(no subject)

[sorcyress]

Looking for input:

1) Is there a good non-gendered, or gender-inclusive word that could provide about the same connotations as "gentleman"?

(A friend asked this on Flife, and it occurs to me that this would be a useful word for my life. Neither he nor I thinks "gentleperson" satisfies.)

2) So, a boy-shaped friend of mine asked recently if I had any suggestions for how to indicate "I am not a bad guy" when walking late at night near (specifically, but it could certainly be generalized) single¹ women. His biggest concern was what happens when he is walking at about the same pace as a woman, and behind her, such as to seem like he is following her (rather than both going in the same direction).

(Obviously walking the opposite direction from someone is easy to indicate "safe" --make eye contact, smile, maybe say "good evening" and keep walking.)

Oh, damn. Only now it occurs to me that I could've suggested he switch sides of the street, assuming the area is safe to do so. I mean...there's still the following problem, but especially if the woman is aware of you switching sides, there's an indication of giving space.

More suggestions?

~Sor
MOOP!

1: As in, "only one" not "unpartnered"

Comments

[lyrwen.livejournal.com]

Oh jee I dunno about Mensch (Mentsh). I always associate it with the concepts of ubermensch and especially untermensch, which gives me the screaming heebie jeebies. That might be just me though.

[diego001.livejournal.com]

The problem is that in the German dialects that comes from, it is a gendered male word. I did think of this one, too, though, and I would agree otherwise.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Isn't the word for "girl" also gendered male?

[diego001.livejournal.com]

Mmm, actually that's gender-neutral. Das Mädchen. German is strange.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Right, I'd misremembered, since I don't actually speak German. (I just remembered that it wasn't female.)

The point being that in gendered-noun languages, the gender of the noun does not necessarily equal the gender of the person it describes.

[mogwit.livejournal.com]

Especially that sort of thing in German: the "umlaut on applicable vowel plus -chen suffix" is a diminutive and also gender-neutralizes any word. (A friend and I used to use it in class when we'd forgotten the gender of a word.)