In Which We Discuss Avatars and Custom User Titles IX

[sophie]

You must mean a badass woman.

Dude is generally considered gender neutral in modern parlance.

 

[caketastydelish]

Dude is generally considered gender neutral in modern parlance.

Considering what you've accused me of in the past, here's something interesting to read whenever you have the time.

Copied and pasted from my communications class from microsoft word to here:

Spoiler :

CHAPTER 36
MUTED GROUP THEORY

Outline

Introduction.
To Cheris Kramarae, language is a man-made construction.
Women’s words and thoughts are discounted in our society.
When women try to overcome this inequity, the masculine control of communication places them at a disadvantage.
Women are a muted group because man-made language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding them.
Kramarae began her research studying gender bias in cartoons.

Muted groups: Black holes in someone else’s universe.
Edwin Ardener first proposed that women are a muted group.
He noted that many ethnographers claimed to have “cracked the code” of a culture without referencing female speech.
He and Shirley Ardener discovered that mutedness is caused by the lack of power that besets any group of low status.
He claimed that muted groups are “black holes” because they are overlooked, muffled, and rendered invisible.
Shirley Ardener argues that the key issue is whether people can say what they want to say when and where they want to say it, or must they re-encode their thoughts to make them understood in the public domain?
Kramarae’s extension of the Ardeners’ initial concept explores why women are muted and how to free them.
She argues that the public-private distinction in language exaggerates gender differences, poses separate sexual spheres of activity, and devalues private communication.

The masculine power to name experience.
Kramarae’s basic assumption is that women perceive the world differently from men because of women’s and men’s different experiences and activities rooted in the division of labor.
Kramarae argues that because of their political dominance, men’s system of perception is dominant, impeding the free expression of women’s alternative models of the world.
Men’s control of the dominant mode of expression has produced a vast stock of derogatory, gender-specific terms to refer to women’s talking.
There are also more words to describe sexually promiscuous women than men.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that muted women may come to doubt the validity of their experience and the legitimacy of their feelings.

Cheris Kramarae has a very interesting perspective that most people do not even consider. I appreciate original thinkers like that.

 

[sophie]

Yes I understand feminist theory, thank you very much. Doesn't change the fact that dude is gender neutral in modern parlance.

Accepting or enforcing word-differentation where it doesn't exist just re-emphasizes the largely arbitrary distinction between the male and female sexes in modern society.

 

[caketastydelish]

Yes I understand feminist theory, thank you very much. Doesn't change the fact that dude is gender neutral in modern parlance.

Accepting or enforcing word-differentation where it doesn't exist just re-emphasizes the largely arbitrary distinction between the male and female sexes in modern society.

That's fine, but what I'm advocating is we've got to come up with a better gender-neutral term than 'dude'.

How about 'that person looks badass' or 'that jedi (idk about star wars so much so I could be wrong) looks like a badass' or even just 'she looks like a badass'. Yes she is feminine, but on deeper thought, feminine and badass are self-contradictory (stereotypically speaking that is) so when you say 'she looks like a badass' you are openly breaking the stereotype that occurs in people's mind subconsciously.

 

[sophie]

That's fine, but what I'm advocating is we've got to come up with a better gender-neutral term than 'dude'.

How about 'that person looks badass' or 'that jedi (idk about star wars so much so I could be wrong) looks like a badass' or even just 'she looks like a badass'. Yes she is feminine, but on deeper thought, feminine and badass are self-contradictory (stereotypically speaking that is) so when you say 'she looks like a badass' you are openly breaking the stereotype that occurs in people's mind subconsciously.

Whatisthisidonteven

 

[caketastydelish]

Whatisthisidonteven

The kind of logic I'm talking about requires an I.Q of roughly 85 to understand, sorry.

 

[sophie]

The kind of logic I'm talking about requires an I.Q of roughly 85 to understand, sorry.

85 or below, maybe. What you posted is the most garbled mess of superficially related nonstatements that I have ever seen in my life.

Anyway, upon further review (with bundle) apparently the gender-neutral "dude" is not a Thing across the nation. In California literally everybody is a dude. I'm a dude, you're a dude, my sister is a dude, my dog is a dude, and my grandmother is a dude. There's really no stigma. You're making an issue out of a nonissue.

 

[caketastydelish]

85 or below, maybe. What you posted is the most garbled mess of superficially related nonstatements that I have ever seen in my life.

Anyway, upon further review (with bundle) apparently the gender-neutral "dude" is not a Thing across the nation. In California literally everybody is a dude. I'm a dude, you're a dude, my sister is a dude, my dog is a dude, and my grandmother is a dude. There's really no stigma. You're making an issue out of a nonissue.

Dude can mean everyone now, but it originally referred to males, and the male-exclusive term has become the 'everyone' term by default, and this in itself is a problem. Sort of like 'mankind'. If someone said 'womankind' everyone else would laugh, but we just say 'mankind' without even considering we're looking at humanity from an androcentric point of view.

 

[sophie]

Dude can mean everyone now, but it originally referred to males, and the male-exclusive term has become the 'everyone' term by default, and this in itself is a problem. Sort of like 'mankind'. If someone said 'womankind' everyone else would laugh, but we just say 'mankind' without even considering we're looking at humanity from an androcentric point of view.

Your tendency to get pedantic over crap everybody knows already is highly amusing.

 

[caketastydelish]

Your tendency to get pedantic over crap everybody knows already is highly amusing.

Well YOU apparently know, but sadly a hell of a lot of people don't. Anyway, we're clearly on the same side with this so I'm not sure what we're even arguing about.

 

[sophie]

Well YOU apparently know, but sadly a hell of a lot of people don't. Anyway, we're clearly on the same side with this so I'm not sure what we're even arguing about.

Oh? So you accept that this is all irrelevant and you're making a big stink out of nothing now?

 

[azzaman333]

Dude WTH this isn't the right thread for gender politics.

 

[bhsup]

Yes I understand feminist theory, thank you very much. Doesn't change the fact that dude is gender neutral in modern parlance.

Then why does "dudette" exist in my vocabulary?

 

[Kennigit]

because the eighties happened

now chump and chumpettes, I'm catching the next pimpmobile outta here

 

[Borachio]

It's an interesting if rather ugly* word, imo.

Dude is an American English slang term[1] for an individual. It typically applies to males, although the word can encompass all genders.

Dude is an old term, recognized by multiple generations although potentially with slightly different meanings.[2] From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a person who dressed in an extremely fashion-forward manner (a dandy) or a citified person who was visiting a rural location but stuck out (a city slicker). In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean companion, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s. Current slang retains at least some use of all three of these common meanings.

The word may have derived from the Scottish term for clothes, duddies.[5] The term "dude" was first used in print in 1876, in Putnam's Magazine, to mock how a woman was dressed (as a "dud"/dude).[5]

In 1885, a newspaper advertisement for men's clothing credits the Baptist missionary G. W. Hervey for the notion that 'dude' may have been derived from the Swahili language.[6] He cited A Handbook of the Swahili Language (As Spoken at Zanzibar), by Edward Steer, LL.D., Missionary Bishop for Central Africa, as translating the Swahili word 'dude' (plural, madude) as "a thing of which you don't know or have forgotten the name".[7] Purportedly, the locals described early missionaries to Africa as "dude".

(*I suppose I'm betraying my natural anti-American prejudices here. Sorry about that. No offence intended. Something to do with a hang over from WW2 and nylon stockings.)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You must mean a badass woman.

hahahahahaha

I used dude in reference to Dachs. So everyone argued for nothing.

 

[Farm Boy]

Something to do with a hang over from WW2 and nylon stockings.

It was dark, you didn't know she was wearing them... kerpoing!!?!

 

[Borachio]

Eh? No. I meant the GIs were always seducing women with promises of supplies of nylon stockings. Oversexed, overpaid, and over here.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/oversexed-overpaid-and-over-here.html

But I only have this second hand, of course. I'm not that old.

 

[Farm Boy]

Eh? No. I meant the GIs were always seducing women with promises of supplies of nylon stockings. Oversexed, overpaid, and over here.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/oversexed-overpaid-and-over-here.html

But I only have this second hand, of course. I'm not that old.

Darn. I liked my mental image significantly better.

Mostly I think the problem was that the GI's were just a bit too late. Should have sent 'em(or left 'em I guess) 20 years earlier right after Yurope smashed up its supply of fighting age men. Might have, ahem, bridged some gaps in the demographics.

 

[classical_hero]

You must mean a badass woman.

To me, the word "dude" is referring to Dachs.