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You don't think that people are accustomed to thinking of "nurse" as a female role?
by ihm 9y ago
You don't think that people are accustomed to thinking of "nurse" as a female role?
- broodbucket 9y agoSure but I don't think a mother breastfeeding their child being called "nursing" is the reason
- jieiieifnfj88 9y agoLook at this tree! It's lovely and the only one in the forest.
- jieiieifnfj88 9y agoOh no! I'm losing fake points that don't matter!
- flukus 9y agoI looked up the etymology of the word and this is in fact where it came from: https://nursemanifest.com/2012/04/24/some-history-on-the-origin-of-the-word-nurse/ https://nursemanifest.com/2012/04/24/some-history-on-the-ori... > The first instance in English of nurse occurred in the early thirteenth century as the Anglo-Norman nurice, derived from the fifth-century post-Classical Latin nutrice, a wet-nurse (hired to provide an infant with breast milk when the infant’s mother would not or could not do so), although by the time it entered the Middle English lexicon, it had already absorbed the figurative sense of any female caretaker of children (Oxford English Dictionary 2010). Etymologically it is related to our modern word nourish, to feed. Unlike other professions like stewardess, nursing has never broken away from the gendered roots of the term.
- broodbucket 9y agoLanguage does evolve, though, for better or for worse. I'm sure the term has contributed to the "nurses must be female" perception, but I doubt renaming the profession is going to do anything
- flukus 9y agoYes language evolves, but it hasn't in this case and doesn't look to be anytime soon. Compared to much of the language it's remarkably stable. I'm surprised it didn't get changed back when we were changing actress to female actor, air hostess to flight attendant and all those others.
- broodbucket 9y agoBut a nurse is a nurse whether male or female, it's not directly comparable. And since when is the term "actress" not a thing?