ActorS/Talk

Also, I still see some girls here on the boys page.

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In case you haven't noticed, women refer to themselves now as ActorS...I hope the page editor who deleted all the women, except Judith Dench, Ellen Burstein, Blythe Danner, and Sophia Loren and further messed up the alphabetizing will correct it. You might notice also that Sidney Poitier is a man, or so I always thought.

• A female who acts is an actress. Thus, when Hilary Swank won an AcademyAward?, it was for Best Actress, not Best Actor Who Is Female. Please see GeorgeOrwell?'s 'Politics and the English Language' for more on manipulating thought by abusing language.

• Great essay, [this], but doesn't have enough detail about the ways political hacks abuse language. That is a fascinating topic. I'm also not quite sure that it's the best way to describe the resistance to "actress."

Re: "actress"...yet another perfectly useful word forever tarred with the brush of political incorrectness. Female actpersons might refer to themselves as ActorS, but there are still many people who refer to them (quite respectfully) as ActresseS. It's what they are, isn't it? -- AnonymousCoward (ducking)

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Linguistically speaking, what is common usage IS correct. These females who act are, as a group, whatever the plurality of AME speakers call them, be it ActorS or ActresseS. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE!!!(Answer to A.C.) Since there is a dispute here, started by me, I will cede to the older nomenclature and possibly the majority opinion. I have created ActresseS. Wait til next year though...:-).

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I thought about this when I created the two pages, believe me. I thought about it, too, when I created separate pages for MaleTennisProfessionals and FemaleTennisProfessionals. In both cases, I was guided by the highest professional awards. In tennis, women play in a separate league from men. In acting, the AcademyAwards (and, I believe, all the other major awards) are granted separately to male and female performers.

In both cases, there is a good reason for the distinction. If men and women played in the same tennis league, it would be extremely unfair. That's a biological fact, as far as I know. Maybe in the future, it will not be true, but for today, it is true.

In acting, it is generally, but of course not universally, the case that parts played by women and parts played by men are inherently different. It might be possible to remake, say, TheGodfather?, with MichellePfeiffer? playing the role previously played by MarlonBrando?, but...

If we were making a page listing famous philosophers, or famous scientists, I do not think that a separate listing would be a good thing at all. Unless, of course, someone wanted to make a page highlighting famous female scientists of the past, when they were more rare, or something like that.

One of the beautiful things about a wiki is, of course, that someone can create a page of 'ActingProfessionals?' that lists all of them, male or female, on the same page, or in alphabetical order, like 'ActingProfessionals?/A', etc.