Modern English Usage
posted by Jon Siegel
On the way back from teaching class today, I passed two women students in the hallway, one of whom was saying to the other, “I was in the same situation. But I manned up.”
Do women man up? I was interested to learn that they do.
September 15, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Posted in: Feminism and Gender
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Responses (5)
Miriam A. Cherry - September 15, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I’ve actually thought about this. Can a woman be a mensch? (Yes, I think, in the non-literal use of that term). Can someone “person up”?
A.J. Sutter - September 15, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I’d always thought that ‘mensch’ (in both German and Yiddish) was grammatically gendered, but not necessarily semantically so. OTOH ‘man’ seems to have become more clearly marked for semantic gender, esp. in the last 30 years or so (maybe other than as an interjection — though “dude” seems to be making it increasingly irrelevant in that usage). For as long as I can remember, one has been able to say admiringly of a woman that she has “more balls” than some guy — but that’s a kind of left-handed compliment, usually meant to shame the guy or guys in question. OTOH, “man up” suggests a deficiency of character, not a superfluity of anatomy. For a woman to use “man up” in reference to herself or another woman seems a bit sad, like an expression of what used to be called an oppressed consciousness.
Howard Wasserman - September 15, 2009 at 6:33 pm
What if you “cowboy up” (as the 2004 Red Sox used to say). Can one “cowgirl up”?
Mike Zimmer - September 16, 2009 at 6:53 am
I think the term “man up” originates in basketball, to go to man-to-man defense. For what it is worth, women’s basketball use the term that way. So, it is not gendered in basketball.
A.J. Sutter - September 16, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Mike: Thanks, I didn’t know that. But are you suggesting that the basketball usage means the same as, say, when some female character on a TV drama yells at her two-timing/lackadaisical significant other to “man up” (the only occasion I have to hear the expression, living overseas)? Does telling your boyfriend to stop cheating on you fit in with the basketball usage (see Dexter, Season 2)? or could the expression have shifted considerably in meaning?
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