Ask a Manager: My boss talks about “femtors” and “herstory”

[minoanmiss]

[N.B. The whole post is full of amazing things. There's a question about masking and a question about Ph.Ds and that's just two of the others.]



#4: My boss is very enthusiastic about women’s issues, which is great! But she insists on using phrases like “femtor” (for female mentor) and “herstory” instead of “history,” and these drive me nuts. Part of the reason is that the “men” in “mentor” and the “his” in “history” have nothing to do with gender, but it’s also because it seems patronizing in the same way that “girl boss” does. Is there a way I can bring this up?

That would be annoying as hell, and it’s also a quirk of your boss that you probably just need to accept. The exception would be if you have excellent rapport with her and she’s open to pushback in general, in which case you could maybe raise it … but I’m skeptical it’ll have much impact, and you’re almost certainly better off saving your capital for other things.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I tagged this "bigotry" as in "pushback against" and also "beware of in discussion" Boss is being mostly ridiculous [1] but there's a bit of "we don't need no stinkin' feminism" in the discussion.

[1] There's an interesting thread about the term "herstory" as a technical term in women's studies in past decades.

Also, I will take this boss over SO many others.

[xenacryst]

Seriously - I might roll my eyes with mild amusement sometimes with the words, but unless they're veering into terfy territory I'd happily take this boss.

[ermingarden]

"Femtor" is especially funny to me, since the original mentor is already a woman – in the Odyssey, the goddess Athena guides and advises Odysseus' son Telemachus while in disguise as a mortal man named Mentor, which is where the English word "mentor" comes from.

[minoanmiss]

Bwee YES

[ioplokon]

I think maybe you could ask for a 'Don't sis me if you wouldn't miss me' (I am open to better formulations on this) rule around femtor, where the boss can use it for herself or people in her life filling that role but not put it on others. So if LW wants to be a mentor, not a femtor, they have that right.

But otherwise, yeah, just chalk it up to your boss being weird.

[lannamichaels]

I've heard "herstory" but never "femtor", in fact when I saw femtor, I thought femmoid or whatever is that sexist term some folks use for women who won't have sex with them.

[petra]

I have enough reading-feminist-theory experience to get herstory with only a minor quibble, but "femtor" made me think "femme Thor? No, can't be."

[conuly]

Isn't Thor currently a woman in the comics though?

[petra]

I know there has been a female Thor in the comics, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would come up in your average workplace.

[minoanmiss]

The next Thor movie will be about her! *remembers and is briefly incadescantly happy*

[jamoche]

I saw "femtor" and thought "obscure physics term?"; femto is a SI prefix you don't run across much outside of nuclear physics.

[goljerp]

femto is a SI prefix you don't run across much outside of nuclear physics Or certain branches of Physical Chemistry (I almost did research with someone who worked with femto second lasers. Dunno if that's still a thing, it's been a while.)

[minoanmiss]

I am utterly delighted by this comment.

[edenfalling]

Same hat!

[lemonsharks]

I do not know if I could keep a straight face around someone who uses the word femtor but I absolutely know that I would tell them about the true origins of the word Mentor.

[shirou]

From the link, I think Alison missed what the letter about masks was asking. Alison responded about mask mandates from state and local governments, but the letter asked about the rights of employees to request others wear masks in companies that don't require it. This is the position I'm in. My company required masks until a few weeks ago, but we are now mask-optional. The new policy forbids any employee, including managers, from requesting or requiring another employee to wear a mask.

I do not want to have a discussion about whether this is the right time to have a mask-optional policy, and frankly I'm not sure there is a "right time" since infection rates will rise and fall. Given that masks are optional, though, I agree they should be optional everywhere, and employees shouldn't feel compelled or pressured to wear masks. Either make them compulsory or fully optional; the middle ground is messy.

From the letter above: "herstory" and especially "femtor" sound awful and ridiculous, but this is not the hill I would die on.