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In fact, the exact reverse is true! While the word "lady" has fallen out of favour, the "n"-word has accrued a positive meaning. The following excerpt is from a review of Randall Kennedy's well-known book on the subject:
"Many Black Americans have actually embraced the word nigger and shifted its meaning to a more positive connotation that they use among themselves. For example, Kennedy documents Black American rap artist Ice Cube as saying, "When we call each other ‘nigger’ it means no harm. . . . But if a white person uses it, it’s something different, it’s a racist word".
Surely we didn't have to look up the Harvard Review to learn that....
The blacks who use the term are doing what all minorities do, thwarting the EXPECTATIONS of the majority as a weapon.
You can't have it both ways. One minute you say the 'n' word is a good example of why the term 'lady' should be avoided, now we're hearing it's a valid term anyway. What are you trying to say? That the term 'lady' is okay if one woman uses it about another, but not if a man uses it about a woman?
I repeat again.
A young modern woman thinks that if she is born with no Y-chromosomes, and a vagina, and reaches a certain age she can relax. She may even be told about her sacred role as a 'wumman' by post-New Age practitioners. She has nothing to do in the matter, it just happens. There is no initiation, she has a RIGHT to sacred status just because. None of that old nonsense about self-respect and honour. THERE ISN'T EVEN A WORD FOR IT because all the words were invented by men and should be ditched.
Women need 'initiation' into adulthood (and other things) just as young men do. It doesn't just happen. And there isn't even a word for it any more.
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One only has to read the paper or peruse the internet to note that there are MILLIONS of American males who think they have the legal and God-given right to tell women what to do with their own bodies, to make them work for less pay, and to let men "think" for them because women obviously aren't capable of making their own intelligent decisions. Based on some of the comments on this thread, I think some of the posters might all into that category. And there are probably many more male lurkers out there who feel the same way as well. Who'd have ever thought film music fans could be so positive of their superiority over other types of people? You'd think they'd recognize what a geeky minority they are (and I mean that in a good way) and they'd stick up for the rights of others?
Well thank you MMM. That was a decent and measured response. I think better of you now. I take back what I said earlier.
But I don't think many see themselves a s'superior' to women. I don't think Dan does.
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Are you prepared to concede my point that the word “lady” is often used in a patronizing/sexist way – irrespective of whether the speaker is cognizant of this usage or not?
Yes, it is. But so are many words.
If the answer is “yes”, is it not advisable, therefore, to replace that word, wherever possible, with one that is culturally/socially/politically neutral – i.e. “woman” - so as not to cause offence to those who take umbrage at the word “lady” in certain contexts?
As I said above, by all means find a new word, the mere word 'woman' is pedestrian and banal and unimaginative and uninspiring. It's neutral all right, I'll give you that! There has to be a better word. Words are important. If men have a word, then women should have a word. 'Woman' just means adult female. It has no connotation of aspiration, nothing to reach for. It's egalitarian but also BORING. There has to be a word, and 'woman' is not enough. 'Woman' says, 'we are what we are and that should be good enough'. If only.
Incidentally, do you think that the speaker WAS being patronising when he referred to Rachel Maddow a “bright lady”?
But not consciously so. I know, you'll tell me that this is the very point you want to make.
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Actually, I'm going to qualify that last point.
If this Maddow storm in a teacup had happened in Westminster, in the Commons, no-one would have thought it sexist, not even feminists.
In the US you have a slightly different understanding of the term 'lady'. I don't know when this happened, but I have a suspicion that it all relates to the 1950s and '60s and American definitions and stereotypes from the media and advertising that feminists then rebelled against later. The term 'ladylike' is a very American one for instance, and whilst it's an English term, it's not used often here, and it's not the first thing that jumps into our heads if you use the word 'lady'.
We use the terms 'lady' and 'gentleman' as common polite parlance.
I don't know, but I SUSPECT that in the US the term may have had connotations of the Old South, chivalry etc., and these terms went out of fashion in the '60s in response to Civil Rights issues etc.. I also suspect it went out of fashion by feminists in the reaction against finishing schools and the like in the '60s and the fairly extreme stereotyping in the '50s media.
But you guys do like to POLARISE a lot. If things get lumped together like Republicanism, gun-lobby, old family stereotypes etc., then 'lady' gets in there too. It's part of a package. You take all of it or nothing. (NO this isn't going to get political ...)
I'm picturing David Cameron or Ed Miliband using the phrase, 'She's a bright lady' and no, on this side of the Pond it would never be jumped on as significant, rather the content of the issues of the speech and policies. Maybe that's partly because there's still a sort of aristocracy here, the term goes back a long way and was never divorced from its original meaning totally. It's almost an insult NOT to refer to someone you don't know as a 'lady'. It's common parlance in shops and services for instance: 'Could you show this lady to the check-out, thank you?' You'd never say 'woman' in a context like that.
No, it IS different on this side of the Pond. Less feminists would find it offensive here without doubt. Only very militant ones.
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Posted: |
Mar 25, 2012 - 6:37 PM
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By: |
John Smith
(Member)
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Are you prepared to concede my point that the word “lady” is often used in a patronizing/sexist way – irrespective of whether the speaker is cognizant of this usage or not?
Yes, it is. But so are many words.
If the answer is “yes”, is it not advisable, therefore, to replace that word, wherever possible, with one that is culturally/socially/politically neutral – i.e. “woman” - so as not to cause offence to those who take umbrage at the word “lady” in certain contexts?
As I said above, by all means find a new word, the mere word 'woman' is pedestrian and banal and unimaginative and uninspiring. It's neutral all right, I'll give you that! There has to be a better word. Words are important. If men have a word, then women should have a word. 'Woman' just means adult female. It has no connotation of aspiration, nothing to reach for. It's egalitarian but also BORING. There has to be a word, and 'woman' is not enough. 'Woman' says, 'we are what we are and that should be good enough'. If only.
Incidentally, do you think that the speaker WAS being patronising when he referred to Rachel Maddow a “bright lady”?
But not consciously so. I know, you'll tell me that this is the very point you want to make.
I rest my case.
Now that we've exhausted that avenue of inquiry, perhaps we can devote some time to exploring what AstraeaBeauty said in an earlier post and get back to Dan's opening question: namely, where are the women?
AstraeaBeauty said: "The general attitude of male posters on this thread is a good example of why I don't like to participate. "
Instead of idle speculation about the functioning of female brains and other fascinating divertissements, perhaps we could focus on trying to identify the nature of that "general attitude" and then attempt to alter it - hopefully rendering the board more female-friendly in the process.
Just a thought...
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Instead of idle speculation about the functioning of female brains and other fascinating divertissements .....
Why 'brains'? Because that's the most controversial aspect, the most game for conflict?
People are not just brains. The entire endrocrine system HAS TO affect how we react to some things. Both men and women take a delight in fighting and winning for example, but testosterone means men revel in the chase and in the violent aspects of life more than women do, AS A RULE. Few would deny that.
If we can't speculate re the various ramifications of this in terms of sensual pleasures like music (which IS a sensual pleasure), then we're just playing empty games.
No-one knows the answers to these issues until somebody does long-term, double-blind, large sample, multi-variabled differentiated, peer-reviewed research. I'm not sure what people are frightened of here. It's as though I'd said 'eugenics' or something.
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I mean to tell ya, This thread is simply FASCINATING.
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Thankfully, there's a much bigger world out there than this little arena where folk gang up in a sort of vacuum.
I'm happy being stereotyped as '19th Century' here where it doesn't matter. But people will need to start differentiating between knee-jerk 'follow the leader' nonsense about what 'connotations' a certain word may have, and try to be OBJECTIVE.
MMM seems obsessed with telling people he's had a relationship with a woman. To me, that sounds adolescent, like the schoolboy who shows pictures of his first girlfriend. Does he really think we all don't have relationships?
The reasons women don't appear here are OVER-DETERMINED and COMPLEX, and the idea that it's all to do with their terror of male aggression here is patronising to women, it suggests they're all very fragile. All the feminists I know just would have better things to do than even BE here. Maybe we should too.
And if we ask speculative questions about whether there ARE differences in what genres women and men like, we're being ancient fascists or something, on the verge of human vivisection.
There are the fellows who are sexist.
Then there are the fellows who stop being sexist.
Then there are the fellows who stop being sexist and agree with every cliche extreme feminists throw up, because they think it'll make them seem sensitive with women.
Then there are the fellows who realise the above is a dishonest and patronising stance to women, and try to be more objective about how women and men REALLY are.
And then there are the fellows who actually break through the zeitgeist conditioning and make the genuine enquiries.
It's a LONG way to step 5 I think. But step 5 is FAR ADVANCED of the previous 4. Sometimes the fellow who's behind you has actually lapped you and you haven't noticed..
Being truly 'Modern' requires more than a taste for expressionist art and a love of jazz. It means a transcendentalist outlook and a genuine quest for the fluidity and paradox of things and a sense of how to move things forward and where to move them. Posturing is only hot air.
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