Adieu, "Mademoiselle" - Page 6

On February 28 2012 03:29 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
getting rid of beautiful innocent words , great achievement.

On February 28 2012 03:29 Kleinmuuhg wrote:
getting rid of beautiful innocent words , great achievement.

On February 28 2012 03:48 mister.bubbles wrote:
Argh! I hate when there are complicated honorifics in a language, it confuses me so much. I remember when I was on the plane to Montreal I was watching Star Trek in French to get back in shape and I noticed Spock calls Kirk "vous" so I decieded it was probably a good idea to call everyone "vous" just to be sure.

It's really anoying when there are multiple honorifics that and the same ones can be offencive or friendly in the wrong context, like Japanese for instance. I get around it in the worst way possible by calling all my young female friends by masculin terms, mostly "bro" or "dude". It's probably because I live in Hippy-Town Canada, but they seem to be quite alright with it.

On February 28 2012 01:04 Bigpet wrote:


They are open to males. It's just that either the employer doesn't want them there (thinks women are statistically more likely to be better at communicating or thinks that they would disrupt the predominantly female work environment) or men just don't want those jobs. There is no law prohibiting men to enact those jobs.

The only thing that government could do would be to enact a law that enforces a male/female quota in those jobs and that won't benefit anybody.

On February 28 2012 03:19 Spieltor wrote:
let's make everyone transsexuals and solve the problem of sexuality once and for all.

I feel the whole "hiding or masking sexual identity or race or color for "equality"" thing to be a joke. Differences between one person and another always exist, denying differences and covering them up for the sake of PC is what generally harms people in the long run.

Here's a reasonable question. if we're expunging the use of feminine traits, does that mean we're only allowing "male" or "neutral"? That sounds more like gender suppression than "equality". A lot of people don't think of it this way, even though that's what happens. Even the so called "Server" instead of "waiter/waitress". The word "server" implies male characteristics because the word itself is inherently masculine. Just like -to and -ta in Spanish.

Language is inherently categorizing because the human mind is inherently a categorizing machine.

How can this be a win for feminists?

We always seem to want to play the gender card in the case of the culpability of males vs females for instance. There is a poll on http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5665921#5665932
and http://www.wnd.com/2006/03/35370/

For these kinds of things to stop being doubel standards would be either to treat females as harshly as males or to treat males as leniently as females.



those "official forms" exist because of culture and society.

On February 28 2012 03:30 Ansinjunger wrote:


It's okay, we've got a new word: swapportunity.

On February 28 2012 00:19 Erasme wrote:
This isn't a victory, it's rather sad. But I'll still use it : ]

On February 28 2012 04:58 HotShizz wrote:


Ditto. What a silly state of affairs. I am sorry but its not like saying, Pardon mademoiselle is equivalent to, excuse me, whore. It's a title, a polite title. I think we should stop asking for the nom jeune fille. It sounds like you can only not be married when you are young. Maybe it should be nom de naissance, because not all women get married. It's derogatory and against women's rights. Maybe we should make it illegal to hold a door for a woman as well, because that makes her feel like she can't do it for herself. And let her get on the metro before you? Fuck that shit as well. Shove the hag down (like most other Parisians do anyway :D)

Not a victory for anyone, just a waste of time.

On February 28 2012 03:54 Spieltor wrote:


all languages have "polite and deferential" speech and "colloquial" speech. I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but north america seems to have lost a lot of that from the English language.

Modern English does not have a T–V pronoun distinction. In earlier versions of English, thou and thee were the T-forms of the second person singular, while ye and you constituted the V-forms. The T-forms, however, became stigmatised, and disappeared from ordinary speech, leaving the original V-form, you, the only active second-person pronoun. Thou and thee survive chiefly as archaisms. To a modern English speaker unaware of the origin of the distinction, the use of thou (for example in prayer), originally a sign of intimacy, now has connotations of formality due to its ceremonial character.

On February 28 2012 04:58 HotShizz wrote:


Ditto. What a silly state of affairs. I am sorry but its not like saying, Pardon mademoiselle is equivalent to, excuse me, whore. It's a title, a polite title. I think we should stop asking for the nom jeune fille. It sounds like you can only not be married when you are young. Maybe it should be nom de naissance, because not all women get married. It's derogatory and against women's rights. Maybe we should make it illegal to hold a door for a woman as well, because that makes her feel like she can't do it for herself. And let her get on the metro before you? Fuck that shit as well. Shove the hag down (like most other Parisians do anyway :D)

Not a victory for anyone, just a waste of time.

On February 28 2012 04:47 Jetaap wrote:


People are misenterpreting this: mademoiselle did not disapear from the French language, only from the administrative forms... I think it's completly fair to say that women should not have to give their marital status if they don't wish to and if it's not necessary.
Mademoiselle will still be used, but its meaning is shifting and is now more likely to mean "young lady".