With respect to the call about "professor emeritus/emerita" and other gender-specific words, it seems (at least among the improv comedy students in my San Diego classes) that a gender-neutral word remains preferable to defaulting to the masculine version, so we have taken to using "actron" as the gender-neutral version of actor/actress and "waitron" as the gender-neutral version of waiter/waitress. Similar to the way that feminists and then others neutralized words ending in "-man" by converting them to "-person" as in chairperson or salesperson, in the late '60s. "-tron" has such a nice futuristic ring, too.
I object to substituting gender neutral words unless both genders use the term. It's perfectly fine for a female to use "actor" (and they do) or "chairman" or "waiter." To "person"alize a title or profession and use it only for the female gender is demeaning to women, especially since men don't take the term "person"ally.
Don't you think the only "actron" would be R2D2?
Jacquie, you didn't encounter any resistance among your students to "actron"?
It Does sound kind of R2D2ish, now that Jeanne mentions it.
Am I being old fashioned and sexist here? Here's my take on why professor emerita is just fine (and preferable): It's Latin, plain and simple. Although we use it in English, it is a rare enough word--even around universities, really--to show its roots clearly. It seems very different from actor/actress, which is an example of people not wanting to use a diminutive suffix. That's quite understandable, although given the respect actors have historically received, going from actress to actor is not a great step up.
I wonder: do other countries and cultures with Latin based language have this issue with the gender neutralization of words? I ask this because most Romance languages have masculine and feminine form which is what English lacks, so if I am a Transgendered or gender sensitive person in Italy, or Spain, what am I to do?