Calling a woman "sir"

[skrumle]

this is totally daft but i've been watching the new season of Castle and in the first episode a new female captain appears. when the (female) lead detective goes in to introduce herself she calls the captain "ma'am" and is told to either call her "captain" or "sir". for the rest of that episode and the next she calls the captain "sir".

it REALLY jarred with me - i think on the basis that sir is gendered and i don't see why a woman would/should choose to be addressed in a way that suggests she is a man. is anyone american, is there a difference in the level of respect that ma'am would get as opposed to sir??

I know this is a zombie thread... but actually in the Pilot episode if Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway makes a point that she doesn't want to be called 'Sir'...

It definitely should be 'madam'!

Oh I was going to say about start trek too!!!

And see this is a zombie thread now....

Marilyn "Sir" isn't gender irrelevant though. It reinforces male as default.

If you were going to be gender irrelevant you'd choose a term which was unrelated to sex e.g. Captain in the example in the OP.

If I was a teacher I wouldn't want to be called 'Miss'. I've seen a school in the papers recently that has told children to called female staff 'Sir'. Annoying, as if they're honorary men, not senior women.

I served on a jury once and the Judge addressed me as 'Madam Foreman'. Which was... odd.

I don't want to reference the TV show that prompted the thread, as I don't watch it, so I'll speak generally.

In most of contemporary linguistics, it is considered that meaning is not inherent to form (or different languages would be predominantly iconic and overlapping). Whether this is what's going on today or not, I can't conclude, but it could be the case that "sir" is generalizing to refer to any individual in an authority position, regardless of gender.

Keep in mind that the etymology of words is unavailable to speakers except in the context of scholarship. In other words, 'once gendered, always gendered' does not hold.