<p>I don’t think there’s much disagreement here, no matter what part of the country one is from, that “lady” is usually a compliment or at least neutral. I tend to use “lady” and “gentleman” as a form of respect for older people, just as I would say “yes ma’am” or “no sir” to someone older. My parents also used “ma’am” and “sir” as a form of respect to people who were waiting on them in stores or restaurants, and I learned that as well. On the other hand, many waitresses in the South, especially at family-owned restaurants, address nearly everyone, male and female, as “honey”. The rule of thumb is that if you’re “honeyed” at a restaurant, you’re probably going to get some really good food. :)</p>
<p>DS says he has many “lady” friends but currently no “girl” friend. He has called his friends that are girls his “lady” friends since middle school.:)</p>
<p>It was hyperbole to suggest that my wife would commit an act of mayhem if called a lady. She is definitely the sort of person who is liable to be described as a ball-breaker from time to time, but never literally. She would recoil from the notion that she would respond to anything with physical violence. She wouldn’t. (Lord knows, I’ve tested that proposition a few times.)</p>
<p>She lives in the world, so I doubt she would cause a ruckus if a server at a restaurant addressed her and a group of women as “ladies.” Nor would she get out of joint if some 70-something emeritus/of counsel/whatever called her a lady. But she would bristle if a peer, especially a male peer, talked about what a great lady she was.</p>
<p>As for MichiganGeorgia’s son’s “lady friends”: That seems pretty regional. I suspect that if my son called the women who are his friends his “lady friends,” he wouldn’t have any.</p>
<p>I am trying to imagine the circumstances where I would use “ladies” to address a group of women and can’t. At the very least, there would be a sense of it being a problematic choice. Since I am uncomfortable with “you guys” my solution is another southernism - “y’all”. Genderless. </p>
<p>I am okay with non-southerners borrowing it if they wish.</p>
<p>
Thought of some.</p>
<p>That is where you would use it. Not me. : ) : )</p>
<p>ETA: or at least I think I wouldn’t. These days I have difficulty remembering. Anything becomes possible. </p>
<p>I would like my sons to have good manners, too. Gentlemanly behavior: opening/holding doors for people, offering seats to women/older people, offering to help/carry things etc. Sometimes I’ll (somewhat jokingly) say things like “Coarse language will never impress the ladies. Poor hygiene will never impress the ladies,” etc. (I could just as well tell my sons, “Don’t swear. Take a shower/put on deodorant.”) I don’t really consider myself a “lady.” My parents are both from peasant/working class backgrounds and never had or taught us fine manners. I’m a tomboy/natural-outdoorsy type, but I do admire people who dress/speak/carry themselves well in formal social situations. (Imagine a reality show where you have to pass yourself off as either a duchess or a biker chick. I am very far from either, but I could much more easily pull off the biker chick. . .)
H could probably use the old line: “That ain’t no LADY. That’s my WIFE!” </p>
<p>Most of my closest friends are either women or gay men. I (informally) distinguish between the two using the words, “ladies” and “boys” (yes, I know they are all over 40 - but they’re still “my boys”). Call me sexist, old fashioned, etc - but it works for me and my friends. And yes, the ladies and I are going out for drinks tomorrow. </p>
<p>Remember pinky up!</p>
<p>megpmom: I realize I didn’t make something clear: If I was hanging out with you, I’d talk like you. (and I’m pretty sure it would be a great time : ) ) Usually I’m with women like JHS’s wife and they are fairly intimidating. Some of my male gay friends refer to themselves as “the ladies” but I’m definitely not going there. I am A-Okay with “madam.” Generally, I believe, they refer to me as “madam.” I am really in favor of genderless address as much as possible. It get’s me in much less hot water.</p>
<p>I’m stunned that any woman would ever object to being described as a lady. Is this a regional thing? I was born into a northeastern family, grew up in the south, and live in the mid-atlantic and have never encountered this notion. I do think it’s sad that so many women hate to be called ma’am because it makes them feel “old”. The first time anyone called me that I was about 20 and it from a little boy at my front door selling something for school. I admit that it startled me at first, but really it’s a term of respect to an adult female. Do those of you who don’t like it prefer “miss” instead? I’d feel ridiculous if someone called me that, as if they were pretending I was an ingénue of some sort.</p>
<p>Cobrat, you spend far too much time on Youtube and worrying about class distinctions.</p>
<p>Yeah, I didn’t realize that there was any problem with “lady” until this conversation. </p>
<p><a href=“The Angel in the House”>http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html</a></p>
<p>I think it has something to do with this idea. When I think really hard about what the word meant to my grandmothers, it probably is connected to this idea. We can argue about submissive. My grandmothers weren’t. But they were sheltered.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t like feeling like I need to be stripped of my gender because some women find being a woman to be offensive. Just because what it means to be a woman is difficult to pin down doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything. Even though I don’t believe in firmly defined gender roles, I do think that in most cases most women experience the world differently than most men, even if there is a lot of perfectly acceptable and admirable crossover and overlap. That shared experience with other women means something to me. I LIKE being a woman and I think being a woman is a part of my identity, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean I have to like pink dresses and turn my nose up at traditionally “male” jobs, but it does mean SOMETHING to me. We carry children, we give birth, we have hundreds of years of oppression in our history and feel pressures and have ideas about things that men would never even think of, we were silenced for lifetimes, and while it would be nice if we could stick our heads in the sand and pretend none of that ever happened, it did and it has changed us, in some negative ways and in some positive, it helped to form what todays idealized “modern woman” is-- and that’s a good thing! Women are strong and have fought to prove it, and fight today to put that power into action, to me that is special and that is something I want to hold onto. I don’t WANT society to move toward genderlessness and strip that part of my identity away from me for the sake of political correctness, that is offensive. </p>
<p>I took a really good gender studies course once that I wish I could write a post about that would even scratch the surface, but one of the ideas we covered was this idea of feminism where men and women are exactly the same and as such should be treated exactly the same, vs an idea of feminism where men and women are DIFFERENT but neither is inferior to the other and they both deserve to be treated equally regardless of any differences they might have. This is something that feminsists do not agree on, there isn’t a consensus on the “right” way to think about feminism even if each group might have you think otherwise. The former seems to be what I see most often in the feminists I encounter personally, but I definitely align myself more with the latter. </p>
<p>*an idea of feminism where men and women are DIFFERENT but neither is inferior to the other and they both deserve to be treated equally regardless of any differences they might have. *</p>
<p>When “lady” is used as a term of derision to criticize sports players (both women and men), doesn’t that mean the word has some built-in bias? Is “gentlemen” ever used as a term of derision? Actually it might be where I live. Sometimes someone “defends” a man generally considered to be gentleman by protesting “he’s really just a good ole boy”</p>
<p>If that were the primary usage of the word perhaps, but I think the sexism in that scenario has more to do with the person using the word than the actual meaning of the word. You can load up any word you want with context and tone, I think it takes more than the occasional jackass coach to completely rob a word of it’s real meaning and replace it with something else.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ve ever heard “gentleman” being used in that way, but I don’t think that’s a problem with the words, I think that’s a problem with people. A word being misused doesn’t make the word bad, especially when it’s only being misused by “bad” (/sexist?) people and not the world at large-- I don’t think “lady” qualifies. But perhaps in some regions it does, I guess I wouldn’t know.</p>
<p>^^ I think ‘girl’ or ‘woman’ is used as a term of derision in sports more often than ‘lady’. “You throw like a girl” comes to mind. Or “you’re such a woman”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘lady’ used in a condescending manner in a sports-related context.</p>
<p>This thread title immediately made me think of Jerry Lewis’s voice - Hey Laaay-Deeee… I also thought of the song Lay Lady Lay, so I also heard Bob Dylan’s voice. There are so many contexts of the usage as can be seen in this thread - historical, cultural, regional, situational, generational - that it really can’t be simply defined.</p>
<p>Agree. But, “You throw like a girl,” doesn’t make girl an insult to girls who enjoy being girls… I see no problem with lady and hear it used frequently in a very complimentary fashion. Never once considered it an insult.</p>
<p>“girls who enjoy being girls” - a different group than girls who don’t throw like girls? or some overlap? </p>
<p>FWIW: I throw like a girl and still wear the woman-of-a-certain-age equivalent of pink dresses.</p>