I don’t happen to think you have to be gender neutered to be a strong professional. There is nothing second class in my opinion about being a female. I am with oldfort on this one. If I can be ballsy AND feminine I win.
I’ve never heard it used to describe a thing. A vivacious downtown doesn’t make sense to me.
Thanks for all the responses!
To continue the story… The actual incident occurred almost a year ago.
.The student was called in to the dean and basically read the riot act. He apologized saying he didn’t realize “vivacious” was considered sexist and that it was truly meant to be only complimentary.
Another faculty (much older gentleman–and a real gentleman) came to his defense just to say that the student had probably learned the word from him. He had no idea there was ever any negative connotation associated.
There was nothing “quiet” about the incident. But it should have been over and done.
Fast forward to the present…The dean was published in a law review journal recently and she publicly called out the student and faculty member for sexism in her article. The student has received harassing phone calls as well as the faculty member. Everyone knows who they are even if their names were not actually printed.
Understandably many are hugely upset and it’s causing a big rift.
More thoughts?
People need to get over things. Let’s focus on sexism in the sense of - women getting passed over for promotion, women being propositioned or worse, groped - instead of well-meant but slightly ill-chosen words meant as compliments.
I don’t think it’s a great word to use for reasons already discussed. But it sounds like the reaction was excessive.
And certainly the phone calls are completely uncalled for.
Totally agree with the last two posts. THIS hyper-sensitivity is what is wrong these days. It does nothing to advance anyone and does quite the opposite…shows “weakness” to be so sensitive in my opinion.
I think this is ridiculous and if someone is offended by that word they have some big problems!
MOWC–totally agree. But her problem has dumped on two unsuspecting innocents. She has tried to say “oh, I didn’t mean to cause all this!” But she did.
If part of the introduction in question was actually “we feel so lucky to have such a young and vivacious dean” would that change anyone’s take on this?
I am pretty sure those were the words used.
A student using the word to introduce a dean = stupid.
Getting called on the carpet over it = correct.
Apologizing for it = good. Should have been over with at this point.
Older “real gentleman” saying he didn’t know it was inappropriate = predictable.
Bringing it up a year later in a law journal article = wildly inappropriate.
HarvestMoon–that’s exactly the way it was worded.
Perhaps using the word “vivacious” was a tiny bit sexist. From your description, it sounds like this student (who was probably about 24 years old) meant no offense whatsoever and was trying to be complimentary. He probably was nervous introducing the dean in a public forum.
But on a scale of sexism of 1 to 10, where 10 is pinching her butt and saying “Hey sexy, why don’t you walk them pretty little legs over to the coffee pot and get a few cups for the menfolk who are doing the real work”, this was about a 2.
The dean runs the law school and is in a position of immense authority over a student. A mild correction in private was probably in order, but from your description I think the dean mishandled the situation. At this point, what she is doing is an abuse of her authority and constitutes bullying the student. Doubt there’s anything the student can do to stop it though; he’s just going to have to shut up and take it and hope the furor dies down.
The dean is simply being hysterical and is probably just too emotional for her job. Sounds like being a dean is too complicated for her. Hopefully she has a husband who can tell her how to do her job since it’s probably all too confusing for her to handle 
(whoosh … that’s the sound of me running away from the pursuing mob. Seriously, I don’t see how her reaction helps anything.).
I agree with the above Especially the predictable part! There’s a very funny interview with my father about his Foreign Service experiences. He has really good things to say about the women he worked with, but the language he used is so old-fashioned and sometimes sexist. (They were always gals for starters.) I can absolutely see that the sentence quoted in #89 could easily seem perfectly harmless, but also irritating to the person described. But the Dean’s ultimate reaction was over the top. If she wanted to write about the incident - she should have been much more circumspect.
Yes, our culture is rapidly changing and we need to give people the time to catch up. This was an unsuspecting student who got caught up in something that really has little to do with him. I think the dean looks bad here in the end. She should have risen above it and handled it quietly. The law review article addressing it was passive aggressive in my mind.
The word vivacious is sexist, in the sense that it is usually used only for women, and in common usage it usually indicates a woman who is yes, lively and full of beans, but also is otherwise very attractive, I have never heard it used for men. That said, vivacious also is a term I suspect people younger than a certain age are not likely to use, it isn’t used all that often anymore in regular conversation or writing, so the kid may well have not understood the context of how it is used, he may have thought it was a synonym for lively, for full of life (which it is, but contextually is used in a different way).
I join the club in thinking the dean’s reaction was way, way out of line, one of the things that disturbs me is when people don’t differentiate between deliberate use of insulting language and where there was no intent of being demeaning. She could have privately told the kid later on that the term he used bothered her, and why, she could later on have referred to the incident in a general way ie “I was being introduced at an event, and someone used the description of “vivacious”, which while they may have thought it was a compliment, was not because it is one that is used only to describe women who are both attractive and lively”, but she turned it into a personal vendetta, as if the kid was some arch chauvinist out to put women down. In life, people do say things that are bothersome, are emotionally loaded, but there also is this tendency far too much for people to look for evil intent where there may be none, where cultural differences, or misunderstood language, lead to things like this. The incident where the young woman at some college claimed to feel threatened because some student had a Trump bumper sticker on their door is a classic example of this, it is stretching the boundaries of things and turning everything into a personal insult or threat.
And this is coming from someone who isn’t of the ‘everyone should develop a thick skin, bullying is something kids do, sticks and stones may break my bones, names will never hurt me’ school of things, I don’t think those things toughens someone up, I don’t think they are acceptable, but when the intent isn’t there the dean to me lends credence to those who say such things, that the world has gone mad with the PC police, etc, when you turn everything into sexism or racism or whatnot, it diminishes the real problems (like, for example, if that law school dean was being paid less because she was a woman, hypothetically, or if a woman trying to get tenure has to jump through more hoops than a man to prove she is qualified).
I think it’s always useful to go back to the original source when discussing something. Dean Laura Rosenbury’s comment about being introduced as “young and vivacious” was at the end of a larger article about the legacy of murdered postmodern feminist legal scholar Mary Jo Frug. The focus of the article was not this incident. The larger article makes for thought provoking reading.
https://newenglrev.com/volume-50/rosenbury-channeling-mary-joe-frug/
Dean Rosenbury has a right to be “offended’ by that word if she so chooses of course. And if this is the only mention she made of it, it doesn’t sound like she meant it to be any more than an antidote in her article. However, I shudder at a world where we literally have to review every single word to make sure it couldn’t possibly insult someone somewhere. I’m not talking about obvious things (in college my roommate used the term 'jew me down” in front of me and didn’t seem to realize why I would find that upsetting) but in this particular case, sounds like even the word ‘young’ offended her. Even though trust me, she’ll miss that adjective being used to describe her when it no longer is (I speak from experience.)…
I’m thinking about alternatives to vivacious - ‘she works tirelessly’ she gives the job her all’- is that an insult to working moms who have to run home to their kids at 5, or those with low iron? What about 'we are lucky to have her" - insulting to consider it luck and not her hard work that brought her to that position?
If someone personally doesn’t like something that was said about them, do tell the person who said it that it bothered you, but I don’t believe we should start censoring any word that someone somewhere sometime may not like…
I referred to a co-lawyer as “stubborn” once in a non-negative context. He went ballistic and said it was insulting and could impact his career. No one agreed with his outrage. We were friends context was joking/teasing, but it was in a work context. This reminds me of that situation. If someone doesn’t like a word, so be it, but I don’t think it’s a national issue!
Wow, al2simon, “simply being hysterical and is probably just too emotional for her job” is very loaded. Very.
Thing is, while the word vivacious isn’t really sexist (intended to convey energy and likeability,) the choice to use that word to intro a law school dean refers to a social aspect, takes focus off accomplishments, skills, or wisdom. And authority. I can see wincing. That’s the point at which it’s inappropriate, a distraction.
It does happen to men. I’ve heard countless side lines about “and he plays a mean game of golf” or the like. You have to be mindful of context, place. And the real hierarchy of authority.
And I suspect, al2, that it was your humor slipping through. I know. But we women could share tales of various trials and how we bucked up, ate it and moved on. Many of us do laugh it off. But it gets tiresome. At times.
I think this thread is timely though - things are changing so we do need to be more thoughtful about our language or we are going to end up in hot water.
A while back Princeton’s HR department released a memo “suggesting” that all official communications use more gender inclusive language. Some of the examples given were:
Frosh or first year students instead of freshman.
Humankind instead of mankind.
Firefighter instead of fireman
Person hours instead of man hours
Office cleaner instead of cleaning lady