Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the first woman to be elected to Congress from Tennessee's 7th District, explained Monday that she officially refers to herself as a congressman -- not a congresswoman.
"Doesn't sound very politically correct, does it?" she said in a video produced by FreedomWorks.
Blackburn said that while she was campaigning, a farmer asked, "Little lady, if you win this thing what are we you going to call you?" to which she replied, "Congressman will be just fine."
"Then I found out from some English teachers that actually 'congresswoman' is grammatically incorrect," she continued.
"It is one of these politically correct misnomers that have woven their way into our lexicon. And this is why, 'congressman' is not a gender specific job. You wouldn't call a freshman in high school a freshwoman, would ya? And when we have a female governor, we don't use governess, do we? And when we have a female senator, we don't us senatress, do we?"
She described female lawmakers using the term "congressman" as a Tennessee tradition, noting that former Tennessee Rep. Irene Baker (R) had used the term as well.
Watch video, uploaded to YouTube on August 6, below:
