Taking Front Court in Mixed?

Wow. Mind = blown. Never thought it would be possible to ruin a classic and elegant English word like "lady".

I'm fully aware of the imminent risk that @Borkya might be going to bite my head off, but seriously, sometimes it would actually make this world a little bit better if we all start loosening up a bit and get back a certain tolerance level when it comes to feeling offended. Body hell, I wouldn't have spent a single thought about a third-layer context or connotation of "gentleman" if it was used in such a neutral overall context.

Oh, for the record: Not a native English speaker here too (I'm sure you already noticed...). But in case anyone's interested, it's still the standard term in German badminton language to use the words "Dame" and "Herr" which have the exact same meaning as lady and gentleman. It sounds a lot more polite and less clinical than just saying "woman" or "man". My opinion.

And out of serious interest - when did being polite get a condescending connotation?

 

BC is an old-fashioned forum. I vote for a gender studies sub-forum in regards of Badminton if this leads to peace in all other threads. This watching the mouth everywhere and ruining threads several times because of nothing pisses me off.

IMO the best trolling of the year: USA discipline UK how to speak english!

 

That's indeed a good one!

 

By whom? Because its not seen that way by the people I live with and talk to. Can you point to a credible source for this?

I simply disagree with you, and believe there is no substance to this claim. From my experience it is only a mark of respect and of regarding the person in high esteem and high value, as it has always been, and has no connotations of weakness - only value. In the UK, it is a sign of good manners. It is in no way a "given" that using this word is a mark of sexism. Now, I think I can understand that the point you are trying to make is that YOU would prefer to use the term woman than lady, as in your experience there have been instances where the term "lady" has some derogatory connotations to it and hence you kindly request that people steer clear of that word. That I can understand and I'd ask you to tell me more about it so we can understand each other better.

Anyway. I won't say anymore - I am in disbelief that this would even be discussed here and blame myself for sparking the discussion - sorry everyone. But I will say this final point: nobody gets to police the language of another human being - its not OK.

 

See? It's reactions like this that really make it hard for women in sport and hard for women to participate in forums like this. I've often wondered where all the female badminton players are on BC and now I kinda now why they don't want to speak out. Cause they get pretty s*%t on by all the guys ganging up on them of they dare express their feminine opinion.

First off I wasn't biting anyone's head off and I know in a forum it's hard to tell the tone but I tired to use "haha's" and winky faces to show that I was speaking in a normal tone and not mad. I was just pointing out that that calling your female partner "my lady" is considered rude by the majority of women in sports.

Here's a source

Here's another source

Here's another source from the BBC so you know it's not just an American English thing

And here's another source from the dictionary so you know it's not just a sports thing

If you would like other sources I'd be happy to provide as there are literally hundreds.

I was actually complimenting you and saying it was a good thing to question long held assumptions to try to understand things better, but this quote?! Come on man! So you walk around calling black people n*&$#r and gays f$^&t because you don't let anyone tell you how to speak? Sorry for even implying those words, but people ABSOLUTELY have the right to tell someone what word is okay and what is not as those are perfect examples of. Lady isn't as extreme as those, just making the point that YES, people can police others language. And should.

I don't get what is so fragile from the white male ego that even THINKING of changing a simple word gets you all riled up? You didn't know it was an offensive word to a lot of women, fine, I get that, and maybe at first you don't believe it because you've never heard it before, fine I get that. But hearing someone out and then dismissing it as some "feminist rant from one wacko" is not the right way to go with this. What you should be doing is "I've never heard that before, let me google that really quick to see if anyone else has ever said that," and then follow the hundreds of links about this very topic. Language does change, whether you want it to or not.

And again, it's not the word lady that is offensive. "Ladies and gentlemen" is fine. "What would the lady like and what would the gentleman like" at a restaurant is fine. It's not offensive when the opposite word for men is gentleman. It's offensive when the opposite word is men, like in sports (where the only sports that the men's game has ever been called "gentleman's" is tennis.)

When a black person, a gay person, a handicapped person tells me "by the way, that words a little rude," I say, "oh sorry, I didn't know that. What's a better words to use?" Cause I'm not at all threatened by using another word, even if I don't get why it's offensive. It's enough for me to believe it because someone tell me.

I also call some of my gay friends gay, while calling others queer, because different people have different preferences. It's really no skin off my back and doesn't take a lot of brain power to remember which word to use with which person. I think you guys have enough intelligence to remember "in a public forum I should refer to them as women/female partners because that is more acceptable to the general public and in my club I can say 'my lady' cause the females in my group like it" without it disrupting your whole world!

 

Wow.. a simple "Could you guys (or fellas or gentlemen) please stop referring your XD partner as "lady" because..?" would have sufficed

 

I would really love to have a statistic of how many women are actually offended or at least annoyed by that. I really doubt the majority give a damn about that. If that's your only concern, consider yourself very happy.

 

I have often came across Borkyas feminism fight in several threads here at BC which always lead to textwalls of offtopic. This is not twitter here or your personal blog. This continous drifting to feminism which has nothing to do with the OP annoys me much. Since when everybody needs to explain in 10 posts or a wall of text how he meant something? Especially a single word? You are just one human which had bad experience with males. Sorry for you, but not every male is your enemy, enemy for every woman in the world or has bad intentions and evil plans to hold women down. This forum is the wrongest place for such discussions and this hypersensitive autopsy to find a reason to fight for feminism kills very thread here. You get excited about a single neutral word, but try to hold everybody's opinion down with you standard interlude of "A high level mixed doubles female" who plays at a so "high level club" which always sound that we all play in the backyard and don't have a clue. Please think about it.

 

You know what would make you a respected and useful member of this forum without anyone giving a damn sh*t about your gender? Posting actual badminton related and helpful content that maybe even has something to do with the discussed topic.

And apart from that, why don't you take your high horse and your pseudo feminist and mostly rude WOTs to a dedicated political correctness language police forum or use your blog for it? But for the sake of Lin Dan, stop polluting our nice and simple badminton forum with it!

And yeah, I would have written the exact same if you were a guy posting so much poisonous OT stuff. Hope that makes you a little happy at least. Over and out.

 

All of your sources show that it is an issue under contention, and not that there is a clear line.

As a British born Chinese person, i’m plenty used to hearing racist slurs, and it’s pretty obvious when terms are meant to be derogatory or not. Just today I had a business meeting where we were discussing how information is lost as it’s transmitted by word of mouth. Everyone was dancing around the phrase ‘Chinese whispers’ which I absolutely would have been fine with! It’s conceivable that there are other people who do not see the phrase as acceptable- perhaps it connotes barbarianism or something?

I would group this experience similar to that of the ‘women/ladies’ issue, and my personal experience is of females who refer to themselves or other females as ‘the lady’ or ‘his lady’ when trying to describe XD tactics.

I certainly do not see the issue as straightforward as e.g black vs. nigger, or less commonly known, midget vs dwarf. Those are very clear stances by the groups involved about what is acceptable.

Anyway. Back to badminton? One XD specific question I have as the male is: why are clears more accepted as a stroke in XD play vs MD play? Does the clear always have to be directed at the female to make it an acceptable stroke? Given the strength of ladies generally in the forecourt compared to MD players (who I feel tend to have lesser forecourt skill), surely giving a clear to the opposition male would be even worse than in MD?