Gym thinks only men can be Drs

Monseigneur - that sounds awesome! Is there a female equivalent or is that just Madame?

Hardly given it's referring to a senior member of the Catholic clergy.

Ooh! Thanks. I shall watch.

I think we should all be monseigneur, really.

But you couldn't have a more patriarchial title, could you? It's the word for a feudal lord, and France does feudalism like noone else.

Hmm. Not familiar enough with Catholic hierarchy.

The titles discussion got a bit out of hand...

Thanks Jeanne! Reburial of Richard III is on C4 tomorrow pm, FYI, - I'll stick it in history club too.

Monseigneur - that sounds awesome! Is there a female equivalent or is that just Madame?

Oh, I meant non-gendered in the very broad sense of the word being used for men and women. I agree lots of endearments are used more for women now and can be patronizing.

yonic - no, I don't know. I assume a lot must pre-date Christianity if they're just things like 'love'. Post-Christianity you get romantic/erotic terminology adopted to describe relationships with God, but I can't actually think of terms that start out as religious and then become endearments.

Dear is non-gendered except when patronising men want to tell people on the internet they're wrong, in which case it becomes a term for females who are wrong. They don't address men they think are wrong as Dear.

I'm now remembering a conversation I once had when specifying titles for a drop-down list where one of the men thought it was terribly important that we had Captain as an option. I then asked if he thought Brigadier, General and Flight-Lieutenant needed to go on the list. Then someone suggested Sergeant and Inspector, someone else said The Honourable and someone else suggested HRH in case one of the royal family signed up. Monseigneur came up at one point. No-one suggested Comrade or Citizen.

In the end we went back to basics and went for Mr, Ms, Miss, Mrs, Doctor and Reverend with an Other field that you had to fill in yourself. I don't think any of the titles were linked to sex though.

Apropos of nothing really...

Yes.

You'd know this better than me - how did terms of endearment arise? Were they linked to the love from and for god or very separate?

I suppose maybe if you are in an intimate relationship, you have to try to relate to someone as a person?

That's interesting.

Sweetheart, cariad, darling, dear are all non gendered too I think.

It is odd, isn't it?

About 80% of the time I love it when hardcore feminists address groups of women as 'sisters'. I have had a sister and I like having lots of them.

But the other 20% it feels impossibly cliquey and female. Which, as you say, is conditioning.

But I do love trying to think what terms we might use, post-gender. And it really interest me that the affectionate ones seem to be the first to become non-gendered. In formal contexts, terms are gendered even today. But as far back as I know of in English, you can just call someone 'love' and it doesn't specify gender. I think that's quite hopeful, isn't it?

Ooh, this belongs on the other thread really, but the idea of that makes me feel odd.

Damn you, male-as-default conditioning

I like it.

In a post-gender world, I see no issue with 'sisters' as a non-gendered form of address.

Does that bring us back to Comrade as an honorific, then?!

We just need someone to get rid of the whole idea of gender. I find it so depressing this is seen as if it were rocket science - the idea that we could all just, you know, leave each other alone and stop judging based on trivial externals.

I wonder if they will fix just the DR bit. Will they also fix the Prof, Rev etc?

Probably depends on whether it's picked up by someone who will do only what they have been asked, no more, no less - or someone who will fix the overall issue, which would pick up Prof, Rev, etc as well or just remove all the bloody titles all together.

Which you get may depend on how crap the IT management has been of late.

(This post may be written through the filters of my own employment situation, and may contain some bias as a result...)

yonic, to be fair, it is a long thread and she probably didn't read it, but saw kim's posts, which she retracted. It's not necessarily anything more than that.

WW, report anything you think is a PA. You know that.

I think you've confused me with someone else, WW.

heckler - don't be silly! Everyone knows women are never Revs or Profs! The idea! Why, their wombs might drop out.

Jeanne - so you keep doing personal attacks on one user but calling you out on it is rude? I'll never get the hang of that politeness thing

I wonder if they will fix just the DR bit. Will they also fix the Prof, Rev etc?

*Exactly. That's the main thing. She needs access to the changing room. Is there a way that can be achieved quickly and easily whilst the database error is sorted out?

That's all I've been trying to say. How can she get access to the changing room easily?*

See, from my point of view, this is not an easy fix because the problem is sexism. So a designer could loftily waft their phone at it or whatever the fuck they do and solve this specific issue but the problem is the underlying sexism which won't go away because this woman has access to a changing room. And to say that this problem will be solved with a bit of code is to dismiss the ongoing sexism that it performs. And to say that it's just a glitch is to dismiss the ongoing sexism that it performs.

So to my mind thinking through the pragmatics and then wondering in a sort of disinterested way what would happen if similar person-gets-into-wrong-changing-room situations is a way of casually dismissing the sexism at play. To me, this is a discussion about sexism and not really a discussion about MyAsHole or whatever programming language it is. Which is why you're coming across as not getting it, Kim

You'd think it'd be in their interests, WW.

Did you mean to be so rude, though? 'Bad faith' is not a very nice thing to say. Why the need for the attack?

Seeing as this has some reputational impact it can quickly affect revenue, so it's in their interest to fox quickly.

Btw what the heck is all that homeing in on Kim about? There seems to be a lot of very bad faith interpretation of her posts

You were claiming it was an easy fix, quickly sorted - so she would only need to be let in once (and that is no more difficult accompanied by the person on the desk than not).

Or, do you now think it would be a hard fix, requiring enough time she'd need her own card?

It can really only be one or the other.