Is the USA male or female?

Question

i'm kinda new for this country and i wanna know about that. is the USA known as a male, or is it known as a female? 'cause sometime i hear songs that refer USA as a woman, and sometime like a man

Answer 1

It's a man. It has a wang! (FLORIDA)

Answer 2

Neither.

The United States is a paper tiger, the pirate in the puddle. You pretend to be mighty, but then go and are defeated by some people with firecrackers in Laos or something.

Answer 3

Female personification, unless you want to change this :

In the song "God Bless America" written by Irving Berlin in 1918 (revised in 1938), the U.S. is referred to as "she."

God bless America,
Land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her,
Through the night, with the light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,
to the Oceans, white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home.

or

A quote from the Manchester Guardian, 10 April 1941
Mr. Churchill is clearly not comfortable about France, in spite of his welcome of Marshall Petain's declaration that she will never fight her old ally.

But you can find plenty of modern examples.
Quote from the Washington Post, 11 February 2006
"The threat to Americans' liberty today comes from al Qaeda and its associates and the people who would destroy America and her people,..."

I don't think replacing the "her" with him or it would sound odd for the former and impersonal for the latter. Many people refer to their home countries as their "motherland.", rare do they say, "fatherland".

As for the Uncle Sam thing, icon of the government and for the armed forces would have to take on a masculine entity, how would it sound if Aunt Samantha wanted you? :)

Again, it's only personifications. In French the US is masculine -Les Etats-Unis.

Answer 4

I beg to differ on what Maria said, countries have always had a gender...as in the fatherland for Germany....USA is the motherland.

Answer 5

Its a country. Its neither male or female. What you're hearing is called personification and is just used to emphasize a point.

Answer 6

It depends on the adjective they are using. Like somebody said earlier, it's a personification. If they say america is beautiful, it's she. If they say america is strong, it's he.

Answer 7

People generally refer to non-living things (cars, countries, hurricanes, etc.) as "she". However, the country itself has no gender.

Answer 8

I think male.
In German and French it has masculine gender.
Plus it's kind of big and pushy like a guy.

Answer 9

If the US is assigned a gender, it's female.

Answer 10

I want to say it's male b/c we refer to our govt as "Uncle Sam".