Language and Misogyny

[alexpolismum]

I have been thinking a lot about how language is used to express things implicitly or just to add a hint, a nuance, without explicitly saying something.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that misogyny is often expressed in this way. For example, saying "a nagging wife" or a "hysterical girl" etc.

This has also got me thinking about other points of language. Does it matter if we say for example 'actress' or should actor be used for both?

(I should perhaps mention that I am a professional translator, so I think carefully about the right choice of word all the time.)

Ooh, this has brought me on to another point. Do you think it belittles women to refer to them as 'girls' as adults, while males of the same age range are referred to as 'men'?

Absolutely. Language hugely important as it shapes our entire understanding of the world - you can't communicate without language so you can't share and develop ideas without it, so the words that are used and available create our world.

I never refer to women as girls, and I would use actor, I have the 'ess on the end of things.

I have to remind myself not to say "girls" when talking about women of my own age. Think this is just because I have been a "girl" for a lot longer than a "woman" and it takes time to get over it. Get very annoyed when e.g. at work someone says "the girls are in meeting X", (age range 22-45) or my dad refers to "that nice girl" of 40 or so.

I also get pissed off with "actress" etc although probably use it myself sometimes . Think that's mainly because if someone (M or F) is "the finest actor of their generation" then they are better than everyone else, but if they are "the finest actress of her generation" then it's clear she is just better than the other women who act. There doesn't seem to be a way of phrasing that a female actor can actually be the iconic figure in the same way that males can. Does that make any sense?

It's just occurred to me, while thinking about language, that the word used to mean "homeland" in a number of European languages literally means "Fatherland", (Vaterland, patria, patrie, patrida, etc) although I am not sure how significant this is!

Hmm.

I don't refer to 18 year old males as men, as a rule. I refer to them as 'boys' or 'lads' or even 'young people'.

Most people under 21 are referred to as boys and girls by me. Twatty, but not sexist.

I wouldn't see it that way EvilAnts: I think 'the finest actor' is the finest male actor. I would consider actor and actress to be mutually exclusive terms - there is not one word that means 'person who acts for a living regardless of gender'.

And we do have 'fatherland' but we also have 'mother tongue' for languages.

Not sure if that translates.

Yes, EvilAnts, that's a good point about iconic figures, and I expect there are many spheres it refers to besides acting

Ooh, good point Trillian. Mother tongue does translate in the languages I am aware of.

Trillian - actron? :o

I think in a lot of cases there is a perfectly usual general name for people who do a job, and the "man" and "woman" parts are tacked on. Or the "woman suffix" is added for women, while the general name starts to be used for men only. Wish I could remember where I'd read that fishermen used to be just "fishers" (as in "of men" and as in the common surname) for instance.

Police officers were originally "runners" - then policemen, then had to be changed back to police officers to become gender neutral again.

So I would say "actor" is the general term that could be applied to men and women, and "actress" is a soon-to-be-archaic special lady form.

I'm really glad we don't have a language like French or German where everything is gendered - that must have an effect surely? If I had to say "I am an English laaaaady" instead of "I am English" I would be pissed off :o

The Guardian has dropped "actress" hasn't it? Good lead, though I still find it hard to think only in terms of "actor". We've managed to phase out unnecessarily gendered occupation terms in lots of areas, and I hope that "actress" does soon become as archaic as "authoress". I'm pleased for the replacement of headmaster/headmistress with the ungendered "headteacher". Lots of nasty stereotypes are harder to form with the ungendered word.

Yes, EvilAnts, it does have an effect. And it does indeed get irritating. I work with Greek, and it is a language where you instantly know the gender of any person referred to. Even words like "actor" or "MP" or "minister", where the word itself doesn't change, are instantly clear because ofthe article used. I have even heard news presenters stressing the article (where they wouldn't for a man) when talking about a govt minister who happens to be a woman. So annoying.

It's no dafter than Bench, for e.g. bench of magistrates. If we can be furniture collectively we can be it alone?

I don't know MD - like I said I would see it as a neutral form (not draftsman obviously) where a female ending has been put on specifically to mark out who the women are. Like the way they used to use WPC for female police officers - no need is there?

They used to use "poetess" too didn't they? Patronising (ooh look that father root again) in the same way that "hackette" is patronising to female journalists. It implies that real poets/journalists are men, and impertinent women trying to do these jobs need a separate label to indicate their essential difference.

Good point Eleison about being harder to make stereotypes stick.

You are right, of course, MadamDeathstare that we have no reason to be ashamed of being women.

I am just not sure that the language terms used eg actress are entirely equal in connotation to the male terms. This is not the way it should be, but it is.

'man' as in mankind (possibly correct etymology)

'man' as in human (almost deifnitely incorret and I may have spelled etymology wrong too)

If I refer to a binman I don't mean the male man who collects my bins, but the person who collects my bins. So don't see why we can't use 'Chairman' for everyone.

God that does sound annoying Alex - as if they were saying "She-minister" or something?

This is true. Hysterical man or nagging woman would sound wrong to many ears. AS though men never repeated themselves! ha ha.

Mankind is alright, but Chairperson, firefighter etc for me.

how do you all manage to type so quickly? Or am I just really slow?

Well your post appeared after mine in the point .05 of a second after I pressed post.

I think if my profession were one in which the standard job title included 'man' as a suffix I would adapt it to the suffix 'woman', like MmDeathstare. But terms like 'actor' aren't male; they just get colonised as male when the women are ghettoised by some bolt-on female modification of the word, like actress, poetess, WPC.

Not just that Alex - it's also that most of the time the sex of the person is totally irrelevant. (confusingly, not so for acting obviously) I don't need to know whether we're talking about a teacher or a she-teacher (thinking of Lehrer and Lehrerin in German - sorry spelling probably v wrong).