refusing to say 'Lady'

[MyPeriodFeatures]

I have a son who is fast approaching 3. I'm so fed up with hearing the word 'Lady'

'Pay the lady'

'Say thank you to the Lady'

Etc.

It is loaded with so much about what it means to be female. There is no secondary term used to speak about men in common use.

'Pay the geezer/bloke/gent'

'Mind out, let the bloke past'

We never say it do we?!!

Men are Men and don't have a term of address loaded with notions of vulnerability or anything else in common use

I've got a bee in my bonnet about this at the moment. I encourage my son to refer to females as women.

I certainly use 'woman' with women over 70 if I'm talking to my young child in a queue situation etc. I am aware that for some of them at least, that may sound 'rude', so I soften it slightly by making eye contact and smiling, or I sometimes might use 'person' instead - but honestly, I'm not responsible for someone else's internalised misogyny/snobbery. It's a sad day when we have to avoid using the word 'woman' because it's perceived as blunt or ungenteel.

Pay the man seems rude too.

I hate love though. A man in Timpsons kept using it the other day and it made me want to rip his fucking head off.

Yup. I do a hard stare and say 'I don't think we're on those terms'. Or alternatively call him 'darling' or 'sweetie' and watch his bafflement.

Though in at least some parts of Cornwall, 'lover' seemed to be being applied cross-sexually and cross-generationally, which I kind of liked.

Agree with ArfArfArf, it is weird, and I don't know why woman and man sound wrong/rude, but they do. If talking to someone else about a person I didn't know in their hearing, I would always say "this lady was here first" or "there's a gentleman here who etc".

It's how language evolves. Since "woman" is seen as inferior, if you want to be polite, you intuitively use "lady".

We managed to put the actual word for woman out of use in Germany since a very long time - the normal term used for the female sex is now the one that was formerly exclusive to ladies. (Weib, for the common woman and Frau, for the noblewoman, respectively).

The polite term is "Dame", now.

Interestingly, we would never use the word "gentleman" in Germany to describe any random men, since the English term "gentleman" denotes a man with good manners. For many men, "bloke" is more accurate.

A mum in a shop the other day asked her child to "move out if the way for the lady" so I also moved over to let this lady past and then realised she meant me! I'm 36 and considor myself too young to be a lady!

Well yes, they have gentlemen

"Pay the gentleman

Yes. Particularly when the instruction is being given to a small child.

I agree with Apocalypse

I say 'pay the man' and 'pay the lady' even though I know I should use 'pay the woman'. Gentleman is a word I never use.

'pay the person' may be better...

Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

I always say Lady. You're gonna piss someone off whatever term you use.

I grew up in a town which a couple of hundred years ago was known for smuggling. Love that poem TeiTetua!

Could be worse, you could be in Scotland and be referred to as a " wifie" !

I don't see the issue. I teach the kids to refer to gentleman and lady to people we don't know. I refer to clients the same way, not collectively obviously.

I'm a great fan of the word person. Pay the person, let the person past, she was a nice person. etc

I use lady because I would find saying 'pay the woman' rude. I appreciate that it should be a neutral term as man is but it just isn't for me.

I think that because 'woman' is something women were called to their faces to put them in their place and to remind them that their name didn't matter.

I'm not really comfortable using "woman", I think because I've heard it used in a derogatory way too many times - e.g. "THAT WOMAN..." (with the emphasis on the "woman" bit, which you don't get in the same way about men), or "women drivers..." and similar, so I feel a bit rude saying it or that people might take it as rude. I agree using "lady" sometimes feels a bit odd though, not sure there's an ideal solution except for twunts to stop using "woman" as an insult but that may take a while

I notice that mothers (rarely fathers, weirdly) are forever describing me to their children as "the lady", not "the doctor". And they never call me Dr Shiny or Doctor . Apparently, my ladyness trumps my doctorliness

Not that I am precious about the title - quite a few of my patients use my first name - I just see the difference with how the mothers speak to my male colleagues in front of their kids. They tend to lower their voices and use an an "important man' tone - "You must do what the Doctor tells you." No wonder kids get the message that a male doctor is an authority figure and a female doctor is not.

I would say pay the lady or gentleman. I personally find "person" the rudest. I would hate to hear "let the person pass" it sounds really abrupt and harsh to me. I would rather hear lady/woman.

I use woman or person. It took practice but it feels odd calling some random female lady now.

And no one on earth would call me wifie twice.

I know this is an old thread but I have only recently joined. I don't object to "lady" in every situation, not if it is being used politely in the same contexts as "gentleman". I was in a library recently and I heard a librarian say "this gentleman" and I have often been referred to in the same way myself in shop/customer situations.

However, I dislike "lady" when it is used in situations where people would just call a man a "man". "Lady" and "man" just don't sound right to me. And, as I saw on another thread, there are "ladies" football teams and other sports teams when men's teams are just "mens". And we have "ladies" hairdressers. The barber's shop near me had "gents cut" on the price list until recently when he changed the prices, but now it reads "mens cut" instead. I have rarely seen women's hairdressers that refer to "womens cut" as opposed to "ladies cut" as well as signs that always say "ladies hairdressing" when often mens shops just say "mens hairdressing"

I think "lady" in situations where man is just "man" can sound too genteel and polite and I often think about the way some people consider "woman" to sound rude when they don't feel the same about the word "man". My least favourite uses of the word "lady" are when it is used loosely just as a substitute for woman as in "the lady at the shop". This always feels cringey to me. People wouldn't say "the gentleman at the shop". I don't know what would be wrong with just saying "the woman at the shop".

As i said two years ago my children were brought up to say lady and gentleman

Ds1 is now 19 so i might just check with him again

@Blackcountryman12 only mentioning as I didn't know this when I joined, it's better form to start a new thread than revive an old zombie one like this.

Geezer is now David Cameron, and I picture him with trotters thanks to Danny Dyer.

For once I haven't RTFT, but I hate 'lady' too. I get my kids to refer to whoever it is by their relelevant function, so "Pay the driver," or "Ask the librarian." Or if no function to refer to "Make way for this person!"
'Ladies' makes me cringe so badly; lots of women at work use it as a collective noun, and I feel like even the mere mention of 'women' in my staffroom has some sort of political edge and makes people sit up and listen, and not necessarily in a good way.