Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Language and Misogyny

175 replies

alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 13:55

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'?

OP posts:
LittleRedPumpkin · 28/10/2010 15:12

Ah, I see alex. I'll ask DH when he comes home.

Gerbil - true! So if there are both male and female personifications, do we think it is to do with needing protection/being belligerent?

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:14

EvilAnts - if your DP says 'hysterical', ask him what exactly is womb-like about what he is referring to!

OP posts:
EvilAntsAndMiasmas · 28/10/2010 15:20

Oh, he won't :o

Going back to your original post, my dad gets really cross with the word "bossy" as he claims it is only used in relation to women, and is an insult to women who have the presumption to tell men (even employees) what to do.

dittany · 28/10/2010 15:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:24

I have just been trying to think of male equivalents for words like 'hag' and 'crone' or even 'slut' and other such delightful ways to refer to women. It seems that our vocabulary is full of ways to insult women. Sad

OP posts:
Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:29

dittany - although I lik the idea of 'herstory' , it is worth pointing out that the word 'history' does not come from 'his story' but rather from the Greek word 'istoria', which used to take an aspirant on the first 'i', making it a 'h' sound. It has no male-only connotations in it's original form.

OP posts:
EvilAntsAndMiasmas · 28/10/2010 15:30

I always use "humankind" - it's only one extra syllable but does mean something else.

On the other hand I do feel delightfully excluded from cheerful Philip Larkin's line that "man hands on misery to man" - well if that's what they want to do let the get on with it :o

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:32

I agree with you about mankind, though. Why not just say 'humanity'?

OP posts:
LittleRedPumpkin · 28/10/2010 15:32

That's exactly why 'herstory' annoys me, alex! I also think it can be questionable to apply new coinages to past cultures that wouldn't have recognized them, which is a danger here.

dittany · 28/10/2010 15:34

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

EvilAntsAndMiasmas · 28/10/2010 15:34

Alex - I know that about history but I quite like it when feminists use it (as Finn Mackay did on saturday) to refer specifically to women's/feminist history.

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:34

EvilAnts - the word is 5 syllables in Greek! The 3 in English are nothing in comparison!

OP posts:
Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:36

Perhaps we need to coin an entirely new word, one that is gender neutral and has nothing to do with the etymology of 'history'. Something like 'Paststudy' if you see what I mean

OP posts:
EvilAntsAndMiasmas · 28/10/2010 15:39

I don't have a problem with the word history, it's just an accident of etymology AFAIC

I remember being told that some people were looking for a new word for "male midwife" because they thought that the "wife" part indicated that the job was for women (as "nursemaid" or similar). But in fact "midwife" means the person who is with (mid) the woman (wife).

Lotster · 28/10/2010 15:41

I would definately say "Actor", the same as I would say "Director" if I had directed a film, or "Butcher" if I ran a shop selling meet, "Author", "Taxi-Driver" etc etc.

I have acting on my CV and personally hate the term actress.

However I must disagree about the term "girl" used across the ages, as long as it is use in (what I term!) the appropriate way. Which is IMHO that some women and women, and some are girls, in the way they behave, and dress etc.

E.g. I would say at 36 I am a "girl" type (wear young clothes, late alot, quite disorganised), whereas two of my best friends have been very well dressed, together, "women" types since we were teenagers. In fact I'm off to start a thread about it!

LittleRedPumpkin · 28/10/2010 15:43

alex - I've noticed that quite a lot of people in my field (medieval) avoid the term 'history', partly for reasons to do with genre but also to do with the negative gender associations.

I didn't know that about 'midwife' - good to know!

What I'd really like to see less of is the term 'virile' as praise. Some pompous guy used it yesterday like that and it does annoy me when it's applied to something totally gender-less!

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:45

Speaking of history, has anyone else noticed a tendency for history books to talk about "people used to XYZ" and then say "women used to..." separately, as though they didn't qualify as people. One that especially annoys me is "People used to take their wives to X" or similar. Why not just say "Women and men used to go to X together"

OP posts:
Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:48

Lotster - what's wrong with 'casual' and 'formal' in reference to style?

OP posts:
EvilAntsAndMiasmas · 28/10/2010 15:48

link it here won't you lotster?

ugh yes - virile. An old friend used to talk about "limp-dick" movies (i.e. ones where everyone doesn't die in a bloodbath) but reeeally hated it when I co-opted the term to talk about "throbbing hard-on" films. (not ladylike I imagine Hmm)

doesn't "virile" actually mean "manly"?

LittleRedPumpkin · 28/10/2010 15:51

That pisses me off so much alex!

'virile' does mean manly, but the guy who used it yesterday was referring to the duct of a script we were looking at. Now, I know handwriting can tell a lot about a person, but I refuse to believe it can be 'manly writing'! (He meant, it had strong lines.)

Original poster
alexpolismum · 28/10/2010 15:52

Yes, virile means 'manly' If I remember rightly, it's from an Eastern root, meaning 'man' or 'hero', but came into English via Latin. (it's ages since I studied this sort of thing, though, so don't quote me on this!)

OP posts:
LittleRedPumpkin · 28/10/2010 15:55

Yes, it's via Latin. In classical Latin it doesn't carry the 'hero' connotation so must have dropped that quite early on. In Engish it's used to mean 'strong' from very early on but such a crappy term.

AliceWorld · 28/10/2010 15:56

Lotster - so is a female child who is organised and smart a woman? And a disorganised and casual man a boy? I don't get it.

Lotster · 28/10/2010 15:56

alexpolismum - "..what's wrong with 'casual' and 'formal' in reference to style?"

Do you mean what I was saying about women and girls? If so, I think that being a woman or a girl, at any age is about a mixture of personality and style, not so much about what number you've reached IYSWIM?

thread!

Lotster · 28/10/2010 16:01

Alice, bear with my quick garbled explanation as I'm assembling an Ikea bookshelf in between posts at the mo!

I mean when I was a kid I was very much a kid, even in to my teens, quite tomboyish, awkward and gawky, couldn't cook until my thirties etc. When I look back at one of my best friend for example, she was such a little woman even when we were 12, boys adored her.. and as adults when we've all had this convo, everyone agrees, she's very stylish, together, a real Woman, and that we could all see it back then.