Brilliant woke misogyny, is it just me?

[TheOriginalMrsBagwell]

Facebook post from the National Marine Aquarium:

'Meet the Rangers! Here’s Jenny, (she/her), one of our Ocean Discovery Rangers. Check out this fact file of Jenny to learn a bit more about her!
We are aiming to connect you, our NMA family, with our brilliantly brainy Ocean Discovery Rangers. These guys are always around the building to help with any questions, provide you with fascinating fish facts and give amazing talks about the fish, sharks and rays!'

Everyday sexism all mixed up with some lovely virtue-signalling pronoun announcing, wonderful.

That's just badly written. It refers to Jenny as her, so there's no need to double that up with the pronouns in brackets.

'fact file of Jenny' is plain wrong. Fact file of Jenny's? Fact file about Jenny? Fact file by Jenny?

Guys is male, however commonly used as 'unisex'. Just ask a heterosexual man how many guys he's slept with.

'00:08AuntyBumBum

'ShiftingSands21

A micro aggression against who?

Bonfire effigies?'

You both need to get ready for a huge eyeroll, and get ready to share a few jokes on the thread, I look forward to it!

Enjoy... (Incidentally, I proper love bonfire night..)

Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament 400 years ago. Reason, wanted to restore Catholic monarch, protestant had to go. Didn't manage it obv. Caught tortured etc.

Four hundred years later! I mean talk about holding a grudge! We merrily get together, drink mulled wine, admire huge fire, children running about, sparklers, it's a great night.

The reason for this is to celebrate the failure of them to get a Catholic back in the throne.

When I was growing up, when fire got higher, watching for the moment the Guy went into flames was an anticipated moment and a cue for raucous cheering. Yay!

Yes it's normal and standard just not even worth thinking about. But when you do think about it. Burning an effigy of a Catholic who tried to execute a massive terrorist act for religious reasons (massive terrorist acts are obv not ok at all).
A terrorist act that failed...

In 1605!

I mean. If explaining bonfire night to someone from a different country, never heard of it.

I mean I've tried it and it sounds pretty dodgy indeed, if you've not tried it, take my word for it!

But, that's about protestant v Catholic centuries ago.

Luckily in the UK, there's zero issues around protestant v RC! If there were, would be a bit iffy, maybe....

.....

...

Ever been to Lewes? Heard of Lewes? Maybe live there?

They have a MASSIVE bonfire night celebration!

Just picked up s bit from wiki-

'To mark the demise of the 17 Lewes Martyrs, 17 burning crosses are carried through the town...'

'A number of large effigies are drawn through the streets before being burned at the bonfires. Each year these include Guy Fawkes, as well as Pope Paul V,[17] who became head of the Roman Catholic Church in 1605'

Pic attached of the burning crosses. Personally, not sure why. It makes me feel a bit... Like it's more threatening, than memorialising. That's just me though maybe.

I will be disappointed if I don't get some pretty strongly worded comments back eye rolling etc!

Anyway. This is in feminism, lots of posters are interested in all sorts of stuff related to politics etc. And so let's plough on... Getting to the good bit!

Luckily we don't have RC/protestant friction in UK. I'm pretty sure. Maybe will consider for couple secs.

Oh wow! How could I totally forget about Northern Ireland, Scotland sectarianism? Oops! Silly me.

Oh look! Wiki has a tiny bit on this!

'In Northern Ireland, bonfires are lit on the Eleventh Night (11 July) by Ulster Protestants. Folklorist Jack Santino notes that the Eleventh Night is "thematically similar to Guy Fawkes Night in that it celebrates the establishment and maintenance of the Protestant state"'

Well that sounds totally innocuous to me. I mean. A march here. Burning an RC effigy there. Good clean fun!

Comments about overthinking, oversensitivity, looking for things to get offended by.... 3... 2.... 1... Go!

So they've told us Jenny is a she/her, then immediately misgendered she/her by referring to her as a guy.
Secondly, we're given virtually no information about Jenny's role or the aquarium, it's all about the gender confusion, which isn't why I visit an aquarium 🤔

It's really bad marketing, even if ignore the pronouns/ guys thing!

@CheeseMmmm

Comments about overthinking, oversensitivity, looking for things to get offended by.... 3... 2.... 1... Go!

I mean I don't want you to get disappointed, but it's 2am, this is a board about feminism, a fairly dull thread about pronouns, and you're suddenly expecting a deluge of lively debate about seventeenth century Christian politics??

Well you've replied! At 2am on feminism, on this dull thread

And commented earlier and had a bit of banter...

Not sure if read posts, can you see pic burning crosses? What do you make of it?

Oh oops!

Given UK & sectarianism, plus of course loads of RC people here, at least in my neck of woods.

Is celebratory burning of RC person for something 400 years ago, maybe. A bit weird?

Not sure how i would feel if the other way round! Eg come to celebrate massive event 100s years old! Ooh big fire what about? We're burning effigy of queen victoria! Due to the atrocities committed against our whole society under her rule!!!

Tbh I would be ok interesting, but, think plenty would be a bit wtaf. Not at all impressed..

In Scotland with catholic and protestant friends and family and can’t say the bonfire night controversy has ever come up irl.

Hate the pronoun stuff, but we use ‘guys’ as gender neutral here in our part of Yorkshire (could be unique) much like ‘lads’ in Ireland.

I find both guys and lads are just colloquialisms for ‘group of people numbering more than two’.

There's definitely a regional as well as a generational variation in how 'guys' is used, as well as it varying dependant on the context.

My Disney channel generation children use 'guys' to loosely mean any group of people known to each other i.e. group of friends, work colleagues etc.

In the singular I'm struggling to think of a time where it wouldn't be referring to a male, in pleural not necessarily so.

I would definitely say about myself, female, something like “I don’t want to be that guy but…” for example, or “I’m your guy!” in a certain context.

I don't mind the 'guys' as I think it's unisex. I do mind the pronouns as it feels like it's saying that they want to welcome anyone - as long as they don't believe in sexism or the material facts of female oppression and as long as they think it's fine to force the idea of a gender identity on people. So not most people then.

Lads is not gender neutral at all! There are lads and lasses.

Again, ask a hetero man how many lads he's slept with.

Funny how in the singular, those words are very definitely masculine.

I'm not disputing that guys is often used as if it were unisex. But actually it's like everything 'unisex' i.e. male but you girls can use it too, if you like. That's very different from gender (or sex) neutral.

'One of the team', or 'any of the rangers' etc would get around it.

I also use “guys” as unisex/neutral. Could be a regional/dialect type thing.

I don’t think there’s anything in the original post that would bother me.

Lads is definitely used like guys round my way for unisex group of people in Ireland. I watched my 11 year old the other day trying to defuse and argument amongst a group of 5 girls in his class at the Carole concert the other day and he most definitely said, "Guys, come.on, stop arguing". If I was with a group of all female friends I would often say something like, come on guys, our taxi is here. I accept what you say about it most definitely being a repurposed male word that we can now use though and, of course, is definitely male when singular. I'd never point to a woman and say, look what that guy is wearing.

The pronoun thing is cringe, obviously. But 'these guys' wouldn't even register with me, I have to be honest. Lots of things get my every day sexism radar pinging (and annoy the hell out of me) but that one doesn't as it seems perfectly acceptable as a collective description for a bunch of people of either or all one sex, to me.

I work in technology and am, and always have been, the only woman in any tech team I've worked in. My radar is finally tuned, as you can imagine. The one I hate is "Mr Customer". Or talking about the hypothetical CEO or VIPs in the company and automatically calling them 'he'. I always make a really obvious point of saying "Mr or Ms Customer" and he or she when talking about hypothetical job roles. I've noticed it rubbing off on a few of my male colleagues. The one that really used to make my blood boils was when male managers would send an email to the team asking them to do something with the intro "Gents". Gents, can you all fill out your timesheets please?. That used to infuriate me. Luckily the men at my current company don't do that and are a bit more evolved. They might say Guys, can you all finish your security training please? though and I have to say that would not bother me.

Repurposed 'male' words do grate, but in some cases I don't think there's a viable alternative to them. My DD is a master of engineering, and for a while in the past I was a fellow.

There are few words which have gone the other way from female to neutral - the only one I can think of is 'nurse', the etymology of which is from the specifically female act of nourishing a baby. That meaning still exists but with less prominence than the derived extension to caring in a medical rather than childcare context.

Oh yes, I wouldn't recoil at 'guys' and would barely notice, by itself. It is an increasingly normal usage, if not one I like that much.

It's the crowbarring in of the pronouns, especially where they've already been used naturally in the prose, so there's no need whatsoever, (except neon flashing virtue signalling) and the result is stilted, confusing text, that sticks out like a sore thumb.

And equally some female words have a very sexualised connotation (also annoying) so for example I too have a Master's and am Master of something. But I wouldn't want to be a MIstress or have a Mistress's. And we do say "I've masters this now" etc which also seems ok to me. The automatic 'female is the offshoot from the default male is annoying, of course' (especially as, biologically, it's the other way round!). But that's hundreds of thousands nof years of human speech development and is going to be hard to change retrospectively I think. Man and WOman. Male and FEmale. We're always the add-on. I think all we can change is how we use words going forward.

Man and WOman. Male and FEmale. We're always the add-on. I think all we can change is how we use words going forward.

'Man' is sort of worse, because it started as a neutral human, with werman/wifman for the male and female humans. But then the 'default male' thing happened to 'man'.
Iirc the etymology of 'female' is a bit more roundabout and actually not a mere derivation from 'male'. Which doesn't help how it ended up sounding!

And is used that way as well..Man conquers space etc.