Well, pardon me for missing that memo from the university. Can you copy it to me or link it? I wouldn’t want to make such an egregious micro-aggression in the future.
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Heels Ladies Body Transformation Underway
- Thread starter Hvaheel
- Start date
Find ANY article or social media post from the program or athletic department in the last decade that doesn’t call the women and instead calls them ladies. We’ll eagerly await…
They have asked the media not to do it as well. But you hold onto your antiquated ideas as you go against their wishes.
“as well” means in addition to. I’m still awaiting confirmation of the initial request. But I will accept a quote, memo, directive, etc. from the university as to either request.
I agree I hold antiquated ideas. Reference to a female as a lady or a male as a gentleman is a polite compliment, not an invective or insult.
Likewise, I refuse to adopt the media-driven culture of referring to an individual by a plural pronoun. “A person was run over crossing the street. They were not seriously injured” is an affront to proper grammar and I will not abide it.
Call yourself whatever you want, and I will do the same. Attempts to restrict my freedom of speech will be ignored. A public university is classified as an instrumentality of state government and, as such, may not compel speech. I will, of course make every attempt not to offend someone unnecessarily and will take your suggestion in that spirit.
And I trust you will take note that at no point in this thread nor in any other thread on this site have I referred to “Lady Heels” or anything of the sort. I am simply defending the right of the OP to do so.
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Yeah, but if you do not attend UNC anymore, and you have been gone for over 20 plus years, how in the blank are you suppose to know that information when you no longer live in the area for that length of time. This is the craziest thing I have ever heard. This is the problem with the world right now. You cannot please everyone, that is the bottom line. Life does not work that one. If you look what is going on in the US, people are using calling and using different platforms to hurt people, slander people, degrade people, etc. I know some of yall have stated not to bring politics into this board, but if the university is going to ask people to stop calling women young ladies than they just brought politics in.
so let me ask you: when was the last time you referred to the men's team as the "gentlemen's basketball team"?
Exactly.
As I said above I don’t to refer to either team by those terms. So there. Still waiting on the directive from the school.
man so resistant to doing the right thing....ill see what I can find
The moniker Lady Tar Heels was never an official branding name of UNC, but it was dropped from informal use in the late 90's. This was a deliberate and public push by the Athletic department that was spearheaded through Dana Gelin, the Associate Director of Athletic Communications for women's sports. She died at 55 about a year ago, while still employed at UNC. UNC named the Field Hockey press box after her this past fall.
Anson Dorrance and Sylvia Hatchell were among the first coaches to agree with this change and participate in the corrections given to media. That is to say, UNC Women's Basketball specifically made an effort to drop the moniker for good. This was before online media was really a thing, so good luck finding any sort of news or discussion. But the proof is in the pudding: find me any article for a major NC media outlet that uses that term.
In regards to women's basketball, the push for the name change started to become a public conversation right around UNC's championship run. Here is a DTH editorial from April 18th 1994:
Note that UNC had stopped using "Lady Tar Heels" internally, and the DTH had dropped it as well as you can see in teh championship article here from a week before:
But the media had not yet caught on. It is also worth noting that as the opinion piece states equity in athletics at that time fell well short, even at UNC. So naming at that time was in many ways a symbol of a larger issue.
It started being defined in UNC media guides in the early 00's that the name was no longer to be in use. Or more accurate, it was stated to call them Tar Heels, full stop. No other embellishments or added descriptors. Conversely, before then UNC's own media routinely referred to the "Lady Tar Heels." So this was a change in practice by UNC and a request to media. And since then you cannot brand UNC merchandise with "Lady" in the branding.
Women's golf was probably the last adopter. We had a golf event called the Lady Tar Heel Invitational until around 2013. After that it was just called the Tar Heel Invitational. That was probably the unofficial end of UNC Athletics using Lady anywhere. This article shows the low-key nature of the shift; they did not want to make it a big deal. They probably sensed that just like the Cracker Barrell logo fiasco, some old heads would rail against change just on principle. Those blue hairs pay the bills around here so finesse was always the course of prudent action.
There are still dozens of schools that still use the Lady term or other differentiator for women's teams. But the vasty majority of schools switched over a generation ago, or never used it to begin with.
I am not arguing strongly either way here as to the use of the term lady generically. I consider it outdated and undesired by some so I don't use it broadly. but when you imply that the university and specific sports team did not direct this change for UNC sports, you are being inaccurate.
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<I am putting on my moderator hat now: >
lets avoid broader statements about political belief here please. We are already well away from the actual topic of this thread, and this post is crossing the line into political discussion, a board violation.
So it’s a good thing I never implied that I asked for confirmation that the university requested fans to stop using the term. There was never any doubt the university made that decision.
That aside, I appreciate the work you put into that post. Well done.
Well what started out as an interesting and relevant topic died on the vine. Time to move on.