The Sophistry

So since my post on whether gentlemen can exist without ladies, I’ve spoken to a number of colleagues and friends on the related issues.  Some fascinating things emerged.

First, it is apparently not necessarily a compliment for contemporary women to be called “a lady”.  One colleague immediately asked, “Well, what do you mean by ‘lady’?”  And another said, “Well, I guess that’s good, but… I wouldn’t want to be considered a prude.” 

Second, there is little doubt about the meaning of the word “gentleman”.  There is correspondingly little understanding about the meaning of the word “lady”.  As the above example showed, people instinctively knew what was meant by “gentleman” and never asked, “What do you mean by that?”  But almost every single person I spoke with asked what I meant by “lady”.

Third, there are fewer “ladies” among women than there are “gentlemen” among men, at least as instinctively understood.  For example, just about everyone I spoke with would confidently say that many if not most of their male friends were “gentlemen” however that term was instinctively understood.  At the same time, almost every single one either couldn’t name a single woman friend he/she would consider a “lady”, or only one or two women friends who might be called a “lady”.

How interesting.

I spoke with parents of little girls the original question: Would you want to raise your daughter to be a lady?

The answer was almost always a qualified No.  When you dig into it, as I did with close friends who wouldn’t be insulted, what I found was that in their minds, being a “lady” is tied up with being passive, submissive, and weak.  A Victorian ideal perhaps of a “lady” as the kind of woman who has fainting spells.  There was a subtext that a “lady” does not work, except at some high-society charity type of places, and all of the parents of little girls wanted their daughters to be All That She Can Be.

Here’s another interesting tidbit.  The opposite of “gentleman” is “cad” or “scumbag” or “lowlife” according to the people I spoke to.  The opposite of “lady” is “slut” in every single case.  Why the word “gentleman” would be tied almost exclusively to the idea of manners, while the word “lady” would be tied exclusively to sexual chastity is something I find enormously interesting.

-TS