(no subject)

[wavyarms]

Two reasons to go look at osirusbrisbane's latest post...

1.) It features ME. Or, at least, I'm in it. OK, OK, there's merely a passing reference to me. But still...ME!
2.) Every link on it is interesting. So, rather than reproducing all of them here, go read it. Esp. the one about the church ad. Grrr.

Anyone wishing to instigate a discussion on gendered nouns (e.g. actress, conductress), their connotations in today's society, and whether or not you use them in conversation or not, should feel free to comment away. I'm on the fence myself.

Comments

Gendered Nouns

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I want someone to start this discussion so that I can read it, but no one is stepping up to the plate, so that seems to leave me.

I'm trying to think about this. Some gendered nouns really really bother me and others do not - what's the difference? I think I use fewer than I used to. I think I still use waitress/waiter, and don't even stop to consider. But I rarely say actress anymore, and just use actor in general (that would be a linguistic shift for me in the past 10+ years). One that definitely bugs me - poetess. Why is it necessary to point out that Emily Dickinson, say, is female, as if I can't figure it out from the name anyway?

So what's the difference between poetess and waitress? Is it that the poet (or the actor or whatnot) gets that title by virtue of their talent and skill and craft, and the "ess" suffix feels like a diminutive, which in turn belittles their work and efforts as well? Whereas - a waitress is just a job. Hmmmm. Dunno.

Conductress just seems silly - a clear construction of taking a perfectly useable word and adding unnecessary suffixes just... to be gendered. Yes, perhaps female conductors are still a relative minority, but do we need a special word for them? (Very tangential note: our local Symphony is looking for a new conductor, and we have 5 candidates coming this year to conduct a concert as guests as a tryout - and 2 of the 5 are female! I think that's cool. Anyway. End of tangent.)

Back to my question - why do we feel compelled to create the special word? Does the knowledge of that person's gender influence my opinion of their work? Depends on what it is.... (Say, a poem on the subject of rape - I think I might read it differently if it were written by a man as opposed to a woman.)

Re: Gendered Nouns

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

a clear construction of taking a perfectly useable word and adding unnecessary suffixes

Here's what I'm not sure about. Is "conductress" any more recent a word than "conductor"? Or, since conductors have tended to be men, did "conductress" fall out of general use? If "conductor" is an inherently masculine word, then we should use the feminine for me, right? www.m-w.com (http://www.m-w.com) defines "conductor" as "one who conducts" but is "-or" a masculine ending?

The thing is I don't know whether or not we're creating special words.

And I'm very glad to hear about your tangent! :)

Re: Gendered Nouns

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Conductress just seems silly - a clear construction of taking a perfectly useable word and adding unnecessary suffixes just... to be gendered.

Trust me that is exactly how I feel about the word "poetess." I think I once ripped the arms off of some man that called me a poetess. In the world of writing it might be interesting to note that the novel was originally considered a woman's form of writing. Since poets needed a reasonable level of education, women were almost virtually excluded from this club. Novels, though, needed far less education to write, so women cornered the market on novels 200 years ago. Unfortunately, while novels written by women were popular enough to make Nathanial Hawthorne lament that he would not be remembered "from the mass of scribbling women," we barely have any novels left from that time period that were written by women. Many women were able to support themselves and their families off of the proceeds from novel writing, but apparently none of them were good enough to save for posterity.

I would like to think that people treat everyone equally whether they are a poet, poetess, actor, actress, conductor or a conductoress. Realistically, I doubt that is true, since gender roles play into our interpretation of how component is in their job.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting topic, to be sure. Actress is a word I use whenever I talk about female actresses. Conductress I used because I was looking for a Big Name, but when discussing wavyarms with friends I've always used conductor because conductress just sounds silly and frankly I didn't think it was a real word either. Poetess is a word I can't imagine using. I mean at all, even if you were a poet and I wanted to make a mocking big title similar to "The Conductress", poetess just doesn't work for me, as a word.

Why is that? One possibility, which I don't think I like but it's the best I've come up with so far, is that it varies based on whether it's brain or breasts (to use earlier phrasing) that the occupation calls for. Poets? All brain. Actresses? Well, in an ideal world it'd be different, but these days I fear mostly breasts. This might even give us insights into what occupations really require. Stewardess, Hostess, Judge, Lawyer, etc.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

these days I fear mostly breasts.

*reads*
*rereads*

Well, it's better than hinder-phobia, but only marginally.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

Ha. Have you seen Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask? One of Woody Allen's earlier funny movies.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Seriously, though, I remember at least one poem about being called a poetess. I'm paraphrasing badly, but one part was like "you have to add "ess" to show/ it was something a man was supposed to do." (I'll track down the exact reference later.)

Adding a feminine ending does change the meaning of the word beyond just "a woman who does X." 'Stewardess,' for example, creates a much different image than 'steward,' and it's not just the skirt. And I'm not sure Host Fruit Pies would have gotten off the ground.

I'd like to see whether this is true of languages that have gendered nouns.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

Well, Russian has gendered nouns and certain jobs have certain genders. For instance, the word for secretary is actually masculine. Obviously there are feminine forms for SOME jobs- but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the same words in english that are masculine are the same in Russian, too.

Teacher can be masculine or feminine, and the word for the store clerk is (primarily) feminine... poet is both, but I don't know if there's a culturally felt difference as there is in English. Anyway. Good stuff.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAH! I know this poem! I have it! I can't find it! Where is my xeroxed packet of feminist poetry? Where did it go? It's nowhere I usually keep it. Argh. This is going to drive me insane. That was a really valuable bunch of paper! ARgh!

Re: Gendered Nouns

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Ntozake Shange, from "Wow...Yr Just Like a Man!"

...cuz words/are a man's thing/ you know/the craftsmen/the artisan/the artist/they are all in men/why else wd you haveta put 'ess' on the end of every damn thing/if it waznt to signify when/a woman waz doin something that men do/

I found it in my Virago Book of Wicked Verse

Re: Gendered Nouns

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

That's it! I think someone copied me that book, actually. Now that I know what it is, I'm off to Amazon. :)

Re: Gendered Nouns

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

I want to mention that when I gave up creating a tornado of paper in my room and turned to Google to find the poem, I put in:

man woman poem poetess

and Google, in addition to turning out a number of useless links, asked me

Are you sure you don't mean man woman poem poet?

So even Google is getting in on the discussion.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Adding a feminine ending does change the meaning of the word beyond just "a woman who does X."

I think this is the root of the problem.

Do we fight gender stereotypes by calling all people who conduct "conductors"? Or do we fight gender stereotypes by calling women "conductresses" and forcing the word to be as acceptable as "conductor"?

I'm not sure the latter is ever going to work, myself.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Why is that? One possibility, which I don't think I like but it's the best I've come up with so far, is that it varies based on whether it's brain or breasts (to use earlier phrasing) that the occupation calls for.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop people from prepending (that is a word, right?) or appending either woman or female in front of gender-free titles. I've seen people referred to as being a "female scientist," a "scientist woman," a "female poet," etc.

Re: Gendered Nouns

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

"scientist woman"? I really wish you were kidding. That just sounds awful.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

Hi, you don't know me, but I'm a friend of osirusbrisbane's ... ::uses non-threatening userpic::

I do have to agree with whoever said that waiter/waitress is somehow different from actor/actress, but I just can't define how. I can tell you that when I was in college, we used the term "waitron" as the generic term, mostly as a joke, but sometimes it slips out, even now. And yes, I do get stared at.

"Conductress" just feels weird. It's even hard to say. I want to put the "r" after the "d". And "poetess" seems really condescending.

At least there's no such word as "writress".

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

I believe I've seen you around on other people's LJ's - glad you dropped by!

And as for adding an "r" after the "d"...that sounds like a familiar animated character/charactress or something...Daffy Duck?

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

Could be -- Daffy is my favorite of all the 'toons.

[minyan.livejournal.com]

There's at least one other category of gendered nouns we haven't brought up. I agree with the '-ess' is mostly useless camp alot of the time, except in cases where the conotations have diverged, like steward and stewardess. (The closest I can get to a real female equivalent of the job we mean by steward is somewhere between landlady, den mother and chatelaine.) Usage may have a lot to do with it. We don't consider words like 'spectator' to be gender-specific, and certainly not words like 'loiterer' or 'performer'. I think I've heard 'actor' applied to men and women about equally, but I haven't heard 'waiter' often refer to a woman, so I'm les comfortable with it.
But what about words that end in 'man' or woman? I used to get stuck with Selectman Janet P... but the title of the office is selectman. Similar question: is selectwoman a respectful word, or a patronizing one? It feels a little like calling Rosa Delauro a (former) senetess. Some of these are naturally giving way to neutral words, like police officer. My editor never let me use "the chair of the committee" though, always chairman or chairwoman.
How about lumberlady? firefemme? garbagegal? muffinmaid?

[chorusgirl19.livejournal.com]

Here's what I think about gendered nouns:
In English like all other languages I know anything about, we make some feminine versions of nouns in order to describe women as opposed to men who do that work or have that status. Actor/actress. All the other languages I know do the same thing. In Russian, German, Portugese, Spanish, etc., When you say "I am an American," you end "American" differently depending on whether you are male or female. As far as I know, only in English are all people just plain "American."

Unfortunately we live in a society which has historically been male dominated, so there is still a notion in our collective unconscious that masculinity is superior to femininity. That has caused women not to want to be described using the female versions of the words--has made the female version perjorative. To me, it seems that saying "I'm not an actress, I'm an actor" means "I identify as masculine, so I'm superior" or "I'm afraid that if I identify as feminine, you'll think less of me." If this wasn't true, then men would be content to be called actresses.

And I think it's a shame. I think the power of women and the strength inherit in femininity ought to be celebrated, enjoyed--not eschewed because historically women haven't been allowed to be powerful.

Most of these words have existed for a long time, and those that are new (comedian/comedianne) simply stem from an ancient linguistic phenomenon in which male and female are differentiated. I don't care if they make new ones, but I really do believe that the old ones ought to be preserved and that women shouldn't avoid being identified with female descriptions.