Regarding the insults "cow" and "bitch," it is interesting that no one has commented on how they are the deadly sin counterparts of perceived feminine holy virtues.
"Bitch," as I usually hear it applied, tends to indicate that a women is mean, in-your-face, rude, uppity, etc. That is the exact opposite of how standard sexist culture claims that women should act (they should be "kind, caring, polite, soft-spoken, etc).
"Cow" (at least as I hear it used in the States) tends to be directed in a most physical sort of manner; calling a woman cow is akin to calling them fat, lazy, and simple. The sexist stance is that women should be accomplished (in Pride and Prejudice sense of the word), industrious, and slender.
I ask you, why shouldn't a woman be in-your-face? What is so bad about an uppity member of the XX genetic group? Why is our society consumed with the supposition that a woman's worth is defined by her weight (or lack thereof)?!
To call a woman such names is to chide them for not conforming to sexist social expectations.
Indeed, physical appearance is one of the more subtle forms of sexual oppression that occurs in modern society. Being overweight is seen as a punishment; if you fail at life, that is what you'll be.
I recently received a spam email that read "Happy Birthday Barbie!" followed by a picture and then the additional sentence "It is about time this happened to her."
Here's a link to the image that was included in the email:
http://www.clickplay.com.au/funny_zone/wp-content/uploads/pic04144.jpgI took the tone of the email to be one of revenge; Barbie is hated and so being overweight is revenge. To say that a person's weight is a punishment is actually fairly apt; society seems to bind women with size 6 chains.
There are certain perceptions associated this being fat: they're stupid, lazy, gluttons, etc. While women are underrepresented in the sciences, overweight women are even more underrepresented. This ignores the reality of the situation. We don't discriminate someone because of hair color, correct? It's genetic and they can't do anything about it (except perhaps dye it). But a person's weight can (and often does) have a huge genetic factor associated with it.
Our genes can predispose us to eat more, to process that food more efficiently, to more readily store fat, to produce additional adipose tissue with greater ease, to retain excess fat more stubbornly, to burn fewer calories for common activities, etc. Epigenetics and environment can also play large roles in if a person is large. Recent studies indicate that what a mother eats while being pregnant can influence the weight of the child (consume excessive calories and the child has an increased likelihood of being obese in their adult life). There are viruses that can cause a person to put on weight. To blame someone for being overweight is akin to blaming someone for developing cancer (though the difference is that cancer's effects on the body are much well known).
And so what does society do? We insist that women should appear a certain way. If they don't, they should devote all their efforts to achieving that ideal. Instead of society trying to keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, society is trying to keep them in sweat pants, exhausted, and in the gym. The effect is largely the same; don't give them time to think, to develop as human beings, to become the women they want to be. No, they should spend their time, fighting their genetic structure, trying to conform to a fleeting ideal. Keep a populace exhausted and distracted and they won’t have the energy to rebel.
It is quite frustrating when I hear men complain that a woman's "ugly" because she's fat. Physical attraction does likewise have a genetic component, but such genetically predisposed preferences seem to be in a minority of the population. The majority of physical attraction seems to be the result of social conditioning. Which is to say, when a guy says that a woman is ugly because she's fat, he is really saying that he is subject to social conditioning that limits his own perceptions. It is a comment on the viewer, not the one being viewed.
To be more a little soap-boxy, the old saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is vile bunk. Beauty is inherent in the beholden. Every woman (and indeed, every individual) is beautiful. That is the starting condition. It is only a question as to if the beholder is capable of seeing past their own prejudices to see it. When we call someone ugly, all we are doing is identifying our own limitations, where
we have failed as human beings. It says not a whit about the person to whom the insult is being applied.
Third, we can acknowledge hopefully with unanimity that some naming conventions are structurally sexist because they routinely flow from male to female...
Depends on how one looks at it. Julius and Julia would seem to be one such example of where the female equivalent is derived from the male version. Historically, it is true that the name Julius seems to have been common long before Julia was. However, both follow basic Latin grammatical forms. The name stem is "Juli-" while the "-us" and "-a" endings are merely declension specific endings (and those declensions have gender associated). Julius and Julia are grammatically cognates, not derivatives.
Or consider Aaron and Erin; the former was popular long before the latter, and so one might well suppose that the latter was derived from the former. However, if one is willing to trust a
website on name information (a dubious proposition, of course), then Erin and Aaron aren't even related (the former being of Hebrew origin and the latter being of Gaelic origin).
General classifying nouns, however, such as waiter and waitress or actor and actress, appear (to the best of my knowledge) to be much more along the lines of what you are talking about, and indeed is seemingly unnecessary. The only potential use I can see for having different words for the same position is, say, for a director to know who he ought to cast in a particular role (though we may be too hasty in excluding women from men's parts, and vice versa. Such swaps used to work, after all).
We could talk through all of that, but I think if you're looking for a yes-or-no answer as to whether sex-specific names are sexist, look no further than the fact that names are rarely chosen by adult individuals who are looking to express themselves.
Do you mean that people seldom choose standard names when selecting adult monikers, or that they seldom choose sex specific monikers? And in what setting?
People choose aliases for the internet fairly often, and as adults, but anonymity seems to be a powerful draw for non-standard names than an aversion to sexual identifiers. Additionally, people seem to still generally follow vague naming conventions. To be very hasty in my generalizations, it seems that words that end in consonants are often associated as being masculine while words that end in vowels are often associated as being feminine (though diminutives of all sorts also often take vowel endings). To use the forum as an example:
Uboa, Zephira, and ZaichikArky are all self-identified women. You'll note, each ends in a vowel. Take a few male examples: Faust Wolf, Thought, Ramsus, Truthordeal. We all choose names that end in what could be interpreted as standard masculine naming conventions.
Anywho, I'm not meaning to disagree; I just thought of the possibility and as such haven't had time to figure things out for myself.
Naming culture is interesting. Today, most people keep the names they've been given at birth for their entire lives.
I think you might be too legalistic in such a perspective. I can assure you, my parent's didn't name me Thought. Also, I have had a few nicknames over the years as well. People usually refer to me by my "real" name, but I've had plenty of other names too. The difference is that one was recorded by the government and the others weren't. But that difference doesn’t make the others non-names.
