The new Yoruba instructor who hasn’t seen my face yet addresses me as “sir” multiple times in each email.
I find it oddly endearing. Makes me feel like I’m in the military. “Sir, yes, sir! Ready to go, sir! At your orders, sir!”
We are having a Zoom meeting tomorrow, so I finally did write to say that I’m actually a ma’am to avoid shocking the instructor when he sees me.
“addresses me as “sir” multiple times”
Maybe he knows Spanish….. (didn’t you say you have a masculine persona in Spanish?)
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You do realize that “ma’am” is informal address, not quite the equivalent of “sir.” The proper respectful feminine title is “madam.”
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Madam makes me feel like I’m a brothel keeper. Academia is so asexual that it feels off.
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” makes me feel like I’m a brothel keeper”
Well American brothels (late 19th early 20th centuries) often featured “professors” so it doesn’t seem so far fetched after all..
The professor was a piano player who took requests and some great early jazz musicians started their careers that way (like Jelly Roll Morton).
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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