In Her Own Words:

addressing a grown-ass woman as a girl

Grown-ass, indeed.

Still wondering how, after you've personally itemized all of the things the mediation program requires, that anyone could call it "free".

Some "language policing" would seem to be in order.

We pretend that handcuffs and jailhouse bars are softer by calling the restrained, "detainee".
That's just sick.

I don't think I could call you "sugar tits" without blushing, so how about:

"Hot Vampiric Mistress?"

So I think it’s mostly about context. If it’s an older gentleman out and about or pretty much anywhere but in a work environment I think it’s definitely cute.

Now if I’m an office work environment....not so much. I’ve worked with some real “Mad Men” kinda guys. Them calling me “girls” or even a woman superior calling me a “Girl” feels kinda condescending. But I’d probably not make a big fuss about it - still, I think it’s about context with this one.

The only term I have ever objected to in the work environment is “female”

For some reason it became common in the military in the 80’s to refer to the women as “females”.

I think there is something very dehumanizing about it. Like you were sorting rats in a lab to prevent reproduction or sexing kittens at the pound.

I haven't heard women in an office or professional setting referred to as "girls" in decades - outside of a "Mad Men" episode; especially by men.

Like you were sorting rats in a lab to prevent reproduction or sexing kittens at the pound. ~ Isab at July 30, 2019 5:42 AM

Yeah, "female" always seemed an awkward construct for referring to specific people or face-to-face. Like one of those ridiculous science fiction shows where the female aliens are not women, so "female" is used.

Well said, Feebie.

Also Isab. (What you said reminded me of when I was a preteen and I found it horrible when I read a story by Roald Dahl about his dinner at the White House and he referred to "several females at the table." I couldn't put my feelings into words at the time, though.)

However, I think it's important to remember that many of us would very much like a return to adult formality in general, if only so that young people will be less likely to regard us with contempt. (Is it any surprise that so many teens refuse to act more mature as they age, when they're surrounded by adults with no sense of adult decorum - or a real work ethic?)

Different example: Many white men may call each other "boys," regardless of rank, but maybe they shouldn't, since they could easily slip up one day and call a black man "boy." (Do I really need to spell out the reason it's always wrong to do THAT?)

You can't satisfy the language police. If they succeed in wiping out "girls", it won't be long before they decide that "women" is derogatory. A story: In the competitive ballroom dancing world, it is standard for women to be referred to as "ladies" and men as "gentlemen". A competition organizer I knew once got into a big argument with a female dancer who insisted that the word "lady" meant "prostitute". She wanted to be listed under her own separate category in the comp program! Those things are computer generated, and creating a separate listing, aside from the sheer stupidity, would have meant the organizer having hand-edit the program, a significant amount of additional work, and then that would have caused further difficulty with the score-keeping database.

I blame the NAACP for some of this silliness. They went through a period back in the '60s where they were changing their minds every year or so about how black people should referred to.

I find the term "problematic" problematic.

Who decides what is objectively "problematic"? "I have a problem with that" is more accurate. "I don't like it" is more accurate still. At least with that phrasing we know where the "problem" is.

You know you can't say "more accurate," right? (grin)

One CAN say "closer to accurate," though.

Oh, and Cousin Dave...it seems to me, at least, that while for a time, people were supposed to say "African American" and not "black," hardly anyone objects any more if "black" is used on informal occasions. (I can't remember the last time anyone DID object.)

That doesn't change the fact that, for whatever reason, one does not refer (in the U.S., anyway) to people from India as "black," no matter how dark-skinned they might be. (But I don't remember hearing of anyone who has committed that mistake, either.)

I blame the NAACP for some of this silliness. They went through a period back in the '60s where they were changing their minds every year or so about how black people should referred to.
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I don't understand that. All I remember hearing is that the words "Negro," "darky," and "colored," got banned in favor of "black." "People of color" is not a term that applies only to black people. So, from 1960 to 1990 or so, what term other than "black" WAS acceptable to black people?

When this sort of thing comes up, I always think of Sidney Poitier's answer: They call me MISTER Tibbs. If you're offended by being called $X, then gently correct the person.

https://youtu.be/i6n8VyqaCQ4?t=45

Of course, these are the sorts who will also object to being addressed by wait staff as "you guys".

My sister jumped down my throat about this once. I stopped and thought about it and came to the conclusion my sister is crazy and ignore her more often now.

No Feebie the only context is how woke the woman is. Doesn't matter what the age of the guy is or even that of the girl.

By definition women are oppressed. Can't see how that works in the US these days? Too bad. As an article of faith women are oppressed. Hence microagressions. You can't see it but it has to be there. This is just another example of those who wish to be offended finding some new way to be offended.

Darth, as I said, what's wrong with demanding a return to old-fashioned adult formality?

I seldom eat out. However, I don't remember ANY server saying "you guys." Maybe they're more likely to do that with an all-male group.

"Guys" is just a typical example of American linguistic laziness and sloppiness, IMO. It's almost like the profanity that comes up in almost every sentence in "A Star is Born" (2018) - which I saw last night. Not that it wasn't a good movie, but still...

"Still wondering how, after you've personally itemized all of the things the mediation program requires, that anyone could call it 'free.'"

It is free to Los Angeles residents. We volunteers mediate their disputes free of charge.

Every LAPD call costs at minimum $50 per hour per officer ($100 hour) for the lowest level officers. People call the cops on their neighbors 8, 20, 40, 100 times a year. Our resolutions stop that.

Funding the program with the workspaces so volunteers can come in and take cases is not an extravagance; it's a cost-savings.

Was it really necessary to sneer at this and make me explain this in a post that had nothing to do with it?

I'll ask "what're you boys up to" frequently when hubs has people over and I wander into the man cave for a beer. Good Lord.

Well said, sugar tits. Who wants to be uptight when out having fun, anyway?

Good work on keeping that program from going tits up; it really helps people.

You can't use "females" or "women" to address a group, as commenters here have noted above, because it sounds weird. The other option, which I use, is "ladies" or "gentlemen" but the Left doesn't like those terms either, because "ladies" has implications that one should show forth decorum and manners, which they reject, and they think the terms are elitist (only rich people are "gentlemen").
Most of the time servers around here just say "what can I get you" or "are you ready to order"? Where "you" refers to whomever. I think the southern "Ya'll" is a great option but the Left thinks that is redneck and only can be used by trump supporter racists (never mind that blacks say Ya'll).
When the Left rules out all viable forms of communication, it is hard to take them seriously.

> Who decides what is
> objectively "problematic"?

The same people who know if it's sustainable.

I think the southern "Ya'll" is a great option but the Left thinks that is redneck

Yinz? but that's...ummm...problematic as well. Steel worker/coal miner dialect.

https://www.pennlive.com/life/2016/09/pittsburghese_talk_like_pittsb.html

"I don't understand that. All I remember hearing is that the words "Negro," "darky," and "colored," got banned in favor of "black." "

Actually "colored" is what they started out with. (After all, the acronym does stand for "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People". They went to "Negro", then "black", then "African-American", then "Afro-American", then back to "black" again, and at some point around 1970 people stopped caring what they thought. (There used to be an organization in the U.S. called the United Negro College Fund, and they continued to use that name well into the 1970s. They were known for their TV commercials with their well-chosen motto, "We're looking for a hand up, not a handout.")

Yeah, terms like "darky" and "spook", and "boy" (when addressed to a black men) are obviously offensive today, because they were always meant to be. I don't know of anyone who would disagree. I don't know if a black person would be offended as being referred to as "Negro", since that was once the preferred term. They might just look at you funny since the word is pretty much obsolete now.

I dislike "female" because I don't associate it with the military. To me, it's cop-talk and it's picked up by inmates. I agree that it's often dehumanizing. At best, it has a clinical ring that is very unpleasant when you're talking about crimes against women.

That said, I've never attempted to "correct" anyone who used it.

"You go, girl!!"
(or should I say, 'sugartits' :)

@Cousin Dave:

"Black" was once an insult. "Negro" (pronounced knee-grow) was considered the most correct and a polite term in the north, from Colonial days up to the 1960's. But with a southern accent, it's most easily pronounced as "nigger". I'm not sure when that became an insult in the south, beyond the insult that was inherent in _any_ way of referring to blacks by a speaker who believed that they were racially inferior. When Mark Twain did his best to reproduce mid-19th Century colloquial southern speed in _Huckleberry Finn_, sometimes a character would use it as an insult, but more often it was simply descriptive. (There were _many_ much more insulting terms, but IIRC, Twain avoided them.)

But when northern racists (who could easily pronounce knee-grow if they wanted to) picked up the N-word, it was definitely intended as an insult. By the 20th Century, it was an insult anywhere. Most blacks have a strong southern accent, and have trouble pronouncing "negro" without slipping into the insulting term - and when they gained enough confidence in the 1960's to push back on being called the N-word, they had to ask their northern white allies to join them in not using "negro".

A side note: in the 1960's, if the TV cameras were rolling, some white southerners would concentrate and pronounce it "nigra", like they were trying but were incapable of saying "knee" and "grow" together - and thus the worst racists in official positions identified themselves .

"Colored" was once the polite term for blacks in the south, on the rare occasions that southern whites bothered being polite. It was used by blacks to describe themselves, and any northern white who bothered to learn anything about blacks would know this. So in 1909, Yankees (W.E.B DuBois was black but still a Yankee) formed the NAACP and used "Colored People". (Others could choose differently. In 1944, a group of black college presidents and professors founded the United Negro College Fund, showing off their education by pronouncing knee-grow.) In the 1960's, a more radical generation rejected "colored", as the term used by both racists pretending to be fair, and by previous generations of blacks who had to go along with a whole lot of crap just to survive.

So now they had rid themselves of both the northern and southern polite terms for their race, and needed a new term - and there were two main camps. One group wanted to be called "African-Americans", but that's too long to work in common speech. (And that's without considering the logical problems - you sound really stupid calling a Nigerian who immigrated to Great Britain an "African American", and why isn't Charlize Theron an actual African American?) For a little while, they tried to promote "Afro-American", but it's still too long. The other group reclaimed "black" - short and descriptive, and who cares that some old folks on the wrong side of history once used it as a insult.

Actually "colored" is what they started out with. (After all, the acronym does stand for "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People".
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Which was formed in 1909. Not the 1960s.
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They went to "Negro",
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Also well before the 1960s.

I don't know just when "Negro" started being rejected by black people (in casual conversation, that is, as opposed to names of organizations) in favor of "black." But it was likely well before 1970.

(Of course, white journalists and other white writers were slower to change their ways, well into the early 1970s or so. It's also a little eerie when you come across a character in a 1960s American children's novel who is clearly white, in the illustrations, but who is referred to as "dark" just because of her hair. The implication is that there was no need to spell that out, in the text, because so many schools and neighborhoods weren't really integrated back then anyway, so of COURSE it wasn't a reference to her skin. However, I know that that old use of the word was likely dropped - at least in books for preteens and younger kids - as early as 1969. Though I don't remember seeing the word used to mean "dark-faced" in more than one book. Nowadays, the writer would likely just refer directly to that character's ethnicity - or possible ethnicity.)

I admit I forgot about "Afro-American," but that was pretty short-lived. I'd NEVER heard of "African-American" being used before 1990. So maybe that was even shorter-lived.

OK, so don't call them "girls"

What then?

Women? as in "What can I get you women?" Sounds rather impersonal, doesn't it?

Or, how about, "What can I get you ladies?" Holy cow - don't do that they will complain about that too. Many feminists don't like "Ladies' room." They prefer "Women's room."

And, under no circumstance call them "Ma'am" they will tar and feather you!

Best to not address them at all - just "what will you have?"

And, then they will leave you a small tip for not being friendly enough.

P.S. Maybe it is me; but, I'd watch out for that Michael Flood guy - saying that "girls" has creepy sexual undertones. Since when?

— “Negro" (pronounced knee-grow)

Do you often run into people who don’t know how to pronounce this word?

Feebie: An aspect of Appalachian dialect is that words ending in "-ow" are often pronounced as if the ending was "-er". For instance, my grandmother pronounced "window" as "winder", and "barrow" (wheelbarrow) as "barrer." In my parents' generation, it was considered ignorant and they tried hard to get away from it, but I remember hearing it around some of the older folks.

As a more general observation, a lot of ethnic-based insults have fallen from use during my lifetime. I recall hearing Italians referred to as "wops", and Polish jokes, which were still a thing back then, often used the word "Polack".

Well, I don't call women "girls" I call them "ladies" so I guess I've got my virtue quota for the day.

Girl, you are truly awesome, you sugar-titted, godless harlot ginger!

Do you often run into people who don’t know how to pronounce this word? ~ Feebie at July 30, 2019 6:31 PM

My Southern grandmother pronounced it "nigra." She was not well-educated, to CD's point. My father and uncle, both better educated, largely abandoned that wording and pronunciation and stuck with "black."

Interesting Conan & Cousin Dave.

Speaking of accents...

In "Mary Poppins" (the book) it becomes clear, in more than one scene, that she's a Cockney. That is, she pronounces sparrow as "sparrer." Plus, in the second chapter, when she and Bert enter the country scene through the chalk drawing on the sidewalk and their clothes transform, HER fantasy of an elegant outfit is one that includes real diamonds and..."artificial silk"! (That is, rayon.) I mean, why not REAL silk?

charles, just how often do those things happen to you in real life? Or to any waiter who says "ladies"?

From 1995 (this is also on page 26 of "Miss Manners Rescues Civilization" - OK, so it's not quite the same subject matter):

"Dear Miss Manners, All the complaints cited by the man who wrote you about the travails of being a '90s white male are decades-old stereotypes. (Well, maybe the stereotype of the distraught mother who was angry because he tried to rescue her child is only a few years old.) I was sucked into that sort of thing in 1917 or '18 and stopped in revulsion. I could see what I was doing to others, but that was not what bothered me. What was happening to me was what I was not going to allow. And since then, I have opposed all forms of exploitation and oppression. Including such stereotyping. The only confrontational African-American I encountered was about 1970, a time when there was a strong racist counterattack. If I treat a person as an equal, I find I'm accepted with equal courtesy. The confrontational woman who doesn't want the door held is also one I've never met. Though I've always had a reply ready ('I do it for men, too'), I've never had to use it. Some women have complimented me on my old-fashioned courtesy, so rare these days. I think the stories are excuses for his own confrontational attitudes and feelings of persecution..."

If you like, here's the complaining column that LW was responding to:

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/461879/POLITICALLY-CORRECT-BIGOTRY-BRINGS-GRIEF.html

No, these aren't fake stories Lenona.

On the women yelling at men who hold doors open, yes it has happened to me. It isn't a frequent thing by any stretch of the imagination. But it does happen. I think I've had that happen three times. Having a rebuttal is of no help. The idiot just yells her head off and then leaves. She isn't going to listen to anything you say.

On the woman yelling at a guy helping her kids, this is a stereotype because it is so common.

On the 'girls' issue, I already shared by story about my sister yelling at me over this.

On the racist and confrontational black, yes that happens too. More often than the stupid feminist in my experience. The only time it actually hurt I had a friend who was a black woman. Normally I didn't have any issues with her. Obviously if I did we wouldn't have been friends. Anyway the company we worked at hired a cute young black guy and she went 'ghetto'. I had to avoid her till Calvin quit to find a different job. (Nothing to do with her. Just what happened.) To some extent it was funny because her actions clearly weren't thought out. They were instinctual. He didn't respond well to her actions. He was a rather sophisticated fellow so the racist ghetto black thing didn't really work for him.

People aren't making these things up. They do happen. Miss Manners is right you should recognize these are bad people and not everyone is a bad person. But these bad actions are condoned. That really isn't debatable.

"I mean, why not REAL silk?"

Hmm. I'm speculating: Acetate rayon, which is probably what was referred to, is actually quite luxurious. (There was, briefly, a fad for acetate men's shirts in the mid-1970s, and as a high school student, I had a few.) It also has the advantage that dye can be made permanent, so exotic patterns are possible and will not fade.

Acetate rayon became popular in the late 1920s and persisted until WWII. I see on Wikipedia that the first Mary Poppins book was published in 1934, so it falls in that timeframe. And I imagine that real silk was much harder to obtain back then.

Unfortunately, acetate is also incredibly fragile. It is easily damaged by heat, such as by standing too close to a stove, or from cigarette ashes. It pretty much has to be hand laundered, and it's iffy as to whether it will survive a dryer even on low heat. During WWII, pretty much all production of artificial fibers went to war materiel, so there was none available in the consumer market for the duration. After the war, two things happened: (1) Machine laundering started to replace hand laundering in a lot of households. (2) Nylon became available. I'll hazard a guess that these two factors drove acetate off the market for most garments.

(All of my acetate shirts eventually died horrible deaths. An overheating dryer got several of them. Another one fell victim to an acetone spill in chemistry lab. I ruined one by standing too close to a gas space heater.)

Hmm. I'm speculating: Acetate rayon, which is probably what was referred to, is actually quite luxurious.
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So are diamonds. Which she couldn't really afford - but they were there.

And silk wasn't economically off-limits even to, at least, some working-class people. Thirty years earlier. (I know because there was a well-known American murder case in 1906; the victim was working-class but wore a silk blouse.)

My point was that if she weren't a Cockney, her fantasy would likely have included real silk.

No, these aren't fake stories Lenona.
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Read that again. I didn't say they were fake. I merely questioned how OFTEN they happened.

It certainly doesn't surprise me when hysterical, ungrateful mother stories turn up at, say, the Bratfree website. (While they sometimes use the positive term PNB - Parent, Not Breeder - they seldom bother singing the praises of parents who actually do their jobs and have good manners - presumably because they take such parents for granted.) But even the posters THERE don't necessarily claim that they happen more than a fraction of the time when a male stranger rescues a kid from being run over or what have you.

How often do they need to happen Lenona? The person you quoted clearly dismissed them as fantasies that don't really happen. I listed down my rough incidence rate for the different situations. Your risk of getting your house broken into is actually quite small, but people still lock their doors. Same with your risk of other crimes. Just because an incident rate is low doesn't mean it is insignificant.

There is a great Gary larson cartoon: God has just finished making the Earth and has like a salt shaker he is shaking adding "jerks" for seasoning. There is a small % of them everywhere. Getting offended for using "ladies" is just one flavor of jerk. Lady in front of me at grocery would not accept that the coupon she just got from checkout would not work until the next day. I tried to warn a lady (not very lady-like) in the parking lot that a car was coming--she yelled back that she "had the right of way". Yeah, put that on your tombstone.

"Was it really necessary to sneer at this and make me explain this in a post that had nothing to do with it?"

Here you go: "I've been doing that -- as a volunteer mediator standing up to the Los Angeles City Attorney and saying, "no, you are not going to kill the free community mediation program like you thought you would.""

So, you brought it up...

Your program looks a lot like these essential elements of California society. In a blog with "science" in its title, one should probably make the distinction as to there not being such a thing as "free". Not really.
Like so many others claiming to be "free", your program actually IS costing taxpayers - just lees than most.

How often do they need to happen Lenona? The person you quoted clearly dismissed them as fantasies that don't really happen.

Ben at July 31, 2019 3:59 PM
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"Stereotype" is not a synonym for "fantasy" or "myth." You know that, right?

The man I quoted DID mention one unpleasant encounter from 1970, so he was admitting that those stories didn't come out of nowhere. He did NOT claim they didn't ever happen.

Bottom line: Some stereotypes are 80% true and others are only 5% true, and it's childish for anyone to ignore the former or exaggerate the latter.

Of course, rudeness, even when rare, is not insignificant. But Gary Larson got it right with that salt shaker image; jerks may be everywhere, but they are not the main ingredient. (Not that rudeness can't easily take over the world if parents and teachers don't do their jobs properly - and one lesson should be "rudeness to anyone, even to someone much younger than you, counts as rudeness.")

Interesting thread, everyone. We went down a lot of side roads, but it was a fun trip.

Lenona's question about Mary Poppins and the rayon is going to bug me now... must do some reading.

Spin it how you like Lenona. You clearly indicated these are not significant events. I disagree with you.

"Some stereotypes are 80% true and others are only 5% true,"

At some point in time, almost all are more true than not, or they don't catch on. Stereotypes are the public acknowledgement of strong correlations. Bigotry lies in interpreting them to signal causality.

bw1,

Where do you have statistics showing that almost all stereotypes are more true than not?

There are entire collections of stereotypes that weren't even remotely true.

Bigotry isn't like in interpreting stereotypes as inherent... it is also creating stereotypes out of whole cloth targeting a particular group.

I don't like being called a girl. If someone does it, I can tell them. I don't need to make grand statements or police language. It's no different than if I correct soembody who calls me Sharon. I also don't have to be up in their face about it.

Now, I have had people who refused to do things I asked... Like call me Mrs instead of Miss... At the OBGYN when 7 months pregnant and accompanied by my husband. I did get a wee bit cantankerous then, but the first round was just, "It is Mrs. Smith."

I think perhaps where things went awry in genert is when people started complaining that it was insulting to be called a lady (as in Lady mascot basketball team for the girl's team). It didn't leave great choices.

Artemis,

People don't create stereotypes out of whole cloth unless they already intend to imply causality, so your definition is a corollary to mine. Most such correlations are the baggage of how a demographic has been mistreated - if you deny a group access to education, they will be less educated. Thus, a stereotype that they are uneducated is based on a valid correlation, but it is not reflective upon the group - membership in the group is not causal. It's about the difference between perception and judgement.

And, if they do that, those stereotype don't catch on unless they correlate with the observations of enough people for them to do so. The correlation must exist for the stereotype to have any legs.

You can't just create a stereotype about Muslims loving to eat bacon without people looking at you like you're an idiot.

I should amend that.
Stereotypes about BEHAVIOR are based on observed correlations. Stereotypes that assign motives are typically bigoted.

A stereotype that observes that a group are very good at business is perceptive. A stereotype that says they are greedy assumes a motive, and is bigoted.