The Scientific American published this article today, What is the Sex of 17? It's a fascinating read, because it discuses how and why people assign genders to everyday objects, as well as really abstract things like numbers.
I have always assigned genders to numbers - as a kid I used them as imaginary characters to play with (in my head). But usually I only do it up to 10, because beyond that the numbers tend to lose their characteristics for me, and become redundant. Here is how I assign genders to numbers in my mind:
0: male
1: male
2: female
3: female
4: male
5: male
6: female
7: male
8: female
9: female
10: male
11: male
12: female
I think I can do more numbers, but beyond 12 things start to get a bit too abstract. Plus, I have noticed that I repeat the genders in order (i.e. the pattern is in the same order every ten numbers - look at 11 and 12, they are the same gender as 1 and 2).
But sometimes, for example if you randomly yelled "91" at me, I would tend to think of it as female (talk about gender confusion), hence I break out of the pattern. But if I think about it sequentially (i.e. assigning the gender of each number in ascending order, starting with zero), then I repeat the pattern.
The article discusses that people usually associate odd numbers with the male gender and even numbers with female. It does not have a detailed discussion as to why this is so, but it has something to do with gender stereotypes, and how odd numbers are perceived as being more independent (?).
Perhaps an interesting thing would be to look at the physical structure of the number and see how that influences peoples' perception.
I wonder if these assignments are simply based on cultural gender stereotypes, or if there is something more primitive going on.
As for everyday objects, I used to be able to assign clear genders to them before, but when I tried to think consciously of this now (things around my room, like the side table, the bed, etc) I find it too hard.
I think I find it hard to assign genders to man-made objects, but for natural objects it's easy. Like the moon (an example from the article) is feminine, whereas the sun is masculine. Sand is feminine, but rocks are masculine. Some more examples:
Leaves: masculine
Trees: masculine
Rivers: not sure, but possibly feminine
Earth: feminine
Grass: feminine
Whereas, if you asked me to assign a gender for a mobile phone, I would look at you funny. One of my friends thinks of his laptop as a female, but try as I might, I cannot think of my laptop in terms of gender. If I really want to force myself to personify it, the best I can do is think of it as some sort of cute animal, or as a good companion.
The article also discusses how peoples' language influences their gender assignments. I think this would be more obvious in certain European languages (the article mentions German and Spanish). A lot of the European languages actively assign gender to objects (like the une, un, le, la thing in French - correct me if I'm wrong, I forgot all of my French), so maybe for Europeans who speak these languages, the distinction is very strong. For example, in French you cannot say table without adding an "une" in front of it, so it is always une table.
My mother tongue does not assign genders to objects actively, at least not all the time, but in sentences, gender-specific pronouns show up. For example, the moon and the sun would be referred to as masculine, whereas the wind is feminine, etc.
It would be interesting to see how your second or third languages influence your gender perception of objects.
Even more interesting would be to see what are the gender assignments of objects (if any) done by people whose mother tongue has no grammatical gender. A lot of East Asian languages (e.g. Tagalog, Malay) and Austronesian languages in general are as such.
Feel free to share your gender assignments of abstract objects in the comments below, as well as any other titbits you might have concerning this. It will be fascinating information for me.
when i was newly learning english i was shocked that the terms "he" and "she" existed...but now i kinda got used to the whole giving gender to things therefore i dont find it impossible to do anymore.
ReplyDeletefor example i consider the moon as a she because it gives soft lighting which in my mind's eye is feminine.
so what was the baseline for deciding which gender goes to which numbers then?
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's always odd numbers are masculine and even numbers feminine. In Egypt when I was young, we had two elevators in our building. One for odd floors and one for even floors. Since I lived in the fifth floor and used the odd elevator, I always thought that the even one is for girls, so I never came near it.
ReplyDeleteIn Arabic, apart from numbers, almost every word has a gendry feel to it. For example, the sun is feminine and the moon is masculine. These are standard and not an individual's imagination. Also, a car is feminine, a door is masculine, a table is feminine, a chair is masculine, a tree is feminine, a ball is feminine, a clock is feminine.
I dunno in India number 9 represents Eunuchs.
ReplyDeleteI never considered leaves masculine. They lay on the ground and get walked all over. Wait, that's what happens when a guy gets married. Nevermind.
ReplyDelete@DHR: I think I am similar to you, because I consider the moon to be feminine because of how it looks so beautiful. And I can only imagine how shocking it must be to learn all these very specific pronouns =O
ReplyDeleteSo I guess your second language (English) influenced you more...
@roza: I honestly can't explain properly. It's just this gut feeling you have, that this number is female, the other is male. I've always had this same list in my head since I was a kid. I guess I imagine the numbers as being next to each other, and gossiping among themselves.
It's weird...maybe it has something to do with how the numbers are written...?
@mohamed:
ReplyDeleteYou follow the norm with other people! Maybe it has to do with the lift thing, or maybe it is a more general thing among humans. Because, as the article points out,most people consider odd numbers to be masculine and even numbers to be feminine.
Wow, it's interesting to know about Arabic. I guess then it's a bit like French, where each word has to have a gender related thing to it. But is it just the feel of the word, or an actual gender-specific pronoun which determines the gender of the word/object?
Also, do you then just follow your language, or do you still tend to think of some objects as a separate gender? Like for me,in my language, the moon is referred to as masculine, but I still think of it as feminine.
@meandmythinkingcap: I didn't know about this at all!
ReplyDeleteThey are gender-specific. There are some differences between standard Arabic and the Egyptian dialect, so in this case I use the Egyptian dialect.
ReplyDelete