The phrase \u2018ladies and gentlemen\u2019 has always struck me as a bit odd. I\u2019ve spent quite some time cycling around thinking of alternatives to it to include all my non-binary and gender nonconforming pals, when at some point it got me thinking \u2018Why do I need to think of an alternative in the first place?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phrase \u2018ladies and gentlemen\u2019 is old, but not as old as you might think. Wikipedia says that it originates from the 19th century. This however is not because we only then started welcoming groups with gendered greetings, but because before that phrases such as \u2018Gentlemen and ladies\u2019 were more popular. It\u2019s actually pretty interesting that this has shifted so drastically, and could reflect mainly a change in etiquette that stems from the increase in womens rights that follows a \u2018women and children first\u2019 kind of vibe instead of a \u2018why is there a woman here?\u2019 one.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not what strikes me about the phrase \u2018Ladies and gentlemen\u2019 though. What stikes me is the need to greet men and women separately. Even in versions that aim to be more inclusive, this distinction usually remains, for example in \u2018Guys, gals and nonbinary pals\u2019 or \u2018Ladies, gentlemen and everything in between\u2019. For some reason, in a group of people, the only distinction that is relevant to mention immediately upon speaking is that of gender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, to me, could be because of two things. The first is that gender is viewed by our society as the most important characteristic someone has. I get that this is a pretty bold claim to make, but there are many more things that point towards this (enough that you could probably write something more substantial than this article about it). When describing someone, people generally always name a gender unless deliberately avoiding it, gender is on our passports, it is the first thing people care about when getting pregnant (even before health sometimes, which is wild). This is not even considering that it is only pretty recently in human history that women have been getting the same rights as men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second is that it\u2019s the only semi-important distinction you can make that has a nice dichotomy to it, if you ignore queer people. \u2018Welcome, people who like sports and people who dislike sports and people who are neutral about it\u2019 just doesn\u2019t have the same ring to it. Also, a lot of characteristics automatically have positive or negative connotations attached. You can\u2019t very well say \u2018Smart and dumb people\u2019, even if you would find that more important than gender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither of these explainations is fully satisfactory to me, and both still leave the question of why you would split the group in the first place. It makes me think of the drama when the NS (Dutch railway company) changed it\u2019s greeting over the intercom from \u2018Ladies and gentlemen\u2019 to \u2018Dear travellers\u2019 to include nonbinary people, and the media started making a fussabout some transphobic nonsense, fully ignoring that \u2018Dear travellers\u2019 is actually a much more accurate greeting for a railway company to have regardless of gender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now I will leave you with my favorite gender neutral non-dividing alternative, which is \u2018Esteemed guests\u2019, because it makes me feel fancy to be called \u2018Esteemed\u2019. Alternatively, \u2018Dear members\u2019 also works. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The phrase \u2018ladies and gentlemen\u2019 has always struck me as a bit odd. I\u2019ve spent quite some time cycling around thinking of alternatives to it to include all my non-binary and gender nonconforming pals, when …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2171,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.koornbeurs.nl\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}