Which Cities Do You See as Masculine Or Feminine?

[BillM]

I think there are attributes that people could consider to be feminine or masculine. It would then be how you perceive the influence of these attributes on the city, which could vary from person to person.

Here's a few off the top of my head.

sports - masculine
museums - feminine
culinary - feminine
music scene - trans
office towers - masculine
beauty - feminine
liberal vibe - feminine
conservative vibe - masculine
clean - feminine
dirty - masculine

[muppet]

London, aka the Old Smoke. Ze is an implacable beast to pin down.

Founded according to legend by the two ugly giants, Gog and Magog


http://www.prayerforlondon.com/gog-and-magog/


and haunt of the river god, Old Father Thames. (Someone please tell me what the flip that is behind him)?



long a city of mass poverty, grit and industry, hence its moniker (it's bad smog days used to kill 12,000 people a pop)


https://vintagenewsdaily.com/the-gre...ears-to-solve/



contrasted with imperial and colonial power, built on the blood and toil of millions (ta very much India)


https://www.redbubble.com/people/tom...p=canvas-print, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...-day-rmk0vs95d


and today aligned with shameless financial clout (ta very much, world)


https://fineartamerica.com/featured/...s-england.html

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...-a4162901.html


Okay, so far, so Type-A manspreading fvckboss displaying his balls to all from the boardroom chair...


However in its recent gentrification, prettifying and instagrammification it looks much more femme, thanks to getting a mayoralty back off Thatcher who dissolved the position because of its unruly,
pedantic socialism, but whose return has now garnered a mix of left wing progress and right wing exclusion (dependent on the mayor).


https://secretldn.com/pretty-city-lo...olouring-book/


https://tripswithrosie.com/7-of-lond...tiest-streets/


Now inclusive of the ex-industrial areas where a sure buck is to be made again in some of the world's most expensive land values


https://evanevanstours.com/blog/10-o...ets-in-london/


https://tripswithrosie.com/7-of-lond...tiest-streets/
https://www.visitlondon.com/things-t...ristmas-lights


even its notorious sink estates and brutalism are becoming celebrated (after the worst 1,000 were demolished)




(just noone mention the thousands of hidden beds-in-sheds that are the return of shanty housing into the leafy, presentable suburbs)


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...eds-sheds.html


In short, London has morphed from a fat Cockney bloke in the pub (aka The Dirty Man of Europe until the 1980s). He'd fallen on hard times back when he used to wear bowler hats and tails.
On bad hair days he occasionally got mistaken for a punk.


https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk

into an Essex fastboy hired into b(w)anking after the Big Bang deregulation in 1986 (ta very much Thatcher)...



https://i.dailymail.co.uk


then into today's fun and Millennial drag act, with a darker sideshow as an S&M mistress. She's available for high end weddings, bar mitvahs, Quinceañeras and progressive Eid celebrations,
but will cost you an indentured child.


https://www.monopol-magazin.de/trave...ayreuth-kommen
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Centropolis]

rolling around london and boston on streetview...i'm sure that someone could find more similar streets of course.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3534...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4914...2!8i6656?hl=en

both cities with a major sense of refinement historically co-exisiting with a brute edge...londons perhaps more hidden than in the past.

[wwmiv]

Austin is a homeless cross dresser named Leslie:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran

[Centropolis]

st. louis is disheveled, declined midwestern old money lady sitting in a lawn chair with a cigarette, budweiser and a radio by the alley

[Boisebro]

Boise is a hot, athletic cyclist woman.

In other words, Boise’s more of a Girlsie.

[Razor]

Tokyo?
Melbourne?
Sydney?
Milwaukee?

ya, Milwaukee came out of nowhere, but I just checked the NBA standings..

I'm having a hard time with the other cities?

[chris08876]

Newark NJ is an old head O.G. that would publicly lay a woopin' on anybody who is disrespectful, especially young bloods. Newark NJ has old man strength, the type not to be messed with. Newark NJ is definitely masculine.

Hoboken NJ is feminine. Drinking Starbucks, and checking the Obama twitter feed 5x a day while putting sweaters on the pocket sized dog.

NYC is that businessman that does 8-balls like they are going out of style, and drinks Starbucks on top of it!

[big T]

Originally Posted by Nantais

In French cities and cars are definitely feminine but ships are always masculine, so I am often confused when I read or hear "she" for a vessel.

I guess the major difference is that every noun is gendered in French, so we naturally tend to think of all cities and cars as female because « une ville » et « une voiture », vs « un navire ». I’m the same as you, I can’t think of a city as anything other than female, for example.
English doesn’t have gendered nouns so it has more flexibility to arbitrarily cast something as male or female I suppose.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Masculine:

San Francisco
San Jose
St. Louis
San Diego
Los Angeles
San Bernardino


Feminine:
Las Vegas
Santa Fe
Santa Barbara
Santa Clara
Sault Ste. Marie

I see what you did there.

I think in Spanish all cities take on feminine pronouns because "la ciudad" is feminine. So Los Angeles is still a "she" even though she has a boy's name.

Where are the native French speakers? They could sort this out.

[JManc]

Los Angeles's original name: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by JManc

Los Angeles's original name: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles

Didn't know that.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

rolling around london and boston on streetview...i'm sure that someone could find more similar streets of course.

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3534...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4914...2!8i6656?hl=en

both cities with a major sense of refinement historically co-exisiting with a brute edge...londons perhaps more hidden than in the past.

This block in Boston also looks ALOT like a Belgian/ Bruxellois vernacular




Begium / northern France

[S Car Go]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

This thread:

This thread is telling me way, way more about the posters than the cities. Like this is months and months of experience of posting with someone packed into just three pages.

[bossabreezes]

Rio de Janeiro- A woman, tall, tanned, in a skimpy bikini drinking a caipirinha one moment. In the next moment, screaming at the top of her lungs, freaking out, threatening to kill you before then saying sorry while kissing you on the forehead.

São Paulo- A businessman who is very successful at work for 10 hours a day, who eats at 5 star restaurants every night during the week. Gets 8 full hours of sleep on Monday through Thursday. Friday - Sun he doesn't sleep at all, drinks 10 caipirinhas an hour and goes on a wild bender throughout the metro region. Owns multiple properties throughout Brazil, including a few in São Paulo city, one in the countryside, one at the beach, and has a small family farm in the mountains.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by big T

I guess the major difference is that every noun is gendered in French, so we naturally tend to think of all cities and cars as female because « une ville » et « une voiture », vs « un navire ». I’m the same as you, I can’t think of a city as anything other than female, for example.
English doesn’t have gendered nouns so it has more flexibility to arbitrarily cast something as male or female I suppose.

You nailed it. German and Spanish have gendered nouns as well. Arbitrarily assigning gender to cities, cars, ships etc, is mostly an English thing, and as I already stated, is also mostly a male thing.

Man admiring a classic car: "Ain't she a beauty?"
Wife standing next to him: "It's cute"

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by badrunner

You nailed it. German and Spanish have gendered nouns as well. Arbitrarily assigning gender to cities, cars, ships etc, is mostly an English thing, and as I already stated, is also mostly a male thing.

Man admiring a classic car: "Ain't she a beauty?"
Wife standing next to him: "It's cute"

Even though English does not assign explicitly assign gender to nouns, many of our nouns are derived from Latin, so this tendency is likely historical recognition of that. For instance, "city" is derived from French and is closely related to the word for city in many Latin languages (Spanish: la ciudad, Portuguese: a cidade, Italian: la citta). In all of those languages, the noun is feminine. Similarly, "nation" is also feminine in the Romance language cognates (French: la nation, Spanish: la nación, Italian: la nazione, Portuguese: a naçao), which probably explains why English speakers personify countries as women.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Even though English does not assign explicitly assign gender to nouns, many of our nouns are derived from Latin, so this tendency is likely historical recognition of that. For instance, "city" is derived from French and is closely related to the word for city in many Latin languages (Spanish: la ciudad, Portuguese: a cidade, Italian: la citta). In all of those languages, the noun is feminine. Similarly, "nation" is also feminine in the Romance language cognates (French: la nation, Spanish: la nación, Italian: la nazione, Portuguese: a naçao), which probably explains why English speakers personify countries as women.

You might be onto something here, but then, if this is the case, why don't English speakers describe things derived from male gendered nouns as he/him?

It only seems to apply to certain female gendered nouns, and it seems only male English speakers have retained this linguistic tendency...

You rarely hear women refer to cars or ships as she/her etc.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by badrunner

You might be onto something here, but then, if this is the case, why don't English speakers describe things derived from male gendered nouns as he/him?

It only seems to apply to certain female gendered nouns, and it seems only male English speakers have retained this linguistic tendency...

You rarely hear women refer to cars or ships as she/her etc.

Surveillance state/Deep State/Big Brother is usually personified as male. State is a masculine noun that English borrowed from Romance languages (Spanish: el estado, Port: o estado, Italian: lo stato). The federal government is also personified as male (Uncle Sam), and "government" is also a masculine noun that English shares with Romance languages (Fr: le gouvernement, Sp: el gobierno, Pt/It: o/il governo).

Car is a tough one, since it wasn't really broadly used until the 20th century. We may want to assign a gender because of our implicit recognition of gendered nouns, but we may just default to female because there isn't a long history of personifying that noun before the personal car. But cars would be male if the rules held up. I think "ship" may be one of the nouns that came to English from German, so not as strong of a gender association.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Surveillance state/Deep State/Big Brother is usually personified as male. State is a masculine noun that English borrowed from Romance languages (Spanish: el estado, Port: o estado, Italian: lo stato). The federal government is also personified as male (Uncle Sam), and "government" is also a masculine noun that English shares with Romance languages (Fr: le gouvernement, Sp: el gobierno, Pt/It: o/il governo).

Car is a tough one, since it wasn't really broadly used until the 20th century. We may want to assign a gender because of our implicit recognition of gendered nouns, but we may just default to female because there isn't a long history of personifying that noun before the personal car. But cars would be male if the rules held up. I think "ship" may be one of the nouns that came to English from German, so not as strong of a gender association.

I'm not buying it. If it was based on the gender of specific nouns, you would expect to see examples of it scattered throughout the English language. We'd be calling all kinds of gender neutral things "he" and "she". Instead we only see it in very specific instances, with objects that arouse passions in men, like cars, ships etc. It's also not based on specific nouns, but is instead based on concepts - any oceangoing vessel is a "she" - a boat, a yacht, a ship, a submarine. This tells you that it is not derived from the gender of specific nouns, and that it is meaningful, not just an accident of history and language.

The more likely explanation is the simpler one - that men personify objects of their affection as feminine. This is fairly obvious to me. Or ask any lonely sailor who's spent a little too much time out at sea...