I have a friend, some 10 years my senior, who is a competitive sailor and licensed captain. She sometimes invites me to go sailing with her, her clear intent being to demonstrate that she is fully four times as manly as I (as opposed to the three times as manly which I generally concede). In a recent conversation, the two of us were discussing her dreams of becoming a pirate queen in the presence of a third friend. When my sailor friend – let’s call her Joanna — referred to her boat as “she”, the other friend – let’s call her Lily – objected. Lily, who is about 15 years my junior, and who has to my knowledge never been on a sailboat of any size, opined that the practice of using feminine pronouns to refer to boats & ships is both antiquated and sexist. Joanna laughed, said something insulting and funny to Lily which I will not attempt to replicate here, and ordered another round of drinks while saying she was too old to worry about shit like this.
So I thought I would start a thread about this issue. Is anyone bothered by the practice Lily objected to? If so, why exactly?
A sailor friend of mine once told me that ships are “she” because they are expensive, high-maintenance, and always have a lot of men around them. I imagine that’s a common jape among nautical types.
Personally, I don’t find it offensive. It could as easily be interpreted as a compliment as it could a denigration. More easily, in fact.
No, it is absolutely an honorific. Comes from the same British roots as referring to a country as “she.” Your sailor friend was just breaking balls, it may be that sailors joke about the origin coming from that, but it’s definitely NOT historical fact.
I dictated the OP on account of my legal blindness. Sometimes the iPhone’s dictation does weird things. I listened to it and did not discover the extra E vet the algorithm mysteriously inserted, and as the misspelling and the proper word are homophones, I did not notice until Your Wisecrack cause me to go through the thread title letter by letter.
I will do everything possible to find a hapless hobbit, murder it, and have its eyes transplanted into my skull if that will make you feel any better.
In Spanish they’re he if large, she if small. A lifeboat is a she, the large boat which carries it is a he. So long as our lifeboats aren’t automatically expected to cook and clean and English ships aren’t expected to pamper their male sailors, I’m fine with both.
Skald, darling, kindly refrain from murdering any hobbits. Well, unless you find one who can’t cook despite being taller than knee-height to an adult hobbit. If such an aberration exists, I can lend you my cleaver.
Beloved, my hatred of halflings is long standing. Everybody knows that it was I who murdered Lotho Sackville-Baggins and framed Wormtongue for it.
And as there were no meddling kids around, I totally got away with it. The only thing that bothers me is that pippin survived and went on to inspire musicals .
Isn’t everything in Spanish a he or she though? Gendered objects in English seem to be limited to boats, which is kind of odd by itself…something to do with olde figureheads?
I’ve never been comfortable with referring to ships or nations or whatever else as “she.” It seems to incorporate a bundle of assumptions and privileges and prejudices together as well as very troubling parallels between human women and inanimate objects or concepts.
When I was getting my forklift certification, the guy teaching us said you should handle the controls like you handle a woman: gently but firmly. It was pretty inappropriate and one of the other women reported him and he was reprimanded.
I feel like calling a boat or a car “she” is like that. Like it’s a beautiful and graceful thing that you possess and control. It’s in poor taste and society should be catching on by now.
“She” seems right, given so many ships have girls names.
Hell when I was a kid “Subaru and Cadillac” we’re tough for the littlest kids to pronounce, so the cars were named “snow white” for the Sub and “Goldie” for the Caddy…and Mom and Dad always called the cars she.
Ever since childhood, I’ve called my cars and bikes she. and I name my guitars after women I’ve known.
So you would be offended by a 59-year-old woman, like the one mentioned in the OP, referring to her dream sailboat as she? If you were an apprentice on her boat, you would feel harassed by her choice of pronoun?
I don’t know about boats, but my ride is a he. Mainly because he’s an asshole and I am always trying to figure out his idiocy. And he forgets our anniversary. Every. Year.
( see how well that works???)
I’m offended that while women are waking up to the pervasive sexism ingrained in our culture, some people want to pretend it doesn’t exist and we are just boo-hooing about our hurt fee-fees like the irrational women you think we are.
At no point have I called you or any other woman your rational. You are mistaken if you believe I am defending the practice. My intent in the post you responded to was to ask whether you would have been offended by Joanna’s use of feminine pronouns to refer to the sailboats she races and would like to own, and whether you would have complained about her use of the term given her sex. I haven’t given my opinion on whether ships & boats should be referred to by feminine pronouns. I have given an example of one woman who is offended by it and another who is not. I myself do not do so, partly because I don’t spend time on boats & ships in the first place but mostly because I dislike personifying inanimate objects. I am forever arguing with other blind people because I refuse to call Siri “she”. To me, Siri is nothing but a robot I often dislike, and definitely in it.
It’s difficult to say for certain, but likely ships are ‘shes’ because they are equated with mothers and wives. We know that at least as far back as the 14th century it was common to name a ship after wives, mothers and more rarely daughters. Naming them after goddesses was an even earlier tradition. Why is always conjecture, but since we still do it, we can just ask people that do why. The two reasons are as a tribute to the person and as superstition. Male names are considered fickle and dangerous, while female names are considered safe and protective. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that our ancestors felt the same way. A ship named after Thor is asking for trouble and one named after Freya is pleading for succor.
I would ask what you find so unbelievable about the OP, but I have Smurfs to turn into gold. Or maybe to bake into a pie. It all depends on how many I can catch in the traps before Papa and Sassette figure out a way to rescue the rest of the village.
and I name my guitars after women I’ve known.