What Happened to the Term "Actress?"

My friend Richard asked this question one day last week in response to the post I publish every morning on my Facebook page, in which I list noteworthy birthdays and riff on some historical event that took place on that day. Richard's question arose because I list the birthdays of "actors," rather than "actors and actresses."

The short answer to his question is that nothing has happened to the term "actress" - it's still here. Although I think we've gone overboard in many ways with trying to scrub supposedly sexist terms from American English*, I don't think - from a purely linguistic standpoint - that there's any point to differentiating between male and female members of most professions. As I noted in my response to Richard, we don't say aviatrix any more to refer to a female aviator ... she's just an aviator or a pilot. We also don't have separate terms for male and female nurses, members of Congress, or for persons in many other professions**.

My bottom line: if there's no definite reason to designate a person as male or female when their profession is discussed, there's no need to have separate terms that denote their sex.

And that's your linguistic rant for the day.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* You may recall the old joke about the fanatical linguistic purist who told her child to, "Run out to the person box and see if the person person has brought us any person."

** Scumbag lawyers are still referred to as "lawyers," crooked or inept judges are called "judges," and useless politicians are referred to as "president," "vice president," or "member of Congress," whether they are male or female.