Why Lionesses?

[EhatBow]

I'll admit I haven't been a fan of women's football. Until recently it's been a lot like watching schoolboys. I felt they needed to develop their own game, like the female tennis player have. In tennis, rather than the same play slower it's a different game and I think the female footballers have achieved that in this competition.

However, we don't have manageresses or actresses anymore, so why Lionesses? Or am I over thinking?

Interestingly the RAF is rebranding Airmen and Airwomen into Aviators. My understanding is that this is still the masculine form, as opposed to aviatrix. Apparently the aviator is perceived as being "gender neutral" and aviatrix as "old-fashioned". It bugs the hell out of me that the male terms are always preferred. Why did actor become the default term and not actress?

Because of the history of the role. Women could not be eg actors during periods of history, so the terms had to refer to a man. So terms were added to specify the female role when it later began

Some did not get whole new words - like doctor or pilot.

I'm struggling to think of roles that were originally all female that then developed a male form (midwife and nurse didn't).

@AuntieStella
Yes I know - it was a rhetorical question really born of frustration. When choosing a word form today the masculine should not be the default, but unfortunately the convention has been set historically. I like the term actress - as a pp said "ess is not less".

Wowza. So you compare women's football to scoolBOYS. The lions couldn't fucking win the euros, why should they share the same name? What's wrong with blood celebrating women kicking arse? in a lot of schools only schoolBOYS get to play football. Hopefully schoolGIRLS will now get a go by pointing at this success. The whole framing and language of your post shows how sexist you are.

bloody*

This .

It also differentiates the huge struggles they've had compared to the men . Yesterday's final was the best game of football I've ever seen , men seem to lose their legs at the end but these women were fighters to the end .

Lionesses is cool, it's after the animal, not just feminising the mens team name
But it's not like they are calling them footballeresses 1

I said until recently and it's true. Both the Autrailian and US national sides (very good sides) have been soundly beaten by U15 boys teams. As you'd expect, which is why the women needed to develop their own style, as they have now.

I think they probably chose that name themselves. Quite clever really.

Lion = a large lazy animal who has a impressive roar, fights a lot, shags a lot, but is lazy, doesn’t do his share of hunting, is incapable of teamwork and doesn’t live long.

Lioness = a quieter and slightly smaller animal, brilliant at teamwork, who does almost all of the hunting (while also doing all the childcare), and has much longer life expentancy. Everything the pride of ‘lions’ achieves is done by the lionesses.

All this fuss would be solved if English had gendered nouns to begin with, like other European countries.

Doesn't stop the default male frankly, but it helps.

I don't know, I like the idea that lionesses work together as a pride, a team. It's a nice reference point.

🙄

Lionesses are way cooler than lions. I would ask why are the men’s team not called lionesses!

Lion or Lioness. One gets shit done.

Fantastic that they are OWNING the gendered version. And making it the excellent one.

I think that instead of saying all groups should be known by the male name, we should be looking honestly at ourselves and asking why we feel the 'ess' is less.

I agree with this.
It think this issue with the ‘female’ form of a word is very specific to English, because we don’t have a gendered language as such, and it’s actually maybe counter productive in creating and promoting equality.
I also speak German and literally any job, if it’s a female doing it, you can stick the suffix ‘rin’ on the end, it goes with everything and is just a normal part of language. So there isn’t this discussion around whether someone imagines a footballer, or scientist, or farmer, or driver etc as a man or woman, because it’s already implicit in the word.
In English it’s just this whole issue that in other languages just doesn’t have to exist.

@Headbandheart

"Not a football fan at all, but I assume it is becuase The males teams are known as British lions"

Nope, don't think that's it...there is a British and Irish Lions, aka "the Lions" but it's a Rugby Union team.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_%26_Irish_Lions

I'm a long time football fan and I've never ever heard of the mens team being referred to as the English Lions TBH, or the players being referred to as Lions...maybe ladies team has set a trend.

And some actresses prefer that - Maureen Lipman for one

That makes even less sense

Aviator an aircraft pilot

Don't suppose they can change the emblem to 3 lionesses can they?

Actress is the correct term for a female thespian. If there is one occasion when the actual sex/looks/appearance of the person matters, it is for playing a role in theatre/film/stage.

lionesses do all the work, make the kills raise the cubs... not much different for humans i would say, So very proud of our lionesses.

meanwhile the backlash has started.. got sent a 'joke' picture of the goal keepers gloves, oven gloves AArrrggghhhhhhhhhh

@Nanny0gg

That makes even less sense Aviator an aircraft pilot

You are not alone, plenty of eyebrows have been raised at that particular piece of rebranding.

Agree with this

The men’s team isn’t referred to as The Lions, they are referred to as ‘The Three Lions’ because of the lions on the shirt. Mostly they are just referred to as the England team, the male team being the default team.

The lionesses have earned their distinction and should wear it proudly. They aren’t just the female version of the mens team. The men’s team have never won a European championship. The women’s team did it first and facing significantly more obstacles to get there. During the commentary last night it was mentioned that the last time the lionesses were in a euros semi was 2009 and the women in that team were not professional, they were still working in other jobs and training for the national football around their other commitments. I hope we don’t stop calling the women’s team the lionesses because I would hate for their accomplishment to go under the general banner of the England football team, which is by default male.

Because they're female. It's accurate. In today's world which is utterly obsessed with gender neutrality and doing away with biological distinction, I'm happy to see femininity being called out and asserted in such a positive way!