Posted by Ronald Vaughan on October 20, 2001
In Reply to: Re: She posted by R. Berg on August 09, 2001
: : : : : : : : : : : Why are certain vessels (boats, automobiles) called she. Why are they known in a feminine way. For example "she is a beauty" when referring to a new car.
: : : : : : : : : : Because you have to treat them like a lady or they will act up and cause havoc.
: : : : : : : : : The concept of gender in English nouns has little use--it gets more of a workout in other languages like Spanish, German and French. where the gender controls the form of the noun depending on the case in which it is used (subject, object, etc.), whether it's plural, etc. Most nouns referring to inanimate objects in English are neutral, in other words, they're "its." For animate creatures, unless the sex is known, the default gender tends to be female (as in, "Nice fish you caught there, Earl," "Yep, she's a beauty.") Cars, boats, and musical instruments have a liminal quality as objects that causes us to engender them female (perhaps for reasons that would sound atavistically sexist if argued--see last follow-up)....Note that this convention has been transgressed in the case of hurricanes (which are now proportionately himacanes)....
: : : : : : : : Who you callin' atavistically sexist? With the "vessel" business, I had in mind that the size and function of a ship might subliminally remind men of their experiences as small boys, when mamma was a large, imposing, enclosing (with arms) figure who carried them around. Really. Without some such intuitive understanding, we have a hard time explaining why people say "the mother ship."
: : : : : : : : Why are musical instruments in this category? --rb
: : : : : : : No offense intended, R.B., I was assuming folks who could get offended by getting called atavistically sexist wouldn't know what it meant! (And actually, I was referring to the association of "ladies" and "act up" and "havoc.") I'm not saying such opinions are right or wrong, but the time when they proceeded unquestioned has sadly passed. Again, no offense intended....I would think the term "mother ship" derives from the spawning of packs of whelps that cluster around their dams like long boats about the Pequod....Even little skiffs and scows are female gendered (it's sounding a lot like parthenogenesis to me!)...I guess instruments are female gendered because they aren't merely inanimate objects, they incite aroused emotional states, they have voices that are intensely expressive, for these and probably other reasons they linguistically partake of the status of animate objects--for whom the default in English is feminine gender. Is there perhaps an expert out there?
: : : : : : No offense taken (that was easy once I learned you weren't talking about me). I'm waiting for a call back from my friend the cognitive linguist. Meanwhile, here's what the books say:
: : : : : : From "The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea":
: : : : : : "SHIP, from the Old English 'scip,' the generic name for sea-going vessels, as opposed to boats, originally personified as masculine but by the 16th century almost universally expressed as feminine. . . ."
: : : : : : From "The Oxford Companion to the English Language":
: : : : : : "GENDER . . . 'She/her' is widely used to refer to a ship or other means of transport ('She runs well before the wind'), to a country ('England will never forget those who gave up their lives for her'), and sometimes to machines ('She sounds rough; maybe the engine needs tuning'). . . ."
: : : : : : The entry for gender says nothing about musical instruments.
: : : : : : Another example, from song: "She'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes" (a train).
: : : : : : If mus. instruments are considered feminine because they arouse strong emotions, the default point of view must be masculine (and heterosexual)--but we already knew that it is, didn't we? Actually, I'm not sure the femininity of mus. instruments is established. I once read about musicians' difficulty in getting large instruments to concerts undamaged. One bassist said that when he flew, he always reserved a second seat in the name of Mr. B. Fiddle.
: : : : : Later: The cognitive linguist says that he's never heard of typing musical instruments as female but it may happen in circles unfamiliar to him, such as the world of jazz. Evidence would take the form, for instance, of hearing someone say "My guitar, she needs new strings."
: : : : What can you say? Cognitive, yes--cunning, no. (Ow, sorry, that was too easy!)...I would accept that most musical instruments are indifferently neutral, "its," in a word, while those in significant relationship with musicians, those that are named, as it were, are female. B.B. King's Lucille springs to mind....It seems that if anything, rock guitars would be masculine (we can guess what they are a surrogate for or extension of)...but I've never heard of a musical instrument with a masculine name....
: : : I think it's simpler than you think.
: : : Not to intentionally offend, but historically (almost pre-historically) men seemed to be egotistical about their possessions (their kingdom) in which some men may have included their woman as a possession.-at least in their minds. I think it's a deep psychological subconscious harem affect which causes "Things" to be referred to in the feminine gender ("She").
: : : I doubt Rock stars would want the homosexual insinuation if they said "Do like my new guitar, he's mine" as opposed to "She's a beauty, I just bought her, she's all mine now". Even with cars "She treats me right and gets me where I need to go". Unfortunately, I think old world sexist thinking originated this phrase (which can be used with any object).
: : : I call it my "Harem theory".
: : How about this theory -- ships are "she" because men name the ships after the women in their lives...the girls'little consolation prize for having to wait on the guys to come home from their yo-ho-hoing.
: I'll throw another hypothesis into the arena. Maybe male rockers and bluesers give women's names to their guitars because the guitar seems to its player like a partner in a relationship. This is similar to the "harem theory" above but less sinister. A related observation: people extend family relationships to things when they call an object or project that they're fond of "my baby."
Ronald writes: Well, the guitar is shaped like
a curvy woman's body. Interesting to note that
the most sexual instrument of all-the steel
guitar-has rarely been played by women in its
70-year existence. Author Steven Waxman writes
about the subject of guitar fetishism in his
book "Instruments of Desire" [about electric
guitars, who are loud enough to be felt]; and I
wrote my own published short story called "Guitar
Fetish" years before that.This dealt with the
cornerstone of the culture: Polynesian eroticism,
mixing sex with music: lustful female hula
dancers,plastic ukuleles, and throbbing, orgasmic
steel guitars. If you get into this kind of thing,
it becomes a total lifestyle.
It's no coincidence that the lap-steel guitar
was shaped like a woman's body--and made of
plastic.A certain popular children's TV show
in the '50's put out a big plastic guitar which
was colored red and black- fetish colors [re:
the devil's fire and brimstone]. The producer of
that show, ironically,was a genius known for his
wholesome values. This was a clever way to mer-
cifully circumvent the conservative values of
A rare book came out in 1974 by Elysian Press
called "Sex in Music". It said "For many teenage
girls, since Hendrix the guitar has become the
ultimate phallic symbol." It showed a couple in
bed with, of course, the electric guitar next to
As a person with a musical bent, I can't think
of anything more humanly satisfying than that!
That's why, indeed, the guitar is the world's
most popular instrument. It has culture and
socially redeeming sexual elements in one place.
I can't think of any other accomplishment of
society as important as the invention of the