As a professor I've been called everything imaginable (and earlier as a teaching Sister, what I read about us on the restroom walls or heard over the partitions you might not even believe: Diderot would blush!). I don't mind 'lady', though to be ladylike has largely been abandoned. When I was young, in
San Francisco ladies never went downtown in white gloves or white shoes (which were for garden parties) or without a hat. As for not wearing any gloves downtown...!!! I'd afraid we regarded such lapses as (gasp!) Midwestern. As a student, I couldn't afford the proprieties, of course, or, for that matter, going to Tea at the St. Francis Hotel. It was the Sixties that 'undid' such traditions. Not just among Hippies. Consider Maryknoll nuns in Nicaragua, for instance.
I
hope that none of us abandoned meaningful courtesy, though. I was what we called 'bohemian' and such I remain. We don't mind what words people use for anything. It's the thought that counts. On the other hand, Paul was right that it isn't
good Christianity to scandalize the weak or ignorant. It isn't well bred to do that no matter what your beliefs are.
However, recent political correctness has often been inverse in its intents and effects.
Pat L.
