Ic Diane Goss Farrell a congressman or a congresswoman?
My personal system is to use <job>man for a singular man, <job>woman for a singular woman, and <job>men for a group including both men and women, like Romance languages do. So I would say congresswoman. This is English, though: anything is acceptable! 
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I don’t believe there is an established ‘proper English’ way to this. But congresswoman is a word so that’s probably as proper as you can get.
Proper for what? If you’re writing for publication, the publisher will have a style manual that dictates which they use, and an editor will correct you if you violate that style.
If you’re writing a post on the SDMB, or a letter to your mother, or a book that you’re going to self-publish, then you can do whatever you please. As Vox says, this is English.
:smack: I ashamed of myself and consider myself a less worth SDMBer now! I totally forgot the most appropriate word of all: congresscritter. And I submit that “senatrix” would have been the coolest word ever if they hadn’t wussed out and gone with calling everyone “senators” after the first woman was elected.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
How about neither as she is not a member of Congress?
For what it’s worth: Most languages have distinct words for “human being” and “adult male human being”: homo/vir, anthropos/andros, adam/ish, Mann/Mensch, etc. In English, they converged to “man” and its predecessors in Anglo-Saxon times. But the combining form “-man” used to create words such as husbandman, landsman, salesman, journeyman, etc., including Congressman, derives from the first of these, and is traditionally used appropriately to describe a woman carrying out that occupation, holding that office, etc.
That being said, IMO it’s a matter of courtesy to women generally and those women who have over the last half century successfully penetrated and conquered traditionally male-only occupations and positions to use such forms as are non-patronizing to them. My observation would be that the presence or absence of a penis or breasts has little to do with the ability to successfully function in the legislative process, and distinguishing a female member of Congress as a Congresswoman is subtly denigrating to her. She deserves to be evaluated against the other 434 members of Congress, not merely the 20 or so with vaginas.
And having said that, I need to echo that it is an individual’s free choice. There are certain usages (“alright”, “to” and “too” used interchangeably) that are considered substandard in most written English. This is not one of them.
Can I inject one small hijack on a related pet peeve , though? The person elected to preside over business meetings of an organization is its Chairman – “Chairwoman” if there is some particular need to draw attention to her sex, or “Chairperson” if you need to be inclusive for reasons valid or irrelevant. He/she is not the "Chair" (except in certain circumstances, which I now explain.) The usage “Chair” of a person in this context refers to the individual currently presiding, whether it be the Chairman/-woman/-person or not. One addresses the Chair in proper Parliamentary form; if the Chairman wishes to speak to a motion as a member, he signals the Vice-Chairman or another to take the Chair and then addresses him/her after being recognized. It’s a subtle but meaningful distinction that should not be obscured by a desire to use an inclusive term – that’s what “Chairperson” was coined to do.
How 'bout representative?
I try to avoid both gender-specific terms and any awkward non-gender-specific replacements. There’s almost always some reasonable way to write around such problems.
Representative is more correct but should be capitalized when used in the Congressional sense.
A “she” is a representative, a congresswoman, or a congressperson. Capitalization is optional and depends on what style guide you are working with. The trend on all modern style guides is to lose the capital except as an integral part of the title. The president said, the congresswoman said.
Chair is perfectly acceptable in all cases. If chairperson was a coinage, then so was chair.
Technically, she’s both a congressman (like the rest of the chamber) & a congresswoman, in the same sense she’s (informally) a congresscritter, congresshominid, congresshaplorrhine, congresscutie (arguably), etc.
Terms like congressjew, congresscaucasian, & congresscelt are frowned upon.
No, she isn’t. Congressman was the default word only because of the sexist assumption that only men get elected to Congress. Even after 1916 when Jeanette Rankin got elected, the number of female representatives was so low that the use of the term congressman never went away.
But there is no correct use of the term congressmen to include females. You may hear it used, but it is always used incorrectly.
Answer to the OP: Yes.
No, it’s not. You just prefer not to, for whatever reason.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Bullshit! As Polycarp says, “man” in many forms was once understood to refer to all humanity, regardless of sex. In the 1960s feminists decided that such uses were sexist, and society has generally acceded to that view. But it remains a matter of preference or style.
So your blanket statement that
will not be true until you become emperor of the world, because, as several of us have pointed out (including Vox, I note on preview), there is no absolutely “correct” or “incorrect” in such matters.
I’ve noticed that in several cases like this, there’s a term which is both gender-neutral and more technically correct for reasons unrelated to gender. Strictly speaking, a “congressman” (or “congresswoman” or “congresscritter” or whatever) could just as easily be a senator as a representative, since the Senate and the House are both part of Congress, but “representative” makes it clear to which one is referring.
On a similar note, a “fireman” starts or maintains fires, while a person who puts them out is a “firefighter”, and a flight attendant’s primary job duty isn’t serving drinks, as “steward” or “stewardess” would imply.
Similarly my obscure word calendar included executrix - defined their as a female executioner.
This is true enough, but I don’t believe for one minute that “congressman” was originally intended to be gender neutral. Merriam-Webster dates the term to 1780 – there were no women in Congress at that time and would not be for many years. Most late 18th century people would be shocked at the idea of women in Congress…heck, they’d be shocked at the idea of women voting.
*Society had a problem with referring to women as “-men” well before the 1960s. Jeannette Rankin was elected in late 1916 and took office in 1917, and sure enough that same year the word “congresswoman” appeared.
Well, I’m sure the Romans had absolutely no intention of the word “senator” (in fact, it comes from the word for “old man”) being gender-neutral, but that’s commonly accepted, and the same goes for all other “-or” words. I have no problem with people using “-woman” (and I do in most cases myself, except where it sounds really stilted) or “-people”, but I also have no problem with people using “-man” or especially “-men” in all cases, either.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Tell me which style guides allow for the use of congressman as a term embracing both male and female representatives.