Actor

Firegod

Firegod

Firegod

Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2003
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Location
Newcastle, UK
Why is it generally accepted that actor covers all genders? What happened to actor and actress? It is something I'm noticing more and more especially on chat shows. Don't we we still have waiter and waitress? Perhaps not.

I'm obviously old, and out of touch, but why the change? I guess I don't understand why we suddenly want to lump everyone together. What is wrong with the individual definition, neither are derogatory or offensive. I honestly don't get it. I mean what happens especially with Fench nouns (le and la)?

Who is making these decisions for us?
 
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Raymond Lin said:
They just did away with the term actress, kind of like Doctor covers both male and female.
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I never thought of it like that. I guess doctor has always been doctor. There is no doctoress I guess. But there has been actor and actress. Just wondered what prompted the change.
 
Firegod said:
I never thought of it like that. I guess doctor has always been doctor. There is no doctoress I guess. But there has been actor and actress. Just wondered what prompted the change.
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Teacher, Politician, Engineer, Architect, Pilot, Photographer, Painter, Scientist, Chef, solider, sailor, solicitor, barrister, mechanic, dentist plus loads don't have a gender.

Randomly, in English, someone decided that some profession requires a gender, waitress, actress, policewomen (as above), who knows and also don't really care. It's not really important. At least it's more consistent if its done away with gender in all of then. Just less confusing tbh.
 
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It would probably have been done to Steward/Stewardess too if that term was still used.


Raymond Lin said:
They just did away with the term actress, kind of like Doctor covers both male and female.
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The funny thing is a large amount of female actors still refer to themselves as an actress because that is what they wanted to be. As one put it "I grew up dreaming of being a princess not a prince" xD


Dis86 said:
Was doctoress a thing previously?
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If women were allowed to be doctors in Shakespearean times it may have. But as doctor and nurse were originally gender specific roles there was never any term for the opposite gender doing the role because it wasn't allowed. When the bigotry was finally dropped and women allowed to become doctors (and men to become nurses) the terms remained unchanged.
 
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ubersonic said:
It would probably have been done to Steward/Stewardess too if that term was still used.



The funny thing is a large amount of female actors still refer to themselves as an actress. As one put it "I grew up dreaming of being a princess not a prince" xD
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People can refer to themselves as as whatever they want, who am I to argue, they can call themselves Princess Venezuela Banana Hammock if they want, but I am just saying in terms of the development of a language, it's just weird some profession have gender and some don't. There is no gender for it in Chinese, if you want to describe a female actor....it's just female actor.
 
Raymond Lin said:
People can refer to themselves as as whatever they want, who am I to argue, they can call themselves Princess Venezuela Banana Hammock if they want, but I am just saying in terms of the development of a language, it's just weird some profession have gender and some don't. There is no gender for it in Chinese, if you want to describe a female actor....it's just female actor.
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A female actor, or actress for short.
 
No idea if it's really true, but I do remember a drunken theatre lovie explain it years ago to all be about billing and hierarchy, you usually had a lead male role and a lead female role whether that be in plays or film so there needed to be a distinction, if only to satisfy the egos of the actors themselves.
 
I imagine it's one of those things that will come in and out of fashion every 10 years as people alternately argue it's good to treat male and female actors the same and that it's good to highlight actresses' unique talents and life experiences or some such.

I think they'll always be actors and actresses to me though, just the language that works for me.

For people pointing out all sorts of other professions don't have gendered names that might be true, for whatever cultural and historic reasons, but it's quite popular to be a 'woman engineer' etc which I think illustrates how much toing and froing there is on ideas like this.
 
Dis86 said:
Was doctoress a thing previously?
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Doctress was a thing, a long time ago. There were female doctors in medieval England and English was much more gendered back then. 'doctor' doesn't always refer to medical people, anyway. Its root is in teaching, not medicine.

My question would be pretty much the opposite of one the OP asks. I'd ask what the point of always gendering this aspect of language is. Why bother doing it? What purpose does it serve? And why only do it for female people?

EDIT: Well, maybe I was sort of wrong a bit. The earliest use of 'doctress' I could find with a quick look is early 16th century, not quite medieval. Which makes me want to find out how female doctors in medieval England (there definitely were some) were addressed. Maybe 'physician' was used for that type of medical people at that time, with 'doctor' still being associated with teaching. But I'm working 12 hours on 12 hours off at the moment so I really shouldn't be spending time indulging my curiosity when I should be sleeping.
 
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English doesn't have gendered grammatical nouns or whatever it's called.
Try being me and not saying the right en or et for every word and the odd look you get when you accidentally called the table a he and not a she....:p
 
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