She should have remembered her Latin
posted by sooyup
on
Daily trivia
I hate political correctness with passion. I have never understood why an actress should insist on being called an actor. Is it by analogy with doctor perhaps? Surely it’s a linguistic anomaly that the word doctress doesn’t exist. If it did, I would use it - without implying lesser status. Some words conveniently have feminine forms, so why not use them? It is a needless debasement of a beautiful language to talk of a spokesperson, or to speak of the leader of a discussion-group as the Chair, and I refuse to be browbeaten by the PC brigade. During her recent stay, Lowri reminded me of a former colleague of ours, a militant feminist, who once took us both to task for using the expression “man-made fibres” as an explanation of “synthetic” - it was on a worksheet for our less able pupils. When I suggested “manufactured” she retorted: “There you go again, you see. It has to be MANufactured, doesn’t it!” Oh dear.
I hate political correctness with passion. I have never understood why an actress should insist on being called an actor. Is it by analogy with doctor perhaps? Surely it’s a linguistic anomaly that the word doctress doesn’t exist. If it did, I would use it - without implying lesser status. Some words conveniently have feminine forms, so why not use them? It is a needless debasement of a beautiful language to talk of a spokesperson, or to speak of the leader of a discussion-group as the Chair, and I refuse to be browbeaten by the PC brigade. During her recent stay, Lowri reminded me of a former colleague of ours, a militant feminist, who once took us both to task for using the expression “man-made fibres” as an explanation of “synthetic” - it was on a worksheet for our less able pupils. When I suggested “manufactured” she retorted: “There you go again, you see. It has to be MANufactured, doesn’t it!” Oh dear.
