Speaking of terms that might be offensive, when we were working our way thru the endless Red Tape involved in getting legal/religious (in Poland, there is no meaningful legal seperation between Church & State, despite what the Polish Constitution might try to say) permission for a non-Catholic, non-Polish, non-EU Citizen (me) to marry a Catholic Polish woman (Mrs. Nonesutch) I was shocked to hear, in a Polish court of law, that my fiancee, a 44 year-old, educated, professional Polish civil servant with an incredibly responsible 20+ year career in Law Enforcement, was referred to, over and over again, in official Polish legal terms, as a “Stara Panno” which translates as “Old Miss” obviously the equal of the English language version of an “Old Maid”.
This is in 2019, in official, legal government documents…
But I will say, (and sincerely, this is NOT directed to you specifically, you seem like a nice enough person as well) that in 2019’s America, and for damn sure certain right here on the good ol’ Straight Dope, that people who are clearly, desperately eager to take offense at some trivial, meaningless percieved slight are virtually never going to be disappointed.
I am SO mollyfocking grateful to be halfway around the world from America’s poisonous, corrosive, hyper-partisan, “HELP, HELP I’M BEING OPPRESSED!!!” victim mentality, it is a miserable, exhausting way to live.
Well, there you have it. If the use of the term “old maid” shocks you, you see how language makes a difference in confronting sexism. Like how a woman might object to being labeled as an old maid when she chose to remain single. Or that a woman might object being lumped into the presumably unfortunate category of the childless, when not having children is something she willingly chose.
How do expect such things as prejudice to change if you don’t confront them? Black lives matter. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it. I am woman, hear me roar.
Say what you want about America, but at least we don’t use the term “old maid” in our court documents.
Poland doesn’t have murderous wierdos shooting up supermarkets filled with innocent people, and then have self-loathing, upper middle-class, college educated white people (Smartest, Hippest!!!) frantically calling other white people who they have never met before but merely didn’t vote the way they did “NAZIS!!!” and then smugly patting themselves on the back for being so insightful. and fearless.
Some years ago, when I first got Lasik, I found the joy of actually seeing stuff with a mask and snorkel. I spent every weekend at one of the nearby rivers. Not one outing went by that I didn’t pull at least one struggling small child out of danger. Parents were nowhere in sight, before or after. At one very popular spot in the middle of a city, I took up a post in an eddy and plucked them out as fast as I could. I have no idea why there aren’t multiple drownings all summer.
/hijack of hijack
A man’s status of having (il)legitimate children - or not - is rarely if ever mentioned or even noted.
A woman’s status (how many children & their ages) is pretty much the 1st thing, and often the only, that’s noted. Read newspaper bios about Olympic athletes, if you don’t believe me and want hard data.
One never speaks of inanimate objects as being “lifeless”, though they obviously are. The term is only used to refer to things that are normally alive, or in the ‘lifelessly’ form to refer to things that normally move in a way that resembles a living thing.
So the construction definitely has the implication that the person using the term thinks that the quantity of the thing in question is less than the expected amount. If you’re a person who is bothered by the implication that you’re not living up to your child-production obligations, then it’s not illogical to find the term vaguely annoying and elect not to use it.
