#334 Kommode

I was at a meeting the other day, functioning in my alternate identity as a member of the business community. I sometimes find it hard to shift through as many identities as I have but the biggest benefit to multiple personality disorder is you can be two places at once. I am by nature an introspective and retiring person, not so much outgoing as in-staying, the original wallflower, so when it comes to public functions the person you see is not necessarily the whole person. I’m not actually acting but I am putting on something of a show. I’ll stand outside a meeting for a few moments when I get there, take a deep breath, then set the personality to schmooze control and drive on in.
The cure for my terminal shyness seemed to be to take on a lot of public functions. Like the person who is afraid of water needs to jump in the pool. The more you survive the more the fear diminishes. If you don’t drown first. While I was at this meeting the leader of the meeting introduced herself as the “chair” of the organization. This didn’t completely surprise me because her predecessor when he conducted the meetings of the same organization for the previous year had also introduced himself as the “chair.” Now I know that we are squeamish about genderizing roles. I wholeheartedly agree with the need to de-male a lot of our language, but really there comes a time when we have to acknowledge that gender exists and tailor our words accordingly, or at the very least include an androgynous humanity to our roles. I mean really, all the foreign languages I took in high school even genderized their articles for gosh sake. “The” is not just “the” as it is in American. There’s a male “the” and a female “the” and a neuter “the.” “Los” Angeles is male “the” angels. “Las” Vegas is female “the” wells. But a chair is a chair. It ain’t even human. I’m comfortable with chairperson. I’m okay with chairman if it’s a man and chairwoman if it’s a woman. I am not comfortable with a person being a chair. Do mailmen now become mail. Letter carriers is a great alternative but I hope we aren’t in any risk of calling them just letters. Stewards and stewardesss are now fight attendants. Again, do we need to call them flights? And what about firefighters? We had fireman and firewomen, are they now just fire? There’s a fire, quick call the fire. So I just don’t think it’s a good idea to be calling people after inanimate objects. Seems to me you can accept the cumbersome chairperson, or degenderize the man in chairman by inflecting it as a neutered mun. Fire-mun sounds different than fireman. Chair-mun and not Chair-man. Worse the organization is question was the Chamber. Chamber has other meanings as well. Saying I am the chair of the chamber is like saying I am the toilet.
America, ya gotta love it.