Job Titles and Gender

[Stu]

P.S. Please nobody mention pronouns when Stu's around!!

Pronouns????

Don't get me started.

[rode_kater]

I've never liked the terms "you guys", or "hi guys", or "__________ guys".

It's regional thing I suppose. In Australia guys is generally considered non-gendered.

A bit like in Dutch where "vrienden" refers to any group of friends, no gender specified. "Vriendinnen" specifically refers to a group of female friends (which can occasionally include the honorary male). It refers more to the type of relationship than gender really.

Yay internet, throwing all languages into a single pile for maximum confusion.

[Stu]

I've never liked the terms "you guys", or "hi guys", or "__________ guys".

It's regional thing I suppose. In Australia guys is generally considered non-gendered.

Same in the UK among some people. My eldest daughter uses the expression "you guys" to include females. She'll say to my wife and I: "Are you guys ready for something to eat?"

[rivegauche]

In parts of the UK such as Yorkshire some people address both genders as Mate. On a Facebook Group I belong to some women address each other as "Man" which is probably also Northern English, as in "Beautiful dress, man". I am not making this up.

[Kirbstone]

In my game, the only 'Bods' I encountered were (dead) Bodies, and they tended not to make a fuss or themselves heard.

Tom

[yardstick]

Historically, in English, the word "man" in many contexts was sexually inclusive, just meaning a human person. That was what the syllable in "mailman" and the like means. When I was growing up, "he", "him", "his" and the like were used for "that one whose sex is unknown or irrelevant". It's used that way in US legal documents. Language changes, but changes slowly.

To back what Jim said above back in my school days I studied human biology which was actually titled "Biology of Man" (thats what it said on the exam paper). I can assure you all that both sexes were studied in equal detail but we must remember that in this and many other context "Man" was often used to denote the species in general (i.e. an alternative word for human being / homo sapien) and was even quoted in the dictionary as such, thus the original job titles with "man" in the title would have been derived from this rather than the over analysed interpretations that are inferred today.
Oh how times have changed.

[Jim]

"Man" originally just meant "person." The males were "were-men" and the females "wo-men." I expect it was mere sexism that made the males the norm so that "man" became associated with males, but I haven't read the history of that.

[Midas]

In parts of the UK such as Yorkshire some people address both genders as Mate. On a Facebook Group I belong to some women address each other as "Man" which is probably also Northern English, as in "Beautiful dress, man". I am not making this up.

As a Yorkshireman living in Lancashire I can confirm various forms of address but most are directed only to men, such as mate or pal. Some address both sexes as duck, love or darling.

Other than hippy refugees from the late 60s/early 70s the term man is seldom used.

[denimini]

The airline industry is becoming gender neutral in their job titles. Airman will become aviator (I wonder if female ones will be aviatrix) and they are doing away with the term cockpit and replacing it with .............. have a guess

[Dust]

... It probably helps in English that we don't have gendered nouns like in Seb's examples!

Honestly, I think the fact that there are relatively few gendered words in English is the reason people can get traction on this stuff. If you are used to having gendered endings on nearly every word, many of which seem entirely arbitrary, you aren't as likely to see an issue with your job title having a different gender than your person.

[moonshadow]

The airline industry is becoming gender neutral in their job titles. Airman will become aviator (I wonder if female ones will be aviatrix) and they are doing away with the term cockpit and replacing it with .............. have a guess

Okay, that was funny.

More fun... I wonder if they'll be trying to think of any new names of other industry items, like pipe fittings and electrical outlets/plugs?

I mean, we all know what a male pipe fitting is, and a female fitting, but what would a nonbinary pipe look like??

Also, isn't it interesting that all pipe nipples are males, and female fittings have none? Of course, all bushings are female so there's that.

Actually... scratch that, one side of the bushing is male, the other is female...

EUREKA! A nonbinary fitting! Or maybe it's intersex.... or transgender?

The mind boggles....