This post is on the Other BDSM web board.
| Tue 5 Aug 08, 10:23 PM TailsLondon UK(SW), 7 yrs   |
So I was on a conference call today and one of the developers we are working with. In all the examples he used during the call he used the third person feminine pronoun "she" or "her". As in "using this feature she can search the application" or "her deal can be seen in this screen". At first I thought he was being progressive and using gender neutral language. But it soon became clear he was just using the feminine in preference over the masculine (to the point of changing our examples from "his deal" to "her deal", salesman to saleswoman etc) So I began wondering what could have caused this. I considered a PC or feminist worldview, but dismissed it because that would imply gender-neutral language not feminine forms. Thus my mind wondered over to kink as it is prone to do during boring calls. Perhaps his mistress had insisted he only use feminine pronouns in his speech? Perhaps it was some subtle kink thing going on? Maybe I'm just weird but what an excellent way to torment a straight male submissive at work or in any social setting where masculine pronouns are preferred forms of speech (i.e., anywhere outside a gender studies faculty). Force him to think through every sentence. The thought he was doing this out of duress rather than an inability to use the word "they" and "their" meant I left the call rather amused as opposed to my usual irascible self. Have any mistresses done this? Would any of you consider it? Would the male subs here speak differently for their mistresses? | |
| 5 Aug 08, 10:24 PM TheTroll 3 yrs |
tl;dr but skimming revealed fail. | |
| 5 Aug 08, 10:28 PM TailsLondon UK(SW), 7 yrs |
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| 5 Aug 08, 10:31 PM TheTroll 3 yrs |
Twice in one thread wow. | |
| 6 Aug 08, 12:21 AM PrinceCaspian UK(SE), 6 yrs |
I did have a female lecturer who attempted (and failed whenever she got excited) to do this herself, I imagined for feminist reasons as she was rather violently outspoken on the empowerment of women through looking at pictures of vaginas and the like. never heard a man do it though, you may well be on to something. Thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends taken forth from holy writ and do seem a saint when most I play the Devil! Shakespeare | |
| 6 Aug 08, 8:55 AM newfavourite UK(S), 4 yrs |
I would have been dying to find out why he did that.
I'm a feminist and am very aware of how I use language
but I would never replace all male pronouns with female
ones, it would just sound pretentious. The only other reason I can think of apart from the exciting kinky one,
is that he might have been responding to some dictat
at work- maybe he had attended equal opps training and
took it too far as a bit of an up yours to his employers.
Equality is over-rated | |
| 6 Aug 08, 9:59 AM EmdE06 UK, 6 yrs |
Oldie but goodie conference call blooper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdHfmdFXxDU When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep. like my Grandfather. Not shouting and screaming like his passengers. | |
| 6 Aug 08, 12:53 PM littlenic 5 yrs |
Another possible non-kinky reason - as a developer, is his key user female? If the person he's been discussing system requirements with, and who has been doing his user testing, is female, it'd be fairly natural to drop into that if he's the sort of person who imagines her visually when he's talking about use of the system. But not sure he'd keep it up all the time, so you might be right! "Have you ever been married?" | |
| 6 Aug 08, 1:19 PM DDDDom 6 yrs |
I used to have a teaching colleague - (sadly passed away now) - who used to to this in seminars. However most of the people he was talking to were women. Seemed sensible to me... | |
| 6 Aug 08, 5:59 PM strongarm CH, 6 yrs |
I think that it is grasping at straws to see pervery here (but then conference calls can be just a tad boring ... ). On the other hand, even as a paid up member of the (English) language police (don't get me started on the now lost use of the original sense of gay, or the misuse of the word proactive), it seems to me that the world would be a slightly better place if gender specific pronouns were used randomly when the context was random, rather than the convention to use masculine. It is certainly true that the use of the feminine tends to jar at the moment, but surely that could be changed in not such a long time---nothing in the rules of grammar to prescribe masculine, and it seems to me to be just a social convention of a somewhat invidious kind. In my own writing and speech I often change the examples to the gender-neutral plural, they, their etc, and even (shock, horror) sometimes deliberately misuse a gender-neutral plural pronoun in a singular context.
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