Ask a Manager: I Hate Being Called "Lady"

[minoanmiss]

I hate being called “lady” at work. This is a small but ongoing annoyance, and I’m not sure how to address it. At work, when I’m in a chat or email with other women, I find that certain people have a tendency to refer to the rest of the group as “ladies.” Someone will open the message with “hello ladies” or address a request with “ladies, I need from you …” or close with a “thanks, ladies!” Sometimes this comes from coworkers, sometimes from clients or vendors.

I HATE this. So much. I find it twee and condescending, and I don’t think there’s any reason to unnecessarily inject gender into work discussions. (For similar reasons, I’m glad we’ve moved away from the “dear sir or madam” greeting.) I am a femme cis woman myself, but I’m sure it would be even more alienating for people who don’t fall into that category.

It would be a little easier to nip this in the bud if the people calling others “ladies” were male, but this is primarily coming from other women.

Is there a way to make this stop, or do I just need to tolerate it? I don’t quite know how to bring it up, especially because it doesn’t seem ill-intentioned or explicitly sexist. I don’t want to seem oversensitive or controlling, but it just … doesn’t feel good to be addressed that way.

You could try leading by example and opening the next group email with: “Hi, y’all! (I’m trying to get away from gendered greetings like ‘ladies.’)” Some people pick might pick up on it and follow your lead. But it’s so, so common that to really address it effectively, you’d probably need to have more of an open discussion of it, and that gets into how receptive you think your audience will be and whether it’ll take capital you’d rather save for something else. Some workplaces would be super receptive to your point! Others wouldn’t be. So you have to know your culture and decide how much you want to push it.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

The discussion is interesting if sometimes infuriating, and also made me think about criticism, privilege, and power.

[lannamichaels]

This one is interesting to me because I was on a call on Tuesday when someone addressed me and someone else as "ladies" and I had a visceral nope reaction. I honestly think that might be because he's a man and probably around my age or within 5 years of it. Whereas a previous boss of mine is old enough to be my mother and if we were on a call and addressed to me and someone else as "ladies", that would be completely fine with me.

...also I like her and am on good terms with her, and the guy on Tuesday it's pretty cordial and whatever.

New rule, perhaps, I am okay with someone referring to me as a lady if they'd include themselves in it too.

[lilysea]

This one is interesting to me because I was on a call on Tuesday when someone addressed me and someone else as "ladies" and I had a visceral nope reaction

I'm a cis woman and I feel NOPE about "ladies" - it feels condescending/patronising

[shanaqui]

People group me in with "ladies" despite me being enby, and it drives me wild. Especially when the "ladies" being referred to are in fact me, my also-enby wife, and a cis woman. Only one person in this group wants you to use that word, folks!

Yep I'm thinking of a specific group of people right now, ahaha.

I have no advice, though. It always feels really confrontational to even start to get at this subject. "I was just being friendly" etc etc.

[rmc28]

We have a bit of this discussion about "ladies" for the women's hockey team I play in. First and most importantly, not all of our players are female or use she/her pronouns, and our captain is pushing for using other terms like "everyone" or "team" or "players" as relevant rather than specifically gendered terms, to ensure we're not excluding people.

Less obviously, I find being addressed as "ladies" grating, especially when it comes from the coaches. We're all beginners and none of us are men, and the coaches are all much more skilled and experienced and all of them are men, and the whole damn sport is male-dominated, and calling attention to our status as minority players isn't helpful when we're just there to learn.

[purlewe]

I know some people have a visceral reaction to "ladies" and while it does not bother me I have been trying very hard to use non-gendered versions instead. y'all, folks, knitters, team, friends, etc. Once you know people don't like it it makes more sense to just change it up and not use it.

Another icon!

[cereta]

You know, I'm one of those people who take Foxglove's (or was it Hazel's?) view that insisting on being called a woman instead of a girl takes all the fun out of being a girl,* and I hate ladies. The word is just too encumbered by it's long, long use as a marker of sexual virtue and Knowing Your Place for me.

Oddly, in Stephen King's Rose Madder, the protagonist's abusive cop husband has only two words for women: "ladies," reserved for women like the wives of his fellow cops, and "gals," used for sex workers and any woman who doesn't Know Her Place. I've always hated "gal," but that might very well be lingering anti-Southern dialect bias common where I grew up, both a few miles from the Mason-Dixon line (and a place where a great many formerly enslaved individuals, who certainly had reason to have negative reactions to Southern patois) and not far from where a great many people from Appalachia were kind of pushed to settle when they moved north to work in said city, which is a shitty bias I'm trying very hard to overcome.

*As always, context-specific in ways I trust y'all to get.

[jadelennox]

This would be an easier answer if the Discourse didn't start pulling shit about cultural appropriation when non-southerners say "y'all."

[ioplokon]

'Ladies' definitely has the ring of like, a high school principal or coach.

[melannen]

"Ladies" is only okay in circumstances when it's being used gender-neutrally, and work isn't one of them.

[ashbet]

I realize that this doesn’t map to the workplace unless you’re in a position of authority, but in a FB group that I co-admin (for jewelry from a specific artist), we have the following in the rules:

This is not a women-only group.

Please use gender-neutral language when addressing the group -- we're not all women, ladies, girls, etc. Good examples are "everyone," "all," "folks," "y'all," "friends," etc.

[shirou]

I haven’t had this specific issue—I’m a cis male, so nobody has ever called me a lady—but I have encountered language at work that is problematic but not clearly offensive. I’m never sure how to deal with it. I have seen very few real-world examples of people asking others to adjust their language. LW has to gauge how others would react to what they may perceive as an unusual request.

[julian]

IME, "ladies" is often used (as a term) by a) men of a certain age and economic status, and b) women ditto. So, my point is, it's a cultural marker.

Now, I find it an *annoying* cultural marker, but reasonably harmless, and the calculus about how and whether to bring it up is complicated, because some people feel challenged by even a mild suggestion of change. Sigh.

[lassarina]

I dislike "ladies" both for being gender-exclusionary, and because it carries a specific weight of behavioral expectation that I choose not to endorse, and I don't want people giving me shit about it. Especially because it feels like "go back to your place (quiet and at the stove)" and upholds a particular vision of fragile White femininity.

I use "y'all" or "everyone."