A genuine question that hopefully y'all won't run away from...

[Hiheels]

What, actually, is perceived as being so "terrible" about anything female or feminine?

Can you imagine a man ruling for 63 years over the United Queendom? I would imagine one of the first things to change would have been to make it Kingdom, but the Queen cracked on and nobody gave it much thought.

There's the pervasive trend to call groups of people "guys", now there's a female counterpart to that of either "girls" or "gals" - a group of women, or containing women will still be called "guys" by some, but one man in a group would mean the generic terms of girls or gals would never be applied.

Just a couple of for instances and apart from the personal thing of mine that I object to being lumped in with "guys" I'm not trying to make any complaints or points - so what, exactly, is the deal with women being handed male-centric things without a ripple, but never going the other way?

[Cosmos]

I believe the idea that women are 'sinister' goes back to the Roman days (at least, possibly further back) when they discovered that the left (in Roman Latin = sinister) side of every human was weaker. In chiromancy (palm reading) the left hand is read for the future which is something that has always been feared.

[Duffield1]

I'd suggest that it is down to our patriarchal society - historically, men held much more influence than women (Elizabeth I wouldn't have taken the throne if she'd had a brother), and within the royal family, traditions are more closely followed than changing traditions.  It has taken until the current generation of Royals for the male right of ascendancy to be revoked.

This is not unique to the UK - in French, if you are referring to a group of people with 1000 women and one man, you'd use the masculine pronoun 'ils' rather than 'elles' - again, probably down to tradition rather than anything else.  The English language is interesting in that we don't generally give gender specific pronouns to objects, whereas languages which stuck more strongly to latin origins do - le bateau (the boat) but la station (the station) for no clear reason that I can see.

[P-Kasso2]

At the risk of getting battered, I think it is perfectly natural, given man's long-established natural ascendency over females.
Men as heads of power, men as heads of armies, men as heads of corporations, men men men. Mankind ever was thus.

What has taken a thousand or more years to establish is obviously going to take far more than a couple of weeks to change.
But, Heels, it is changing. Maybe not as fast as you'd like...and probably too fast for some people's preference.

One example of this slow and creeping change is that in our language we have deep seated habits such as when talking about a child, we 'automatically' use the 'he' word (such as in "When a child is born he can grow up to be anything") rather than automatically using 'she'.

But, a glimmer of hope, I have noticed a growing trend in female US writers and feminism-aware commentators in the last 10 years or so using the word 'she' as a generic descriptor although I must admit it still sounds (to my admittedly male ears) a little contrived and over-deliberate and politically edgy.

But, then again, I thought exactly that about the use of the word 'gay' too in the 70s and 80s...and look how that has turned out! It has now been totally assimilated into the mainstream.

I believe that there has been a mighty shift in men's perception of women. A couple of dreadful wars have helped women be seen to be equals of men. The broadcasting media have shown to most people that women can be intellectual thinkers and debaters, although I admit there is still far too much 'pretty face' being a qualification for getting on TV.

But change is perceptible and happening. I think you just need to sit tight and all will come about. It unfortunately naturally takes time.