Okay I'm genuinely curious why "mail lady" wouldn't fly today.
...why not?
...why not?
It's not "cancel culture" as the sibling comment suggests; it's rarely people being outraged about imagined attacks. It's just language evolving as society evolves. As an added bonus, sticking with non-gendered terms means you don't accidentally insult someone by assuming something based on their body type or haircut, and it leaves space for non-binary or non-conforming people to not be accidentally made to feel unwelcome.
In this case, I wouldn't have thought anything was wrong with "mail lady" and might have said the same thing if my mail carrier were a woman (which she is). Now I read this thread and realize that some people would think it is a problem.
This cultural wave of making seemingly harmless language into problems is one more barrier to speaking anything at all unless I'm talking to people I know well.
The point is that singling out her gender is needless, and kinda seems a bit strange if gender was never really pertinent to the story in the first place.
"Cancel culture" would be going through high school recommended reading lists and removing books that focused "wrongly" on gender or something.
I think that's too generous. I've definitely met people who just enjoy feeling indignation at anything.
Despite you using the word 'funny' I don't think you were laughing while posting that whereas the GP was.
Like "the mail lady says she likes our cat", differentiating from the mail guy who we also don't know personally, but who doesn't like the animals.
Also, it's sex not gender people are referring to.
> "Cancel culture" would be going through high school recommended reading lists and removing books that focused "wrongly" on gender or something.
That certainly is, but it doesn't end with their most egregious actions.
I don't think so. "The mail carrier follows female gender roles" is bad enough, but why would you describe someone as "the mail carrier with a vagina"?
> I don't think so.
You don't think lady in 'mail-lady' refers to woman?
> why would you describe someone as "the mail carrier with a vagina"?
Rude. I never would. But if I did it would be redundant after calling her a woman. What do you mean?
But maybe I'm trying to help my brother find a partner so I do want to point out available women, and that does imply people with vaginas. Again, so, and what do you think would be a more efficient way to do this?
It can either refer to their sex or their gender.
> Rude. I never would. But if I did it would be redundant after calling her a woman. What do you mean?
If we refer to sex, a woman/lady is someone with a vagina. So yes, if you call someone a mail lady, you literally are describing her as a mail carrier with a vagina.
> But maybe I'm trying to help my brother find a partner so I do want to point out available women, and that does imply people with vaginas. Again, so, and what do you think would be a more efficient way to do this?
In that case, you might also talk about "the cute ginger mail lady with blue eyes" (or whatever your brother likes). But in most situations, that would be quite inappropriate.
That seems unlikely and definitely unproven.
We're told gender expression is individual, so the gendered concepts you hold for 'woman' aren't going to be the ones I hold. Thus is seems unlikely that we're referring to gender or nobody would be able to understand each other.
Also, we refer to people by the same pronouns whether they're awake or sleeping, cross dressing or not, which changes their gender expression, but not their sex.
> If we refer to sex, a woman/lady is someone with a vagina.
Which we do. Yes.
> So yes, if you call someone a mail lady, you literally are describing her as a mail carrier with a vagina.
No. I'm also not describing her as a bipedal humanoid. Some things are just expected unless you say otherwise.
> the cute ginger mail lady with blue eyes
Yes, lady. Okay, so no suggestion.
> But in most situations, that would be quite inappropriate.
Right, right, human attraction is verboten.
100% agreed. Don't see how it relates to what I wrote however.
Instead of people correcting mistaken assumptions about themselves and moving on (which happens to everyone in many ways, not just trans peoples' gender), we have this stupid culture war about the topic.
No, that the people "being offended" are just lying to get their way. You know it's true.
> so I don't get how your intentions are relevant.
Right, because the baying mob never has time for relevance or subtlety.
Probably. Most people who look like women are. But some are actually closeted non-binary people or trans men. In which case calling them a lady isn't offensive, but it hurts.