Posted: Apr 03, 2018 1:20 pm
Fallible wrote:
I can't agree with you there. 'Lady' is extremely annoying to some people, often because of this idea of a 'gentler' word. Why is that necessary? Do we need to be gentle to 'ladies'? There's only one circumstance I would use either 'lady' or 'gentleman', and it's if I'm referring to an unknown person either to a child, for example 'little Johnny, move over and let the gentleman pass', or to another adult, eg. 'this lady was in line before me', within earshot of the person themselves. Why use anything other than 'woman' if in the same circumstance you would use 'man'?
No the word is gentler, not the women. I should have used a different word than gentle I guess. Maybe it's because the word woman has baggage here. You know, because some men are like "Get my dinner woman!" "Woman, what's wrong with you!" etc.
You can say to a stranger, "hey man, can I get by?" But not "hey woman, can I get by?" That would garner a dirty look.
That's how lady was used by people my age in Boston when I lived there through 2004, and it's how it's used in northern Maine in 2018. Of course, we're about 20 years behind up here, so maybe they stopped using it down in Boston now. I'll pay more attention to it now and ask around.
I don't mean lady-like or anything like that when I say tall lady, nice lady, mean lady, etc. I mean female human. Women don't need any more coddling than men do. I don't ever say "that's not very lady-like you know" or bs like that.