[Colonol Dekker]

I'm slowly working my way through series 1 of this NuBsg thing. Overall it seems a bit emo heavy. But I'll give it a chance to grow on me.
 
The point of the topic though is, . . . . . . WHY the Smurf do Colonials call the female officership "Sir" as opposed to the more gender correct "Ma'am"? It's worse than calling a daddy mummy or vice versa.
 
 

[Thaeris]

Ma'am, that is a valid point.

[Dilmah G]

Mm, I recall going through this stage and thinking Battuta and Darius were having some kind of in-joke when Laporte started being referred to as Sir in WiH.

I dunno, I think it's a convention of some other mil sci-fi authors/series to use Sir as if it were gender-neutral form of address. Even if it messes up the minds of those who've had to refer to female occifers as ma'am for quite some time.

I guess you could put it down to language evolving or something. Or modern navies being changed dramatically by some kind of lawsuit involving an offended male officer and a very frightened looking Petty Officer who got sir/ma'am mixed up over the radio. Who knows.

[Colonol Dekker]

It's just soooooo wrong. I thought the same about WIH using Sir to refer to laporte to be honest.

[General Battuta]

Because it's shorter and therefore better, and the distinction is otherwise meaningless.

Rather like the ms vs. mrs issue, it's an unnecessary flourish that'll fade.

[General Battuta]

Oh and it's canonical for FreeSpace.

[Colonol Dekker]

Sir is Male, Ma'am is female. They're both one syllable.
 
This is BSG focused. Blue Planet has every right to use the wrong terminology if it chooses. I retain my right of  disapproval.
 
 
 

[Thaeris]

For the record, are there any actual military organizations which do this?

When I was a cadet, we used male/female specific verbiage. I never thought about this too much when watching BSG, but I do now wonder what the precise reasons are for making use of this naming system...

And, for the record, I'm going to say that it being "canon" in FS doesn't count. Volition assumably made the assumption that the user-base would primarily be male, and thus did not feel the need to make a gender-select system (apart from choosing your pilot image). Furthermore, doing so would require significantly more difficult VA work, which would cost more, use more disk space, etc. In short, it was conveniant do it the way they did it - it doesn't mean that that's the way it really is in the FS-verse.

[Dilmah G]

I don't believe there are any functioning organisations which do this.

And some goes for when I was a cadet as well. And to be perfectly honest with you, calling male officers sir and female officers ma'am makes more sense and feels more natural to me, but sir for both sexes is what the BP team decided and as a team member, I'm obliged to support that decision (though I did challenge it on the dev channel at some stage).

[General Battuta]

And, for the record, I'm going to say that it being "canon" in FS doesn't count. Volition assumably made the assumption that the user-base would primarily be male, and thus did not feel the need to make a gender-select system (apart from choosing your pilot image). Furthermore, doing so would require significantly more difficult VA work, which would cost more, use more disk space, etc. In short, it was conveniant do it the way they did it - it doesn't mean that that's the way it really is in the FS-verse.

Negative; :V: went to careful effort to ensure their campaign was totally gender-blind in FS2. You can see the marks in the writing. Given that you can pick male or female pilots that's as much as we got.

I'm not going to get into a debate on this so consider it a Battutedict! TRUTH HAS SPOKEN

In more general terms you increase the cognitive effort of any message by forcing a male/female choice, and splitting your rank delineator in half leads to all sorts of problematic consequences. The objective of military verbiage is to support unit cohesion and hierarchy and provide terse, informative communications. Fat like this will get cut over time, since the gender of the officer is functionally irrelevant. Wasting even a split-second on making a useless distinction is going to get people killed.

Functioning militaries today don't require you to greet high-ranking officers by a long-ass list of titles (the Viscount of Canter****, Smasher of Heathens, Whose Endowment is Akin to the Stallion); they're a relic of older social structures that eventually got discarded.

[Colonol Dekker]

I heartily believe the opposite. Ma'am has been in place for centuries. It'll stick.

[General Battuta]

I heartily believe the opposite. Ma'am has been in place for centuries. It'll stick.

Could be. In BSG they've got a whole different history, though; group and homosexual marriages are normal and their whole society is a bit more relaxed.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm looking forward to seeing the more socially utopian aspects of the BSG universe. If they can attain a level of tolerance and acceptance above and beyond our own, it just confuses the heck out of me why they apply Male designations to Female crew.

[General Battuta]

I'm looking forward to seeing the more socially utopian aspects of the BSG universe. If they can attain a level of tolerance and acceptance above and beyond our own, it just confuses the heck out of me why they apply Male designations to Female crew.

Because the designation is not male. It's gender-blind. 'Ms.' is now, for many, a term that's agnostic to marital state; I don't think you'd argue it's somehow offensive that it's applied to married women because it's 'an unmarried term'.

[Qent]

Why isn't "ma'am" the neutral one?

[Dilmah G]

The number of male officers in the Navy probably edges a little more than the number of female officers. Even in a gender-neutral society, fields like aircrew have physical restrictions that favour the average male rather than the average female. Even if you take something trivial like the minimum height for aircrew (163cm) and look at the average heights of males and females around the world you'll see some interesting things.

And then you have direct combat roles akin to Infantry, which, even if women were allowed to serve, would not do so in large numbers (I linked a pdf some time ago done by the British Army, I believe, which stated that out of the percentage of women already serving in the defence force, less than 1% were physically able to hack being in a direct combat section).

Unless of course you have some kind of uber bone strength serum, surgery, thing...

[General Battuta]

Why isn't "ma'am" the neutral one?

Because 'sir', at least in our society, carries historical connotations of authority and presence, whereas 'maam' is tied to femininity, submission, and weakness.

[T-LoW]

HOORA!

[Colonol Dekker]

Because it's a contraction of Madam. Sir is most definitely a male term. Anyone who's recieved junk mail headed by
"Dear Sir or Madam" could work that out. Miss is for young girls, the female equivalent of Master. Mrs is obvious, Ms is widowers, divorcee's, spinsters and Teachers, and anything else.

[rscaper1070]

Excuse the Star Trek reference but Saavik in the Wrath of Khan was addressed as Mr. Saavik.