On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Egad! What a confusion of questions, Uche!
>
> "Mr" means a male, could be married could be unmarried. "Mrs" means (in
> the
> States, at least) a married female. "Miss" means an unmarried female.
> That
> is, if they are used as titles, i.e., immediately before a person's
> name(s).
>
> Feminists (female and male) in the USA sought and succeeded in the 1960s to
> offer the alternative "Ms" so that females could opt for a title that, like
> males, did not "speak" their marital status. My own taste and response has
> been that I don't like any of the titles and do not use any of them, if
> possible. I don't like "Mrs" and I don't like "Ms", and I don't like "Mr".
> They seem entirely unnecessary in ordinary circumstances.
>
> Now, though, we're talking about addressing a president. Since I've bot
> much notion of the connotations connected with "Madam" or "Miss" or
> "Mistress' or "Mister" or "Master", I'll bow out of the discussion and be
> eager to hear what you and others say about it.
>
> My feeling about you is that you've always been a staunch feminist; hence,
> I
> was surprised that you said "Mrs. President" and equally surprised at your
> upset with my reply. What's going on? What's the hot button here to which
> you're responding?
>
Hmm. Since you sense hot buttons, I think it's time for me to simmer. You
know my style is straightforward, even when it's not meaning to be nasty. I
was certainly not meaning to be nasty, but I did think sharp examination was
called for.
Anyway, I don't really know if I meet the definition of a staunch feminist.
I certainly think that in deeds I'm quite staunch in my insistence on
egalitarianism, but in words, I might not be as modern as some might
insist. I do honestly hate the politicization of linguistic idiom among
feminists, afrocentrists, and other such groups. I find it destructive and
wrong-headed, which is the crux of that TNB piece I keep picking at, and
more importantly, I think that it does absolutely nothing for true equality,
and can even be counter-productive to same.
As I've said before on this list, I think a lot of that comes from the
fallacy that linguistic constructs influence or reflect experiential
realities, AKA the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. That hypothesis, dating from the
early 20th century, caught the public imagination, especially in the days of
modernism and post-modernism, and, for example, influenced Orwell's Newspeak
nonsense. It was never much more than pop science and has now been roundly
discredited by linguists and psychologists, but I think its damage continues
on in the way we play "gotcha" with every inflection of each other's speech,
insisting that long-autonomous linguistic constructs hide some insidious
bigotry.
But anyway, it's early on the weekend, and I'm in much too light a mood for
all that, so I guess we'll just have to wait for the comment thread on that
there TNB piece, Madam Prince, eh? Cheerio!
--
Uche Ogbuji http://uche.ogbuji.net
Founding Partner, Zepheira http://zepheira.com
Linked-in profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
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