So military officers aren’t supposed to fraternise with the soldiers under their command, to maintain discipline, etc.
“Fraternisation” comes from the Latin for “brother.”
Is there an equivalent word when it’s a female officer, or is “fraternisation” the general word?
“Fraternization” is the general word.
A word’s origin is irrelevant to its current meaning. You can come up with many examples of words that no longer have any connection with the original meaning (for instance, “The statue has a northward orientation”).
Sororiterization?
The word is “sororization”. It’s in Webster’s 2nd Unabridged (not sure about the 3rd), but isn’t used at all, as far as I can tell.
We just use “fraternization” for any inappropriate relationship (usually sexual) between members.
Fraternization is the general term, in part because English lacks non-gendered terms for humanity, and thus uses the male in its place. And in part because it seems silly to make up a new word for the same activity just because we now let girls be soldiers.
That non-gendered term thing explained:
Say I am describing the process of getting on a bus, and I am describing the actions a rider would take. Now I want to use a pronoun to refer to that rider.
“It” just sounds wrong in that context. “It then pays the fare.” Other languages have terminology that works there and is non-gendered, but English doesn’t.
Other languages are also far less hung up on the genderedness of words. It is no problem at all to them to refer to a maid with a male pronoun, because the word for servant is “male” in their language. Because of this hang-up, people have tried to construct some non-gendered pronouns for English, most of which seem clunky and artificial. Others have just decided that female should be the default for a while, which flows better and seems less artificial.
But I don’t see anything wrong with saying “The rider will then board, and he will pay the fare.”
And all soldiers are brothers. Even the ones who don’t have a penis.
Women have been soldiers for a very long time. Many women have been on active duty in harm’s way for a very long time. The recent political decision is merely formally acknowledging this long-standing process.
We have had a non-clunky natural non-gendered pronoun for 500 years: “they”. “The rider will board and they will pay the fare.” “Everyone should bring their books”. “Some guy came up behind me and they hit me on the head for no reason”. “The patient just left, but they forgot their paperwork.”
I don’t disagree with your assertion but your examples leave a lot to be desired. In the first two cases you could simply leave out the ‘they’:
“The rider will board and they will pay the fare.”
The rider will board and will pay the fare.
“Some guy came up behind me and they hit me on the head for no reason”
Some guy came up behind me and hit me on the head for no reason
This is better:
“The patient just left, but they forgot their paperwork.”
The patient just left, but forgot their paperwork.
Just googled the word “sororization” (WITH quotes) and this thread was the second hit. (Gotta include the quotes, lest it include searches for words like sororize and solorization.)
Sure, in the samples I gave I included a noun and so the pronoun could be eliminated. But note that the suggested usage you give also includes a gender neutral pronoun “their”, to use prescriptivist school-marm grammar it would have to be:
“The patient just left but forgot his paperwork.”
since the indeterminate gender patient is singular and “their” is supposed to be plural.
“They left but forgot their paperwork” is perfectly good English, even if you are referring to a single person.
I disagree with the “non-clunky” part of using a plural pronoun in a singular context.
When forced to write sentences about people of unknown gender, I do my best to cast the sentence with a plural subject to make this problem (and the clunkiness of the singular “they”) go away.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:12, topic:661220”]
I disagree with the “non-clunky” part of using a plural pronoun in a singular context.
When forced to write sentences about people of unknown gender, I do my best to cast the sentence with a plural subject to make this problem (and the clunkiness of the singular “they”) go away.
[/QUOTE]
Depends on what you’re used to. I used to recast, like you do, but now I don’t bother as it sounds perfectly natural and non-clunky to me.
“Fraternization” has generally *not *referred to sexual relationships. In the military has most commonly been used to mean officers mixing socially with enlisted men, which I think has been considered a threat to discipline. This can, of course, include sexual relationships, but not usually.
Recall that the women’s equivalent to fraternity is sorority. Except at my alma mater, U. Penna, which has men’s and women’s fraternities.