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The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

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Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#101

Post by mlang23 »

elliekelly wrote: post #77
mffnbs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing. This is still the case today. I feel like the two are entirely unrelated, actually. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market. Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that cater to masculinit…

How interesting because from my perspective (a woman) I feel like I'm seeing significantly fewer products that are marketed to/cater to traditional notions of femininity and instead there seems to be a trend towards inclusivity. Tom Ford, Bvlgari, Calvin Klein, and Chanel all have uni-sex fragrances now. Chanel's is called "Boy" and CK's is very inclusively named "all". And there's a _huge_ trend in high-end cosmetic…

The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad. As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#102

Post by hillz »

> This [plot # 2] view wasn’t very useful

I disagree. It shows that far more gender-neutral or boy names become significantly more popular as girl names, compared to the other way around. That's pretty interesting.

This conforms to the idea that a boy with a girl's name (or other girlish attribute) is bad, whereas a girl with a boy's name (or other boyish attribute) is not as bad, or is even good.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#103

Post by hillz »

mffnbs wrote: post #52
crazygringo wrote: post #41

First, this is a great and original (AFAIK) post. Kudos to the author! Second, I actually find the most interesting fact to be completely unmentioned by the author: that in the first chart (greatest absolute changes), of the 30 biggest swaps, only two were female->male, while the other 28 (over 90%!) were male->female. It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for wom…

> It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing. This is still the case today. I feel like the two are entirely unrelated, actually. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market. Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that cater to masculinit…

> We’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market.

Not really? If buffalo wings are like a man's name, or men's pants, the same trend would be for women to adopt those things (which we do). Similarly, if you market only towards women, it is seen as somewhat shameful for a man (and sometimes, even for a woman) to purchase that good.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#104

Post by TomK32 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #83

"My name is Sue! How do you do? Now you're gonna die!" I wonder if there was any fluctuation in "Sue" after Johnny Cash's recording of Shel Silverstein "A Boy Named Sue" spent three weeks at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1969 (second only to the Stone's "Honky Tonk Woman"). He even performed it in the East Room of the White House by request of Richard Nixon on April 17, 1970! Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (fro…

There's a german cover version: Ein Mädchen namens Gerd (A girl called Gerd).

in 1971 Little Murders (based on the 1966 play) was released (includes a great speech by Donald Southerland) in which the father is named Carol Newquist and constantly says it's a man's name.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#105

Post by maldeh »

mlang23 wrote: post #101
elliekelly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How interesting because from my perspective (a woman) I feel like I'm seeing significantly fewer products that are marketed to/cater to traditional notions of femininity and instead there seems to be a trend towards inclusivity. Tom Ford, Bvlgari, Calvin Klein, and Chanel all have uni-sex fragrances now. Chanel's is called "Boy" and CK's is very inclusively named "all". And there's a _huge_ trend in high-end cosmetic…

The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad. As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

Your musings here are legitimate, so long as you recognize your feelings as a single datapoint and don't mistake them for a general trend, or extrapolate them to the wider population.

As a counterpoint, I don't know of any friends or close acquaintances who would consider feminism or femininity a dirty word. To me, it's a fairly straightforward proposition:

Q: Are you pro- women having equal rights to men w.r.t. social structures, family responsibilities, economic opportunities, etc.?

A: Yes?

Q: And are you willing to take a second look at your social and professional conduct to make sure it doesn't put your female peers in difficult, awkward or uncomfortable positions?

A: Sure, why wouldn't I.

Hooray! you might be a feminist, it's not that hard.

Also, personally don't see what's wrong with unisex products, and I think it may be possible companies might possibly occasionally find the odd not-shitty cause they can back because their employees collectively believe in the positive message and that also aligns well with their goals, and not solely because of a small group of cynical PR managers running focus groups.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#106

Post by arrrg »

trophycase wrote: post #88
kaitai wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're agreeing with the previous poster: "masculinity would be called into question throughout their life", and "far easier for femininity to coop[t] masculine concepts than the reverse." That's exactly what the previous poster said. (Check out the story of Steve Shirley for a computer-world related example.)

are we looking at the same post? GP: girls can benefit from some aspects of male privilege (the parts where only a name is given) by taking a male name parent: masculinity is more rigid in its ostracizing of feminine ideas

Those are facets of the same thing, one is just more narrow than the other. They certainly don’t contradict each other.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#107

Post by arrrg »

weberc2 wrote: post #70
whack wrote: post #45

At the risk of turning an innocent topic into a political discussion, I wonder how much of this trend can be explained by societal privilege. Ie, parents (consciously or subconsciously) want their daughters to benefit from appearing male (at least on paper) and so give them ambiguous or masculine names. And of course, the same parents would do the exact opposite for their sons, by not selecting any name that might be…

Is societal privilege even falsifiable? Can it explain anything? (Or rather, can it be made to explain anything and everything?)

Sure. Look for example at studies of resumes with “black sounding” and “white sounding” names.

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#109

Post by pengstrom »

mlang23 wrote: post #101
elliekelly wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How interesting because from my perspective (a woman) I feel like I'm seeing significantly fewer products that are marketed to/cater to traditional notions of femininity and instead there seems to be a trend towards inclusivity. Tom Ford, Bvlgari, Calvin Klein, and Chanel all have uni-sex fragrances now. Chanel's is called "Boy" and CK's is very inclusively named "all". And there's a _huge_ trend in high-end cosmetic…

The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad. As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

> The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad.

I'm not sure I follow. Care to explain?

> As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

Wouldn't unisex products be more economical since one product now has twice the demographic?

Re: The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.

#110

Post by WA »

elliekelly wrote: post #77
mffnbs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing. This is still the case today. I feel like the two are entirely unrelated, actually. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market. Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that cater to masculinit…

How interesting because from my perspective (a woman) I feel like I'm seeing significantly fewer products that are marketed to/cater to traditional notions of femininity and instead there seems to be a trend towards inclusivity. Tom Ford, Bvlgari, Calvin Klein, and Chanel all have uni-sex fragrances now. Chanel's is called "Boy" and CK's is very inclusively named "all". And there's a _huge_ trend in high-end cosmetic…

Ironically, pink used to be the boys' color back a couple hundred years, because royal red = king, pink = prince, blue = princess.

The pink = girl color switched only in more recent times. It's very stupid.

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