Does it matter that women get misgendered

Even if people are comfortable with current unisex usage of male-centric collective nouns such as "guys", I think it's still worth emphasising the fact that the unisex word usually started as a male-only word.

I think the evolution of unisex collective nouns from male-only words does not happen by chance. I think it occurs mainly by the habitual refusal of most boys and men to accept female-centric words as unisex, because female is lower status than male. This then results in male-centric words being the only words with any realistic chance of widespread adoption as unisex collective nouns. In other words, we can have any unisex word we want, as long as most men and boys find it acceptable.

Women have the subordinate position in the gender hierarchy and this has forced the competition between male-centric and female-centric words for unisex status to be inherently unfair. Until women are liberated from this subordinate position, the competition between male-centric and female-centric words for unisex status cannot be fair.

YonicScrewdriver I recognise that unfortunately it's down to market forces. Male sport can be sold for a higher sum because there is currently greater interest from the viewing public, therefore the participants earn more. In recent years women and girls have been encouraged into competitive sport (e.g. the girls for gold programme) therefore in time I'd like to think that the balance will shift. We do at least have some female sports presenters nowadays - that would have been unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago.

Thank you!

Oh, and almond, I would classify most of the accents in Boyhood as "Texas light." (I think you asked about that yesterday.)

Sorry, I meant you enjoyed being disagreed with.

And Buffy, I always assumed you enjoyed being disagreed, within reason.

(I have no intention of defining reason here)

I like y'all.

Ooh, yes! I like 'y'all'.

I do just love dialect in general.

I also like 'youse'.

I have been wondering if we will end up retro-forming this from 'you lot', because increasingly I hear people slur it to 'youl't'.

I also love y'all. Particularly at the moment as DD has watched Boyhood for five days in a row.

I understand almond and as I said before, that's a discussion that goes on in the States as well, where we are losing large measures of linguistic richness and regional identity to Hollywood blandness.

Thank goodness, though, that "y'all" has not bitten the dust. It's the reason that I don't often get called a guy.

I agree completely, errol.

I'm taking issue with the idea that there can be one single meaning that exists 'in our culture'. I don't think there is. So, I think we have to be aware that some of these terms have gendered connotations for some people, and for others they really don't.

The issue is when someone confidently says 'in our culture ...', because, of course, we don't have just one culture. We have many between us. And one reading isn't any more definitive than another.

I always find these debates about history and etymology and usage to be utterly beside the point.

The point is not what the word is held to 'mean' (because we'll never fix that, it's not in the nature of language). The point is, what's the structure it's referring to, and what does that tell us about who's keen on the word and who's not?

Jeanne - I think when there is cultural drift, in this case both transatlantic and generational, we can generally manage to communicate appropriately. I use somewhat different language with my dad than I would with an older person and I might use different terminology with us colleagues versus a bunch of fellow Brits. It's not that either culture is more important.

Seneca, I wanted to say that my issue with Americanisms is about US cultural dominance reducing or excessively changing cultural development in other locations, or skewing debate, or putting language into contexts where it is a poor fit for the situation, or where is excludes older people who are not familiar with online US centric discussion.

I do consider opposition to American culture on the basis that it is somehow of less value/ inferior to be xenophobia, prejudiced and wrong. I appreciate that people's intentions and motivations when they object to something American are sometimes unclear, and that can be distressing, particularly if said to an American who is young, the only American there or otherwise vulnerable.

I suppose that is class intersecting with language, isn't it? Because the same thing happens where I grew up, to a lesser degree. Men refer to women as 'the missus' in my bit of the East Midlands, but if you were to go into Nottingham University, or Queen's Med (hospital), you wouldn't hear the academics or the doctors saying that. And yet, you'd find you went into A&E and some doctors would talk about 'your missus' because they thought that would be easily understood.

It's not wrong, exactly, but it presumes that the doctor understands the dialect and the person speaking dialect wouldn't understand 'your wife' or 'your girlfriend', which doesn't sit right with me, and does tend to reinforce the implications of those terms.

Seneca, that's interesting, thanks.

I wasn't going to go into this, but I have a bit of a negative sense of wifey because when I was a student in Scotland, most people I heard use it seem to give it a class connotation, as in referring to the cleaners as the "wee wifeys." Women professors or wives of professors of the same age were not called wifeys.

When men are routinely called gals or lasses or another collective noun for women in non-derogatory ways, then they can come on here and tell us it isn't a problem, because they don't deem it to be.

And Buffy you were perfectly clear. Not understanding the blatant and frankly absurd nit picking going on here.

Speaking of the toast to the lassies at the Burns supper, it originally was to thank the women for preparing the meal. So make what you will of that. And it's always a man who gets to stab the haggis.

BuffyEpistemiwhatsit Mon 23-Mar-15 09:48:00

My highland cousin and his mates use 'wifey' as a bit of a derogatory term, meaning older lady you wouldn't necessarily be interested in. Connotations of hatchet faced harridan. Lassie however, is more appreciative. Both equally as misogynistic, sadly.

Buffy's post copied and pasted. Looks to me and everyone but you, Still, like Buffy is talking about her cousin and his friends. Care to back down now, or are you too busy frothing to be capable of seeing reason?

Cross post.

dadwas, I can absolutely solemnly swear no one, on either side of the argument, wants us to talk like Chaucer.

But, my culture is clearly not your culture. In mine, 'guys' isn't unisex. So I suppose this is a translation issue really - it's not 'this is what the word means and always shall!' it's 'why should my culture matter less'?

I'd hope so!

I do occasionally notice people who have an attitude I associate with my dear mother ('an American accent! '), but it's not that common and usually gets squashed.

So 'guys' is a term that has evolved over previous decades to be used as a unisex term in current culture. Its used a lot by my youngest daughter and her friends. I do not see the problem unless you want to argue we are all of us corrupted because we no longer communicate like Geoffrey Chaucer.

I should have added a after that last post. On the whole I think Americans are made very welcome on MN, especially in FWR.

That was rather odd, TBH (the idea of it being ok to dislike Americanisms, though I did think the point about American being a culturally dominant form of English was interesting).

But, the point isn't that we all agree, is it?