The word “lionesses” makes me cringe

[bottledjoyy]

I’m sorry, I know this is irrational but something about it just makes me cringe so much. I enjoyed watching the women’s football and am all for it, but for some reason the term “Lionesses” makes me shudder with cringe.
I feel like it just makes it feel a bit infantilising? I know it’s Three Lions but not like we constantly refers to the men’s team as “the lions”. I dunno it just seems patronising and cringe.

Just me? Haha

YANBU I find it weird too.

It's extremely Americanised- a lot of sport coverage is these days.

YANBU

Exactly. If you want to whine about the name your own country's team is called then I suppose that is understandable, but sorry, you have no rights to whine about any team from another country - it just shows your ignorance.

Socceroos

Love It

No, it was voted for by fans. The team didn’t like the nickname initially…although it was probably better than the previous one (The Female Socceroos)….

Honestly, reading through this thread makes me think nothing more than that a lot of you really don't have enough of anything important in your life to thing about. Whether or not any of you like the name, it really has f-all to do with you. Whinge, whinge, whinge .......

It has flitted through my mind once or twice that I’m not keen on ‘the Lionesses’ when the blokes are ‘England’, and then I’ve spent about 10 minutes reading this thread.

I’d say I’ve invested about as much time and energy in the topic as you have. As for whingeing…

The Netherlands women's team are also the Lionesses - and the Morrocan team are the Lionesses of Atlas which I think sounds great.

(England's netball team are also the Roses)

In my experience it's the people who have quite a lot of Proper (TM) things to worry about who love getting annoyed about things like this; we can't do much to change the shitshow of our daily lives, and living in constant ire about said daily life would make us collapse sobbing. Therefore, the ire gets directed elsewhere.

For my own part, I don't think that the routine males-first attitude of the planet is a small thing at all and so deserves pointing out....

I get you OP. For me, it's the inbuilt misogyny of language. The default when naming an anima is male with a suffix for the female.
Likewise, our national women's football team has a feminised version of a name rather than their own name. Though of all the animals, lionesses are awesome

The men have always been nicknamed the three Lions, so Lionesses as a nickname fits for the womens.

The cheap, gimmicky american stuff refers to official names for teams (thankfully none in football...so no Liverpool FC "Wildcats", or Manchester United "Gladiators") which are seen in rugby union (Leicester Tigers) or rugby league (Leeds Rhinos). They are beyond cringe.

Professional sport originates in Victorian England, and most of the major sports were invented in England (golf in Scotland), it's the rest of the world that has been influenced by the English. Rounders (baseball), an English children's game, became america's pastime.

It’s not even really about the inbuilt misogyny of language, because it is vanishingly rare for the men’s team to be referred to as ‘The Three Lions’ or ‘Lions’.

For the men, it’s England, and they compete in the World Cup. All neutral and genderless. The default.

Yet almost everything about the women’s game is coded as feminine.

It's extremely Americanised

Yet, the US team is known as, well, the US Team (sometimes with "women's" added.)

Agree with you it is so awful and hate hearing the word.

Men’s rugby team, British Lions 🤷‍♀️

@jolaylasofia bafana bafana is the name of the South African men's soccer team, unless the Americans have one.

I like it. Lionesses are fantastic.

Complaining about the English language being gendered is utterly pointless.

By the way, “female” was NOT created by taking male and sticking on a prefix of “fe” like male was the origin or default. The two words are NOT even entomologically related at all. Their spelling was tweaked in the 14th century to give them symmetry.

What exactly is infantilising about being called by the name of a fierce, brave, and determined bunch of adult female animals?

If they were called the kittens I’d agree with you.

You’ve not heard of The Lions then?

Best of the rugby players for the U.K. kicking butt across the globe… hence the footballs won’t get called that.

And also for man and woman, no they did not add on a prefix as if man were the default to create woman. The part of woman that denotes a female is the “wo” which came from “wif”. Wo-man used to be wif-man or literally woman-man and meant a female servant to a man.

Wo is not a prefix, it’s the original word that means woman. The man is suffix done in later centuries to create symmetry.

I agree but I figured I was the only one who thought that. It grates on me in the same way as 'male nurse' (as though only women can be nurses) or 'stewardess' instead of just plain old steward. The 'ess' feels like it's a weaker form.

https://www.lionsrugby.com/

British Lions aka The Lions have been called that since 1950.

The male England football team has never Been called the lions.

@OrwellianTimes

I think you're continuing to miss the point.

The British & Irish Lions is the actual name of the Rugby team.

The England Men's International Football Team have the nickname 'The Three Lions'.

The England Women's International Football Team have the nickname 'The Lionesses'.

Officially, they both compete under the name England.

However, the Men's team are almost exclusively referred to simply as 'England' and, to distinguish them, the media tends to almost always refer to the England women's team as 'The Lionesses', despite it not being their actual name.

I think the U21s should be called the Cubs.

I don't mind it as an affectionate nickname, but I'm not sure it should be used as the "official" one. You don't see the BBC reporting that the Hatters were promoted, or the Gunners won their most recent game.