Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!petsd!pesnta!hplabs!sdcrdcf!barryg
From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: When are you a man/woman?
Message-ID: <2365@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 09:49:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2365
Posted: Thu Sep 26 09:49:13 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Sep-85 01:29:08 EDT
References: <305@decwrl.UUCP> <43800006@uiucuxc> <685@cornell.UUCP>
Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 31

First off, about "lady."  One of my subscribers belongs to the Society
for Creative Anachronism and sends me checks in envelopes addressed to
"The Lady Lee Gold."  I find this annoying.  "Lady" generally seems to
me to carry connotations of being put on a pedestal--and having to meet
expectations of being ladylike.

Some years back, I was helping out my parents-in-law who run a check
cashing store.  A woman who ran a business whose checks to her employees
had bounced came in (after repeated calling) to pay off her bad checks
plus our fee for the bounces.  She tearfully asked why she had to pay off
the bounce fee, and my mother-in-law told her because our bank had charged
us a fee for each check WE deposited that bounced--and besides why should
we carry her payroll interest-free?  Indignantly she told my mother-in-law,
"You're not a lady."  "You're right," said my mother-in-law.  "I'm a
businesswoman!"

As for changing from girl to woman:  One old rule of thumb was that if
you're no longer virgin, you're a woman.  There's generally an assumption
that a woman is the adult version of a girl (and presumably you shouldn't
start having sex until you're mature enough to know what you're doing), which
seems to fit this.

I think your association of "woman" with 40ish may be derived from the
department stores dress sections which carefully separate clothes into
stylish and "women's."   Then again it may be due to our culture's general
cult of youth which leads us to feel that adulthood/maturity has something
unfashionably dowdy about it, particularly for a woman.  (It's long been
remarked that old men are culturally sexy but old women aren't.  Perhaps
old men are asumed to be wealthy, and old women aren't.)

--Lee Gold


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com