How Old Are My Fellow A2K Members?

Yeh, it has baggage in fields where women weren't, as in medicine, to some extent law, and now, for me, in landscape architecture. Walking on to a site where you can approve the job or not, "good morning, ladies" is sometimes a dart, followed by subloud chuckles or minute snorts. A woman in construction who has a crew earns, usually, their respect, and then there is no nonsense. But as a designer who arrives to see if the plans are fulfilled, let me tell you there are various vectors of displeasure flying. Again, this tends to pass with people who get to know and respect each other.

On the other hand, I was raised in preladyhood and liked a lot of it. I just have a perhaps too big ear for it as a diminisher.

By definition, it shouldn't be diminishing, any more than gentlemen is, as a word.. at best it denotes an understanding of the elements of courtesy.

Ha! "g"! Gave!!

Ooft, me brain cells are keeling over as we speak...

I use "lady" all the time. I've never been able to take the objections to the word seriously no matter how hard I tried.

I understand the objection of the earliest feminists, a la Betty Friedan. In the 50's and 60's, you were "a lady" if you "knew your place," and conformed to the steroetypes, in which case you would "be put on a pedestal." The reality was, of course, far more complex, and the ideals of "worshipful" treatment were no more attained or attainable than were the those of what constituted a lady.

I believe, however, that the term is no longer so freighted, and is less likely to offend women with a justifiable scruple about how they are addressed. Basically, for ease, and with a hidden agenda of satisfying the strict standards of my upbriging, i refer to all men as gentlemen, and all women as ladies, address all men as "Mister," and address all women as "Miss," and i hold the door for anyone, to the extent that i don't let it slam in anyone's face. For the elderly, i take a few hurried steps, open the door, and hold it for however long it takes them to get through--without regard to gender.

It all seems to work pretty well.

I just edited my post. I see both sides, but I have heard lady as semitaunt not all that long ago.

That it is a word that is losing it's connotation of clueless dip is only good news.

Aha - I see Lady Craven has arisen from his snowy sheets...

So true - so true!

It is good to see that, beneath thy Trampish exterior, beats the heart of a pedigree pooch!

Mikey, good to see you, so, are you coming to SF? It's happening soon. (Scuse me, tangent, but important..)

Mikey? Where?

about six posts back, Dl...

So, hey, all of you use the word gentleman all the time?

Not me. When I use it, it's a compliment.

Or do you ever say, will the men (move the pig) and the ladies (whiffle the whipped cream?) Not men and women, but men and ladies.
Oh, well, guess you had to be there to see what I am saying.

Lot of assumptions in a packet like that, some Ladies can move pigs better (we'll have to ask Gus), though I suppose fewer among a hundred, and some Men do whipped cream better than most of either gender.
I think of Ladies as sort of cutesie, in certain contexts, women is the word... mostly.

I use it all the time, but the use of "gentleman" has become, in my experience, so much less common than it once was, that it often gets a subtle reaction of surprise. It also has the effect of "civilizing" the discourse--were i to say, for example, to a companion who just arrived on the scene, "I was just saying to this gentleman . . . ," my expectation (usually confirmed, in roughly 9 out of 10 times) would be that the discourse thereafter is at the least civil, and at best cheerfully courteous.

Whiffle? Nice word.

I might say guys and gals in that context. No, I'd say guys, and mean both. "Hey you guys over there, would you move the pig? Thanks. And you guys in the corner...? HEY! You guys in the corner, whiffle the cream, OK? Thanks."

Interesting take . . . i've noticed that "guys" has become almost gender neutral. I hear women younger than i using it with one another, and i've frequently used it, say for example, as in: "OK, you guys have a good weekend, and stay outta trouble," when addressing women younger than i, and they don't bat an eye, don't react as though there were anything unusual in what i've said.

Well, let us all listen more for a week or two and reconvene.

I agree that gentleman is rarely used and, in my new environment, I can hardly avoid lady being my defining word.

Gee, I am just a middle aged sort of interesting woman.
(what e'er my faults, which I could list myself.)

I am thinking now that lady is sort of a benevolent appellation.
But I always thought that. Just that it is sometimes used as a screening away word. And the word used a minute later is bitch. Both of these, lady and bitch,are sort of shutting off words, I think, for some, in certain situations.

When not used sarcastically, of course, as in:

"Hey Lady, whyncha have some turn signals installed in that old beater ? ! ? ! ?"

Yah, but my whimper is tuned slightly lower than Hey, Lady, though it isn't all that much lower, which was my point, gads, when was that, in this thread or earlier.

I just reedited again, last post may be more intelligible plus might have added a bit.

Set, we said (we being the four Hennessy girls and the McNulty and the Buckman and me, every one of us, girls) you guys all the time. 'Hey you guys' being the entry phrase. I don't even remember learning it, though I do remember being thrust into their company.

We moved to Chicago the first week of November in 1950 and when my mother and I arrived at La Salle street station, the whole city was blanketed in snow.. I was so young and clueless I didn't understand that concept, a city blanketed in snow. My dad had rented us a house, quite a ways north of the station. Turns out that was the house of my life, but I had just turned nine and had not much sense of a wider world.

In my first week there the nice little girl my father had talked to when he rented the house nailed me on the ground and scrubbed my face with an iceball. Katherine Trahan, should anyone know her now. But, I loved my pals on that street and we still write each other.

My point - we were all 'you guys' all the time.