Girls...Poet or Poetess?

Do you feel uncomfortable when someones calls you Poetess?Why so many female writers drop the feminine termination?In Brazil some writers get offended if we use the term Poetess to refer to them, I have often caught myself thinking about this issue.A poetess in my country is the one who writes confessional poetry, almost autobiographical but I like the term. There is a well-known Poet(ess) here who once wrote
"...I am a poetess, a seamstress of words, a weaver of sentences in verses..."
So girls how do you prefer to be called and why:
poet or poetess?

That's really interesting Karla...

I refer to myself as a poet, but when other people say " you're an awesome poetess!"...I don't mind at all. A poetess is a female poet...which I am. :) I don't know why I never refer to myself as that though. I guess that is out of habit because I never heard of poetess until a few years ago.. I've been a poet since I was 12.5 and that word is what I'm more use to using.

Love this topic, its kind of interesting :)

I consider you both poets, to emphasise that you are female detracts from that a little I feel. Is poetry about gender? I think not, I read a poem and then judge it on its merits not whether it was written by a male or female

Will come back and edit this when I'm sober me thinks

I too do not like it . the gender distinction is unnecessary,
Being a woman or man has no bearing on the insight of the poetry.
For me it sounds like women are only a branch of the main stem, they are not poets they are only poetess.
I do not like divisions; they are sexist and they belong to patriarchy

Is a female writer a "writress?"

No but if shes good she can waitress my table

Well, I'm always called Poetess. I guess I will find it odd if someone calls me... Poet. However, like Chels said, when I refer to myself or to a group of female writers, I say poets.
I don't know. I'm not a native speaker, I might mess up.

But in the end it doesn't really matter what they call you if you could write.

Not true, you could be called DDavidd and that wouldnt be good

As Shakespeare said :
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.
or
as Shakespeare would say : Prick or not prick this is the question !!

thanks nicko for using my proper title that's good good

I definitely prefer "poet." I don't see why a girl writing a poem would have a different title than a guy. But I don't think people who say "poetess" here are ever meaning to use it offensively.

I just flat don't care or notice I guess. I think poet can go either way, but poetess is strictly female. I wouldn't be offended if someone ever calls me the feminine version of anything, because I'm a woman, so duh. lol

I don't like when people say something and use "person" instead of man. Like 'mailman'. I personally call our mailman a mail lady because it's an inside joke... but saying mailperson sounds goofy.

In Arabic, we say poetess for the female poet and poet for the male.

It's not intended at all to sound sexist. It's just the same title, the same art, the same soul... only the genital organs differ :p

Genital organs bahah love the modesty

your answers are very interesting, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me but I'm intrigued by those of you who don't like the term. :)

I'll get to this when I have a keyboard.

LP In the States we call the spouse of the president
"The first Lady" which makes me wonder what we will call the first lady president's spouse?

I would like to buy the title of "unknown poet" and receive his or her's royaties

I don't mind waitress or actress or murderess. But I don't like poetess. As a person who appreciates words, there are some that just don't ring true to me and that is one of them. I also hate chillax. Some words are just unsexy. Nothing to do with genitals.

If someone called me a poetess, I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't necessarily call myself a poet either, I'm more of a writer, because I don't just write poetry.
But this is a really interesting thread to see people's views on it

I've been called many things, but please don't call me late for supper! LOL

^^ cheesy I know... you can throw tomato's at me now!

I've been called a Poet and Poetess... obviously I'm female so either way, is fine with me...

I'm with Tara Kay on the fact that I look at myself as a writer....

I've even been called a freaky writer before... ha ha

I think its out of respect being called a Poetess and its elegant... but for me I truly don't have a preference...

It's just a historical thing, I guess. Gender distinction has always had a place in language...it's becoming archaic in English as well as other languages nowadays, especially with the feminist movement pushing so hard.

Example: the Russian language has both masculine and feminine forms of professions. In recent history, there has been an increase in female lawyers. We have two words, advokat and advokatka (I think). Strictly speaking, from what I've been taught, it would be offensive to call a female lawyer an advokatka because she's in a powerful position where gender neutrality is important.

There is so much gender neutrality in English now, that people often find gender distinctions among titles to be a bit odd or even offensive. This is completely understandable.

I use the term poetess because I have always liked the idea of having masc/fem distinctions of words. It makes the language sound nicer to me.

I'll stop saying it, though, if there's enough negative feedback. I don't wanna go around pissing people off.

Right before I got very interested in poetry my Aunt bought me a book written by a monk that many of my relatives knew face to face.. It was not written as a book but rather a journal. In the book published by the monks after the untimely death of Thomas Merton, Merton recorded his admitted affair with nurse M. I some how believe the relationship was so pure that the ordained priest never broke his vows
In the book the four loves C.S Lewis writes about four types of love . Love between man and (his or her) Higher Power, love between parent and offspring , love between friends,and finally erotic love between man and wife. Life requires nature and nurture . Every man has a mother and every daughter has a father . I personally try to avoid avoid ranking sexes

I look at in terms of why it is used. If there is a reason to distinguish the author as female, Poetess is convenient. If gender identity is irrelevant, poet serves just as well and requires fewer keystrokes.

By the same token, chillax takes fewer keystrokes than chill & relax

If a poem is written by a women, for sure it has some feminine distinction, but those distinctions do not turn the poet to poetess. She, is still a human, experiencing universe as any other man and women would do in her place.
If the poetical experience remains only in the limit of its origin and could not include human as whole, it is not true poetry regardless of its gender background.
The distinction belongs to patriarch society when genders were not equal and distinction was necessary.
Nowadays it is just extra typing and residue from the man world. It is emphasizing on our differences whereas we are erasing them.

Now that's an interesting topic of convo. "Erasng gender distinctions." How much erasing are we talking?

We must be very careful how we use these terms . I never talked about "erasing gender distinctions" in the society. I did it though in the level of human conscience and awareness.
In there, could be no difference between genders, races, personal achievements, individualities and so on
In the physical level though, there always be distinction
where in the spiritual level there is non. And poetry belongs to the spirit, and any initiation to bring it down to instinctive distinction is disrupting its true identity.
A poem could be sexual, physical, gender oriented, but if it remains there, it is not art, it has noting to do with inspiration and spiritual ascension; it is not from intuition; it is not connected to the ocean:: the collective awareness, where we are all equals!!

If it took a big pencil to draw the line between genders it should take a big erasor to erase that line

I agree that poetry is more about mind ,heart and soul than random neuron firings

Sometimes a dream is just the product of random neural firings.

The old question of which came first the chicken or the egg was most likely not a female plot to erase the rooster

We may also consider drawing a line in our courting rituals
http://youtu.be/6UV3kRV46Zs

I have a feeling that "erasing gender distinctions" only applies to humans - makes sense as we are the one manipulating our views and with it, our language. I doubt we'll stop saying sow or hen or doe or cow - in fact, these words are the feminine form of many sorts of animals, and there are equally specific masculine versions as well. Lioness is nicer than 'female lion', but perhaps this is acceptable because 'lion' describes both genders. For humans, there is no humaness. There are separate words for each gender.

Or perhaps "erasing gender distinctions" will only apply to certain human professions. Yes, probably that.

Haha even though the rooster's cockyness is interesting and quite erotic and arousing, supposedly in instinctive side of foreplay but I rather doves. They really make love equally in place of being dominant. They most likely do not need gender distinction.

"Big cats can be dangerous, but a little pussy never hurt anybody."

The term lioness is used poetically more often than not
The rhyme ding dong bell may have been taken from
"Ding Dong Bell" a poem with a moral theme
The origins of this nursery rhyme date back to the 16th century and the era of Shakespeare who used the phrase "Ding Dong Bell" in several plays. The original lyrics of "Ding Dong Bell" actually ended with the cat being left to drown! These words were modified and the cat was saved by 'Little Tommy Stout' to encourage children to understand that it was unacceptable and cruel to harm any animal
The Tempest, Act I, Scene II:
"Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! Now I hear them - Ding, dong, bell."
The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene II:
"Let us all ring fancy's bell;
I'll begin it - Ding, dong, bell."

I think the plural of poetess would be as awkward as many old terms

It's interesting when looking at the famine of the large cats where you have;

Lion and Lioness which is commonly used but in reference to the others, they hardly ever used and hard to know if they are grammatically correct or not. i.e.

Cheetah and Cheetess
Tiger and Tigress
Leopard and Leopardess
Jaguar and Jaguaress

they just don't sound right/
Anybody can help?

Tigress and leopardess sound okay to me. Especially tigress. Also, spell check doesn't have a problem with them.

Cheetess mightn't work because Cheetah ends with a vowel. Cutting that vowel out takes away its meaning so you can't say "Cheetess" and adding another vowel screws with the flow of sonority (these are different levels of sounds in linguistics) - we can't have a vowel proceeding another vowel, we'd have to insert a consonant or something, but inserting a consonant would again sort of remove the meaning from "cheetah."

I think the same might go for Jaguaress as 'r' can sometimes be treated as a vowel.

"A poem could be sexual, physical, gender oriented, but if it remains there, it is not art, it has noting to do with inspiration and spiritual ascension"

Who's to say this? Why can't we get inspiration from sex or gender? It is all part of our natural orientation after all. Also I'm sure that many would disagree about sex having nothing to do with spiritual ascension XD

You: "Also I'm sure that many would disagree about sex having nothing to do with spiritual ascension ..."
me: "A poem COULD BE sexual, physical, gender oriented, but...."

what is the use of having discretion if we do not read each other post carefully?
Or even more, the part we quote!!

Thanks Jordan

Taking this a step further when you look at the animal or insect world the male female gender thing is a bit cockeyed for eg

donkey..........Male: dicky, jack, jack-ass...... The Female: jennet, jenny, she-ass
We have some of those on here...

cat...Male: tom, tomcat, gib, gib-cat.......Female: puss, queen, tabby

chicken....Male: cock, rooster......Female: biddy, hen
Is that where you get "old biddy" from lol

deer.....Male: buck, hart, stag.......Female: doe, hind, roe, teg

bear.....Male: boar...........Female: sow, ursa

Yet many are just male and female like an Eagle or the common fly

I did read your post, Ddavid, and I quoted exactly what I meant to. I'll quote you again as I did before and ask my question again. Maybe I didn't word it well enough?

"A poem could be sexual, physical, gender oriented, but if it remains there, it is not art, it has noting to do with inspiration and spiritual ascension"

What I was asking is who's to say that this type of poem is not art and that it has nothing to do with spiritual ascension?

If I'm not mistaken we all take inspiration and can get spiritual enlightenment from anywhere depending on our personal beliefs/feelings.

Nicko, that's such a big conversation to be had...I wouldn't know where to start. There are so many names for different animals all stemming from different areas of language. You'd have to get into historical/comparative linguistics, ie etymology, semantics, language contact. So much. Ahahaha.

Http://youtu.be/b_X_SWuwM7k

Do you know what the opposite of a day stud is?
I know that beast of burden have little to do with poets or poetesses, but Mules are interesting cross breeds

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.[1] Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny (the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey). While there is no known instance of a male mule siring offspring, female mules have on very rare occasion given birth to viable offspring.

Angel's have gender fallen or otherwise in lowness or highness

Gender of connectors and fasteners

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In electrical and mechanical trades and manufacturing, each half of a pair of mating connectors or fasteners is conventionally assigned the designation male or female. The "female" connector is generally a receptacle that receives and holds the "male" connector.

Would it be more politicallycorrect to say internal and external connectors?

Bear with me here, Michael... in a distant genetics class, I learnt that horses and donkeys don't usually mate, and their mating requires much human manipulation (humans love mules because they are sturdier, sure-footed, intelligent, etc). To make a mule, a male donkey has to mount a platform to mount the mare. And the reason hinnies are rarer is because, apparently, stallions think donkeys are pretty disgusting. They have to be first aroused by a mare, then they are blindfolded and thus fooled into mating a donkey instead.
Pretty intense.

In group psychology one could see the P&Q's public discussion always exhibits a massive ADD tendency. But in zoo -gymnastia -logy science we could easily call it insane stretching tendency of tendons . We could burst forth from poetry to mule mating. That my friends is a massive muscular flexibility, or insane masculine elongation, which brings us back to the subject in hand poetry that is . :) :)

Female authors

"Some female authors have used pen names to ensure that their works were accepted by publishers and/or the public. Such is the case of Peru's famous Clarinda, whose work was published in the early 17th century. More often, women have adopted masculine pen names."
I believe when it was legal to have a secret account many males had female names on their profile and many poets still pretend to be one year old

Do you see, being poetess considered a shortcoming, therefore they had to hide it??

And to our ADHD disorder, our age is another shortcoming, that due to our freedom of choice, we choose hiding
Then one would wander how many fat numbers could hide behind this tiny little number 1