. Is that also sexist? And if not, doesn't the "woman" or "female" qualifier simply compensate for the English language for the sake of clarity? I'm certainly on the fence about it.
I'm waiting for the day when they stop asking for gender (or race, for that matter, but that's another discussion, although they often qualify the same sorts of things that way. If I may quote Chris Rock on Barack Obama, "He's so well spoken!") on ANYTHING because no one cares a lick unless they might want to fuck you. And even then, just because they might not have encountered said genetalia before. Srsly, guys. The differences aren't all that big.
kestrelct
2007-04-25 10:38 am
I have less of an objection to "female" because it's at least a damn adjective. This post was borne (uh, shit, do I mean borne or born? what an embarrassing place in the sentence to not know that) more out of my inner grammar freak than the inner feminist, who got her metaphorical rocks off in the previous post.
I can't decide whether to cut English some slack on not having gender built in and for assuming that mixed groups and unnamed things are male by default. I think, and i did just realise this, that I'm cool with the "female" qualifier *only if* it's relevant and/or one would use a "male" qualifier. Kind of how I'm extremely unlikely to point someone out as "the white guy over there" but have been known to include races other than my own in a short physical description -- it's the assumption of defaultness when not mandated by language that gets me. I like that point. I'm going to bold it so it stands out in this big, unparagraphed mess. That people say "woman lawyer" because they feel like it's unusual, that lawyers are by default male (is a sentence fragment). I guess "male nurse" falls into the same category (but at least nobody f'ing says "man nurse"!!) but it offends me less because I'm a
dragonmagelet
2007-04-25 10:44 am
<3 you :D
kestrelct
2007-04-25 10:49 am
Yay!
If I collect enough hearts, I unlock a secret area of the game, did you know?
Aaaaand fuckijustlostthegame.
nietzscheansmut
2007-04-25 12:49 pm
No, but it makes you harder to kill. Didn't you realize that this was a Legend of Zelda game?
And it's all good with the cranky. I think most of us who read this (myself very much included) have done the same sort of thing at some point.
katealaurel
2007-04-25 12:17 pm
Interestingly, languages like Latin that have gender built in often assume that groups are male much more explicitly than non-gendered languages. When I was in first-year Latin in seventh grade, they told us that if we have a group of people in Latin, and at least one of them is male, the entire group should be referred to with male nouns and adjectives. (With objects, of course, you refer to them by whatever gender the object is.) Hence "alumni" for groups of "alumni and alumnae".
Also, languages that explicitly gender words make some weird assumptions. The Latin "virtus", for example-- virtue-- is a feminine noun, but is made out of the word "vir"-- man. So.. manhood is feminine. Right.
On the whole, I get the impression that gendered languages tend to describe abstract concepts-- particularly ideals and virtues-- as feminine. However, grab a linguist to check on that.
in which I geek too much
dragonmagelet
2007-04-25 03:00 pm
Yeah, as I recall from German, French, and Latin, European languages seem to mostly do the absract concepts bring feminine thing (la beauté, die Liebe, etc). I assume they grabbed it from Latin, with whom the virtus thing is freaking notorious.
The Latin argument loses validity because it, you know, DIED long before women's rights. In modern foreign languages, it's true they do tend to assume the masculine when talking about a mixed group (des amis or die Freunde, for example), but on the other hand they went out of their way in many cases to feminize many professions (I know that "professor", for example, only recently and only in Quebec gained a feminine form), yet there seems to be no stigma attatched to this qualification, at least not in Germany as far as I know. In short, I get the impression that a naturally gendered language gets people less up-in-arms about gender neutrality and discrimination and unnecessary qualification and etc.
(On another note, the first place I heard the term "alumn-" was when I was in the San Francisco Girls Chorus School, from which we actually did only have alumnae. At this time I was also taking Latin, in which I learned the proper latin pronunciation for "ae" as well as "i", so I got fair confused when I got to high school and people started talking about "alumni" and pronouncing it the same way you're supposed to pronounce "alumnae", which is how they prounounced it at SFGC, despite the fact that they clearly meant the masculine form...gaaahhhh. I still think we should be inviting "uh-LUM-nee" back to visit the college, but it just sounds too silly)
don't be a pedant unless you know what you're talking about
katealaurel
2007-04-25 03:14 pm
[Allie sez: Kate, your formatting here for quotes is being replaced by italics because I'm lazy]
as I recall from German, French, and Latin
German, of course, is not nearly as closely related to French and Latin as those two are to each other. I'd be cautious about making any argument that relies too heavily on generalizations between all three.
but on the other hand they went out of their way in many cases to feminize many professions
The problem is that while there may not be a stigma overtly attached to feminization of professional nouns, the feminization itself contains an implication that a normal "professor" (for example) is not female. If we have to create new words to account for the presence of women in these professions, it implies that women were not present in them to begin with-- or worse, don't belong there.
Naturally gendered languages may raise less hue and cry about the problems of gendering nouns, but that doesn't mean that they don't exhibit linguistic evidence of discriminatory thought.
...
dragonmagelet
2007-04-25 03:50 pm
Uhm, hi. *waves* No need to insult my intelligence, here. It's just the internets.
The whole reason I was bringing up the question of gendered languages is because I wasn't sure how I felt about it. As I understand it the LACK of a feminized form of "professor" in French is under some debate, as THAT is considered to be discriminatory by some people, which is counterintuitive given the overall message of the original post. Also, as I understand it that attitude, that "if we have to create new words to account for the presence of women in these professions, it implies that women were not present in them to begin with-- or worse, don't belong there", seems to be a largely AMERICAN attitude because we don't have gendered nouns in English. The feminization of professions in most European languages (the French le professeur standing out as a notable exception) seems to be a part of gender equality, rather than the opposite. Would it be better if they continued refering to ALL professions in the masculine? That seems to be the attitude in the environment of gendered languages. That's the point I was trying to make.
I was mostly taking issue with your reply because it relied heavily on the trends of a dead language, which seemed somewhat irrelevant. I apologize if this came off as dismissive or...uhm...if it made you sad, or whatever :(
I thought, too, that German would be almost entirely unrelated to Latin (which I took for six years). It's what I had been told about the language. Now that I've taken almost a year or it, however, I see a lot of connections between the two, some which do not appear even in French (which I took for three years). Most (almost all, in fact) of the words, it's true, are Germanic rather than Latin in origin, but the structure is very reminiscient of Latin. Specifically, German still has neuter nouns, which French does not have, and also shares the trend towards feminine abstract nouns, which Latin and French also share. Which is what we were talking about. It's possible--likely even! I'm not a Linguist, I don't know--that Latin had zero influence on German and the commonalities are just coincidence. That doesn't mean the commonalities aren't there. I was making comparisons between them because they're the only languages I've taken.
Frankly, I DON'T know that much about linguistics. I've only taken three languages, and I don't know very much about the politics/political correctness/whatever of other countries. I was just putting out there what I did know, and hoping it would spark some discussion. I didn't intend for any of this to get nasty :P Maybe this response was excessive, for which I do apologize, but I do my best to know what I'm talking about, so forgive me if I took offense when accused of ignorance.
kestrelct
2007-04-25 05:01 pm
Oh crap guys, now I have to read all this.
Also, please play nice and try to stay calm. Like clams, the way I typed it first. Just because it's almost [the end of the year blowout party] doesn't mean stress has *actually* taken over anyone's brain.
*sheep*
dragonmagelet
2007-04-25 05:04 pm
*shuffles*
[this is in response to dragonmagelet's "bitching out the sciences" comment]
beckyzoole
2007-04-25 11:01 am
It really may be for safety reasons -- when I was in Chem lab, all students had to wear those white coverup coats. We had a man professor, and a man TA too.
The word I hate is "coed" to mean a female college student. Bwa?
kestrelct
2007-04-25 11:04 am
Because the default state of higher education is male, obviously, and coeducationalizing (+1 made up word point to me!) involves introducing wimmins, who must obviously then be "coeds" because they bring it with them...?
I only ever see that term in porn.
katealaurel
2007-04-25 12:14 pm
"H0TT c0LL3GE CO3DS WANT Y00!", you mean?
I've actually seen it in serious articles-- like in the NYTimes-- before, but I've no idea how I'd go about digging one up except for long and laborious internet sleuthing, which is great for procrastination but not-what-I-need-to-be-doing-right-now.
pendragoness
2007-04-25 12:54 pm
To continue bitching out the science department, they won't let us bare our shoulders in Chem lab (allegedly because it's unsafe, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with not distracting our more serious male colleagues) :P
awww come on. I know this is facetious, but still. You can't wear sandals or come in without safety goggles either...
[Allie sez: This is in response to my comment about the misogynists in the physics department]
flawlessnight
2007-04-25 03:49 pm
Actually it's because they said they'd buy her a $20,000 piece of equipment she needed for her research and then they didn't.
Yeah, I kinda do. Of the last like 100 Nobel Prizes in physics, like 98 of them have been men, and the last two were Marie Curie and some other chick. It's my duty to out-badass all the men on staff. :) And out-badass them I shall!
kestrelct
2007-04-25 05:08 pm
What, other than [A Physics Major Who Lives In My Basement And Got To Use Danielle's Super Nice Lab All By Himself]'s Thesis Lab?
The bulletin board in the physics hallway just reinforces my ire and my determination that WOM(A/E)N IS NOT A DAMN ADJECTIVE! It's a fucking noun! English is crying!
pendragoness
2007-04-25 12:57 pm
re #4 [in flawlessnight's list]: forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'd imagine the pool of qualified physicists for professor positions in the particular generations from which they are hiring is kind of skewed towards men. Not because women aren't capable of being qualified physicists, but just because in the generations from which our professors grew up, there wasn't as much encouragement for women in the sciences.
aris_tgd
2007-04-25 03:04 pm
I'd also point out that the chemistry department, while full of male professors, has had an abundance of female students over the past few years. I believe there was one year recently wherein all the graduating seniors were female.
And that's not even pointing out the Reactor of Awesome [Allie sez: a mostly-student-run small nuclear reactor in the basement of the psychology building at said college, which the admissions department is fond of pointing out produces the most licensed female reactor operators of anywhere every year], wherein there are about 11 female senior operators and only 5 or so male ones this year.
flawlessnight
2007-04-25 03:55 pm
Wow, really? That's awesome!
Physics has historically been the most male-dominated of the sciences. Like, I don't even know if I KNOW any male Bio majors, and I know a LOT of female chem majors, but even though there are more female physics majors now than ever before, I think we're still at like a 60/40 split.
djibril24
2007-04-25 07:55 pm
There are plenty of male bio majors, but it does tend to be skewed towards women.
pendragoness
2007-04-25 04:08 pm
To quote R---- [no idea who this is but figure it's polite to take the name out], "we're the only reactor run by hot chicks!"
flawlessnight
2007-04-25 03:52 pm
Yeah, pretty much.
pendragoness
2007-04-25 04:07 pm
I mean, it's sort of an obvious idea, but still, what I meant is that I don't think it's anything particularly chauvinistic NOW, it's just dealing with the way things have historically been.
