Hi, Michael!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:   
      
    MD>  Actors were put before actresses. It is sexism! :-)   
      
    AH>  The author put these words in alphabetical order.  So   
    AH>  would I.  I've noticed people using "actor" in reference   
    AH>  to both at times and I could write an essay on the   
    AH>  subject, but I'll leave it at that for now....  ;-)   
      
    MD>  I am looking forward to reading your essay. :)   
      
      
              On one hand I'm thinking "Me & my big mouth!"... on the other I know   
    I'll have a great time organizing my thoughts about various things I've   
   learned over the years because one of my correspondents has expressed an   
   interest.  ;-)   
      
              Until the 1960's, schoolteachers used formal grammar... and expected   
    their students to do likewise.  My grade two teacher, e.g., insisted we speak   
   & write in complete sentences at all times.  She'd repeat "have you not" until   
   we figured out for ourselves that she meant "haven't you" because... as I now   
   know   
   ... contractions aren't used either in formal English or in literature intended   
    for beginning readers.  In those days no explanation was offered, however.    
   The way many Authority Figures dealt with colloquial English was to ignore   
   whatever they didn't approve of... and from that standpoint I appreciate the   
   descriptive approach taken by modern dictionaries, in which they report what   
   people say but include flags like "colloq." or "coarse slang" or   
   "[Aus./Cdn./UK/US]" so we can make our own choices as to what works best in a   
   particular situation.   
      
              You may have seen jokes elsewhere of a type I'd describe as "gallows   
    humour" from senior citizens about how, if one didn't say "Miss Stickler, may   
   I please go to the lavatory?" one would be completely ignored or be forced to   
   sit through a lecture on the difference between "can" & "may" or wait until   
   recess.   
      
              When our daughter went to the same school I noticed the sign "GIRLS'   
    LAVATORY" had been truncated to "GIRLS".  In many ways that makes more sense   
   to me than pictures which could be interpreted as meaning "males wearing kilts"   
    or "females wearing trousers".  In the sink-or-swim environment of my   
   childhood, I learned a lot about English which I didn't fully appreciate back   
   then....  :-))   
      
              Things began to change during the 1960's.  People questioned many of   
    the rules they'd grown up with... one being the use of the masculine pronoun   
   in situations where the gender of any individual may not be obvious.  According   
    to the rules of formal grammar "each student should bring his own pencil" is   
   quite correct, unless all of the students are female.  Some women didn't like   
   that... they felt they were being ignored, especially when the word "man" was   
   also used to refer to human beings in general.  I thought it was silly that if   
   I had just one male student in a class of forty I was required to say "his",   
   although when I read professional literature I noticed that nurses & elementary   
    teachers were referred to as if they were invariably female.  For many people   
   nowadays it's a lot easier to use the plural pronoun regardless of the actual   
   gender or number.   
      
              Re occupational titles people can no longer take it for granted that   
    firemen & mailmen are male... so they are called fire fighters & mail   
   carriers. The majority of such titles appear to be gender-neutral even if they   
   weren't in the past.  There are still exceptions, though.  While waiters &   
   waitresses have been replaced by servers it would not be safe to assume a   
   governess is a female governor... and I must admit to some puzzlement over the   
   increasing tendency to refer to both actors & actresses as actors because I   
   would imagine their gender is a legitimate job requirement if e.g. the casting   
   director wants somebody who can handle the role of Prince Charming or Snow   
   White in a live-action film.  In animated films I can see from the credits that   
    males play female roles at times & vice versa... but I probably wouldn't know   
   otherwise.  If what matters is the sound of their voice rather than their   
   physical appearance I can think of other situations like that too.  But when   
   Meryrl Streep describes herself as an actor I'm not sure I understand her line   
   of reasoning.  I guess she likes the idea of a unisex job description & I'm not   
    averse to it myself.  OTOH, she's old enough to remember when some feminists   
   would have been outraged about her choice.  :-)   
      
      
      
      
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
    * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)