[Ads-l] Berkeley and gender neutral words

Mark Mandel markamandel at GMAIL.COM
Sat Jul 20 04:42:26 UTC 2019


Laurence is right, of course. My fingers make their own way across the
Swype virtual keyboard of my smartphone.

"Adventuress", though, is quite distinct from "adventurer". From the AHD, (
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Adventuress):

Adventuress
A woman who seeks social and financial advancement by unscrupulous means.
See Usage Note at -*ess*.

(https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=-ess)
Usage Note: When used in occupational terms like *waitress, stewardess, *and*
sculptress*, the feminine suffix -*ess* is sometimes considered sexist and
demeaning because it gratuitously calls attention to gender. With some
nouns, like *poetess* or *sculptress*, the feminine form may be taken to
imply that the task somehow differs when performed by a woman, or that it
is by default the realm of men. With others, such as *seamstress*, the
feminine form may be taken to suggest the occupation is characteristically
feminine. In some cases, such as *sculptor*, the term with masculine gender
has become effectively neuter, applying naturally to either sex. In other
cases, gender-neutral terms like *server* and *flight attendant* have been
created, finessing the problem of using an originally masculine noun to
refer to either sex. A few specialized examples persist in fields in which
the sex of the referent is relevant, sometimes for historical reasons,
including *chiefess* in anthropology, *goddess* in history and literature,
and *lioness* in biology. Other cases, like *webmistress*, represent arch
reclaimings of the -*ess* suffix, but these are whimsical or ironic
exceptions. · Many nouns ending in *-or* or *-er *are commonly used of
women now and should be considered standard. In our 1997 survey, 95 percent
of the Usage Panel approved *The gallery is exhibiting work of sculptor
Barbara Hepworth*, and in our 2016 survey, 88 percent accepted *Meryl
Streep was one of five actors to receive an Oscar nomination for leading
woman this year*. It should be noted tyear. It should be noted that 85
percent of the panelists also accepted a similar sentence with *actresses*,
indicating that in some cases, despite the prevalence of gender-neutral
terms like *actor*, the -*ess* form maintains its acceptability. However,
when discussing mixed-sex groups, *actors* is preferred over *actors and
actresses.* Ninety-three percent of the panelists accepted *Meryl Streep
was one of four actors presented with honorary doctorates yesterday,
together with Robert Duvall, Helen Mirren, and Javier Bardem*, whereas only
67 percent accepted a similar sentence with *actors and actresses *in place
of *actors*. See Usage Note at *man*.



MAM


On Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 8:42 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> > On Jul 19, 2019, at 8:01 PM, Mark Mandel <markamandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > The Latin means "No one is an heir or a living person.”
>
> Mark’s finger meant “of” rather than “or”; the claim as it stands is
> rather too strong.  More seriously, I don’t get the argument to replace
> “heir”, which is parallel to “actor” and arguably also to “poet”.  By all
> means, let’s dump “heiress”, “adventuress”, “actress”, “sculptress”, or
> “poetess”, although it could be (and has been) argued that “actress”
> performs a service that the others don’t, at least until sex-neutral
> casting becomes universal; the tradeoff for sex specification may be deemed
> worth it.  “Waitress” is another case, and I grant we all have different
> cutoff points. (Mine is rather different from Jon’s, for example.)  But the
> fact that “heiress” can be plausibly argued to be sexist on the grounds
> that it marks sex of the referent when it’s irrelevant, I don’t see why
> that consideration should infect “heir”, which as noted below really is
> just ‘one who’, on grounds of both usage and etymology.
>
> LH
>
>

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