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HelpRe: Is there any correlation between the boy name on girl and gender bias?
in reply to a message by Francisinfp5w4
Nobody really knows, of course, and you can come to your own conclusions.
I would say beware drawing any conclusions about the human world that are based on finding faults with others, faults that you never share.
I think there's a relationship between some aspects of sexism/misogyny, and the fact that masculine-on-girl names are more appealing or accepted than feminine-on-boy names.
But I myself find them more appealing in general, and I don't think femininity is weak and bad, or that boys are better than girls! I've thought about it a lot, and I'm sure that's not my attitude.
I sometimes react to *other people* using cross-gender names, as if I assume that's their attitude. Sometimes it seems like it is!
But I don't really think that belief that one gender is good and the other bad, is the main thing that drives unequal directions of cross-gender name usage.
Anyway we could re-phrase the idea of "gender bias," to reverse it, without changing the outcome on name-usage ...
If you say that GNOB is "bad" because masculinity is felt to be too delicately constructed to bear the power of femininity, and BNOG are "good" because a feminine person has so much more potential than a masculine one to take on all different traits and expressions. It's just a different way of looking at the same thing, and no more or less likely to be an "explanation."
So I think it's more about the *way* that masculinity and femininity are constructed, as an asymmetrical contrast to one another, basically.
Masculinity is "normative" in English. Which means it doesn't really specify male sex, so much as it specifies exclusion of any special 'other' status. And femininity is pretty much defined as specifying association with female sex. So that's a more neutral explanation of why it seems like masculinity can't include even the most positive feminine-specifying traits, without being destroyed ("feminized"), but femininity can be anything that women can be, including having "masculine"-associated traits.
- mirfak
I would say beware drawing any conclusions about the human world that are based on finding faults with others, faults that you never share.
I think there's a relationship between some aspects of sexism/misogyny, and the fact that masculine-on-girl names are more appealing or accepted than feminine-on-boy names.
But I myself find them more appealing in general, and I don't think femininity is weak and bad, or that boys are better than girls! I've thought about it a lot, and I'm sure that's not my attitude.
I sometimes react to *other people* using cross-gender names, as if I assume that's their attitude. Sometimes it seems like it is!
But I don't really think that belief that one gender is good and the other bad, is the main thing that drives unequal directions of cross-gender name usage.
Anyway we could re-phrase the idea of "gender bias," to reverse it, without changing the outcome on name-usage ...
If you say that GNOB is "bad" because masculinity is felt to be too delicately constructed to bear the power of femininity, and BNOG are "good" because a feminine person has so much more potential than a masculine one to take on all different traits and expressions. It's just a different way of looking at the same thing, and no more or less likely to be an "explanation."
So I think it's more about the *way* that masculinity and femininity are constructed, as an asymmetrical contrast to one another, basically.
Masculinity is "normative" in English. Which means it doesn't really specify male sex, so much as it specifies exclusion of any special 'other' status. And femininity is pretty much defined as specifying association with female sex. So that's a more neutral explanation of why it seems like masculinity can't include even the most positive feminine-specifying traits, without being destroyed ("feminized"), but femininity can be anything that women can be, including having "masculine"-associated traits.
- mirfak
This message was edited 2/29/2024, 9:36 PM
