Is it sexist to refer to your bass or another object as a female?

Can't imagine this thread lasting long , but...

To me, absolutely not.

To others, I'm sure its offensive.

People seem to want to be offended today. They go looking for things to label offensive...

I'll shut up now, so this can get past 1 or 2 responses.

 

Heck no.

 

I never humanize any inanimate object, doesn't make sense to me. I use "it" or the say the type of object it is, "I just had a junior guitar converted to a bass, it's a beaut." "My computer has an eight TB NVMe RAID drive, it screams." "My compact minivan holds eight passengers, it's very versatile."

 

This has been addressed many times before.

In short, it comes from ye olde sailing days when ships were usually named in the feminine.

That's about it.

 

Yes you are bored.

Boats are females pickups are male. Guitars are females. Course this flips over if the owner is female.

 

Question for the OP. Do you think it's sexist when women call objects with a male name, or does the street only go one way?

 

Of course it is. It's only "complimentary" if you objectify females and value them for what they can give to you or mean to you. In my experience, the offended folks are usually the ones that can't wrap their minds around and accept that concept, not the ones who understand it, and challenge the inherent sexism.

 

I'm not sure about this at all.

In my sailing days it was explained to me that women carry life. Any vessel that can sustain life in an environment that people could not normally sustain life functions without her body should, appropriately, have a feminine name.

Ships without a name are presumed to be cursed because they are thought to be barren.

Clearly basses do not sustain life in the same way vessels do, so I think the derivation to bass fails. As for referring to my bass, I haven't given a thought to anything like the thread subject since I started playing. It's a bass. I play it.

 

Well, I am interested in hearing from the ladies. If it legitimately bothers you then Let's hear about it. I could not care less what a dude thinks.....

 

I think some people take things WAY too seriously when it comes to things like this. I wouldn't worry.

 

I have male instruments, female instruments, and androgynous instruments. They come into my life as they are and get what I feel are appropriate names. I have "Robert" sitting to my left, "Nubs" on my right, "Grunt" just behind me and "Dionne" in a soft case in the other room. Let 'em be what they are.

 

Really depends on what kind of junk it's got. I know one of my Js is a boy bass because its case is always a mess.

 

All of my basses are non-binary.

 

Well English does not have gender on objects like Spanish or French and other languages. I always attributed the gender association as English's way of doing what these languages do

Guitar is a feminine noun in Spanish but the bass is masculine (la guitarra and el bajo). So a bass guitar should probably be gender fluid.

 

The Latin languages assign a gender to every single inanimate object there is. Is THAT sexist?

 

"Gender Fluid" conjures up some images that might not be appropriate for this forum.

 

I'm confused -- you say you're not sure about my explanation, and then proceed to give a similar explanation -- is that what just happened?