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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!cornell!rance
From: rance@cornell.UUCP (Rance Cleaveland)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Ladies and Gentlemen
Message-ID: <844@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 16:09:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.844
Posted: Tue Oct  1 16:09:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 05:38:55 EDT
References: <1056@ubc-vision.UUCP>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 37

I've been kind of amused about the indignation aroused by one poster's
assertion that "ladyship" is something which not all women possess and
by various other posters' saying that they don't like being called ladies
because then they are expected to act like ladies.  Personally, I think
that just as not all men are gentlemen, neither are all women ladies.
I also have a hard time respecting men who aren't gentlemen and women
who aren't ladies, and I think I would enjoy the world much more if everyone
behaved like ladies and gentleman.

Now, before you get your incendiary reponses ready, let me tell you what
I think ladies and gentlemen are.  Ladies are pleasant, polite and sensitive
to the needs of others.  Gentlemen are pleasant, polite and sensitive to
the needs of others.  Notice a duality there?  I don't think that the term
"lady" or the term "gentleman" carries any additional connotations than these;
consequently, I can't accept that a lady must behave in ways forced on her by
our "patriarchal" society (I don't recall the exact wording of the posting I'm
alluding to, but this was the gist of what she said.).

That said, let me now tell you what I think ladies and gentlemen aren't.
They aren't manipulative or scheming; they aren't abrupt or accusatory.
They do not allow people to take advantage of them (so the poster whose
mother-in-law (or was it mother?) demanded payment of bounced-check fees
from one of her store's customers was in fact behaving in a ladylike
manner), and they are not weak-willed or intolerant.  They are not asexual;
in fact, to the contrary, their presence and poise makes them very sexy.

Ladies and gentlemen also realize that it's impossible to be perfect, so
they forgive occasional lapses by others, and they apologize or in some
other way show their contrition for their own lapses.

In short, ladies and gentlemen show class, in the old sense of the word
(before New Yorkers began equating class with throwing money around).
Given that, I don't think "lady" is a feminine equivalent of "guy";
it's something far more respectable.

Hoping I'm a gentleman, and looking for a lady,
Rance Cleaveland


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