It would probably be rude to repost an entire comment here, so instead I will do my usual excerpt-and-link.
In response to the concept of feminism fighting all forms of oppression (ableism, cissexism in general not just transmisogyny, racism, etc etc), I don't think it really works.
We already have a term for a movement that seeks to fight every inch of oppression everywhere it raises its head. Egalitarianism. And anyone can be Egalitarian because it includes everyone. It is the overarching rights for all movement.
Feminism (like disabled activism, womanism, racial activism, trans activism, and etc) is more of a specialization of Egalitarianism.
This comment gets what I've been thinking for months and months now, but have not been able to verbalise.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
A friend elsewhere engaged in a sort of project or pledge or what-have-you – to post daily something that you're grateful for. I keep contemplating it, because my default setting is "too stuck in my head". I think it'd be good for me, as it were, to remind myself of the world around me.
Today, I am grateful that I get to vote. My ballot came in the mail today, which pleases me. I wish there existed a factcheck.org for non-national politics (non-national because factcheck.org covers the Presidential part), but that's why wiki sites exist, I suppose – so I can create wikis.
*resists*
I won't say who I voted for in the primaries, but I will say I voted Democrat for both the Congressional and the Senatorial elections. (FF's spellcheck says that latter is a word…? Okay.) That's Jeff Merkley for US Senator, and Earl Blumenauer for Congress.
Tomorrow I'll be researching what all of the other positions are, whether there's a reason not to vote for the only person listed in a section (such as Martha L Walters, Judge of the Supreme Court, Position 7), and the various and sundry measures. I'll also be buying a stamp off one of my roommates. I may even figure out what the terms are for the House of Reps (these are congressfolk, yes? Stupid Civics class never tells me anything). That's the danger of contextual definitions – I can't always tell if I'm using the right word.
I will not, not, be making a wiki or site or something to compare local candidates. Dammit.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
Speak up, I can't hear you – "Can it really be true that men and women understand language in different ways? Nonsense, says Deborah Cameron in this second extract from her new book – the supposed miscommunication is a myth."
Gray seems to be suggesting that men hear utterances such as "Could you empty the trash?" as purely hypothetical questions about their ability to perform the action mentioned. But that is a patently ridiculous claim. No competent user of English would take "Could you empty the trash?" as "merely a question gathering information", any more than they would take "Could you run a mile in four minutes?' as a polite request to start running.
I highly recommend reading that. It's the second in a series of deconstructing this whole man/woman language barrier nonsense. First part is here; last part comes out tomorrow.
Oo, another good one:
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that someone who feigns unconsciousness while in bed with you probably doesn't want to have sex. But nobody criticises the defendant for being so obtuse. In these proceedings, the assumption does seem to be that avoiding miscommunication is not a shared responsibility, but specifically a female one.
EXACTLY.
Go read this article.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
Twisty pointed her readers over to a burgeoning feminist's speech on language and being normal. I encourage yall to read it. It's a little unpolished, but it's accessible, versus the documents with a 1:5 footnote/word ratio I encounter sometimes.
I couldn't find a good snippet, which is probably due to my being at work, but still. Go read.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
In the olden days, I used to wonder whether there could be an honorific for men that indicates their married status. The only reason I wondered was because there was a linguistic imbalance – there are three honorifics for women, and only one for men* – and I wanted to redress it, because I am a dork when it comes to linguistics.
(Although, asidely, I must say I'm happy with my dorkdom. I could be embarrassed that I derive pleasure from reading the dictionary, frex, but I choose to instead wonder why a lot of people regard this as strange.)
It seriously just occurred to me recently that this imbalance is ugly in more ways than just being linguistically asymmetrical. Because I ask you, why is it necessary to know the ownership marriage status of the woman, but not of the man? And now it's become mandatory that I look up the variously used honorifics. Curse my brain, anyhow.
- ma'am (from 'madam'): Polite term of address for a woman. Originally ma dame, "my lady". And here I was all ready to like this one (since saying "Sir or Ms." sounds atrocious). Eh, I suppose it'd be safe to assume that few people know the etymology of this…
- mrs.: Polite term of address for a married woman. Originally from "mistress".
- miss: La la unmarried woman. (Not single, unmarried.) Short version of "mistress".
- mister: La la man, marriage status unnecessary. Originally from "master".
- -ess, -enne, : Suffices that indicate feminine nouns ("goddess", "tragedienne", "aviatrix"). Apparently, usage of these suffices are in decline. Good.
I find it interesting that "mistress", the female version of "master", went from indicating a female in power to indicating a woman who is having an affair with a married man. I also find it interesting that it went from power down to two ways of indicating married status. But just for the womens, you know.
I'm not sure what I mean by "interesting", but there you go.
I wish I could find a different word for… I don't know the grammar term off-hand. "Sir or [miss|ma'am] or other…" A replacement for the words in brackets. I said already that few know where "ma'am" comes from (incidentally, "lady" apparently comes from "loaf-kneader"), in the same way that few know that "hysteria" originally meant "suffering in the womb", or that "vagina" originally meant "sheath". Words about women can be really creepy, sometimes.
Since I already know most don't know the original terms, I doubt people use them with malice aforethought. Once I find out the history of certain things, though, it's hard for me to use the words in the future, knowing what they originally meant.
* Assuming nowadays-day English-speaking USA, as I often do, being smack in the center of all three of those. Dunno from earlier times or other languages/countries.
Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts. Comment here or there.
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