Actor/actress

[AnnabelCaramel]

Are all thespians actors these days? Is it wrong to use the word actress?

[Capital]

Well, twentypence, you be will glad to know that gender specific 'mother' and 'father' has yet to be erased by the pc police.

However, we do use the non-specific 'Parent/Carer' on Admissions forms, so we don't offend dads and um carers.

'Brother' and 'Sister' also allowed FTTB.

[twentypence]

I am glad I am a musician and a teacher, nobody has bothered to even think up a female version to then reject.

I would cling to mum rather than parent though!

[Capital]

[Capital]

Chairwoman is a fine word.

My actor pals, hate actress because it is so actressy - a support role.

Change our language and we change the way we think. Am with Allfalldown.

[UnquietDad]

Fraulein isn't really used any more, as far as I know. But that's not really the issue here.

Allfalldown - you've surely been on here long enough to know the robust language which I, and others, use... Don't dismiss me as "not thinking about their usage" just because I use humour in these situations.

I never really thought "chair" was a suitable gender-neutral word. It is a piece of furniture. What about Ombudsman? Do people object to that? Serious question, asked in a non-confrontational way. I don't know the answer. Can you have Ombudspersons? Or footpersons/footpeople?

I feel there are a good few words where the "-man" suffix is not specifically related to the male gender, but has just become absorbed into the word, much as "-burger" no longer has the original sense in "hamburger" of "denizen of Hamburg". It's a bit Millie Tant to get hot under the collar about them.

I do think there are bigger battles to be fought than the linguistic - look at the Safety thread. That has me more concerned for my DD than the thought that she might one day suffer the indignity of being called a Chairman or an actress.

[AllFallDown]

It's not so much the words that are objectionable, UQD, it's your dismissal of those who choose to think about their usage as "tight sphinctered PC buggers", which - I'm sorry - is idiotic. That's what got me riled.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Eh, my dad was a firefighter, and totally not pc. But he always said a 'fireman' is someone on a train.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I wouldn't have said anything at all unless he'd made the crack about furniture. I personally don't feel affronted by it. As I said, it isn't really about the personal.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I think it's perhaps less about being personally diminshed and more about wider society.

But DG, how can you hate firefighter? I think that it is fab. So - dynamic!

[DumbledoresGirl]

Do you use the term mankind though?

It really doesn't bother me. Anyway, it bothers me much less than society putting on a front with pc terms.

[TheFallenMadonna]

I am rather reminded of when I became vice chairman of a committee, and the chairman gave me the spiel about not wanting to be called a chair because he wasn't a piece of furniture. Ho ho. And I said, quite, and I'm not a man. I got a bit of a funny look.

[DumbledoresGirl]

I am a woman and I find nothing diminishing about the terms actress, waitress or manageress. As a teacher, I accept headteacher (because the teachers aren't called masters and mistresses anymore except in the poshest of schools so it makes sense to be a headteacher and not a headmaster/headmistress) but terms such as firefighter and chairperson piss me off exceedingly.

It is political correctness, no more. I can only guess at the lives of people who feel diminished at terms such as actress.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Hmmm, well, the m/f thing in French is pretty random. (German is more so - isn't Frauline neuter?) And French is in some ways less sexist than English, at least, in the terms they use for university degrees.

(Ok, there's a real problem with fille and femme, granted.)

I'd bet there are francophones out there trying to sort these things out, though.

[UnquietDad]

No, no... I'm making the point that other reasonable people (presumably including female speakers) use masculine and feminine forms, so how can it be so objectionable?

[NotQuiteCockney]

I worry about the language I speak (Ok, I speak French ok, but not well enough to have a pop at their sexism).

Saying we should worry about French and German is like saying we shouldn't worry about domestic violence and rape here while it's legal in other countries ...

[UnquietDad]

I think we do still have sculptress and manageress in some places, to be honest.

[UnquietDad]

So try getting the French and Germans to change. And the Spanish (actor/actriz).

I think the -ess ending only sounds diminutive because if its assonance with -ette, which actually is a diminutive.

I refuse to change my use of language because of someone else's decisions, when it is not in the least offensive.

[NotQuiteCockney]

We've only kept the gendered nouns for display professions. So we've lost sculptress, poetess, manageress, but kept (maybe) actress, stewardess and waitress - jobs where appearance matters, and hence gender matters?

But really, it shouldn't.

[TheFallenMadonna]

But if there were only male actors...

Anyway, social convention is what this is all about surely? You can't really say a word is gender-neutral if social convention has assigned a gender to it.

[AllFallDown]

No, because actor was a word used for anyone who acted - when there were only male actors. It wasn't a gender specific word. Actress became a gender specific word when women were allowed on stage, and so had to be given a diminutive. Actor is gender-neutral. Only social convention assigned a gender to it.

[TheFallenMadonna]

Hmm. I get the headteacher thing. And firefighter. Because they actually are gender-neutral. But actor isn't gender neutral really, is it? It is an appropriation of the male noun for use with both sexes. So in order to be taken seriously, a woman must take the masculine form of the word?

[AllFallDown]

UQD, words have power and meaning. I've already said why most reputable newspapers have now moved towards gender neutral terms for jobs wherever possible and practicable (clearly there are some jobs for which no gender neutral term exists). One of the reasons words evolved and were used was to assign power; feminine diminutives were used to assign power to men. Just as racial insults were used to assign power to white people. They are part of the same continuum, if at nowhere near the same place on it. This isn't "tight sphinctered PC" buggery; it's what language is all about. If you think it's petty to talk about an actor rather than an actress, how much more petty is it to sneer at a gradual (and hardly rigidly enforced) change that affects you not one jot, and which helps language evolve in a more egalitarian way?

[AnnieAreYouOkAreYouOkAnnie]

My friend used to work as a waitress. She wanted to be an actress. It wouldn't have been anywhere near as dramatic if she couldn't fling her arms around saying 'I'm an actress'.
She wasn't very good though. She is probably still a waitress. Waiter. Whichever.

[Oliveoil]

I would be an actress

actor my arse

you lot would analyse a dead fly on a windowledge