What's the best gender-neutral term for someone who waits on you at a restaurant? (I may have tipped my hand already with that phrasing). #
English #
gender #
polls
- Waiter (62%, 5 votes)
- Waitron (25%, 2 votes)
- Server (12%, 1 vote)
- Other (0%, 0 votes)
8 voters. Poll end: 6 days ago
Allen but one of the good ones
in reply to Graham Downs • • •Allen but one of the good ones
Unknown parent • • •@leoncowle Ah, see, I think that policeman or fireman or foreman are all naturally gendered terms because the word 'man' is right there.
And my thinking of a term that's only gendered by convention (waiter) now applying to everybody shows...
heh. I edited that paragraph like 5 times before I realised that I was really just restating my original point, which you've already read and responded to. No need to make you sit through it a second time!
Allen but one of the good ones
Unknown parent • • •@leoncowle Hahaha, yeah look I was hoping that everybody would agree with me that "Waitron" is an affront to the senses and an assault on my beautiful mother tongue. I'll call somebody "Food servant" before I say "Waitron", which is to say "Never" 😂
Ooh, how about "Dining assistant" or "Meal concierge"?
Graham Downs
Unknown parent • • •@leoncowle @uastronomer I can see where you're coming from. Long ago, the pronouns "he" and "him" used to effectively be gender neutral, to the point where you could even refer to a hypothetical woman as "he", even though the context made it absolutely clear you were referring to a woman.
That's all well and good, but the problem with that is that a) you're often not sure whether the person is speaking about a man, a woman, or whether it even matters, and b) because he/him was *also* -- and perhaps more often -- used specifically to refer to males, women would feel left out of the conversation.
Which over time made it easy for men to leave women out of the conversation, and so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think if I hear the word "waiter", I'm still most often going to be picturing a man. That's probably because of my age and my bias, and i
... Show more...@leoncowle @uastronomer I can see where you're coming from. Long ago, the pronouns "he" and "him" used to effectively be gender neutral, to the point where you could even refer to a hypothetical woman as "he", even though the context made it absolutely clear you were referring to a woman.
That's all well and good, but the problem with that is that a) you're often not sure whether the person is speaking about a man, a woman, or whether it even matters, and b) because he/him was *also* -- and perhaps more often -- used specifically to refer to males, women would feel left out of the conversation.
Which over time made it easy for men to leave women out of the conversation, and so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think if I hear the word "waiter", I'm still most often going to be picturing a man. That's probably because of my age and my bias, and it might take a long time to get that bias out of people.
When I hear the term "server", I snigger because I picture a computer in a data centre first.
But after that, I realise that the author is trying to be inclusive and I picture someone at a table taking orders. More often than not, though, I think I'm inclined to picture either a woman or a non-binary person, because if the person was a man, I feel like the author would've just said "waiter".
Oddly enough, "waitron" gives me slightly more male vibes. But only slight.... :/