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When I was younger, I used "ma'am" and "sir" as respectful ways to address people. I still do to this day. Only once did I have a lady get mad at me for referring to her as "ma'am," but it was so automatic that I couldn't exactly stop. Never have I used either term with disrespectful intent.
Using "sir" and "ma'am" was my way of addressing instructors in engineering school, because the faculty was so diverse that I would otherwise butcher their names.
And that’s why everybody gets to be “Dr. B.” to me. There’s no way I can pronounce that foreign name!
The one that got me was being called "that man".
My dad is "Mr. " and he thought of his dad as the same, but both he and I have courted and expected the same title in various places and if you're called that name enough times, you can kind of get used to it.
But when a small child almost runs into you and their mother chastises them with "Careful! You almost ran into that man!" and "that man" is you. Oh boy. And another time "Why does that man look so sad?". As you might imagine, I was not having a particularly good time before that small child said that.
But I suppose it wasn't "that old man"...
Exact same feeling when a child almost ran into me and her mom said “watch out for that lady” when I’d have expected to be referred to as “that girl”.
I’m 30 now but the moment still stuck with me as a memory about the transition to adulthood .
Yet.
I used to object to it because I was just "a guy." It felt so unnatural because I still felt like a just-stopped-being-a-teenager adult. I defended calling women "chicks" for the same reason because, to 22 yo me, "men" and "women" were middle-aged. Fortunately, I learned not to keep doing that.
But yeah, this comic is pretty easy to identify with.
It's funny, sir never held any connotation of age for me. But I've heard ma'am apparently does. Was she expecting another word? Like miss or something?
Yeah there's no age implications for men because it's either sir or sir.
She must be cisgender. Trans girls love being called ma'am.
First two panels I thought this was going to be a positive trans moment.
I call every woman I don't know "miss". I've just seen too many of these meltdowns among my friends and girlfriends over the years, I don't want to contribute to harm
Karens get the sarcastic inflected ma'am from me.
Ma’am is not old. Ma’am is polite.
That was me going to college after getting out of the military
I was walking to class when the student ahead of me held the door open for me and gestured "Here you go, sir"
I went to the lecture, but just sat there devastated and unable to pay attention
You were just resting your eyes.
I got called “sir” for the first time when I was in high school and loved it
People have started calling me “boss” I reply with “sport”.
What does she expect people to call her? M'lady? Something almost as condescending like "young lady? or "miss"" It's retail, we call you sir or ma'am, or we awkwardly try to avoid referring to you directly as anything but "you" to avoid accidentally offending someone. Those are the only real options.
Why do people care so much about getting old? It would be one the to be annoyed or frustrated with the health aspects, but this kinda shit is lame.
Patriarchal values dictate that as a woman ages, she drops in value. That was the case for quite a while historically. When your value is intrinsically tied to your ability to make children, you become worthless as time goes on.
This is why me and my homies say 'fuck the patriarchy'
Man I get really sick of this trope. “Ma’am” is a term of respect for literally any woman who looks old enough to be married or have children. That means basically anyone who doesn’t look like an actual child. Calling a grown woman “miss” would basically be infantilizing.
Man I get really sick of this trope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift)
is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the
modern meaning is radically different from the original usage.