Hi, Michael!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

 MD>  Actors were put before actresses. It is sexism! :-)

 AH>  The author put these words in alphabetical order.  So
 AH>  would I.  I've noticed people using "actor" in reference
 AH>  to both at times and I could write an essay on the
 AH>  subject, but I'll leave it at that for now....  ;-)

 MD>  I am looking forward to reading your essay. 


           On one hand I'm thinking "Me & my big mouth!"... on the other I know
 I'll have a great time organizing my thoughts about various things I've
learned over the years because one of my correspondents has expressed an
interest.  ;-)

           Until the 1960's, schoolteachers used formal grammar... and expected
 their students to do likewise.  My grade two teacher, e.g., insisted we speak
& write in complete sentences at all times.  She'd repeat "have you not" until
we figured out for ourselves that she meant "haven't you" because... as I now
know
... contractions aren't used either in formal English or in literature intended
 for beginning readers.  In those days no explanation was offered, however. 
The way many Authority Figures dealt with colloquial English was to ignore
whatever they didn't approve of... and from that standpoint I appreciate the
descriptive approach taken by modern dictionaries, in which they report what
people say but include flags like "colloq." or "coarse slang" or
"[Aus./Cdn./UK/US]" so we can make our own choices as to what works best in a
particular situation.

           You may have seen jokes elsewhere of a type I'd describe as "gallows
 humour" from senior citizens about how, if one didn't say "Miss Stickler, may
I please go to the lavatory?" one would be completely ignored or be forced to
sit through a lecture on the difference between "can" & "may" or wait until
recess.

           When our daughter went to the same school I noticed the sign "GIRLS'
 LAVATORY" had been truncated to "GIRLS".  In many ways that makes more sense
to me than pictures which could be interpreted as meaning "males wearing kilts"
 or "females wearing trousers".  In the sink-or-swim environment of my
childhood, I learned a lot about English which I didn't fully appreciate back
then....  :-))

           Things began to change during the 1960's.  People questioned many of
 the rules they'd grown up with... one being the use of the masculine pronoun
in situations where the gender of any individual may not be obvious.  According
 to the rules of formal grammar "each student should bring his own pencil" is
quite correct, unless all of the students are female.  Some women didn't like
that... they felt they were being ignored, especially when the word "man" was
also used to refer to human beings in general.  I thought it was silly that if
I had just one male student in a class of forty I was required to say "his",
although when I read professional literature I noticed that nurses & elementary
 teachers were referred to as if they were invariably female.  For many people
nowadays it's a lot easier to use the plural pronoun regardless of the actual
gender or number.

           Re occupational titles people can no longer take it for granted that
 firemen & mailmen are male... so they are called fire fighters & mail
carriers. The majority of such titles appear to be gender-neutral even if they
weren't in the past.  There are still exceptions, though.  While waiters &
waitresses have been replaced by servers it would not be safe to assume a
governess is a female governor... and I must admit to some puzzlement over the
increasing tendency to refer to both actors & actresses as actors because I
would imagine their gender is a legitimate job requirement if e.g. the casting
director wants somebody who can handle the role of Prince Charming or Snow
White in a live-action film.  In animated films I can see from the credits that
 males play female roles at times & vice versa... but I probably wouldn't know
otherwise.  If what matters is the sound of their voice rather than their
physical appearance I can think of other situations like that too.  But when
Meryrl Streep describes herself as an actor I'm not sure I understand her line
of reasoning.  I guess she likes the idea of a unisex job description & I'm not
 averse to it myself.  OTOH, she's old enough to remember when some feminists
would have been outraged about her choice.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)