TOOTSIE?????

TOMATO????

RIB????

WTF??? Who wrote this? I am speechless.

It's also interesting that "man" is an antonym. As if men and women have traits that are mututally exclusive.

Last I checked, we all have eyes, ears, hands. We all get hungry, sad, happy, pissed. Men and women are not "opposite", even if they are "different". Just like an oak tree is not the opposite of a maple tree.

Why do these all either bring women down to children, or make them seem old? Is there no middle ground?

If you look directly underneath the first definition of "man," you'll see a similar entry to the "woman" entry.

Main Entry: man
Part of Speech: noun 2
Definition: male
Synonyms: ape, beau, beefcake, blade, bloke, boy, boyfriend, bub, buster, butch, cat, chap, daddy, dude, fellow, gent, gentleman, guy, he, hunk, husband, jock, lord, lover, macho, master, mister, old man, papa, partner, pops, sir, spouse, stud, swain*, wolf
Antonyms: woman

Beefcake? Beau? Boyfriend? Stud? Old man? Hum... not too kind to the gentlemen, either.

In case you guys missed the point of antonyms, they are not supposed to be "opposites," in the sense of being entirely unrelated, so much different aspects of a larger category. Love & hate are both strong emotions - would they then not be antonyms?

I see your point, but think about it. How many men really mind being called 'stud?'

On the other hand, just try calling me 'tomato,' and see what happens.

Plus, it bothers me that the man has so many powerful synonyms, like 'lord' or 'master.' It's more generalizing the man into the role of the head, and therefore the woman is his servant.

OK, I'll respond.

antonym means "opposite" here.

The origin of the word means "opposite name": http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=antonym

I can only think of one way that men and women are truly "opposite": one sex has an "innie" and the other has an "outie". But certainly we are not primarily defined by our innies & outies?

Other than that, in what ways are men and women opposite? (Note: "average difference" is not the same as opposite.)

To a very good approximation, every person is male or female but not both... hence the two descriprtions are antonyms.

But that's not true, Alon, as the intersexed will be the first to tell you. It's also not the definition of an antonym. Black and white are opposites, but there's a whole host of other colors.

Quiet, shrill squaws!

I know, EG; hence "to a very good approximation."

SQUAW? That's the Lakota & Chippewa dirty word for vagina...AKA C*%T.

ack.

Actually, a lot of these might have to do with using archaic definitions. I was reading a book for my linguistics class and in discussing lexical change, it used the example of how "spinster" and "mistress" (and a couple others) used to mean, simply, "woman" and no more before getting their specialized definitions.

The fact that we can't keep a word for woman without turning into an insult is kinda fucked up.

Not just these, Cassandra. The English cognate of the Proto-Indo-European word for "woman" is "queen" (and the Old English word for "woman" became "wife").

Isn't *apathy*, and not hate, the opposite of love? You can certainly love someone and hate him/her at the same time.

Fair enough, Alon.

I looked up my Ann Fausto-Sterling and as many as 4% of births are intersexual, that is, hermaphrodite, merm (testes and some aspects of female genitalia) and ferm (ovaries and some aspects of male genitalia). At the moment of birth, intersexuals are entered into a progam of hormone management and surgical management so they can fit into society as males or females.

Language reflects not only the attitudes of the writer but also the preconceptions- the defacto standards which have accumulated over time. Language reflects patriarchy because the writings of our canon of philosophy, literature, science, etc. which have been given authority have to a large extent been written by males from within a patriarchal system. So then, I guess the big question is if we change our usage of language, will those changes be reflected in society, or is it necessary for society’s attitudes to change before we see it reflected in language? One example of language revision is the use of the title Ms. as a designation which does not reflect marital status. (I heard somewhere that it also means divorced, but I don’t know where that comes from). Pronouns are another area which reflects society, one of the first things we do when we meet someone is note their gender. In my mind this only serves to emphasize our gender differences. Even in writing every time we refer to a person other than by name we are forced by our language to gender type her, regardless of her gender’s relevance to the context. My wife and I have been trying for a while now to come up with a non-gender specific pronoun(s) which could substitute for she/he, her/him. I cannot wait to write my next essay or fiction without reference to gender at all. Referring to someone’s gender only when there is a reason to do so, might be an interesting change.

Ken, what you say contradicts the fact that women control language change. About the only solidly supported innate gender difference is that women have better language perception. That better language perception makes women more progressive speakers, which means they tend to control language change.

Women are more verbal and have more verbal ability but men control language.

But it's women who drive language change. Sound changes, acceptance of new words, grammatical tweaks - these are driven by women.

The socially dominant group doesn't always control the language. In fact, new words tend to come from lower-class slang, and grammatical innovations almost invariably come from popular rather than correct speech. Sound changes can come from either direction - in New York the working class follows the upper class, while in London it's the other way around.

I’m sorry Alon, but I have to disagree with your statement that women control language. We learn language by reading and by being taught. It is my opinion that what we read and what we are taught has the largest impact on our absorption of language. School curriculum both at the elementary, high school and university level inundates us with reading material, and by and large this material is written by men or focuses on men; especially on men’s writing. My exposure to women writers has only come because I purposely sought them out in specific electives and then changed my major to focus exclusively on them.

At my university here in Canada we have a local chapter of the Miss G_ project. Its goals are the inclusion of women’s studies courses at the high school level in Canada. The more I think about language and how much of our patriarchy passed along through our school system, the more I see the need for such efforts.

I tend to agree with your statement about minimal gender differences. While our social experiences differ greatly between men and women, I think the actual differences, are less encompassing than society tries to make us believe. This in fact is why I dislike needing to use a gender typed pronoun. It reinforces this assumed separateness between men and women and when writing, subjects the person being written about to different sets of expectations and judgments.

"The socially dominant group doesn't always control the language. In fact, new words tend to come from lower-class slang, and grammatical innovations almost invariably come from popular rather than correct speech." - Alon

Interesting. I hadn’t thought about that element of language change. That would help explain the differences between casually spoken and formally written language. I am still not sure I am with you on the dominance of women in this area of language development. I am not sure what the driving forces are, or how long it takes slang to be incorporated into accepted speech. It would be nice if you were right and this was a process women could consciously affect.

Nobody can affect that process consciously. Prescriptive grammarians have been trying to do that for millennia; and still, English speakers don't speak the same language of Beowulf. People who drive language change don't even notice it, except in the rare case that it's meant as a social marker. Young girls in California don't pronounce the vowel in low, bone, and coat like Brits do because they have a moral objection to the sound sequence /oU/.

Also, language is generally understood to be spoken rather than written. Linguists seldom study languages as they're written, because that is more a study of politics than a study of language. That Hindustani is written in Devanagari script in India and Arabic script in Pakistan is not interesting; that Hindi incorporates technical vocabulary from Sanskrit while Urdu incorporates it from Arabic and Persian is.

The best evidence that women drive language change is observation of which social groups speak the most progressively. Obviously, the young are more progressive than the old, almost by definition. But women are also more progressive than men, and people in cities are more progressive than people in rural areas.

I'm not sure how long it takes slang to be incorporated, either. It's definitely not a constant. American English has changed since 1950 more than it did between 1700 and 1950.

I've always liked the word "hu" as a gender-neutral pronoun, because it's the only one I've ever thought felt natural.

Here's a really good argument for it:
http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/lex_grammar.html

Of course, it's pretty much impossible to force a language change like that. And even if it were possible, resorting to any kind of force would surely be unpleasant. That said, I think there could be some traction for the idea in the legal profession, b/c it would
make certain kinds of legal documents much simpler (any lawyers here care to comment?)

If people actually started using those pronouns in legal writing or law, I'll bet the usage would start to spread to more common language.

<sigh> I suppose that would take a while, so I'll just have to stick to awkward sentences for my research papers. But can always hold out hope for my grandchildren...

;o)

women, poc, lower classes and city dwellers innovate but do not control language.

In that sense nobody controls language. In World War Two, the Japanese government tried excising the Japanese language of English baseball terms, and replacing them with native Japanese words. It never caught on, even though Japan was a totalitarian state. Orwell was a very good writer and a class A observer of political trends, but his knowledge of socio-linguistics was shoddy.

Barbara, I personally lean toward "ta," a Chinese borrowing that mirrors the Malaysian borrowing of "you" as a class-neutral pronoun. Incidentally, Chinese languages are a good example of how language is fairly separate from social trends; spoken Mandarin is almost completely gender egalitarian, certainly more so than any Indo-European language, even though China is hardly a feminist paradise.

IMHO, "they" will take over as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, because so many people already use it that way. There's even a precedent for this: the disappearance of the singular "thou" in favour of the plural "you" as language evolved and the definitions of both words changed. It's a more fluid change than introducing a new word entirely like "hu" or "ta."

We'll see what happens in a few hundred years, of course.

I don't think any pronoun will take over, barring a complete regularization of English grammar. The main advantage of the old gendered system is that it provides three different antecedents at times. It's not perfect - it'd be better to have three epicene pronouns with different default antecedents - but it provides just enough clarity for it to be unlikely to be leveled anytime soon.

In the interest of women-controling-language-change, what would we use to mean female "guy"? I mean, I can call my penis-bearing friends "men", "boys", or "guys" in general conversation, but my clitoris-bearing friends only "women" or "girls" (gals seems archaic). Any thoughts?

Personally, after marriage, I refused the moniker of "missus" and go with "miz". If someone wants to, they can refer to me as "mistress" husband's-last-name, in the sense that mistress is the female equivilent of "master".

You protest the many demeaning terms for "woman" -- yet Feministing frequently uses "chick" as a synonym for woman or young woman. Is this one of those ironic "reclaim the insulting term" things? A way of separating yourself from older feminists, who rejected that term and insisted on "woman"? Part of the whole girly-girl hello-kitty culture? honestly, I don't get it.
I still love you, though.

Katha, so glad you got the TypeKey thing worked out!

I think that a lot of younger women use the word chick, or girl for that matter, not necessarily as a reclaiming thing, but because--perhaps--we weren't really privvy to the sexist history behind the words. Also, I think now chick is really only used among women as an endearing thing--I can honestly say I've never heard a guy use the word chick.

Myself, I actually use the word chick sometimes, but mostly I think of it as a shorter version of chica (which I use much more often)...something from my junior high/high school days.

In the interest of women-controling-language-change, what would we use to mean female "guy"? I mean, I can call my penis-bearing friends "men", "boys", or "guys" in general conversation, but my clitoris-bearing friends only "women" or "girls" (gals seems archaic). Any thoughts?

My guess is that "guy" will become more and more epicenized. The second person construction "You guys" is already gender-neutral.

I cop to ogling buxom birds every chance I get,so
of course women should call us "boys" and "lads"
because,regardless of age and/or professional
status,most of us are sports-,beer-and boobs-ob-
sessed creatures-that is,"boys" and "lads."I also
prefer beau,beefcake,dude partner,and,as a
handsome black lad who's ALWAYS attempting to bed a buxom blonde- "stud!!!!!"And please tell me where
the word "blade" became a synonym for man.Is that
because some lass was after
some hot thick ladsteak?