Andy Murray Fans Thread

[mrzz]

It's not "crying wolf." (And your example is unlikely to happen. And not for nothing you had to look up the opposite corollary word. It is basically unknown for a reason.) Let's say Querrey were a Majors stalwart, and Serena or any other US woman hadn't managed a SF of a Major since 2009. The question would have been phrased, "Serena is the first female US player to have reached a Major SF...." You know it would have. Don't even play with me on that. You and I are speakers of Romance languages, where the default between male and female goes to the male. This isn't only in Romance languages. It's a social construct. If I say tennis player, basketball player, or even doctor or politician, everyone pictures a male person. If "female" isn't qualified, standard prejudices kick in. I really don't think you need to be told that.

I really, really doubt that every time a WTA player reaches an important milestone people simply don't say "she is the first player to do that since X in 19YZ" and always insert the "female". Even I already read something like that.

Yes, there is the male default in languages, but in Portuguese at least it is a bit different, it is not an assumption about the subject. The words themselves are assumed masculine. We can discuss if this (currently) reflects misogyny in society. But my initial point is that users of this default are not necessarily misogynists.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

It's not "crying wolf." (And your example is unlikely to happen. And not for nothing you had to look up the opposite corollary word. It is basically unknown for a reason.) Let's say Querrey were a Majors stalwart, and Serena or any other US woman hadn't managed a SF of a Major since 2009. The question would have been phrased, "Serena is the first female US player to have reached a Major SF...." You know it would have. Don't even play with me on that. You and I are speakers of Romance languages, where the default between male and female goes to the male. This isn't only in Romance languages. It's a social construct. If I say tennis player, basketball player, or even doctor or politician, everyone pictures a male person. If "female" isn't qualified, standard prejudices kick in. I really don't think you need to be told that.

Excuse me please. If you say tennis player or politician to me among men I do think of some women like Steffi Graf, Monica Seles & Maggie Thatcher & my Dr. is female so I disagree with your over-generalisation.

US culture where Moxie lives, is very sensitive to people segregation + denigration, up to the point that the segregation itself, if unjustified, is frowned upon, because the implicit denigration cannot be excluded. Other cultures are not so sensitive, so the segregation is not frowned upon because ignorance rather than denigration is assumed. To understand and have a "feeling" of such nuance, it is best to just live within a given culture at least for awhile. Otherwise simply acknowledge our cultures differ.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

I really, really doubt that every time a WTA player reaches an important milestone people simply don't say "she is the first player to do that since X in 19YZ" and always insert the "female". Even I already read something like that.

Yes, there is the male default in languages, but in Portuguese at least it is a bit different, it is not an assumption about the subject. The words themselves are assumed masculine. We can discuss if this (currently) reflects misogyny in society. But my initial point is that users of this default are not necessarily misogynists.

Can you give an example of the emphasised to clarify what you mean? Is it that all nouns in POR including things have gender? Unlike EN, where all "things" are neuter (except some strange cases of fondness, e.g. all vehicles are feminine). Or about specific conjugation rules (different than e.g French/English)?

 

[mrzz]

Chris, the thing is that in Portuguese we have much fewer neutral words, and most title nouns are defaulted masculine, but we do have the feminine word for it. For example, "engenheiro" (enginner, sorry, compulsion to translate is too strong) is the masculine word, and there is "engenheira", to refer strictly to a female. But someone would ask "Who is the engineer (engenheiro) responsible for this project?" using the masculine word. But the answer could well be "It is engineer (engenheira) Maria". So when we don't know the gender of the person we use the masculine word, and when we do, we decline it accordingly. That's why I wrote that this is not an assumption about the subject. As Moxie said, this is a trait of Romance Languages, Italian is similar (but to a lesser extent), and Spanish too (but I know it less than the other two languages) . I would want to expand a bit but we are hijacking this thread.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Chris, the thing is that in Portuguese we have much fewer neutral words, and most title nouns are defaulted masculine, but we do have the feminine word for it. For example, "engenheiro" (enginner, sorry, compulsion to translate is too strong) is the masculine word, and there is "engenheira", to refer strictly to a female. But someone would ask "Who is the engineer (engenheiro) responsible for this project?" using the masculine word. But the answer could well be "It is engineer (engenheira) Maria". So when we don't know the gender of the person we use the masculine word, and when we do, we decline it accordingly. That's why I wrote that this is not an assumption about the subject. As Moxie said, this is a trait of Romance Languages, Italian is similar (but to a lesser extent), and Spanish too (but I know it less than the other two languages) . I would want to expand a bit but we are hijacking this thread.

Thanks that's enough. Most European languages are like that, including all Eastern-European. English/German only marginally but still are even if English lacks gender declination/conjugation: when we don't know the gender of a person, we say "he". Only recently I noticed the tendency to use "they" as singular neuter pronoun (whereas traditionally it's supposed to be plural neuter only). The only perfectly gender-neutral language that I know of is Japanese.

 

[Horsa]

US culture where Moxie lives, is very sensitive to people segregation + denigration, up to the point that the segregation itself, if unjustified, is frowned upon, because the implicit denigration cannot be excluded. Other cultures are not so sensitive, so the segregation is not frowned upon because ignorance rather than denigration is assumed. To understand and have a "feeling" of such nuance, it is best to just live within a given culture at least for awhile. Otherwise simply acknowledge our cultures differ.

I understand that & acknowledge that cultures differ but that's no reason to over-generalising. Over-generalising isn't fair because it tars everyone with the same brush & not everyone is the same. Over-generalising also leads to labelling/mis-labelling too which isn't always fair. No-one should try to speak for everyone.

 

[Moxie]

I really, really doubt that every time a WTA player reaches an important milestone people simply don't say "she is the first player to do that since X in 19YZ" and always insert the "female". Even I already read something like that.

Yes, there is the male default in languages, but in Portuguese at least it is a bit different, it is not an assumption about the subject. The words themselves are assumed masculine. We can discuss if this (currently) reflects misogyny in society. But my initial point is that users of this default are not necessarily misogynists.

Which I agreed with. The larger point, however, is that Murray felt the fairly to qualify was too obvious to let go. The reporter was just wrong, and I think that saying "context" is too generous.

 

[Moxie]

Chris, the thing is that in Portuguese we have much fewer neutral words, and most title nouns are defaulted masculine, but we do have the feminine word for it. For example, "engenheiro" (enginner, sorry, compulsion to translate is too strong) is the masculine word, and there is "engenheira", to refer strictly to a female. But someone would ask "Who is the engineer (engenheiro) responsible for this project?" using the masculine word. But the answer could well be "It is engineer (engenheira) Maria". So when we don't know the gender of the person we use the masculine word, and when we do, we decline it accordingly. That's why I wrote that this is not an assumption about the subject. As Moxie said, this is a trait of Romance Languages, Italian is similar (but to a lesser extent), and Spanish too (but I know it less than the other two languages) . I would want to expand a bit but we are hijacking this thread.

Right, but the plural is always masculine, unless there actually is a roomful of female engineers. As with your example of when the gender is unknown, this is more my point. Male is the default gender.

 

[Ricardo]

Right, but the plural is always masculine, unless there actually is a roomful of female engineers. As with your example of when the gender is unknown, this is more my point. Male is the default gender.

So? What is the problem with that? Whatever, not worth the endless whinging.

 

[Moxie]

So? What is the problem with that? Whatever, not worth the endless whinging.

It's not a whinge. It's a cultural point which proves that the default gender is male in most circumstances. That would be the problem with that. Flies over your head, though. Back to the point of Murray, and the accolades to him, it didn't fly over his head.

 

[Ricardo]

It's not a whinge. It's a cultural point which proves that the default gender is male in most circumstances. That would be the problem with that. Flies over your head, though. Back to the point of Murray, and the accolades to him, it didn't fly over his head.

Again what is the problem with that? You say it is, how about justify it? Murray is indeed ass kisser for feminism, but guess who took him to all the titles that matter? Someone who is pretty macho, or a feminist? Girls couldn’t do it for him, let’s even say it’s personality clash....he is a puss who needed to be straightened out by a man (you know who).

 

[Moxie]

I really don't want to hijack this thread with fine points of language and etc. about male-dominance in thought. The point is that Murray is a bit of a feminist, and unashamed of it. We are here on this thread to praise him and think about his legacy, as he seems imminently to be retiring. It's also worth mentioning that he took Amelie Mauresmo as his coach. It didn't really work out, but he really is an open-minded guy. Sports Illustrated has this piece on him as an unabashed feminist. It's worth reading, and addresses some of the things we've talked about here. Again I will say: it's not so much about how we debate feminism or misogyny here, but what Andy Murray's point has been about it, and his legacy.

 

[Ricardo]

You are the one who whinged about by-default maleness bla bla bla, all that feminist crap and now you say it’s about his legacy? To be direct, his most known legacy is that he is always a whinge and yes although his injury is real, his ex coach Lendl went out of the game also due to a painful injury but we didn’t see a crybaby face.

 

[Horsa]

It's not a whinge. It's a cultural point which proves that the default gender is male in most circumstances. That would be the problem with that. Flies over your head, though. Back to the point of Murray, and the accolades to him, it didn't fly over his head.

I agree with that. For technical jobs languages like French make them masculine. Mind you, the phrase for yours sincerely in French which is used to end business letters addresses men too. Sometimes there's a reason though. The reason why when people automatically think of men when they think of scientists is other than Marie Curie & Ada Lovelace there are no famous ones that I can think of anyway. That was just 1 example. We normally speak of a gasman but you get gaswomen sometimes. Another proof, when I typed gasman the spellchecker didn't spot a mistake but when I typed gaswomen the spellchecker spotted a mistake. Back to Murray, I think he was right to stand up for female tennis players.

 

[Horsa]

I really don't want to hijack this thread with fine points of language and etc. about male-dominance in thought. The point is that Murray is a bit of a feminist, and unashamed of it. We are here on this thread to praise him and think about his legacy, as he seems imminently to be retiring. It's also worth mentioning that he took Amelie Mauresmo as his coach. It didn't really work out, but he really is an open-minded guy. Sports Illustrated has this piece on him as an unabashed feminist. It's worth reading, and addresses some of the things we've talked about here. Again I will say: it's not so much about how we debate feminism or misogyny here, but what Andy Murray's point has been about it, and his legacy.

Apparently they're thinking about putting his statue at Wimbledon in his honour. I think that it's a good idea.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Mind you, the phrase for yours sincerely in French which is used to end business letters addresses men

I need to see the original French expression to understand your point. Can you provide it?

 

[Horsa]

Do you know you've doubled up?

I need to see the original French expression to understand your point. Can you provide it?

 

[Horsa]

I need to see the original French expression to understand your point. Can you provide it?

Hmm! It's a hard 1 to remember. From memory it starts "Veuillez vous m'envoyer Monsieur" & finishes with "de mes sentiments" but it is 3 lines long written.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

You are the one who whinged about by-default maleness bla bla bla, all that feminist crap and now you say it’s about his legacy? To be direct, his most known legacy is that he is always a whinge and yes although his injury is real, his ex coach Lendl went out of the game also due to a painful injury but we didn’t see a crybaby face.

Yes, sometimes we don't like certain behavioural traits, so I understand that you might not like Murray's behaviour on and/or off court. But this thread should not, per simple social rule of not criticising a person who is departing us, attract even legitimate & constructive criticism. That's because the constructive criticism is an oxymoron in situations like that, when someone is coming to the end of his/her journey with us. That's why all critical opinions in such situations are customarily withheld . So, even if your critique were well meaning and constructive, it would have been inappropriate in this situation. Needless to say your criticism is destructive and highly subjective. Your "crybaby face" description of Murray is just pointless complain. OK, you can opine whatever you like about his look, but don't you see the inappropriateness of your whinging in context of this thread?
Maybe it's hard for you to see the inappropriateness of your opinion, so I'll give you a more indicative example. Say, you attend your mate's funeral, who just died young as a result of incurable cancer. In his final days, you've seen him crying in pain very often, because he signed up a participation in an experimental drug, the drug that could not be taken with sedatives. So, your visits to him were unpleasant because his crying was ugly and he looked like "feminine crap" in it. But eventually he dies few days later and the "crap" finally ends. That last thing you must do is to come to his funeral. Therein, do you reveal to everybody, what "a crybaby face" your mate was?

PS: Everyone, sorry for the macabre example.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

Hmm! It's a hard 1 to remember. From memory it starts "Veuillez vous m'envoyer Monsieur" & finishes with "de mes sentiments" but it is 3 lines long written.

A simple replace of "Monsieur" with "Madame", and no problem addressing women with it.

I have a problem with different French phrase: non-personal form of conjugation: "il pleut" (for "it rains") and all similar. Why do they use masculine pronoun "il" instead of neuter pronoun, e,g, "ça pleut" or "c'est pleut" ? I'm not a linguist to answer, because the reason for masculine pronoun usage here might be as old as French language itself.