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RE: Quote of the Day!-Bossy women
"Bossy" is pejorative because it means to give orders, to boss someone around, in other words to give commands. Leading and commanding are not the same thing. A leader takes initiative and provides direction, a commander demands compliance with his/her directives.
Even in the corporate world people are learning that command and control approaches to management are not as effective as other approaches*, so why would we want more of that among either gender?
* There are of course domains where command and control (thus being "bossy") is the better approach, but those are the exception rather than the rule
They are I agree, but then we are all likely to respond to different situations as humans and what some see as bossy may not necessarily be bossy. I think Amy's definition is more of what the society thinks when a woman is boss and when she has to do things as a leader.
A man is bossy but it is not seen as pejorative, why? because he is a man and is expected to be that way. I think the definition plays both ways and when I say bossy as I understand the Author's take, it means a woman who is not afraid to lead and not minding if she is called otherwise. My thought.
I don't believe your premise is correct. The word is widely recognized as a pejorative.
Almost all of the synonyms in the list above are pejorative, and most of those are associated with men.
I know it is pejorative and I am not disputing that. I mean for a man, it is not thrashed as such. But that word quickly comes into play when its a woman involved. I am just saying the definition works differently based on who is involved.
If a word is more commonly used for one gender than another, it doesn't mean that it's favored or disfavored in that gender.
There are at least three possible explanations for that phenomenon:
I think we are making the same point now, but maybe we are expressing it differently? It works normally on the male folks and on the female, well... a bit differently