"she's a beautiful Handbag" names and pronouns for objects.

[GrumpyNovember]

I'll make an admission I am unwell at the moment so in all likelihood watching too much YouTube and light watching programmes and on plenty of medication.

But.

Can anybody relate to the annoyance of using pronouns for objects?

Also, I have noticed "she" is majority of the time a beautiful dress or an Handbag (arm candy 🤢) and "he" is a powerful Car.

Having learned French in my youth it doesn't seem so weird to me, well not until you said handbags are 'she' LOL that does seem excessive! I heard a lot of 'she' for cars and ships in my early years, don't know if it's as common now.

I know a luxury handbag seller who does this “look at her!”
Didn’t Carrie Bradshaw used to do it with her shoes?

@Gettingbysomehow said "Everything pretty and cute is "she" and everything powerful and useful is "he". We aren't bloody French..." Mmmm.

It is interesting to compare English, with its lack of noun genders, and French. I used to work in computing ages ago and was told that French words for all major terms (ordinateur, clavier, moniteur, etc.) were masculine. The only exception was la souris, which clearly had been feminine before computers rocked up.

Interestingly, newer terms that are feminine include la webcam. 🤔Any linguists out there with an explanation other than @Gettingbysomehow's analysis?

It's exactly this. And I always correct it when I hear it. It pisses me off no end.

I not losing sleep over this but I don’t like the way it sounds. It’s annoying.

I wouldn’t agree that anything powerful and useful is ‘he’.
We have many massive machines at work, and they are always female, even if they’re 50T and so big they need a special escort for their transport lorry!

That’s because the moon relates to divine feminine whereas sun is divine masculine

It's infected the crafting & sewing community too. "Sewed up this dress, isn't she adorable! And she has pockets!" 🙄

I absolutely loathe the use of “she” for fashion things. Loathe it.

Is it something to do with how isolated People are these days? Tik Tok make up ‘ girlies’ calling lipstick ‘ she’… smacks of having an imaginary friend to me.

I’ve learned something new today. I thought it was just the yoga folks being a bit weird.

I'm guessing no one on this thread is part of the Filofax community (don't sneer, it's a thing 😄) - calling Filofaxes 'he' or 'she' and even naming them is very common. Yes, I am talking about adults 😂although I don't do it myself, just to be clear. 😄

That’s probably true too 🫣

Congratulations OP on discovering grammatical gender. English used to be a fully gendered language (like French or Italian) until those pesky Vikings messed up our language and we still retain it for ships and countries. And of course for playful or poetic such as you that seems to annoy you so.

With impeccable timing, someone has started up another thread asking for Robovac recommendations. A suprising number of posters refer to theirs as 'he'.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/housekeeping/5250511-robot-vacuum-cleaners

Oddly, I would have assumed that Eufy was short for Euphemia, a somewhat neglected girl's name.

My eufy is a man!

Thanks!

Plus, I may regret asking this, but why is it a man? I can understand cars being seen as male/female, depending on what name the number plate suggests, but Robovacs?