I disagree. The president is “the President” and a male spouse (or partner) regardless of the president’s gender is still “first Gentleman”. Alternatively, the “first consort” or “president’s consort” is as at least as correct and perhaps more so, as “first gentleman” and may be the best and most accurate honorific.
If the male President’s male spouse is “first gentleman”, then where does the President stand in order of social precedence? It doesn’t seem to make sense to me that the President would have a lower social status than his non-Presidential spouse.
when we had a female governor I think most people just called him the governor’s husband. But he pretty much stayed out of sight for her 4 years in office.
As I’ve said in my previous posts to this thread, I think the entire concept of a First Lady (in the U.S.) is becoming obsolete. It’s been becoming obsolete for at least the last hundred years. It relies on the following old-fashioned assumptions:
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The political officeholder is male. No woman can be elected to this position. In fact none can even vote.
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The spouse of the officeholder (who is female, of course) has no other job than running a household. That’s obviously true because no woman does anything except run a household. She has nothing to do while her spouse holds office except to serve as hostess to the social events. She should publicly avow no political positions except the most inoffensive ones. Her job is to fade into the background and serve as little wifey.
The notion of a First Lady is hopelessly out of date. In many other countries most voters and most reporters barely even know what the family situation of the country’s leader is. The position of the First Family is now a terrible situation. We all know, of course, that the spouse and children of the President are people with their own political positions, their own jobs, and their own personal habits, but we’re supposed to pretend that they don’t when they are reported on. This means that every once in a while some political pundit thinks they can be funny when they make some snide comment on the family which the family isn’t allowed to reply to.
Perhaps we can agree that, in order to be elected president of the US, a man has to do things that disqualify him from claiming the label of “gentleman”. That solves the problem!
“Consort of the President” or “First Consort” would make perfect sense and would be correct in every way, no matter what the gender of the President or Consort. So naturally that’s a term that’ll never catch on.
Personally, I believe almost every modern president is or was an atheist, but won’t admit it. I’ll exempt Carter and Reagan.
Which is why Michelle Obama is still very highly featured, with the title First Lady. And it’s why a former First Lady is a very good candidate for President herself.
You may think it should be outdated, but it’s not. The First Lady has a level of unofficial political power. We know more about what Michelle Obama does than we do about Joe Biden, who actually officially has some power.
The person we will be talking about if Clinton wins would be Bill Clinton. Do you think he’s going to just hide in the background? (Though I hope we get rid of the cumbersome First Gentleman and just go with First Man.)
It’s also an old royal term that most in the U.S. wouldn’t even be familiar with. I didn’t even know it actually referred to the spouse of a reigning monarch.
And, it may be well past the time of George Washington, but are we okay with associating the Presidency with a term of royalty?
No. Third person genderless impersonal pronoun. Replaces a noun that has no gender.
Try this out for size: “I’m going to a new doctor. I hope it has a better idea of what’s wrong with me than the last one.”
There’s a reason why “singular they” exists.
What makes you so sure Bush the Younger and Clinton were atheists considering how avowedly religious they were?
The Reagans didn’t go to church and had no answer for why they didn’t just have a minister come to the White House. I don’t think either was religious (Reagan’s mother was very religious).
current president of Argentina was their first lady right before becoming president. And she’s the 2nd former first lady there to become president.
BigT, when I say that the concept is outdated, I don’t mean that it doesn’t exist anymore. I mean that it clashes horribly with modern ideas. Obviously there are some people who think it makes sense. There are other people, mostly in the news media, who don’t personally think it makes sense but have to have something to write news stories about and so pretend that it does make sense. Then there are a lot of people who sort of go along with the idea of the First Lady because they don’t bother to think about the contradictions in any of their concepts. I don’t mean this entirely as a criticism of them. Everyone has some contradictions in their underlying philosophical/religious/political/cultural assumptions. Some people don’t think about their underlying assumptions at all and consequently have assumptions that aren’t remotely consistent. Some people think hard about their underlying assumptions and have less contradictions in them, although even them have some inconsistencies. I think that if everyone really thought carefully about what the concept of a First Lady implies, they would realize that it doesn’t match other modern concepts.
I’d just like to add that “first officer” is the second in command on aircraft, (as well as the Enterprise for you trekkies) so I don’t think first gentleman would imply any precedence over the commander in chief.
I for one, welcome your pronoun and title-changing overlords.
Actually, what I really welcome is the day people are discussing what to call the same-sex spouse of a sitting president, who him or herself was formerly president. Actually, I never want to hear it, it sounds really foolish and boring, and it will be awesome if the answer is a simple first name, (And the name is something like Muhummed Ben Israel!) but as a citizen of the country “sleeping with the elephant”, I know it will be another waste of bandwidth when that discussion becomes relevant.
What about a gender fluid President, in an unmarried spousal relationship with an equally gender fluid partner.
If people are going to get bent out of shape about what to call people it means you are paying attention to appearances rather than issues. I did like Jon Stewart’s question to Hillary Clinton,
"Bill Clinton’s legacy “Great American President” or “Least Attractive First Lady?”