Two Stories

1. The new Airbus A380 started service with Singapore airlines a couple of weeks ago and was an instant hit. People took their kids to Changi airport to watch it fly as if it was the Great Exhibition of 1851. As you know, it's big (compared to a 747, it's wider & taller but shorter) and the plush upper deck has separate, twin "cabins" with seats than become effectively a double bed. And many people have had the same thought, prompting the airline to issue a request that passengers behave only in a way that respects other passengers and aircrew.

As one couple interviewed after its maiden flight to Sydney, pointed out

... they make it romantic and ply you champagne, everything in fact except serve oysters. What do they expect?

2. The Malaysian ruling party, UMNO, is having their conference at the moment (imagine a 1970's labour conference in Blackpool but with more hats). One of the delegates who spoke during the debate on religion (!) was Madam Zaleha Hussin, a representative from Kelantan, who complained about the uniforms of AirAsia's (local budget airline) stewardesses. She was unhappy that they wore fitting skirts that ended slightly above the knee.

"They expose their calves, thighs and knees".

The UMNO assembly speaker, Badruddin Amiruddin went further to say that "the skirts were too short and exposed women's private parts".

Sexual Timidity

I've just had to fill out another form asking for my Gender and as usual I am allowed to respond with Masculine, M, Feminine or F. As a nit-picking pedant with a scientific background this never fails to irritate me and cause me to cast aspersions of ignorance or timidity on the source organisation.

In writing this entry, I researched whether I was wrong in thinking people have a Sex, and words have a Gender. I'm not, and Lynch, Guide to Grammar confirms my understanding, talks about how feminists started the newer usage and has the following comment

"It's probably unwise, though, to allow gender to edge out sex altogether. Once gender began to be used to describe people, it became first a synonym, and then a substitute, for sex. The word sex still provokes giggles, and I can understand why people who prepare questionnaires would be glad to see it disappear after finding the "Sex" blank on a form filled in with "Yes, please" for the jillionth time. Still, using gender to refer to biological sex should be avoided, except where it avoids confusion or ambiguity."

So I'm right, but will probably lose the battle.

Singapore inherits the Chinese repressed attitudes to sex. It still goes on, I assure you, but anything lewd is shunned. Singapore used to have a nude revue club, the Crazy Horse, which was in the news recently as announcing its closure. Not enough business. I wondered with a colleague if this was because it was too much for local tastes and his take was it was way too tame, standing in the fallow middle ground between acceptability to a prudish (license granting) elite and the wider market for lively adult entertainment.