curses on this inclusive language

[sheenaghpugh]

I am writing about a former military installation, and for my purposes it would be perfect if only men had ever worked there. Because then I could use all sorts of phrases and comparisons (men at arms, for one) that I can't because in fact there were female personnel too. Not that I have anything against the female personnel in themselves, but their presence doesn't half bugger up the terminology. Men and women at arms? Persons at arms? Won't even scan in the line, apart from sounding ludicrous. I am trying to consciously romanticise via language what was not on the surface a very romantic-looking place, and this isn't helping....

In the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed, or in my case went to school, it would have been easier because it was accepted that according to circumstance "man" could either mean "male human" or "human being in general" (man embraces woman, as they used whimsically to express it in the civil service). Now I can entirely see why feminists objected to this - we so need, in English, both a neutral pronoun that doesn't have the class baggage of "one", and a one-word equivalent of the German Mensch (human being). But we don't have them, and if I talk only of "men" in this context it will look either as if I didn't know there were women there (difficult, since the base commander was female) or am deliberately trying to deny their presence. Which I'm not; I just wish it didn't close off quite so much useful vocabulary and imagery....

Comments

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

But if women were on the base doing what would once have been men-at-arms type jobs, can you deliberately play with the language there? She was a perfect gentle knight, men-at-arms strode the corridors in their thick nylon stockings, sensible skirts echoes of those of the legionaries who once marched this landscape back in its heart of darkness days, blah blah or suchlike? Then the observation that we don't have proper words for women in those roles would become part of the poem...

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I used to think the WRENS were very romantically named; I think this was partly because I imagined English wrens as being rather like wild geese. I didn't realise they were little things for ages. Not that that's the service in question anyhow.

I do look forward to reading the poem when you're done.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

My great aunt enlisted in the WRNS during WW2, and she was a tiny, bird-like person (they mustn't have had height restrictions for whatever she did, as she was well south of 5 foot). I imagined they were all like her (no doubt aided by the acronym)...

[executrix.livejournal.com]

soldiers? sailors? officers? I'm not sure, but I believe that in US Navy enlisted sailor Alice Johnson would be referred to as Yeoman First Class Alice Johnson.

[sheenaghpugh]

So that's where the Star Trek term comes from! Never knew that...

Aircrew, though this lot did not fly, which makes the term a bit inappropriate.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

In Star Trek: TNG the women admirals (and there were a lot of them) were usually addressed as "Sir". It sounded odd to my ears.

Sorry, this doesn't help you at all. "Soldiers" is the only one I can come up with, obvious and all as it sounds.

Eek, sorry

[sheenaghpugh]

- had to delete own comment which left one beneath looking odd - substance was, I don't want the gender of the base personnel to look as if it mattered, because it didn't. In absence of gender-neutral vocab, might try to find out what interesting WW2 terms for WAAFs there might have been.

(So far, is not looking good. Found autobiog. stuff by former WAAF in which she says, rather wistfully, that though WAAFs shared in the dangers (many were bombed or suffered industrial accidents) they had no part in the boozy camaraderie of the men, not because the men would have minded but because the girls had to be too careful of their reputation.)

[federhirn.livejournal.com]

Whatever term you use, I'd steer clear of "persons". It's so police-talk.

Whatever happened to "people"? Whenever I hear the word "persons" I cringe.

(As for the neutral pronoun, I, too, miss an English equivalent of the German "man", although Germans now tend to make too many puns on "man" (because it sounds identical to "Mann") and are slowly eroding the word away...

Hmmm. Homo Sapiens at Arms? Folk at arms? Pity they were all adults and not children, because children at arms sounds less clunky to me than any other gender neutral term.

Heros at arms? (Taking "romanticised" a bit too far)

I suppose calling them warriors is out, too...

Hmmm. I'm curious what the solution will be

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

It's the pay-off for being able to write gender-neutrally in the first and second person. (I once came across a French translation of Auden's "Lullaby" -- it was The Wrong -- full of feminine forms, but it's difficult to see how the translator could have managed to pull it off). Normally I'm distrustful of second-person poems, but might that be a solution? Address the personnel? Or write in the persona of one of them?

[sheenaghpugh]

That was also an interesting solution, though in the end I went for the equally neutral "they". But I like second-person as a technique. It can go 'orribly wrong, but it's a challenge and it gets away from the "I" voice, which is ok by me as long as it's persona, but I like the personal "I" far less.

[cyber-moggy.livejournal.com]

How about "Comrades at arms"? Or possibly "Comrades in arms" or "under arms"? That is less gender-specific. It might not scan quite as well, though.

[sheenaghpugh]

That's a very interesting suggestion! On the surface it'd be odd, because at least in the UK, "comrade" suggests communist, and this installation was there specifically because of the cold war threat. But it might work in a sort of twisted way.... Lewis Carroll did say a poet was someone who had to "learn to look at all things/with a sort of mental squint"!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Soldiers, troops, servicepeople...

I like the comrades at/in/under arms suggestion.