Actor/actress

[AnnabelCaramel]

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

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.

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.

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

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 ...

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.