Please call female deities 'goddesses.'

[Xyl]

Personally, I did a double take every time they used "god" to refer to one of the female deities in that article. "Wait, Seh-whatsit is a he? No, it says she earlier..."

I'm not normally picky about gender-specific nouns (female actor is fine), but for some reason "god" is one I just can't use for females. It's as bad to my ears as calling a female ruler a "king" rather than a "queen".

 

[Green Knight]

I'm for female deities being referred to as a goddess, if only to stifle the cries of "ZOMG! SEHANINE'S BEEN TURNED INTO A MAN!!!" that I'm starting to hear all over the place. Geeze, that's so annoying.

 

[GreatLemur]

The term "lady doctor" used to be in the dictionary. It ain't any more. I don't think anyone misses it.

 

[Stogoe]

I didn't even notice, honestly.

But 'God' is perfectly fine terminology.

 

[Leugren]

I have never seen any piece of writing, ever, that used the term "god" for a female deity. It is jarring and extremely awkward. English is a language which has slightly different nouns for different genders, and there is no getting around this. You can't use the language differently than everyone else on a whim! It is like calling a female monarch a King, or a female child of a monarch a Prince. It is like calling a female adult a Man, or a female child a Boy. It doesn't work, and it just isn't done in the English language (and most other languages do similar, or to a bigger extreme).

You would think that being female is somehow supposed to be demeaning, with the kind of attitude in which you avoid any possible reference to the possible femininity of an individual. I don't like it at all.

I agree completely. Enough of these half-measures! We should eradicate all gender differences from the English language. The following words should all be stricken from the English dictionary immediately: woman, girl, daughter, sister, mother, aunt, she, her, wife, bride, princess, maiden, etc. These types of distinctions are completely demeaning and unnecessary. This person is my parent's sibling, therefore this person is my 'uncle'. Why do we need a word like 'aunt'? The important thing is the person's relationship to me, not the person's gender! Appalling! Those gender-casting WOTC bastards are constantly using sexist terms like these!

Well I'm off to rescue a lovely prince from the dragon!

I think that if we close our eyes and believe fervently enough in our own bulls--t, we can start reproducing asexually like flatworms!

 

[rgard]

I don't have a problem with calling them all "gods." Isn't the gender of a deity more or less subjective anyway?

In Corellon's case this is certainly subjective. Nice eye shadow.

 

[Mercule]

Y'know, this one actually existed, but he was called Xipe Totec. Priests wore flayed human skin to honor him. Seriously. Aztecs were freakin' METAL.

Wait.... The Aztecs had a flesh-wearing, sacrifice demanding god named "Zippy"? Or, is that "Hippy"?

 

[Wyrmshadows]

This is one of the silliest things I have ever seen. So the term goddess can be seen as sexist. LOL Yeah and Santa Clause is insulting women by saying "HO, HO, HO"

There is a fine line between sensitivity and utter nonsense.

Throughout mythology and even in real-life polytheistic faiths there are gender descriptors used to seperate male/masculine and female/feminine deities. I find it amazing that gender differentiation is good enough for those who actually believe in deities that have masculine and feminine attributes but the term "goddess" is enough to send some folks who have a hobby that involves make-believe into a PC seizure.

Men and women are different. We are different physically and dare I say psychologically because different hormones pump through our veins and our brains are wired differently in some areas. Our gods reflect the human condition and to chalk these differences up to some sort of either blatant or subliminal sexism is so laughable as to be ridiculous. Broadly speaking, our languages reflect the realities of the human condition and attempting to stamp out these differences through linguistic manipulation is misguided at best and ignorant at worst.

I apologize if this post seems angry....but it is. I am a liberal/progressive of the first order and will stand against actual sexism and bigotry but this very discussion cheapens the reality of actual misogyny and sexism.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I apologize if this post seems angry....but it is. I am a liberal/progressive of the first order and will stand against actual sexism and bigotry but this very discussion cheapens the reality of actual misogyny and sexism.

Who knew ENWorld had that kind of power?

If only we could use our power to cheapen gasoline.

 

[S'mon]

It's silly and archaic.

-TRRW

Considering we're playing role-playing games of medieval fantasy, archaic is what I want - and sometimes silly, too.