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Inspired by the "Britishism" thread wherein it was noted a tender of patients in English is a "Nurse" regardless of sex:
So, what is the proper occupational title for a female USPS worker who delivers mail?
Are there other job titles strongly tied to a specific sex?
So, what is the proper occupational title for a female USPS worker who delivers mail?
Are there other job titles strongly tied to a specific sex?
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West Virginia
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Re: Sexual identity
Wed, December 10, 2008 - 6:34 PMIt is now considered proper to refer to a "mail carrier" or "postal carrier" for either male or female. Postman is long and gone, unless one counts the old movie, "The Postman Always Rings Twice."
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Re: Sexual identity
Wed, December 10, 2008 - 8:25 PMThe word I had in mind was "Mailman", which is what they were called when I was young. . . .
Don't ask.
Interestingly, the relatively new "Going Postal" phrase originally applied to the actions of non-carriers.
The carriers are regarded as separate from the appellative.
Consider a female apprentice in a trade union.
Is she deemed a "journeyman", as are her fellow male apprentices in the same category?
I believe this may be the case, because it is a rank of standing in the training process.
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Thu, December 11, 2008 - 12:55 AMPity the poor French then, whose académie has come up with what must be the most inelegant solution possible for this problem in a number of areas, but particularly in the area of the Arts:
Un écrivain ('a writer'), une femme écrivain. ('a woman who writes')
Un peintre ('a painter'), une femme peintre ('a woman who paints')
(rather than being flexible on the suffix or the particle: un écrivain, une écrivaine; un peintre, une peintre). The (intentional?) side effect is that the female form is thus devaluated with respect to the male form, since one is an profession, while the other carries the connotation of being an auxiliary pass-time. -
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Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Thu, December 11, 2008 - 9:57 PMThe French, they are a funny race...
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Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Fri, December 12, 2008 - 6:54 AMI'll have to double check but I do believe that here in Quebec it's just "peintre" irregardless of gender (and I've never seen a woman painter referred to in this manner in a French art context, undoubtedly for the reasons you point out!). Quebec's interesting in this regard because we have lists of "official" terms, particularly for business and work (there's a reference site run by the government). Newly invented words (of which we have many in Quebec since l'Office de la langue français does not allow English to be used in official contexts...of particular note are translations like hamburger=hamborgois, I'd have to check the spelling since *nobody* uses the word). -
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Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Fri, December 12, 2008 - 7:38 AMI checked here, and can't corroborate my own memory, so I may be mistaken with regards to 'femme peintre' (I've seen it used, but it may simply have been to clarify that it was indeed a woman, and not a man, who was the painter. I have seen 'femme sculpteur' though, and have verified that the Académie Française does not accept the term 'professeure' or 'professeuse', nor a whole slew of further feminized professions.
But let's leave the stage to the haughty immortals themselves (and apologies for the French text, but some things just can not be translated):
"L’application ou la libre interprétation de « règles » de féminisation édictées, de façon souvent arbitraire, par certains organismes français ou francophones, a favorisé l’apparition de nombreux barbarismes."
"il éviter absolument des néologismes tels que professeure, ingénieure, auteure, docteure, proviseure, procureure, rapporteure, réviseure, etc. Certaines formes, parfois rencontrées, sont d’autant plus absurdes que les féminins réguliers correspondants sont parfaitement attestés. Ainsi chercheure à la place de chercheuse, instituteure à la place d’institutrice. On se gardera de même d’user de néologismes comme agente, cheffe, maîtresse de conférences, écrivaine, autrice... L’oreille autant que l’intelligence grammaticale devraient prévenir contre de telles aberrations lexicales."
You will have noticed the usage of major caliber artillery: "barbarismes", "aberrations" and the the most damning argument of all: that those forms insult the French ear. -
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Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Fri, December 12, 2008 - 7:47 AMmichael - I have no doubt that the Academie does decree that but I was talking about the Quebec version, which is the Office of the French Language (though it's always written in French). They enforce Bill 101 in Quebec (which is about French being dominant on signs and quite actively anti-English) and generate the appropriate terminology. It tends to be more geared towards business and official usage rather than general.
Here's the site for anyone who's curious....
www.granddictionnaire.com/btml/..._1.asp
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Re: Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic...
Fri, December 12, 2008 - 8:23 AMSorry, I realize that what I wrote may be confusing with all the different references to "French" flying around. What I meant to convey, is that in reading French-language art magazines and various art world texts in French (both from Canada and France), the male term tends to be used generically, much as it is in English in the arts. (In my memory, though I'd have to check before making any strong assertions!)
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Re: Sexual identity
Mon, December 15, 2008 - 1:40 PMIt seems that most of the gender bias in nomenclacture heavily favors the male version, i.e., the male version of the word is "normal," and the female version is created by adding something to it. Waiter/waitress, actor/actress etc etc.
I looked for a word in which the bias went the other way and I believe I've found one:
Ballerina.
I tried to find out what the male version of this word is and the most common answer I found was "Male ballet dancer."
I also found "ballerino," but I'm less inclined to believe that... -
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Re: Sexual identity
Mon, December 15, 2008 - 5:57 PM"I looked for a word in which the bias went the other way"
Another is: prostitute.
The implied sex is female. A man in the same profession is a "male prostitute".
Then there is the high priced version, the "call girl", but there is no "call guy".
"Male escort" or "Gentleman escort" would seem to apply. -
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Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 7:08 AMThought of "gigolo" but did not include same as the term primarily refers to a "kept man".
That is : A man who has a continuing sexual relationship with and receives financial support from a woman.
However, a google search finds it is equated with a male prostitute. ***shrug***
Common usage may have trumped the original definition.
My age is showing. . . . -
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Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 7:39 AMInterestingly, I don't consider the word "prostitute" to apply specifically to females and when I looked it up it was applicable to both men and women. It functions as a verb and, as a noun, can be applied to both. Of course, male prostitutes are usually servicing other men not women. Just as female prostitutes are usually servicing men. I'd suggest that one's own ideas of who or what a prostitute is probably have more to do with how we read this word and the meaning we assign to it. (It's hardly neutral within our culture! Or any other that I can think of, for that matter!)
I'm not sure if "gigolo" has ever really *just* meant "kept man". The poolside gigolo isn't really a kept man in the same sense that a woman is a man's mistress, there's the implication that he's a bit more of a con artists or older version of a boy toy. Of course, issues of wealth, power and social conventions all play into language around the economics of sex* (or sex as a commodity...I'd suggest there's even a difference between sex as an object-commodity and a service-commodity).
It is interesting though that gigolo has this kind of "cute" sound to it as a word and is seen as not being prostitution (though exchanging money for sex is pretty much the definition of prostitution!), while the only "respectable" word for a woman in this position is "mistress" (though "mistress" does not necessarily denote an exchange of money, it just means that the man is married to someone else). So, since a "mistress" may receive no money in exchange for sex with the married man, it's not really equivalent to "gigolo".
*using "sex" to mean fornication and not to mean gender.
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Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 8:38 AMIf it's just common usage that defines the sex of a word, then a whole slew of gender neutral terms can be assigned a gender:
Flight Attendant
Receptionist
Secretary
Nurse
Librarian
Call it sexist if you want to, but I'm sure that most people will assume that upon hearing about someone in one of those professions that it is a woman. Whereas:
Mason
Janitor
Firefighter
Boxer
...will almost certainly be assumed to be a man.
There is obviously much crossover in that none of the professions listed above are prohibitively male or female (there are very few jobs that have that quality). -
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Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 9:01 PM"Flight Attendant" was coined as a necessary neutral replacement for the wholly female Stewardess.
A side effect of the equality in employment movement was the opening of a few occupations
previously held solely by women.
The assumption of sex in employment gave rise to the following riddle:
A father and his son were in a traffic accident; the son critically injured.
Luckily, a renowned surgeon happened to be in the Emergency Room.
The surgeon quickly scrubbed, but when seeing the patient, said:
"I can't operate on this patient - he's my son!"
How can this be true?
The assumption a surgeon, especially a "renowned" surgeon is a man prevents
very few people from correctly deducing the surgeon is the boy's mother.
Note: An example of an extremely capable female orthopedic surgeon is Debbie Thomas.
Dr. Thomas won the World Figure Skating Championship in '86, and a bronze medal
at the '88 Winter Games. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 9:06 PMCORRECTION:
"very few" in the riddle should be "almost all"
(That's what I get for rewriting a sentence, and not proofreading before hitting "submit")
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Re: Sexual identity
Tue, December 16, 2008 - 9:25 PMWait a minute! Debi Thomas's son was in an accident and she couldn't operate on him?
I am sooooooo confused.... -
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Re: Sexual identity
Sun, December 21, 2008 - 7:27 AMDoctors are not supposed to operate on family members due to the emotional attachment. It is believed to interfere in critical judgment.
Does that help you out, Bill?
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Re: Sexual identity
Wed, December 17, 2008 - 4:48 AMEdward - My mom's a doctor so that riddle was obvious to me the first time I heard it, but yes, it counts on the listener's gender bias for its impact :-)
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Re: Sexual identity
Sat, December 20, 2008 - 12:48 PM>> "I looked for a word in which the bias went the other way"
Another is: prostitute.
The implied sex is female. A man in the same profession is a "male prostitute".
<<
male prostitutes who are homosexual are also called 'sodomites' -
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Re: Sexual identity
Sun, December 21, 2008 - 8:10 PMAnd here I thought Sodomites were followers of the former dictator of Iraq! -
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Re: Sexual identity
Sun, December 21, 2008 - 8:17 PMBill - Well the Sodomites were definitely behind him! -
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Re: Sexual identity
Sun, December 21, 2008 - 8:29 PM[the Sodomites were definitely behind him!]
Oooof! -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Sexual identity
Sun, December 21, 2008 - 9:25 PMWell you did leave the back door open for that one....baddum dum!
The only people I've ever heard go on about anyone homosexual being a "Sodomite" are religious Fundamentalists. Technically, since sodomy isn't restricted to homosexuality, not all "sodomites" are men - so it seems a bit odd to only associate it with male prostitutes (though not being Christian there may be some aspect of the myth I'm not aware of and certainly evangelical preachers do seem to have some issues with not-so-well repressed homosexuality).
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