Museum forced to stop calling ships "she"

TM's take on this ...

It’s seems very counterproductive to reward bad behaviour by doing what the vandal wants - this museum needs some parenting advice!

Yes!

My dad was in the Navy and told me that ships (like aircraft) are named after ladies and called she because they represent beautiful qualities... grace, power, and reliability. And when you spend that much time working/living on a vessel you love her, as she always has your life at her mercy. Probably his take but I like it.

AlwaysComingHome

Long and thin and full of seamen.

(I’ll get me coat.)

^This! So bad so obvious but so good! Lmao! I needed that.

Okay, now I have to do a Jodi Taylor quote:

“No, he’s made a very good point,’ said Bashford provocatively. ‘Women are just vessels, you know.’ ‘That’s very true,’ said Sykes, smiling angelically at him. ‘I myself am a seventeen-thousand-ton Dreadnought class battleship with enough firepower to destroy a medium-sized city.”

AlwaysComingHome

But name-gender is cultural. In France, Laurence is a girl. So is Morgan. But Gael and Lillian are boys. In Italy, Nicola and Andrea, boys. USA, Robyn, Girl, Jessie, Boy. Etc.

Will they now lobby for gender neutral storms too?

Tbh that mightn't be a bad thing, there's a (contested) theory that people react differently to storm warnings based on whether they're given male or female names, leading to "female" storms killing more people because people take them less seriously. Neutral names might actually save lives.

www.snopes.com/fact-check/female-named-hurricanes-death/

People need to stop rewarding these toddler tantrums though. Vandalism should be prosecuted, not grovelled to!

Quietly wondering up myself how this mentality would manifest in a language with masculine and feminine pronouns. .. French and German for example

This. With nobs on.

Can we just send them some cash to replace the signs? Then they can just carry on as normal and tell the vandal to go fuck themselves.

It’s seems very counterproductive to reward bad behaviour by doing what the vandal wants - this museum needs some parenting advice!

It’s bad enough they are transing the dead, now they are doing it to inanimate objects.

YES. THIS.

Fucksake. As if there aren’t enough actual real things to protest about happening in the world..

I can’t believe this charity is not telling these ignorant, narcissistic weirdos to go fuck themselves and then calling the police for the vandalising criminal damage that they have done to their expensive signage (apparently twice now).

Instead the charity are on Twitter saying let’s chat and we want to be inclusive.

I know this might sound odd but referring to a ship as ‘it’ sounds sort of... dehumanising!

Well I can’t see the Queen saying “God bless it and all who sail in it”. (Possibly because she may not name ships any more, or we don’t build them.)

I'm really confused as to what the objection is for calling a ship she?

Me too. I refer to my car as “she” because she is awesome and powerful (gets me out of those snowdrifts with her AWD, too).

I'm really confused as to what the objection is for calling a ship she?

Presentism is a menace of our age. Sometimes it is justified, such as renaming the Colston Hall. (It was never his in the first place.) Sometimes it is arguable, such as renaming Agatha Chistie's And Then There Were None, as it is now known.

Even in museums, it might be the right thing, such as removing the stuffed Eskimos from the New York Museum of Natural History. (Brught to the city by Admiral Pearey as a reword for guiding him to the North Pole, they caught the flu and got taxidermed.)

Sometimes it creates new confusion in place of old, such as the Battle of Britian Memorials who can't make up their mind if one of 'The Few,' Flying Officer George Goodman was from Israel, Palestine or Turkey. The current view is that he was British.

How phallic.

Long and thin and full of seamen.

(I’ll get me coat.)

Submarines are not 'she' because they are boats, not ships.

Subs are just known by their names, no pronoun required.

It’s not the pettiness of ending this practice now that concerns me so much as extending into the past.

This is a museum for Christ’s sake. Even if we stopped doing this now those ships were referred to as ‘she’ in the past.

It takes a monumental ego to think that the time you are born into is more important than any other.

It’s bad enough they are transing the dead, now they are doing it to inanimate objects.

IIRC, submarines are male.

How phallic.

I was told when was a child by my mum's friend that all cars and ships are she because the carry people inside them and only females can do that.

I’d never heard that, but I like it.

My first car, a Peugeot 205 was male. Every car I have had since has been female. I have no idea why.

English is one of the least gendered languages. I suspect this is linguistic relic like the fact that cooked meats have French names.

IIRC, submarines are male.

Ffs that's just ridiculous.

I'm.curious now, if everywhere has to start using gender neutral language fir everything and everyone then what's the point of any of the transition.

My dad was a sailor, and I always had the feeling that ship's were not "it" because they were seen as having a sort of personality of their own.

HMS Victory is a she. She has a figurehead:

I was told when was a child by my mum's friend that all cars and ships are she because the carry people inside them and only females can do that.