Yes Sir, Ma'am

(This is old news, but it's something I've been wondering about and I think is still interesting, even if the basis is provided.)
Ron Moore was asked about why female officers in Battlestar Galactica are all addressed with SIR. His response:

...I liked the way it played and the implication that the honorific had become gender neutral at that point. [...] My personal feeling was that there was something vaguely condescending about "Yes, ma'am" versus "Yes, sir" in context and that by addressing everyone as "sir" it made a point about the egalitarian nature of Starfleet. It's certainly a debatable point [...] When I was writing the miniseries for Galactica, I decided I wanted to use sir for all the female characters and I even toyed briefly with the idea of calling Laura "Mister President" but that seemed like a step too far. Billy does call Laura "ma'am" on occasion, so the term itself does exist in the Galactica universe, but the military invariably calls her "sir."

I think this is an interesting observation. I don't really have any particular evidence, but I do too get the impression that, (thinking of children at least), when one goes "Yes, Sir," they are much more likely to be submissive, if not respectful. "Yes, Ma'am" seems to be rather more inclined to a sort of smarmy response. Perhaps this is just the fact that we're not too far from the very patriarchal male-dominate society, where father runs the family and mom just tends to the house and kids. It seems that everyone in the military could be called "ma'am" for egalitarian reasons, but that just wouldn't fly now, would it? It's a great example of an MCP aspect of English. (One influential, male, professor I had used this term, it's for Male Chauvinist Pig) How egalitarian is that? Regardless, it's still an interesting phenomenon that I embarrassingly actually thought for a few episodes was characteristic of the military.