Bartender sounds very American to me and as for Server, never heard of that anywhere. Sounds more like a term applied to a ball game. Barman/Barmaid, Waiter/Waitress is perfectly fine.

What one earth is the matter with people today?

They were probably American terms originally, but they're being used over here now, particularly within the trade.


Nothing's wrong with them. There's just a gradual move towards gender-neutral terms for workers.

gender equality ? what are you on about ?

we can't mention if someone's a woman now ?

I believe in the US they invented "waitron" to replace waiter/waitress. I don't know if that ever caught on.

You've never heard of it? Where have you been for the last few decades??!!


Of course we can. But you must surely agree that there's no real need to have different terms for males and females doing exactly the same job. For example it's more convenient to say that a force employs 3,000 police officers, rather than 3,000 policemen and policewomen.

We live in an age where people enjoy being offended, it gives their sad lives some purpose to feign self-righteous indignation. I blame social media for a great deal of this. We have completely lost the ability to laugh at ourselves. The degree of anger vented in a Twitter storm over the most trivial of matters is something to behold.

You only have to look at the bile and vitriol aimed at Asda yesterday because their online payments system crashed. You would have thought the world was coming to an end. People really need to get a grip.

I'm with you on this though I think Lord Sugar sums up most peoples feelings HERE

I wasn't talking about policemen I was talking about comics on a panel show , so if there's 4 comics in a show and 3 are male and 1 is female it makes perfect sense to me to refer to the female one as female , that way it clearly identifies who I'm talking about .
so - yes , that same logic would apply if I wanted to refer to a female copper too .

and what's all this 'gender neutralizing' nonsense ? is this where we've arrived at now ? I don't want people gender neutralized , I appreciate the differences .

.

Well they should stay where they belong! They make enough mess in their own country and we don't need them invading ours with their American English.


More like neutrality nonsense imo. I like to know if i'm to see a policewoman or policeman and so on. If people have an issue with that then tough.

I see your point. But what if there was a panel of four doctors (3 male, 1 female) and you wanted to refer to the female doctor?


Yes, if it's relevant, why not? But most occupations (doctors, engineers, plumbers etc etc) already have gender-neutral titles, and no one thinks of them as nonsense!

Why should it matter though? If a company is going to send an engineer out to you to repair something, would you demand to know whether they are sending a male or a female?

'WPC' still seems to be used a lot though.

well you just said it : "female doctor" , how does that fit your 'gender neutral' routine ?

Can we get back to the programme, men?

Not doctress?

something that bothered me was the bit about being 'more or less half-hearted ' I was surprised that a pedant like Mitchell didn't pick up on that - would 'more half-hearted' mean less enthusiastic , or more enthusiastic . ?

(I need to get out more I know )

It matters a lot. I'd expect a company to act professionally and tell me exactly who they are sending and not waffle some 'gender neutral' nonsense.


Spot on. My surgery practice has one female and four male GP's. The receptionist always asks your preference when booking appts.

Ian scurried off the set during the credits. Wonder why he was in such a hurry.

Sounds like an robot waiter.

Well, it isn't. And server's been used as a term for waiting staff since the 15th Century at least.

Indeed. One of the reasons it's heading rapidly for the status of 'obsolete word very much of its time' (the '80s).

And do you get a choice of male of female receptionists to make this appointment? I bet your local Specsavers (other ophthalmologists are available) doesn't ask you whether you'd prefer a male or female optician. Do you refuse to get on a bus or a train if the driver isn't blessed with the gender you prefer?

The trend toward the removal of gender specific titles long predates concerns with political correctness or feminist sensitivities. The use of sculptress has been in decline since the '40s, authoress since the '50s, the 1850s that is! That's the pragmatism of language development not some hideous political campaign to corrupt and neuter English as we know it.

Eh? Since when is the word "engineer" "gender-neutral nonsense"? Why should they inform you whether they're sending a man or a woman to do the job?


In a case like that, it's quite reasonable to request a preference. In most other cases it's not. And "female doctor" is not a specific job title anyway!

It's manned between five women working part time.



No. The question you ought to be asking is why shouldn't a company state who the person is? You are attempting to 'normalise' this stupidity by erasing gender as though male and female have ceased to exist from the human race. I've never read such ridiculous rubbish.

Anyway, you took this completely off thread topic so i'm not coming back on this.

Womanned.