I don’t hear the word “comedienne” any more, my understanding being that the comedy industry has collectively stopped using that word, and just prefers “comedian,” regardless of the sexual identity of the performer. I believe the same may be true for “Actress.”
What about “seamstress”? Do I just say “tailor” now?
If my friend Jenny throws a fabulous Academy Awards party, do I tell her she’s a great host now? Or is it still acceptable to say “hostess”?
Quite: instead of having their own terms, women have been upgraded to honorary men. Enjoy.
Funny it never happens the other way around.
I think the terms are generally falling out of favor. However, they’re still used for jobs where people think the gender is important (eg actresses are treated very differently than actors) and for some jobs that are heavily female (eg seamstress).
While “nurse” and “secretary” don’t have outright masculine and feminine terms in English, I just finished reading a book where the author needed to tell us about a “male secretary”, almost as if the terms are viewed as feminine by some people and you need to attach the adjective “male” when a secretary is not female.
I know a steward can fly the friendly skies just like a stewardess, but the word steward has other meanings (eg union steward, someone who serves food, etc) so referring to a steward (either the gender is not relevant, or you want to mention they are male) can get confusing. A female union steward would never be referred to as a stewardess.
I think there are very few words that are outright “masculine” the same way. Actor is probably the most obvious example of such a word.
Yes, the gendered forms of profession titles are falling by the wayside. Because we’re talking about a natural language, the process is a little sloppy. By and large, it’s the masculine forms being adopted, although “nurse” is strongly female historically and is being adopted for male and female people in that profession (you seldom hear “male nurse” anymore, they’re just nurses).
I think actress will stay around for a while, if only because of the Oscars.
It has. Bank Tellers and nurses used to be only men; now they are more often women.
Nice try, but flunko.
Is this a Weinstein joke?
No, a tailor makes men’s clothing, a seamstress makes women’s clothes. A woman who makes men’s clothing is still a tailor; a man who makes women’s clothing is a dressmaker, which is gender neutral so it can apply women too. “Seamster” is not a word, and the suffix “ess” is almost always reserved for females in English. Marquess is the only exception I can think of off hand.
Nope, not a flunko. At least, not as I read it. What I interpreted the post to being saying is that the term for females never gets expanded to males, but it always goes the other way. You don’t see male performers calling themselves actresses or male heroes being called heroines and so forth, though you will see women called heroes and actors. …usually it seems calling a man by any female term is an insult
I get it for tellers, but are you saying men, say before Florence Nightingale’s time, who assisted in caring for the sick were called “nurses”?
What about “wet nurse”? - pretty sure those were only women.
“Nurse” has crossed the gender line at least once. So has “secretary” - used to be a male occupation, post WWII it became largely female.
I don’t know about BF (Before Florence), but Walt Whitman is often described as having worked as a nurse during the American Civil War.
mmm
That’s a good point, but I work in the theatre/film/tv world, and most women I know (including my wife, who is a performer) hate the term “actress”. The Oscars may very well default to “Female Actor” or something similar, and it may happen sooner than you think.
I think at least sometimes they were. Though I don’t think there was actual training or officialness to the title of nurse prior to Nightingale (in England). Here is a link that seems to indicate a male called nurse. But I’ve only read a small except, so may be misunderstanding.
Do they still publish that magazine Blactress? I don’t think there was ever a Blacktor.
How are you getting that the nurse is a man? I took the reference to “man” to be the sick person, not the caretakers. It is, I think, at best ambiguous.
Militaries have typically used many men in the role of “nurse” since probably forever. Which not to say there were absolutely no women involved, but militaries are largely male in all roles.
Most of the male nurses I know in my age group came out of the military - Navy, Army, that sort of thing.
No. I’m talking about professionally. Female-only roles and male-only roles. Female actors (actresses) above a certain age can’t get parts except “character” parts. Etc.
And you rarely hear about people visiting a dominator. My spellchecker doesn’t even recognize it.
I don’t think many people use the term comedian anymore. They’re more often referred to as comics now. In my day a comic was something found in the Sunday newspapers.