With the Oscar nominations just being announced, it reminded me of one of my peeves.
When are they going to drop that tired old term “actress”? There is already a gender-neutral term in use, it’s “actor,” meaning one who acts. This is not one of those make-it-politically-correct-by-creating-a-new-term nit-picks. The word “man” is not contained within the word “actor” as it is in the job titles Spokes-man, Chair-man, and Congress-man. And we don’t have directresses, editresses, artistesses, photographresses, designresses, doctresses... see how silly it is?
I do see the term webmistress a lot, but I don’t use it (any more than I use designress or illustratress). What am I? Married to a website? Having an affair with it? Being "kept" by a sugar daddy? Cut it out.
(If you are going to remind me that Mrs. is short for "mistress", go ahead. I also hate the term Mrs. (Missus).
2 comments:
I can't decide what to call myself in my new position as person in charge of a website. I have the same feelings you do about webmistress but then I don't really feel like I have mastered it yet either.(in fact, I know I haven't!!)
I will never master that job in multiple lifetimes. The other aspect of it is that they are never finished, so they go on and on -- infinity.
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