De-genderfication of language.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Has anyone else noticed this? It seems that as time has gone on, many of the gender-specific words in English are disappearing. Women are more often then not referred to as actors, rather than actresses. When was the last time you heard a woman being called an “authoress”? I once read an old Scientific American article from the turn of the century discussing the lecture tour of a noted American “doctoress”.
There was a brief backlash against this during the 60’s and 70’s. Then it was not that we should be equal, but that we should have our own separate words for more things, and change the spellings of others, so as to have no masculine connection (i.e. womyn). Thankfully this has died out.

can you guys think of anymore examples of this de-genderfication? Is it a completely good thing? What are its long-term effects going to be?

2

I think the long term effects are going to be zip, beyond the purely superficial effects of people using different words to communicate.

After all, it’s not like women in societies which have naturally gender-neutral terms for people have had any demonstrable advantage over women in which every word has a gender.

Better to focus on tangibles like pay-equity directly-- they’re not going to just logically follow from modifying the language.

3

English being the bastard language that it is, having borrowed so many words… You would think that the genderosity of nouns would’ve carried over from Spanish and French and whatever else.

The “actor” thingy, “commedian” as opposed to commedianne, ass wipe replacing both bitch and son of a bitch. his/her being used as one word in textbooks and reference material, what else…?

I’ll be back.