Two stories:
I recently helped a customer who kept calling me “honey”. Drove me crazy. First time he said it, I said, “Please don’t call me honey. My name is xJane.” He didn’t blink & did it again. The second time I dropped the “please” and the second sentence. The third time, I said it rather loudly & annoyedly, causing some entertaining glances & stares. It seemed to kick him out of his paternalistic mindset for at least a few minutes (he didn’t do it again).
I just got lunch at the local taco stand, which I love, and got called “señorita” by the owner. I smiled & we caught up, since apparently I’m a regular now. It made me remember the “honey” episode, though, since the diminutive (surely I’m a señora by now under any definition, but I’m younger than him) didn’t bother me.
I’ve decided it’s all about the tone and familiarity. I’ve been called honey, sweetie, deah (dear, for those not from Maine), and many of the like in many different languages. Sometimes it bothers me and sometimes it doesn’t. The difference is in how it seems like it’s meant. In the first instance, “honey” kept being followed by similar condescensions, implications that I didn’t know my job, and odd looks. In the second, a warm smile & greeting preceded the diminutive. In the first instance, I felt like I was being treated as something less than the speaker; like a child who had stumbled into an adult world. In the second, I felt I was being treated as familiar (literally, “like family”). Technically, I suppose, “honey” is an endearment and “señorita” is a diminutive (literally, “something smaller”); but it was in the first instance that I felt smaller and the last that I felt endeared.
I have found that diminutives are often used by men and women from other cultures. This was true in each of the cases above, both spoke English with a slight accent, but certainly well enough for us to communicate (enough for the first man, for example, to have understood that he was annoying me; enough for the second not to have slipped into Spanish). I’m not certain that this is because it’s “okay” in these other cultures to act familiarly or if they know they can get away with it because they’re from another country (how many British women have called me “love”?).
It’s a fine line, obviously, between familiarity and condescension. I think the key here is don’t be linguistically familiar if you’re not socially familiar. In the first case, I had not met this man who called me honey, nor have I seen him since. In the second, I see the (dare I say gentle-)man often, and had seen him often before this particular linguistic episode. I’m struggling to think of familiar terms I use. I call people “dude” an awful lot, a habit I’m trying to break; yet somehow I see this as less familiar than “honey”.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Lessie // Apr 18, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I have nothing intelligent to say, only to note that I’m relieved I’m not the only one who calls people (including my son) “dude” from time to time. Otherwise, I agree about the familiarity issue. It’s amazing how much difference that can make in the way something is said and/or perceived. Just curious, was the guy that called you “honey” from the south? It sounds an awful lot like the men I knew growing up.
Oh, and kudos for being brave enough to speak up. I’m still working on that level of assertiveness. I’m making progress, but it’s slow.
2 Rich // Apr 20, 2008 at 2:30 pm
xJane, what do you do for work? (just curious). Pretty much everyone who deals directly with customers unfortunately encounters rudeness from time to time (which is exactly what the guy calling you honey was practicing), on various levels. Doesn’t it seem like society is trending toward an ever-increasing lack of civility?
I confess I catch myself sometimes being rude to telemarketers, and I know I shouldn’t — they’re just people trying to pay their bills and put food on the table like all of us. Some jobs though do seem to bring out the worst in people more than others.
Just yesterday my daughter (who is a hair stylist in a high-end salon) recounted her experience with a client who wanted her hair colored. This isn’t an exact science — everyone’s hair is different, and the colors used react differently — and so the usual disclaimers were given. After two hours of working with her hair, the client wasn’t happy with the results (even though my daughter thought it looked great). While the client wasn’t rude, she left without a word of thanks, reluctant to pay for the tremendous effort and time spent to please her.
3 xJane // May 19, 2008 at 6:32 pm
A different reaction to diminutives (since they are “smaller things”, they are always intended to make the thing smaller). I’m not sure I completely agree, but I’m sure that this woman does not mind familiar terms from her SO/family.
Lessie: I usually use “dude” to refer to guys, but I’ve started using “guys” to refer to every group, maleness notwithstanding. It also took me a while to get to this point (of speaking up for myself). And it’s hard: people often react as though I just jumped up on the table and started screaming (even to a subtle, “please don’t call me that”).
Rich: I work in retail…and yes, I encounter rudeness often. But gendered rudeness drives me crazy. Like the woman who didn’t like my answer and said, “Could you ask, maybe, you know, one of the guys.” I did all I could to keep from strangling her. There was a guy who said that he worked “in technology“, but honestly that just kinda funny (like, what do I work in…? Don’t tell Steve that Apples don’t qualify as technology). I, too, am often rude to telemarketers, and I’m trying to get better about it. And sure, the whole world could use less rudeness (I just changed my password to a mantra about the whole world experiencing lovingkindness), but what I’d really like to see less of is gendered rudeness, or as I like to call it, misogyny.
Leave a Comment