Subject: cetacean sexism

[Jonathan Lighter]

You are the perspicuous one, Larry.

BTW, _Yahoo Answers_ and  Google Groups rec.boats.building had some typical
discussion of the matter in 2007 and 1998 respectively.

On Aug. 27, 1996 someone at rec.travel.cruises explained that:

"...there is always a great deal of bustle around her; there is usually a
gang of men about, she has a waist and stays; it takes a lot of paint to
keep her good looking; it is not the initial expense that breaks you, it is
the upkeep;
she can be all decked out; it takes an experienced man to handle her; and
without a man at the helm she is absolutely un-controllable. She showes her
topsides, hides her bottom, and when comming into port, always heads for the
buoys."

I mean it can't be just coincidental, can it?  Back in the day, Barbour
rocked!

A few years back you could buy a kitchen towel (or "galley cloth") offering
the same explanation (with edited spelling!) from Seagifts.com. (Towels are
often overlooked as sources of important information.)

JL


On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Subject: cetacean sexism
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11:18 AM -0400 7/6/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Amy, you couldn't have learned it here because it looks wrong. OED
> includes
> >an ex. from Barbour in 1375. It was/is also applied to vehicles (as in
> >Wilson's implied "Fill 'er up!").
> >
> >Pre-19th C. exx. appear to be mainly Scottish, if that means anything.
> >
> >I'm going to start acronyming "if that means anything" as "ITMA."  Too
> lazy
> >to see if it's being done elsewhere.
>
> Semantic overlap with FWIW, no?
>
> >
> >I've run across various wacky rationalizations (disapproving and
> otherwise)
> >for why ships were once expected to be called/ should be called/ must
> never
> >be called "she."
>
> Some at least implicitly disapproving ones come from feminist
> treatments of linguistic asymmetries, in which the argument goes that
> the pilot, controller, subject, etc. is "he" so the vessel, object
> controlled, object, etc. must be "she", which works for ships, cars,
> planes, and so on (maybe even countries, qua ships of state), but not
> directly for whales, where presumably it's the "he" as
> hunter/predator vs. "she" as hunted/wily prey metaphor that comes
> into play.
>
> >
> >A tangential fave:  Richard Howells, *The Myth of the Titanic* (N.Y.: St.
> >Martin's, 1999), pp.75-76, finds the application of the pronouns *she* and
> *
> >her* to ships treacherous and objectionable because, through their use,
> ships
> >like the *Titanic *"become a person rather than just a mechanical
> >object....It follows, then, that when the *Titanic* is damaged in
> collision
> >with the iceberg,  it feels physical pain....[I]n its 'last agony,' one
> 'saw
> >her stagger and reel above the waters.' Finally, the ship descends not
> >simply to the bottom of the sea, but, rather, to its 'grave.'"
>
> Or, more perspicuously, its watery grave.  In fact I was thinking for
> a moment that "watery" is pretty much restricted to such graves, but
> I see it collocates freely with other delightful nominals from "eyes"
> to "discharge".
>
> LH
>
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