6 ms·

Female and Male Googlers append “Lady” to their titles

9 points by nefitty 10y ago

projektir 10y ago
I don't know about this. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice of words, but I doubt it was said out of malice. The reaction seems rather disproportionate. Such a charged atmosphere.
- JshWright 10y ago
  What's "charged" about it? The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and some folks decided to point that out by adding the same unnecessary qualification to their title.
  - flubert 10y ago
    Similar in the "57 states", or "my muslim faith" sense I suppose.
  - projektir 10y ago
    The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and now we have a discussion about the place of women in the industry, designated days, and a campaign about changing job titles. If you do not find that charged, then we have to make do with the significant degree to which our definitions of that word differ.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      "Charged" to me implies that there was some disproportionate response. What do you think the response would have been if he had directed a question to "the black CTO"?
      - projektir 10y ago
        I've definitely seen people use terms like "the man!" and "this gentleman here", so "lady" doesn't seem all that special to me. Isn't the reason "the black CTO" sounds so bad is because the situation is even more charged? Charged to me means that people are on edge, potentially feeling unsafe, and are ready to make various assumptions in reaction to something that would normally be considered fairly benign. Such reactions may very well be justified, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is somehow normal. Black, lady, German, etc., are all just factual descriptors. It is the additional meaning that we assign to them that may make these descriptors sound bad. I do not believe that asking people to walk on eggshells around terms like "woman" and "lady" is a move in the right direction. That may even generate extra resentment. I'd rather change how people think and act. I don't think it's a great thing that people are afraid to say "the black CTO". A better world is not one where nobody acknowledges things like gender or race, but a world where those things are not grounds for diminishing a person.
        dgacmu 10y ago
        The core question is whether these are applied uniformly. In the specific case at hand, only the woman's gender was emphasized. We're the questioner to have identified everyone prefixed by their gender, it would have seemed weird, but not biased per se. There's also a question of whether it's contextually relevant. In this case, the question had everything to do with her CFO-ness and nothing to do with her gender. In a different context, it might have made sense to direct a question to someone on the board specifically because of their gender or race. But this wasn't such a context.
        projektir 10y ago
        Well, if someone says "the CFO", many people will automatically assume the CFO in question is male. The gender may be emphasized to avoid that assumption. The article, as it is written, doesn't do a very good job of presenting the context. Without additional context, I very much doubt the investor was trying to be sexist or offensive with their statement, and I don't think they deserve such a backlash. It's picking at straws. The investor is human, too. There are better targets.
        10y ago
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  The charged atmosphere is largely contributed to by biased articles like this. It's basically one-sided and intentionally leaves out further explanation of their cited stats to exaggerate the alleged problem. And then the charged atmosphere reinforces this problem because everyone gets so touchy that we can't even have an intelligent conversation anymore.
jsmith0295 10y ago
I'm skeptical that the investor that said that meant anything by it. Acknowledging someone's gender in a sentence doesn't immediately qualify as sexism.
- JshWright 10y ago
  > I'm skeptical that the investor that said that meant anything by it. I think that's rather the point... If the investor were aware of the sexist nature of his comment, it wouldn't be necessary to raise awareness in the first place. Just because something isn't malicious doesn't mean it isn't sexist. It comes across as a diminutive affix.
  - jsmith0295 10y ago
    So who gets to decide that it's sexist? Anyone who feels that it is? If thats the case, I think that assuming its sexist is itself sexist, and now we're in the same boat. I'm sure if someone took offense and mentioned it to the investor he would've apologized. There's no need to turn it into some kind of political campaign and publicly mock the guy.
    - parenthephobia 10y ago
      > So who gets to decide that it's sexist? Anyone who feels that it is? Yes. Everyone gets to decide whether things are sexist, whether and when that's a problem, and whether another person having different opinions about any of that should effect the way they act towards that person.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      As another commenter mentioned, would it have been appropriate for him to direct a question to "the black CTO"?
      - jsmith0295 10y ago
        No, but that's really not the same thing at all. It's common to refer to people in the context of their gender (Mr., Ms., etc) but you just don't do that with race. Really, the fact that this is even being focused on as sexism is crazy. In much of the world women are actually being brutally oppressed, and I would assume that the overwhelming majority of people involved in complaining about minor events like this have not and probably never will do anything to address that. So do they really care, or are they just virtue signaling?
flubert 10y ago
So could it have been out of concern of using the wrong choice of Mrs., Ms., or Mz.? Maybe the smart thing to do is to call everyone Dr.
- DKnoll 10y ago
  Not really... traditionally, lady is the feminine equivalent of lord, both of which are technically granted titles. That said, no CFO would likely complain if you called them 'the Lord CFO'... it does have a nice ring to it. 'Ms.' would have been a valid choice, which the person correcting him used to little controversy. I think the problem was not using a gender specific pronoun and rather the way it was used. For example, directing somebody to a stranger and refering to them as 'the lady over there', is totally different than saying 'the lady CFO' as if it qualifies her title. Addressing her as 'Ms. CFO' would be appropriate, as is 'Mr./M(r)s. President' for example.
  - Nadya 10y ago
    I fail to see how "Ms. CFO" and "the Lady CFO" are different, personally. What striked me as an issue is they didn't care to know or ask for her name - but knew Mr. Drummond's name. Everyone else seems to be ignoring that.
    - dgacmu 10y ago
      "Ms. CFO" is using CFO as a replacement for her name; it's awkward and non-standard in the case of CFO, because of the acronym, but it has precedent in other contexts ("Mr. President", "Mrs. Chairwoman"). This would typically be a first-person form of address. ("Mrs. President, could you explain...") "The CFO" is using her title, as would be used as the object of a sentence ("I have a question for the CFO"). You wouldn't say "I have a question for Mr. President" - you'd say "I have a question for the President." "Lady CFO" would be an archaic, first-person form of address. "Lady CFO, prithee explain to me what Alphabet did to mitigate the effects of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations." "The Lady CFO" is expanding the proper title by adding an extra term that's not necessary or typical. You can't combine the "the" and "lady" into a title without it making the title itself be weirdly gendered. (I don't have anything intelligent to say about the second part of your comment - I'm curious to know how others view it.)
kongkong 10y ago
If I translate his sentense into my languange, he would actually have been giving a compliment. Too much hysteria these days.

9 points by nefitty 10y ago

I don't know about this. Perhaps it wasn't the best choice of words, but I doubt it was said out of malice. The reaction seems rather disproportionate. Such a charged atmosphere.

JshWright 10y ago
What's "charged" about it? The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and some folks decided to point that out by adding the same unnecessary qualification to their title.
- flubert 10y ago
  Similar in the "57 states", or "my muslim faith" sense I suppose.
- projektir 10y ago
  The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and now we have a discussion about the place of women in the industry, designated days, and a campaign about changing job titles. If you do not find that charged, then we have to make do with the significant degree to which our definitions of that word differ.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    "Charged" to me implies that there was some disproportionate response. What do you think the response would have been if he had directed a question to "the black CTO"?
    - projektir 10y ago
      I've definitely seen people use terms like "the man!" and "this gentleman here", so "lady" doesn't seem all that special to me. Isn't the reason "the black CTO" sounds so bad is because the situation is even more charged? Charged to me means that people are on edge, potentially feeling unsafe, and are ready to make various assumptions in reaction to something that would normally be considered fairly benign. Such reactions may very well be justified, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is somehow normal. Black, lady, German, etc., are all just factual descriptors. It is the additional meaning that we assign to them that may make these descriptors sound bad. I do not believe that asking people to walk on eggshells around terms like "woman" and "lady" is a move in the right direction. That may even generate extra resentment. I'd rather change how people think and act. I don't think it's a great thing that people are afraid to say "the black CTO". A better world is not one where nobody acknowledges things like gender or race, but a world where those things are not grounds for diminishing a person.
      - dgacmu 10y ago
        The core question is whether these are applied uniformly. In the specific case at hand, only the woman's gender was emphasized. We're the questioner to have identified everyone prefixed by their gender, it would have seemed weird, but not biased per se. There's also a question of whether it's contextually relevant. In this case, the question had everything to do with her CFO-ness and nothing to do with her gender. In a different context, it might have made sense to direct a question to someone on the board specifically because of their gender or race. But this wasn't such a context.
        projektir 10y ago
        Well, if someone says "the CFO", many people will automatically assume the CFO in question is male. The gender may be emphasized to avoid that assumption. The article, as it is written, doesn't do a very good job of presenting the context. Without additional context, I very much doubt the investor was trying to be sexist or offensive with their statement, and I don't think they deserve such a backlash. It's picking at straws. The investor is human, too. There are better targets.
      - 10y ago
jsmith0295 10y ago
The charged atmosphere is largely contributed to by biased articles like this. It's basically one-sided and intentionally leaves out further explanation of their cited stats to exaggerate the alleged problem. And then the charged atmosphere reinforces this problem because everyone gets so touchy that we can't even have an intelligent conversation anymore.

jsmith0295 10y ago

I'm skeptical that the investor that said that meant anything by it. Acknowledging someone's gender in a sentence doesn't immediately qualify as sexism.

JshWright 10y ago
> I'm skeptical that the investor that said that meant anything by it. I think that's rather the point... If the investor were aware of the sexist nature of his comment, it wouldn't be necessary to raise awareness in the first place. Just because something isn't malicious doesn't mean it isn't sexist. It comes across as a diminutive affix.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  So who gets to decide that it's sexist? Anyone who feels that it is? If thats the case, I think that assuming its sexist is itself sexist, and now we're in the same boat. I'm sure if someone took offense and mentioned it to the investor he would've apologized. There's no need to turn it into some kind of political campaign and publicly mock the guy.
  - parenthephobia 10y ago
    > So who gets to decide that it's sexist? Anyone who feels that it is? Yes. Everyone gets to decide whether things are sexist, whether and when that's a problem, and whether another person having different opinions about any of that should effect the way they act towards that person.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    As another commenter mentioned, would it have been appropriate for him to direct a question to "the black CTO"?
    - jsmith0295 10y ago
      No, but that's really not the same thing at all. It's common to refer to people in the context of their gender (Mr., Ms., etc) but you just don't do that with race. Really, the fact that this is even being focused on as sexism is crazy. In much of the world women are actually being brutally oppressed, and I would assume that the overwhelming majority of people involved in complaining about minor events like this have not and probably never will do anything to address that. So do they really care, or are they just virtue signaling?

flubert 10y ago

So could it have been out of concern of using the wrong choice of Mrs., Ms., or Mz.? Maybe the smart thing to do is to call everyone Dr.

DKnoll 10y ago
Not really... traditionally, lady is the feminine equivalent of lord, both of which are technically granted titles. That said, no CFO would likely complain if you called them 'the Lord CFO'... it does have a nice ring to it. 'Ms.' would have been a valid choice, which the person correcting him used to little controversy. I think the problem was not using a gender specific pronoun and rather the way it was used. For example, directing somebody to a stranger and refering to them as 'the lady over there', is totally different than saying 'the lady CFO' as if it qualifies her title. Addressing her as 'Ms. CFO' would be appropriate, as is 'Mr./M(r)s. President' for example.
- Nadya 10y ago
  I fail to see how "Ms. CFO" and "the Lady CFO" are different, personally. What striked me as an issue is they didn't care to know or ask for her name - but knew Mr. Drummond's name. Everyone else seems to be ignoring that.
  - dgacmu 10y ago
    "Ms. CFO" is using CFO as a replacement for her name; it's awkward and non-standard in the case of CFO, because of the acronym, but it has precedent in other contexts ("Mr. President", "Mrs. Chairwoman"). This would typically be a first-person form of address. ("Mrs. President, could you explain...") "The CFO" is using her title, as would be used as the object of a sentence ("I have a question for the CFO"). You wouldn't say "I have a question for Mr. President" - you'd say "I have a question for the President." "Lady CFO" would be an archaic, first-person form of address. "Lady CFO, prithee explain to me what Alphabet did to mitigate the effects of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations." "The Lady CFO" is expanding the proper title by adding an extra term that's not necessary or typical. You can't combine the "the" and "lady" into a title without it making the title itself be weirdly gendered. (I don't have anything intelligent to say about the second part of your comment - I'm curious to know how others view it.)

kongkong 10y ago

If I translate his sentense into my languange, he would actually have been giving a compliment. Too much hysteria these days.