Martin Nash is fine with referring to the guys, the lads, the fellas, but isn’t sure how to refer to the ladies.
Editor’s note: For the benefit of our American readers, we should clarify that Mr. Nash is referring here to British English, which actually suffers from less of the problem he describes than American English.
Today I am looking for help. I need words.
When writing about men and women I obviously find myself referring to people of a given sex by a collective term such as “men” or “women”. In order to avoid my writing sounding repetitive I try and use other words that mean the same.
In the case of men I find this easy and have a bunch of the synonyms at my disposal: Men, males, blokes, chaps, gents, guys, fellas, dudes, lads, boys.
To my knowledge none of these are considered offensive (please let me know if I am wrong) to anybody.
My problem comes when trying to find words for women. There are certainly several such terms but many are contraindicated for use as they are considered patronising, belittling or demeaning.
Sure we have the basics—women, ladies, females—but in a lengthy article even these can get repetitive. So what are my alternatives?
Chicks or birds? As a younger fella I used these words as standard and to be honest never received a complaint (my ex told me it’s because I didn’t sound patronising the way I said it), but I can see how animal comparisons can be taken as an insult and no longer use these terms (I will sidestep usage of “hen night”). Girls or lasses? Again both terms I have used in the past but have read that referring to women in the diminutive is offensive to some and so I cut it out.
At the moment I am just thinking about writing, but this comes into play in spoken word too. For some reason to me it sounds better greeting a group of women as “Hi girls” rather that “Hi ladies”. Not sure why, maybe something I saw on TV or read in a book, but for now I just use the generic “Hi”. As an aside, my mother is in approaching her 70s and still has “lunch with the girls”. She doesn’t seem to use the term demeaningly.
Secondly I need informal terms of address for people I meet in daily life without needing to know their names. When I am talking to a man i don’t know I can call him mate, or pal, or buddy, or chap, geezer, fella, dude or even John (which I find useful as a way of finding out their name when they correct me).
But my old forms of address for women I now try to avoid in most cases as I know they can offend. These would be words like darling, flower, petal and love (apropos of nothing, i got asked “giz a chip love?” by a girl of around 12 the other day, made me smile). Should I use the same forms of address as I do for men? I have a colleague who calls all female colleagues mate and for him it sounds natural, but I just don’t feel it rolls off my tongue very well.
So, please can someone help me with alternative informal words for these situations? The thesaurus is most un-obliging in this matter.
This article originally appeared at Blabberjockey.
Photo—Oxford English Dictionary, courtesy Noah Brand
After brunch with friends we’ve defined this ruleset: Re: Wondersocket: in a conversation with some friends about WHY this could be offensive when no one had ever heard it; ‘Imagine the term for vagina, instead of for women’. One friend says ‘We were raised with a theocracy (meaning Christo-Judea thought) and referring to ‘fun’ in sex is difficult.’ Contrast this term with ‘Nimbusova’ which no one finds offensive; an the ancient terms it refers to fertility, the egg. The middle ground was Kisswicket, which contained the hard Germanic syllables we associate with slang (cock, fuck) but didn’t directly reference the… Read more »
At first hearing though Wondersocket sounds funny, but certainly more along the pet names line of address. So many words do not stand up to scrutiny if analysed that way. Honestly not able to say I have analysed this as deeply as you have, but am intrigued by your thoughts on this. Nimbusova sounds a tad new age to me, so I would have to agree on kisswicket. You are definately right about the hard sounds at the end though. Perhaps what we also need are more light hearted (though not cutsie) nicknames for the vagina that dont carry the… Read more »
I have been having this problem for a while, mostly in a customer service context where my sign off is required to change with the gender and age of the person. For men this is easy – “sir”, and for boys I simply call them “mate” and they’re happy – but for women I find myself remarkably limited. “Lady” comes across as snarky, and every other one except for “ma’am” just doesn’t work for me in terms of my speech – “have a nice day, woman”. I generally stick to “ma’am” and only the young, overly sensitive ones seem to… Read more »
Don’t try ‘Have a nice day, Wondersocket.’ It’ll go badly even though they’ve never heard it. I don’t understand why, really. Making up your own terms is risky even for a woman.
When did “gal” become obsolete?
I do feel that in our societies current context of political correctness (where who defines that correctness is never made clear) collective terms for any groups of peoples is a minefield and offence easily caused. I don’t think that anyone can provide a definitive answer as there are as many ways to cause offence as there are people in the world. Maybe we should start a trend where terms of address hark back to a more etiquette driven era (“Sir/Madam”; “Gentlemen/Ladies”). How could women in society object or take offence at being referred to as “the fairer sex”? Of course… Read more »
Both Steve and Ele seem to suggest moving towards a wider variety of words, some that have slipped into the archaic, which I like. We have a plethora of perfectly serviceable words but so often change the meanings that we then have to go back and find older ones to mean the same thing. British parliamentarians are especially good at this, though someone will then dig out an equally archaic perjorative meaning and we all start again. While personally loving the suggestions above I can still see that if we are going for a “purity” of inoffensiveness then either goddess… Read more »
Geez, I’ve been having this conversation around town with my friends and co-workers. At this point I’ve slipped into amalgamations: Kisswicket, Wondersocket, Nimbusova (pl. Nimbusovum). For some reason Wondersocket is controversial. How can something be derogatory when I just made it up? How can it be scandalous when it has never been used? It really is a tricky issue.
I’m not sure what “wondersocket” would be replacing, but if used with women it could sound like you are reducing them to the “wondersocket” that you put your “wonderstick” in. 😉
Exactly the problem. But it’s funny a word just invented could be immediately lewd isn’t it?
Interesting mix of ideas. Particularly liking the idea of creating my own. Mostly I am trying to avoid a situation where my meaning does not become diluted by offence. As for relevance, a large pat of my blogging to date has been discussing the differences in how people of each sex perceive sexism and without naming individuals i can only refer too each party by gender unless i resort to a confusing “person A” type identifier. In day to day associations this is not much of a problem, but while trying to discuss things online with entrenched feminists it is… Read more »
Making your own is harder than it seems right? I’ve been trying to think of some for the last day. I use a lot of 1940’s jazz terms in my everyday speech, including referring to people as ‘Cats’ and ‘Clams’ but new terms for women are hard. Lester Young, the great saxophonist, would refer to a new girlfriend as ‘a nice hat’ but women aren’t accessories. If we use animals, they should be predators so as to not seem diminutive (Lioness?). I think you could get away with some flamboyantly gorgeous terms, like ‘enchantress’ and ‘godess’, even in a feminist… Read more »
In context:, when you use:
Male/males, use female/ females.
Men,/man use woman/women.
Gents/gentleman, use ladies.
Dudes, use chicks
Guys or boys, use gals or girls
That should cover the vast majority, if not all, of situations.
One of the worst we used in my house: we referred the female lead in old movies as ‘the ginch’. With three brothers it occasionally got terribly rude. If a man refers to me as a girl, I generally gently correct him by saying ‘Actually, I’m a full grown woman.’ It basically comes down to context though… perhaps you should invent your own terms and see how they go over. It’s high time we had some new vocabulary describing the modern femme.
Seriously you ever thought chicks or birds were ok? I use men or women, although there are Cis prejudices inherent in them but most of my readers are aware of my attempts to be aware of my cis privilege. Man, woman, male, female, if gender must be referenced. are you considering that you may be using gender when it is irrelevant? Person,people when gender is irrelevant. This is hardly rocket science. If you do not know someones name why are you being informal with them. Why not “giz a chip please?” Does there gender matter to the request? It seems… Read more »
So, um, I thought “chicks” or “birds” was okay until about seventeen seconds ago. I don’t know if this article was completely honest or slightly tongue in cheek but I think it’s interesting to explore the myriad ways in which we have to tiptoe around women. It feels like, no matter how noble a person actually is, all that matters are his names for things. A male co-worker of mine told a female co-worker, referring to her boyfriend, “…If he don’t tell you that you the finest bitch in the world at least once a day, then he ain’t shit”.… Read more »