In Favor of Feminism: Share Your Views
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I too am curious to hear Alice's thoughts about the use of ladies as offensive.
As one who also finds the use of 'ladies' a bit odd particularly when the next reference is often to men's ....
The term ladies refers to social refinement as does the term gentlemen. Ladies lunch vs men's club; ladies golf times ( LPGA ) vs men's golf associations.
Ladies must be refined while men can just be. Language is ever evolving and the use of 'women and men' is, as some might argue, becoming as outdated as ladies and gentlemen.
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Because I don't hear anyone referring to younger male professionals as boys (except in baseball, collectively, as in "boys of summer"). Because "ladies" is a social designation, not a professional one.
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First and foremost, I would always be supportive of a new poster to the forum, someone new to the bc diagnosis. Compassion, support and understanding come first. At such a time, the use of the word girl or lady is not the important issue.
But in this feminist thread, it's a good discussion. I think using the term girl for a grown woman tends to infantilize her. Girls are young; I would say the term is appropriate up to about age 12. Then you might say “teenage girl" for several years. By the time a female is 18, I would call her a woman or young woman. By that age, they are taking on adult responsibilities: a job, college, owning a car, etc. No longer girls. Not needing supervision. Not a child.
I sometimes use the term fellow/fella in place of young boys or men. For example, at a pumpkin farm with my grandkids, two male tweens tried to cut line for an attraction and I said, “Hey, fellas, I think the line starts back there."
I might call a male hospital technician a fellow, but I would not be referring to him as a boy.
The use of lady/ladies may be on its way out. As society becomes more casual, lady comes across as too formal. I hear it used lightly, as in someone meeting up with friends saying, “How ya doing, ladies?" and of course, there's usually one in the bunch hollering, “ain't never been a lady, ain't startin' now!" (maybe you, wrenn) to where all laugh and no one is offended.I think I once heard an expression like “The art of being a woman is knowing when not to be too much of a lady." I think it referred to sex. You know, the Madonna/whore complex.
My personal pet peeve is referring to a group of two or more people, regardless of gender, as "guys". Hate it, hate it, hate it. Yet it's a common part of everyday language.
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Alice, thank you for explaining and I too would have referred to the staff as techs in a professional capacity.
Maybe it’s my age, casual California upbringing or both but I use girls as youthful in age or attitude, not as an indication of inexperience or lack of knowledge or responsibilities. I also refer to many men as dude and to mixed gender groups as “you guys”. I understand the points of view, just have a different perspective, I guess.
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illimae, I think you are about twenty years younger than me, so I agree, that might have something to do with the different perspectives, too.
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I use "guys" and "dudes" for groups as well. I hate being called "honey".
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Or "dear"
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Or ma'am. I always want to turn around and look to see if my grandmother is standing behind me.
Which would be very weird since she died in 1985.
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I prefer "folks" or "people" because "guys" makes me roll my eyes so hard my head hurts. Nobody addresses a mixed group as "gals" so why is "guys" the default? Nope.
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I definitely say guys or you guys in casual settings. If I say ladies it’s with a touch of irreverence. I definitely think generational slang plays a part as divine pointed out. At age 65, my slang is not up to date! I rarely use dude and when I do it’s in reference to my grandson. Bro is a word I’ve never used but was surprised to hear girls use it in reference to each other. I may not always like linguistic change but it is inevitable and happens constantly in living languages.
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I totally understand Alice's frustration with the word "girls". I'm also glad she held her tongue (fingers?) in that thread, but felt safe venting about it here. Divine summed up my reasons beautifully. I wouldn't want a "girl" performing medical procedures on me. She should have completed at least some higher education before taking that kind of job. A "girl" would still be in middle school.
I find myself using a lot of gender non-committal words, like "my team at work", or "the crew at the gym". Having a gender non-binary child (they/them) has really upped the semantics game around my house.
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Same here, Meriandra. It's not that difficult. The head librarian where I worked really got me into de-gendering language years ago, when she red-lined the term "manning the desk." There were only two men there, so she didn't think the default term should favor them. She substituted "staffing" which is as neutral as it can get, and very professional.
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European countries are having lots of spiky conversations about degendering their languages too. It's particularly challenging in those where nouns are either masculine or feminine (and sometimes neuter).
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Using the masculine “guys” has become too generic. I think someone addressing a gathering should tailor their comments to the group on hand. It’s common to hear guys used for a group of all women, such as a tv studio audience on Mothers Day: TV host: “Thanks, you guys!” “You guys have been great!” It’s rare to hear “You women are great!” Gals could be substituted or one could even simply say, “Thanks to everyone for being here. “ “You’ve all been great!” And morning show anchors are always wrapping up their segments with, “Back to you guys”. or simply, “Guys.” And the camera pans back to the team of, say, Savannah, Hoda and Jenna.
We’ve always affectionately referred to the group of ds’s friends as “the crew”.
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As a cis-female who is also relatively down the far end of the femme spectrum, I don't mind being identified as a woman or girl or lady unless I sense a pejorative in the mind of the user or the situation. I hate being ma'am-ed because it makes me feel old, and I hate being called "honey", "sweetie", "blondie", etc., by men, because they diminish me.
As a dance teacher who rarely had boys in her classes, for years, I said what my teachers said, and would address the class as "Ladies" or if there was a boy present, "Ladies and [boy name]." It definitely took me longer than I think it should have, but long about 2010, I started calling my dancers, "Dancers" -- because gender isn't binary, and neither were they. I mean, I also still referred to them as "Duckies" and "Darlings", but mostly my dancer became "Dancers" and "People." And it wasn't hard, and I'm glad I did.
WRT the teeth-grinding situation, I think what kills me the most is when you have a group of professionals, and someone in charge says, "Men over here, and girls over there," -- simultaneously placing male above female and erasing anyone who identifies as both or neither.
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Again, learning more about how language impacts humans being. Today I read the term 'bikini medicine' and that women's health has been focused on breasts and reproduction - that covered by the bikini!
The author of an article emphasized the problems that language about gender create. In reference to bikini medicine, she wrote '...this, coupled with the paradoxical belief that males have been much easier to research, meant that ladies were routinely excluded from health care study, there are a great deal of studies that show that gals are far more most likely to be disbelieved, dismissed, and less than-dealt with when they present with signs.' Her use of the identifiers 'ladies' and 'gals' highlights how easily women are dismissed.
Overall health treatment routinely fails females. Blame 'bikini medicine' - lesjardins-mandaline
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I recently had an argument with my brother when he referred to his DOCTOR as "the girl I go to." I objected, he laughed. He argued with me that it wasn't sexist, it was actually a compliment. My brother-in-law, trying to help, said he uses the term "gal" because it's less offensive. My explanation that they would refer to a male doctor as "my doctor" not "my boy" fell on deaf ears. they are hopeless. (they are over 60, not that it's an excuse. I just hope the next generation is better)
I can call my friends "the girls" when I am talking about them in a social context, though I rarely do that. But referring to professionals as "girls" is disrespectful.
Though I have to admit, Alice, when I read your post, I went back to see if I had inadvertently done so. After 20 radiation treatments, and chatting with the techs about pets, I did feel a kinship with them.
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And this is why we should never bemoan linguistic changes! Language is a reflection of a society at a given moment. It’s what keeps a language living after all 😊
As for changing gender inflected languages, this process may very well be in the works but may take a bit longer as much of this is grammatical gender as opposed to natural gender. English actually had grammatical gender up until about the 1200’s.
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This is a FB post I came across today. I am posting a screenshot of the start of the post and then including the entire post below. The subject, that of women being sent to jail for the miscarrage of a pregnancy is insanity.
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THE PREGNANCY POLICE
It is not uncommon for anti-choice bullies to come to our Facebook pages and try to shame us for not believing that a soul enters the body at conception and so women's wombs should be the property of the state.
Brittney Poolaw is a 21 year old Oklahoman woman who has been sentenced to four years in prison for first-degree manslaughter after miscarrying. The state charged that she caused the miscarriage because of her drug usage even though the medical examiner does not identify drug usage as the source of the miscarriage.
>>> Most of us would agree drug usage while pregnant is wrong, but what will these prosecutions mean as anti-abortion laws spread across our nation? Here in Texas, abortion is prohibited before many women even know they are pregnant. Will these women face prison as well?
Kim Blalock, a woman from Alabama was prosecuted this year for taking PRESCRIPTION drugs while pregnant. Arwa Mahdawi reports, " A 2016 investigation found more than 500 Alabama women had been prosecuted for filling their prescriptions while pregnant under the state's chemical endangerment law."
Mahdawi points out how differently corporations are treated than poor women:
"Just look at the billionaire Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. Last year Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty in federal court to three criminal charges related to pushing sales of the narcotic, which has fuelled an opioid crisis that has killed more than 500,000 Americans. And how much jail time did they get? Zero, of course. Not one member of the Sackler family will spend a minute in jail for their role in an opioid epidemic that has killed half a million Americans."
My friends, we are ALL in this together. You don't have to be a woman, or even like abortion, to realize the patriarchal terrorism being unleashed by the self appointed pregnancy police. Those of us who believe women are moral agents, not the property of a patriarchal state, must come together in solidarity.
While I respect those who are against abortion and use persuasion to make their case, I have zero respect for those who use the state to unleash threats and coercion against pregnant women but refuse to allow the state to provide free healthcare and education for everyone already born.
The right to life should begin, not end, at birth.
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How many men does it take to fake being a woman writer?
Spain's literary world has been thrown into chaos after a coveted book prize was awarded to "Carmen Mola" -- an acclaimed female thriller writer who turned out to be the pseudonym of three men.
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Magic - I laughed out loud when I read about that earlier today. How many indeed!!
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I think that the term girls is used often to diminish a woman and that is when it feels bad- I think less so when women use it playfully or as good friends. try substituting boys and you see how it would be diminishing to them also.
There are countries in South America who have jailed women for having miscarriages as murder- even without taking drugs.
I do think that a lot is generational also- but, it is freeing to de genderize a lot of rhetoric- took practice for me to address a non binary person using they and them due to my strict grammar upbringing. I can imagine that in languages that genderize all nouns it would be a challenge.
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nkb,
Excellent points. I freely acknowledge that it will take some effort for me to get used to new non-gender specific language, but I believe that change is good!
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It's interesting reading about the like/dislike of various words. I actually enjoy using the word "guys" for both men and women because I feel like it's become gender-neutral and we women can own the word as much as any man. I detest the word "gals" and find it insulting, not sure why. I think, to me, it implies "older women". I was actually thrilled when a few 20-something coworkers called me "dude", because that meant that they didn't just think of me as a mentor/mom-figure, they accepted me as someone they wanted to just talk to socially.
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How Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem Fought For Your Right to Get a Beer
Mallory O'Meara on a Surprising Gender Discrimination Case
By Mallory O'MearaOctober 19, 2021
Many of us are familiar with the second wave of feminism's fights for birth control, abortion and equal pay, but you may be unfamiliar with something else activists battled for during the 1960s and 70s: the bar stool.
During the 1960s, gender discrimination was a widely accepted feature of the bar. It was ubiquitous, like cheap beer and little bowls of salty snacks. Depending on the state, women were only allowed into bars at certain times, or only with male escorts, or sometimes, not at all. There were states where women couldn't work in bars, even if they owned them.
The 1948 Supreme Court case of Goesaert v. Cleary upheld a Michigan law which prohibited women from bartending in all cities that had a population of 50,000 or more, unless their father or husband owned the establishment. The plaintiff in the case, Valentine Goesaert, owned a bar in Dearborn. She wanted to be able to bartend in her own goddamn bar and she wanted her female staff to be able to, as well. But Goesaert lost the case, because the court ruled that, since bartending could lead to "moral and social problems" for women, Michigan (and any other state) had the power to prohibit them from being bartenders.
Sound like bullshit? It is, of course. Unfortunately, it's bullshit that predates bars themselves.
At the time Goesaert v. Cleary was being decided, gendered drinking discrimination had been around for over a thousand years. Since the days of Babylon, in cultures all over the world, women were not allowed to drink in public, or at all. In the early days of Rome, women could be put to death if they were found drinking.
>>> This ancient sexism also masked itself with concern for "moral and social problems". In the code of Hammurabi—the legal document that essentially established the patriarchy— it was written that "godly" women could not drink. It came from the male fear that women would act like people, instead of like property. The code of Hammurabi set in stone that women and their reproductive rights were the property of men, either fathers or husbands. If a woman went off to party and drink, she might have a fling that resulted in the loss of her virginity, a direct financial blow to her husband or father. It wasn't about morals. It was about control.
So, public drinking culture, with some exceptions, developed over the centuries as a mostly male space. By the time bars as we know them today started popping up in America, "women shouldn't drink in public" was an accepted social rule, just like "everyone should wear clothes."
Until one December evening in 1967.
On that night in Syracuse, New York, a journalism student named Joan Kennedy had just finished Christmas shopping with her mother, and the two women decided to go into the bar at the Hotel Syracuse. The bar, named The Rainbow Lounge, denied them entry on the grounds that they were without male escorts. Kennedy was furious.
Soon afterwards, she approached Karen DeCrow, who was then a law student active in the brand spanking new chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Syracuse.
At first, NOW had a lot of internal disagreement about whether it should be a priority for the organization to make the barstool a battleground for the women's rights movement. Equal pay seemed to be a lofty pursuit, but was having a beer in public just as lofty? Lots of members didn't think so.
DeCrow, however, did.
It seems trivial, being able to drink in a bar. But since the earliest days of civilization, the public watering hole was crucial to popular culture, to professional partnerships, to the creation of neighborly bonds, the maintenance of community, and the dissemination of news and local knowledge. A lot of important stuff happened at the tavern and the bar, a place where women were unwelcome.
DeCrow argued that going to a bar was a symbol of being a free person and a way to get women integrated into the workplace. She thought it was crucial for women to be able to leave the home and hang out in the public sphere, where networking and business meetings happened. Since so many states, cities and towns allowed discrimination behind the bar as well, it also kept a lot of women out of a potential job. In 1964, twenty-six states still prohibited women from bartending.
The rest of NOW eventually agreed with DeCrow, and then she launched a plan.
NOW activists traveled from all around the country to participate in a sit-in that she organized at The Rainbow Lounge. Unfortunately, the hotel was ready for them. The owners had taken precautionary measures—right before the protesters arrived, the hotel staff changed the numbers on the occupancy limit sign in the bar from 110 to 6. To top it off, they removed the seats from all the bar stools. It didn't deter the NOW protesters, though. Afterwards, DeCrow issued a lawsuit against the Hotel Syracuse.
The next year, after a few more sit-ins, DeCrow brought the issue of gendered bar discrimination to the 1968 NOW Convention in New York City. The convention was held at the Biltmore Hotel, which was perfect for the point DeCrow was trying to make: the hotel had a men-only bar.
In February of the following year, DeCrow organized "Public Accommodations Week" with other members of NOW. Part of the week of activism and protests involved "drink-ins" at men-only bars across the entire country. At the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room in New York City, Betty Friedan's party of three was refused service by the bartender.
McSorley's, a bar in Manhattan, had never served a woman in all 115 years of its existence. The bar sported a sign on its front door proclaiming, "No Back Room In Here For Ladies." The owners were proud that they had "thrived for over a century on good ale, raw onions and no women."
For DeCrow's drink-in that week, she marched into the stinky atmosphere of McSorley's with a group of fellow NOW members. The women were ignored by the bartenders and when one man tried to buy drinks for all of them, an angry crowd of men grabbed him and quite literally threw him out the door.
By the next year, NOW's protests and drink-ins had finally paid off. In 1970, New York City law eliminated gender discrimination in all public places. Some bars refused to comply with the law and had to be forced to let women in. Some bars welcomed their new customers. Some tried to turn the whole affair into a publicity stunt, such as Berghoff's, who publicly invited Gloria Steinem (and a whole bunch of media) to come and have a drink.
In 1976, the Goesaert v. Cleary decision was overturned by another discrimination case. Craig v. Boren started in Oklahoma, where 3.2 percent ABV beer was available for purchase by women at the age of eighteen, but not by men until the age of twenty-one. This was a holdover from the practice of women buying beer to bring home for their families. The thinking was that women needed to be able to bring home beer for their husbands and families to drink, but men only bought beer for themselves to drink. A 20-year-old man named Curtis Craig and a female liquor store owner named Carolyn Whitener agreed that the law needed to be changed. The two teamed up to challenge it in court.
The lawsuit was in rough shape until a brilliant legal counsel at the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU offered some assistance. It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, future Supreme Court justice herself. She wrote to the lawyer on the case, saying that she was "delighted to see the Supreme Court is interested in beer drinkers."
With Ginsburg's help, the case was argued successfully. The Supreme Court ruled that the Oklahoma law made unconstitutional gender classifications. With this ruling, a new standard for review in gender discrimination cases was set and Goesaert v. Cleary was overruled.
Next time you have a beer, raise your glass to Karen DeCrow, second wave feminists, and RBG.
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Gosh, that's surprising. I started going to bars with other young women my age in 1970 and it was never a big deal.
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Meet Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's groundbreaking 1st female conductor
Nathalie Stutzmann shared her journey of realizing a childhood dream to become just the second woman to lead a major U.S. orchestra.
Scott Stump/ NBC Today/ Oct. 18, 2021
A dream that began as a child is now a groundbreaking reality for Nathalie Stutzmann after she was named the first female music director in the 77-year history of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
The 56-year-old native of France spoke with Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY Monday about becoming just the second woman to be selected as music director of a top-tier U.S. orchestra. Stutzmann conducted her debut concert last week.
"Oh my gosh, I have no words," she said. "It was so moving, and the welcome of the audience, which I met actually yesterday night for the first time, was just amazing."
Stutzmann is the only woman to currently lead a major U.S. orchestra, following in the footsteps of Marin Alsop, 64, who was named music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007. Alsop was the first woman to hold the position at a major U.S. orchestra, and she concluded her historic 14-year tenure this year.
Stutzmann's ascension to leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is the culmination of a dream she had as a young girl.
"I very much remember, I must have been 7 or 8, and I was in the orchestra pit and I watched the conductor," she said. "And when he was taking his baton I thought he was Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia,' because he was taking this baton and he was doing this.
"And the sound was coming there. For me, I couldn't explain. I said, 'How is it possible that this guy does this?' And I say this guy, because it always was a guy. So I was dreaming to have a baton in my hands. And I must tell you, I have been conducting in my heart, in my soul, all through my life."
Stutzmann is the daughter of two opera singers and studied music in school. When she was repeatedly passed over as a conductor in favor of men, she became a celebrated contralto (the lowest range of a classical female singing voice) while still harboring aspirations of breaking through as a conductor."It was so frustrating," she said. "It was so sad for me that after a couple of months it was clear to me that at that time, as a woman, forget it, because you will never make it (as a conductor)."
She performed as a contralto in some of the world's most prestigious opera houses while studying the maestros in the pit.
"I sang with all the greatest conductors in the greatest orchestras of the world, but I think my conducting dream was always there," she said.
"But of course, I was enjoying to watch all the greatest maestros and no young conductor can have a better teaching course than so many years of music making with the greatest people."
When she decided to pursue a career as a conductor, she not only had to overcome skepticism of a singer making the transition, but also being the rare woman on the podium
"I must admit that I spent many nights coming back to my hotel in tears, and thinking the next day I stop," she said. "Because if conducting is this, if I'm going to be treated so bad, I will stop. And the next morning I was going up again."
Stutuzmann described what has been so magnetic to her over the years about being a conductor."I must say, it's probably the most addictive thing on Earth," she said. "Everything you do with your body language, with your eyes, with what you ask to the musicians, has an impact on the sound.
>>> "And when you feel 100 people at the edge of your hands, of your body, of your soul, and everyone going in the same direction, it's like when the birds are flying for the migration, and you are amazed to see them all flying in the same direction. It's completely impossible to understand how it works. This is the same feeling. It's heaven."
Now that she has reached a historic milestone, she takes pride in knowing she is helping pave the way for more women to conduct major U.S. orchestras.
"I dreamed about it, and it's like that," she said. "Now it feels really natural to me.
"When I'm on the podium I feel this is where I should be. And this is a very special feeling."
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One more glass ceiling shattered, hooray!
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This was too funny not to share, so I took a bunch of screen shots of it:
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xD
Loving it!
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