transcriptScreenshot of a tweet by @feralhousepuppy: hey so you've been calling me "bro", "man", and "dude" a lot and it's really invalidating to my masculinity cause those are all gender neutral things you call trans women :/

Screenshot of a tweet by @feralhousepuppy: hey so you've been calling me "bro", "man", and "dude" a lot and it's really invalidating to my masculinity cause those are all gender neutral things you call trans women :/
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 32 points 1 week ago (37 children)

It's odd that the gender "neutral" terms are always the masculine ones

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 37 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 1 week ago (33 children)

    It's deliberate, for all the same reasons across all of history.

    It's why I use terms that (I assume) are genuinely like "folks" and "peeps" and "comrade" etc.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 33 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 1 week ago (20 children)

    I’m sorry but I HATE folks. I’m down with virtually all other gender neutral terms, but I psychologically can’t uncouple ‘folks’ from pseudo-homespun charm put on by people who are sleazebags for various reasons. Anything but folks, I beg (general) you

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 20 child comments
  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago

    I use folks all the time!

    ...but i'm also a server at waffle house, so I guess I am using southern culture and folksy charm to sell you waffles and coffee. It's a soulless existence, I know, but at least I have my cold, hard cash tips to keep me warm at night.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    I use the word folks regularly :(

    That makes me sad

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [+] 5 points 1 week ago* (8 children)
  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (7 children)

    Well no, it doesn't, because it's a different word. Plenty of words have similar meanings or origins while having very different connotations from each other. See for example the whole [saxon? norman? whatever] vs french root thing in english, where words with identical meanings but different root languages came to have different connotations (worker vs laborer) or even different meanings (cow vs beef).

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Another example: cavalier vs caballero. Cavalier comes from the French word for knight, and that's caballero in Spanish, but the meaning is completely different. One is arrogant, one is noble (the good kind, yeah I do get how they are related and where and why the meanings shifted).

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] 1 point 1 week ago (5 children)
  • [–] 0 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    Just that you shouldn't expect two words that have similar meanings to be treated the same way, because they often have different connotations and usages.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [+] 0 points 6 days ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 0 points 6 days ago* (2 children)

    Do you know what a connotation is? Frankly this is a bit annoying and I'm going to be blunt: it's exceedingly obvious that it's a difference in connotation (as I've said three times now) rather than in definition*. The difference is the context of how the words are used and the associations they have.

    I psychologically can’t uncouple ‘folks’ from pseudo-homespun charm put on by people who are sleazebags for various reasons

    That is the difference.

    * There are definitional differences too but it doesn't really matter.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

    Don't forget "cats"

    Everybody wants to be a cat 🎶

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Sorry liberals, there are only two genders: CATS and DOGS

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (2 children)

    I think using "deliberate" to refer to something that's as collective and reactive as societal trends in language usage is misleading. The amount of personal agency involved, except in rare cases of people intentionally trying to cause a cultural shift, is pretty minimal.

    Also you got me curious-- "peeps" comes directly from "people" as you might expect, and "folks" and "comrade" actually originally originate as terms referring to (among other usages) military groups. So I would say they are indeed gender-neutral, even in origin, unless you count gendered expectations of the military which I'm not sure carried over to later, more general usages.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    It's weird when we feminise a word like dude (that didn't have gender and wasn't about people) by adding a diminutive suffix.

    I would say dude wasn't gendered until dudette was coined, and probably isn't gendered where dudette doesn't have currency

  • source
  • parent