"Gender," By Ivan Illich... And More
Dear Janet
Thanks for your email.
Yes, you make an interesting observation about the automatic acceptance of the word "Master" by the men (and women?) who run the show.
Of course, the ready alternative to "Master" is "Mistress" -- problematic, to say the least.
Your comment reminds me that decades ago, I looked up the word "fellow" and learned that it can (or, could at the time) be properly applied to either a "man" or a "woman."
Something similar takes place in biblical exegesis - although without any readily available English language translation of the Greek original for "man."
In Greek, the word "anthropos" means "man," but means "man" in a non-gender-specific way such as "human" -- whereas another word meant "man" in a gender-specific way.
That other gender-specific Greek word for "man" was perhaps "aner."
Perhaps it's time to "teach" English speakers that we're going to use "anthropos" to mean "man" as either man or woman.
In the following list of Google hits, please note that it is not until you get down to the last two "definitions" that the word "man" as a gender-specific reference is the first given meaning of "fellow."
In related vein, long ago I decided to use my self-coined pronoun "s/he" to refer to someone who might be either a man or a woman.
Love
Alan
PS While researching the gender issue as it manifests in Greek, I came across this reference:
Major Exception:
There are some neuter nouns ending in -υ, which are the following:
- βράδυ (vrádi) — “night”
- στάχυ (stáhi) — “ear; the plant”
- δόρυ (dóri) — “spear”
- οξύ (oxí) — “acid”
- δίχτυ (díhti) — “net”
- δάκρυ (dákri) — “tear”
Alan: Notably, all these words are feminine in Spanish as well, except for acid. (I wonder if "oxi" (as in "oxyclean") derives - as it appears - from the Greek word for acid.
PPS Also on the matter of gendered words (of which we have precious few in English, where for example it is (still) said of a sinking ship that "she's going down." Oddly there is a very small handful of Spanish words - like "mano" - that are feminine despite the fact that almost all 4th declension Latin words (like manus meaning hand) are masculine.
PPS A final gender observation... I have read that German and Japanese are humankind's only gendered languages in which the word for "sun" is feminine and the word for "night" is masculine.
On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 11:50 AM Janet Archibald wrote:
I never heard any of this story. Mom certainly liked Alex Trebek and it’s very true that many of the more recent contestants are much more demonstrative than contestants used to be. Plus Alex seemed to be invested in his seemingly godlike status. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t take kindly to being challenged in any way, especially by a woman. Men seem to win far more often than women especially after an initial win. In part that may be due to acquiring experience with the exact moment to ring in with the buzzer. Who knows? Jeopardy is currently doing a masters tournament with the top six winners ever, minus Ken Jennings who’s the current emcee. This tournament of 20 games over 10 nights is half over and the bottom two contestants were eliminated as of last night. Of the six, four are men, one a transgender woman, and one a female-appearing contestant who may consider “herself” non- binary since “her” preferred pronouns are they/them. Anyway the four who are left are three men and the non-binary. And of the seven “masters” (including Jennings) none are what I would consider traditional females. Interesting that they all seem quite comfortable with the word “masters”. This gender thing the culture is experiencing at this moment really isn’t where I want to invest much of my time.On another topic, hope Byron is improving.Sent from my iPhoneOn May 18, 2023, at 7:52 AM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:Dear JanetI think Mom would have sided with the contestant?What do you?Sent from my iPhone
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