Hmm... might want to rethink that title... Anyway... Has it ever struck you as odd that man is used for either gender but woman is only girls? Same with gay/lesbian or actor/actress or... well, you get the point. On a semi similar note, have you ever wondered about Mr vs Mrs and Miss? It's nice that people thought of Ms, but what if men want to show their relationship status in their title? I dunno. Basically I wanted to spark conversation... See ya in the comments!
l remember clearly when "actor" became inclusive of women. l'm 28 lol. About...2005. l remember referring to an actress as an "actor" and my female friend being like UM YOU MEAN ACTRESS??? And me being all 'UH no everyone is called an actor now" (l was very progressive and informed, then). Not sure where l was going with this
I have given thought to pretty much all you just mentioned, great points! I have absolutely no idea though :dry:
I remember something on my history's classes (not really sure) but it's about the patriarchal culture and machismo and how the women were submissive in most of ancient civilizations and consequently their languages. It makes sense I guess. It's about language as well, as english is very neutral for masc/fem terms, it may or may not happen in other languages, ig: actor in portuguese is exclusively for men and actreess exclusively for women, only in plural you give preference to the masculine.
I think it's funny that we use pronouns such as "dude" and "man" to refer to either gender. Kinda like, "Hey dude," or "Hey man". I use the term actor for both men and women because I don't like how actress sounds. It's odd. It always questioned me too that guys don't have a specific title depending on their marriage status. They're just "Mr." regardless. History probably plays a key roll in that with male dominance at that time.
NickTsuki said what I was going to say, but I can also add that looks may matter. A man can get away with looking mostly genderless, whereas women usually have a fairly distinctive set of traits. So it's easier for some cultures to default to masculine, rather than feminine. It's sort of like if there were a near equal amount of sedans and pickup trucks on the road. You can say "There's lots of traffic" but it would also be natural to say "there are a lot of cars." Few would call a truck a car on its own, but they are lumped with the others because trucks are a special sort of car. Not that I really AGREE with this sentiment, as women are obviously as human as men. But they are much more distinctive in some cases.
l agree with your interpretation and choose to further interpret your description of "distinctive'' as 'dead sexy'
I'm of the opinion that when one word is used for everybody, in the case of actor, for instance, it has two positive effects: It separates women and men less, meaning a more equal and unified society, and it also gives non-binary gendered people a language with which to describe themselves. I find it interesting, actually, that the majority of times I've heard the term actress used, it is used to describe transwomen. I don't know exactly why, but perhaps it is something to do with the speaker wanting to be respectful of someone's gender, and going further towards describing her as female than the speaker would ordinarily. I've also noticed, on british news channels, when describing a woman in a job traditionally done by men, such as a police officer, they will refer to her as a 'woman police officer' rather than a female police officer (as I think would be grammatically correct). Not really going anywhere with this, I guess. I'm just rambling slightly about incidences of gender segregation in grammar that I've noticed recently.
