eveiya replied to your post
May. 11th, 2017 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2qvfWjo:eveiya replied to your post “sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “danceswchopstck …”
I’ve seen this in US TV shows (I think more than one?) and every time it’s jarring and just… weird. And yeah, it gives me a twinge of anger and offence. I’ve only seen it used IRL by men to mock, disrespect and undermine women they felt were being “too bossy” - as a deliberate insult or rudeness. I had thought maybe it was another case of my UK sensibilities vs US.
Yeah– when Sister was first in, I would call her Sir occasionally, just to be an ass, and she was always offended by it. IRL, I assure you, American women in actual military positions are called ma’am and there are no connotations of sex work and, honestly, nobody thinks it’s weird.
I’m sure whatever TV show or thing it is must be very compelling overall, and have genuinely captivated people’s imaginations and such, and I do get that, I’m sure from within that perspective it’s meant reverently, I really am– again, the authors of these fics were all people whose opinions I generally respected, so whatever this media property is, I know it’s gotta be something people really were struck by.
But that doesn’t change the real-world implications of that, and the wholesale erasure of generations of real-life women’s actual military experience– including, now, in the US, lately, active combat service, since the rules have changed in the last couple of years.
So– in short, it’s offensive in American English too, to call a woman officer by the wrongly-gendered honorific.
I’ve seen this in US TV shows (I think more than one?) and every time it’s jarring and just… weird. And yeah, it gives me a twinge of anger and offence. I’ve only seen it used IRL by men to mock, disrespect and undermine women they felt were being “too bossy” - as a deliberate insult or rudeness. I had thought maybe it was another case of my UK sensibilities vs US.
Yeah– when Sister was first in, I would call her Sir occasionally, just to be an ass, and she was always offended by it. IRL, I assure you, American women in actual military positions are called ma’am and there are no connotations of sex work and, honestly, nobody thinks it’s weird.
I’m sure whatever TV show or thing it is must be very compelling overall, and have genuinely captivated people’s imaginations and such, and I do get that, I’m sure from within that perspective it’s meant reverently, I really am– again, the authors of these fics were all people whose opinions I generally respected, so whatever this media property is, I know it’s gotta be something people really were struck by.
But that doesn’t change the real-world implications of that, and the wholesale erasure of generations of real-life women’s actual military experience– including, now, in the US, lately, active combat service, since the rules have changed in the last couple of years.
So– in short, it’s offensive in American English too, to call a woman officer by the wrongly-gendered honorific.
