Alderwoman?
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It’s always been alderman / aldermen in Chicago even though a good % of them are women.
Yesterday on the news one of the anchors called one of the females an alderperson but the other anchor used the term alderman for her. I can’t figure out if there is an effort to change the term and one anchor is a stick in the mud or if the other anchor was just trying to be PC but was confused.
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All it is is (not merely a) title with no gendered connotation intended. Using terms like human and huwoman is a false equivalency.
Edit: But that’s just my opinion. Edit2: And if it is - great. Such specificity would eliminate the potential for confusion if 2 Alder persons of the opposite sex were in the same room.
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Alderman is a gendered term, directly referred to men of great age and/or wisdom in both Old English and several Germanic ones and one Finnish equivalent. Alder is technically the true gender neutral term.
Also @Yacob the first anchor is right, looking it up Illinois legally designates alderperson as the correct term.
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Here’s an article going back a couple years discussing this exact thing:
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Wow! Thanks for that. We all need to come around then bc I have never heard that term before two days ago. Maybe it’s just all of us who are sticks in the mud 
My ward is run by Sophia King and she calls herself the Alderman
And yes, it’s from eldermen or elder man.
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Cool article!!!
As a life long Chicagoan the only thing I’m 100% against is “council member.” City Councils usually don’t have a specific geographic region and even if they do, they don’t have any direct control. Chicago is famous for having 1 mayor and 50 mini mayors. Wanna open a business ? You need the alderman’s signature. Wanna do hold a charity event? You need the signature!
Alderman, Alderwoman, Alderperson (I’d actually prefer is each elected person chose which they wishes to be called), all good! City Council Member? Nah!
But I have derailed this long enough. Thanks all for the participation. What do they people who run your place call themselves?
There is no difference at all between how Chicago is run and how most American cities are run, they are by and large Mayor-Council run using charter system to define city law with some cities operating differently and some cities having different numbers of councillors.
In Adelaide we elect councillors who serve the Lord Mayor.
I’ve lived in 3 IL cities, one in NJ, one in CA, one in FL and one in AR, never seen anything quite like it. This article speaks to it pretty well. The current Mayor has been fighting against the custom but is only somewhat successful.
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Really? Because I looked up a few cities and they all seemed to have the same system of Mayor-Council but sometimes they had certain differences, but you would have an advantage over my five minutes of Wikipedia research between bouts of web surfing.
No wonder your country is so dysfunctional, it must be a nightmare. All the cities here are the same, the council members run certain districts under the purview of a mayor. We don’t even know our mayors names unlike most Americans, I had no clue my Lord Mayor is a woman until today.
Arkansas sounds like a living nightmare and you are right Little Rock (might not be where you are referring to but it was the capital) runs differently from the cities I looked at with a City Manager system and the mayor has veto power which seems like a recipe for a disaster.
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The Mayor of Townsville is the only Mayor I’d trust!
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You know there actually is a Townsville? It is right up in Northern Queensland, I can assure you anyone that licks cats is the sanest person there.
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How often do you answer a phone call from an unknown number?
- I don’t. It’s usually an automated voice or somebody trying to sale something
- I do, it could be potentially good news
- Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t
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Depends on my mood or what’s going on. I usually don’t answer them, but if I’m expecting a call from someone, then I would.
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Yeah I’m pretty much do the same.
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Sometimes i wait until the call has ended and then google the number, 9/10 times its some scam/advertising shit.
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as @TheChicken said, it depends on my mood. it’s almost always a call about an accident. i don’t even drive.
they usually start automated, are then vetted by an underling, and finally - if it’s kosher - passed on to a sales agent. i will often - should the mood take me - make up a fake accident that will get more and more ludicrous the further up the chain i get. i’m happy to waste both our times because fuck them.
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As weird as it seems an unknown number called while I was voting 
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I just get scared lmao
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T-Mobile has that sweet “Scam Likely” thing now. It’s pretty good too.
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