I've always thought it was funny how we have a masculine and feminine word for things like actress/actor, but we don't call a female director a directress.
English from England is more sex-conscious, or was in the past, than American English, they would say things like "instructress" or "monitress" or "wardress" (male being warden). Nowadays terms tend to be gender neutral except where a word is well established (like seamstress or ballerina). I do know a lot of actresses are now using the gender neutral actor. I've never heard of a female teamster called a teamstress. But who expects the English language to be logical? The word that really bugs me is "bachelorette". First, "ette" is a diminutive, not a feminine. Second, the female equivalent of bachelor is spinster. But bachelor has the connotation of lively, carefree, maybe playboy while spinster implies a dried up humorless prude. And yet all it really means is a woman who has never been married. And in Congress a man is addressed as "the gentleman from [state]" while a woman is called "the gentlelady from [state]" although lady (more rarely gentlewoman) is the female equivalent of gentleman. Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand, a column from the Chronicle on Jordan's speech: MJ was not Rickey
