>> You mean aside from the anecdotal evidence from 35 years of being the son of a professional dance costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical), and brother of another professional ballet costumer (ballet, jazz, modern, and classical)? And both have worked with a variety of very large and notable dance companies across the western US? Or about 17 years now observing the gender imbalance in dance schools that my sisters (and now daughters) attend. Or the entire fucking genre of media that clearly shows that gender imbalance (seriously, Billy Elliot's central conflict only makes sense in light of this very real and very sustained phenomenon)?

You don't have to be so stand-offish, I don't know who you are and who are your relatives, and I just asked if you had a reference. Like, has someone done a study on this? Is there data or just hear-say? Was my initial comment really so obnoxious, or do you think it impossible I really didn't know what I asked about?

Not everyone here is from the US, or from Anglophone cultures- I'm Greek and a lot of the gender-based nuances that are obvious to the Anglosphere are completely alien to me. To give you an example, you know the riddle about the man and his son who are in an accident and the son who survives is wheeled into the ER where the surgeon says "I can't operate on him, it's my son". Well, I had to have that one explained to me because I didn't get it. I didn't get why it was a riddle. Half of the doctors I've met in my life were women. On the other hand, every time I see Rishi Sunak visiting a car factory or something like that and he's standing next to a girl in a hard hat and overalls, well, that does strike me as weird; but not the locals (I live in the UK). These kinds of things are really not as identically distributed throughout the world as people tend to think.

So please try not to instantly presume bad faith, alright?

Or, you know what? Do you, and I'll just try to get used to the idea that everyone on the internet has a chip on their shoulder and is ready to pounce at the least opportunity. Because apparently that's the internet everyone wants, and they should get it good and hard.

I got standoffish after I said "in the States" twice in my initial explanation of the colloquialism. You apparently missed both, and yet you insisted that the "correct" way to express it was (as you later revealed) more adherent to your understanding of British English. And I don't even concede that point either.

It would be, at a minimum, abrasive if I, as a person who does not speak Greek, tried to insist that you must speak Greek in a way that better fits my conception of how your language works.

Your other examples don't really compare, since there is not extra connotation to "motorist" or "cyclist" or "leisure maker" (although in the states, we might say "vacationer" instead). The best examples I can think of are "arborist" or "forester" vs "someone cutting down a tree", or "trucker" (as in, person who drives a truck/lorry professionally) vs "person currently driving a truck/lorry".

Or you could just not be a twat about it when someone questions you. Twat.