If you have spoken to any female actors
recently, you may have noticed that many of them insist on being called
“actors”, rather than “actresses”. This phenomenon is not limited to just those
who act; indeed people from all walks of life have dropped - or seek to drop -
the feminine versions of job titles.
Good examples are “comedienne” instead of
“comedian”, or “poetess” instead of “poet”. Other job titles have moved - or
are moving - towards gender-neutral titles; for example, “flight attendant” is
now favoured over “steward” and “stewardess”.
It is important to realise the distinction
between the two examples, because I believe that a gender-neutral title is
ideal, whereas simply adopting the masculine version is arguably sexist in
itself. Allow me to explain.
Why go gender-neutral?
The question really should be, why bother
indicating gender at all? Gender is not binary. There are many people who
consider themselves male, or female, and many who consider themselves neither,
or both! When it comes to your job, your gender should (almost) never even be
relevant, so why bother stipulating it in the title?
A doctor is simply a doctor, a nurse is
simply a nurse, and unless there is a particular reason, it is both unnecessary
and potentially troublesome to specify whether someone is a “lady doctor” or a
“male nurse”.
So what’s the problem?
However, problems arise where no
gender-neutral title exists. In the past, we had “poets” who were men, and
“poetesses” who were women. Over time, the phrase “poetess” fell out of favour,
and now one who writes poetry would simply be called a poet.
Personally, I find this fact very
troubling. The simple fact that the male version is taken preferentially over
the female version represents the inherent patriarchal nature of our society. In
essence, I find it offensive that it is offensive to be called a female!
But let’s look at this from a different
perspective: perhaps the “male” version is not male at all. Perhaps “actor” IS
in fact the neutral version: simply one who acts. Indeed, Wikipedia tells me
that the suffix “–man” simply meant “person” in Old English. Whether this is
true? Who knows!
However, you can’t argue that “man” holds
the same neutrality today. So perhaps the “masculine” version of words is both
masculine and neutral, because historically speaking it has become one and the
same. Just as is the case with a poet, the male-version has slowly become the
neutral version, as may eventually happen with “actor”.
Concluding thoughts
Overall, this is a complicated question. It
seems clear that gender-neutral titles should always be preferred over the
gendered titles. Get rid of words like “policeman” and “policewoman”, or
“chairman”, and instead use “chairperson” and “police officer”.
However, where no gender-neutral title
exists, perhaps we should adopt the male title, because the word might (as has
been the case in the past) eventually become gender-neutral. In which case,
let’s toss out words like “actress”.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, this is
already happening. If you look at the screen actors’ guild awards (depressingly
shortened to ‘SAG’ – does anyone else find this to be an unfortunate
abbreviation?), they give out awards for “best male actor” and “best female
actor”. But this raises another question: why bother separating genders at all?
Why not just have “best actor”? And on that note, why do we bother separating
genders in any way? Heck, why do we even have men’s and women’s clothing
departments in shops? Why do we even have gender-separated public bathrooms?
But unfortunately, my dear friends, I don’t
have the time to open up that little can of worms. That conversation will be
saved for another day.
“My Mum’s always encouraged me and never made
my gender an issue, I guess. She brought me up to believe in equality, as
opposed to feminism or sexism – so it just meant that my gender was not
relevant to what I was capable of achieving.” – Paloma Faith (ironically labeled
as an “actress” on Wikipedia)
the reckless philosopher
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