zlacker

That works much better with "surgeon" instead of "doctor". Lots of doctors are female, but not so many surgeons, at least here in the UK.

>>bloak+(OP)
I dunno, it threw me off for a bit - "doctor" still has a very male connotation with me. Mind you I've not seen one in forever.

>>Cthulh+0b
In english 'Doctor' is a word that at one time exclusively did refer only to males. A word used for females was 'Doctress'

http://doctordoctress.org

>>bloak+(OP)
My kid sister is a critical care-trauma surgeon. One of her (least) favourite stories when she worked in the South was when she took care of a rather complex ICU case. At the end of it the patient said, "I just want you to know that you were great, but I never saw the doctor once."

My sister is rarely at a loss for words but I'm not sure _she_ even knew what to say to that.

>>err4nt+Sc
That could be relevant. Also the word "actor", with the same ending, is sometimes (by some newspapers, for example) reserved for men.

Sometimes a similar trick anecdote is told about a "German". There's a suspicion that the ending "man" in "German" primes the listener to imagine a man.