Semantics

I'm not sure when it became a "thing," but I'm noticing a trend where people who, I presume, are trying to be politically correct, refer to women as "females." Probably most notably in the Kimmy Schmidt open titles, "Females are strong as hell." What I'm not seeing is a corresponding switch from "men" to "males." This bothers me.

It's semantics, I know, but words have power and carry weight and bring certain connotations with them. I know there was a movement a while ago to get away from the word "woman" as it contains "man," and I get it. But by the same token, "movement" contains "men" and we didn't change that to "movemynt," because at a certain point it all gets silly. There are only 26 letters in the English language alphabet and to try to avoid any and all combinations of "m-e-n" and "m-a-n" gets ridiculous.

What bothers me about replacing "woman" with "female" is that is takes the humanity out of the equation. "Female" is a very scientific term, used to define the member of the species capable of producing eggs and bearing children. "Woman" is the word used to describe a human female. The same as adult male chickens are roosters and adult female chickens are hens, adult male humans are men, and adult female humans are women. To call women "females," to me, takes away the specificity of what species we are, which is, in my opinion, even more degrading that the fact that the letters "m-a-n" exist in the word "woman."

Biologically, yes, I am female. Transgender women identify as female as well. But I think all of us would like to think of ourselves as more than a set of sex organs, which is what the term "female" implies to me, and which is why I prefer the word woman. It gets even stickier when we note that men are not being called "males," implying that men are humans with complex lives and thoughts and fears and language abilities - all of the lovely things that make humans humans. We are, again, widening the gap between men and women, allowing one gender to be human and the other to be defined exclusively by its gender.

Granted, this also doesn't allow for agendered individuals, as much of the English language was developed at a time when we thought of gender as more of a binary system as opposed to the spectrum we now understand it to be. But perhaps, instead of allowing men to be human, women to be sex organs, and agendered individuals to feel completely out of place, we need to develop three new words - or six new words, or twelve new words or whatever - that better describe the variations of human existence, as opposed to further alienating more than half of the population.

Just a thought. From a woman.

November 20 - Butter

People have talked for years about the phenomenon whereby a physically attractive person can become less attractive if he or she is unkind, or how a non-traditionally physically attractive person can become moreso if they are strong of character. This should not be news to you - I'm sure you've experienced it first hand. We all have. Many of the people I hold most dear would not fall into the Hollywood Leading Man or Leading Lady category, but they are the most beautiful people I know.

I think this goes for sex appeal, too. Take, for instance, current "hearthrob" Benedict Cumberbatch. Let's be honest, he's a little odd-looking. While watching the first season of Sherlock, it bothered me that he didn't seem to have any pores. But he totally won me over in the role, and from doing some (perfectly innocent) interweb searches, I've found I kind of dig the persona he puts out there. I admire his work, and I admire how he handles himself off stage, too. And these things are what have turned him from this weird pore-less man into a sexy guy I'd love to meet and work with.

I bring this up because People Magazine named their Sexiest Man Alive today and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with the choice. I don't usually pay that much attention, though when Channing Tatum won it, I had to look through my own list of sexy qualifications and got the feeling the IQ qualification might fall a little short, but I was okay with it. He seems decent. This year, they gave the title to someone who is either not very talented or intelligent in real life or doesn't want people to think he is, so he puts on an asshat public persona. In either case, I don't think he's a very good role model. Yes, he is nicely shaped, but remember what I said in the first paragraph? Have you heard the phrase "butter face," as in "she's hot, but her face is nasty?" This guy is a butter mouth. He's nicely shaped, but when he opens his mouth to speak or sing, it kind of makes me ill.

There are many, many, many men I think are sexier than this year's Sexiest Man Alive. But for the sake of similar comparisons, I'll throw this one into the mix. Also a tall, skinny musician with dark hair and lots of tattoos. But he writes songs about how everybody should be writing songs, and how he'll look out for his god daughter as she grows up, and how life is meant to be lived to the fullest. He's funny and historically minded. He likes to learn facts about each city he visits on tour. He likes to learn a new cover song every day. He likes to read books, including autobiographies about people of whom he's not particularly fond just for the sake of learning about someone who is different to him. He loves his friends and loves making music. He's fascinated by English folk songs, and he loves to share his knowledge. On a personal level, I emailed him to thank him for his music and he responded with a very pleasant "thank you" email within about eight hours. By all accounts, he seems to be a decent human being. Not perfect by his own admission, but decent. Funny. Smart. Talented. Hot.

So for as much as I complain about the objectification of women, and as much as I do like to occasionally objectify men as a joke, could we please stop celebrating idiocy? If we're going to adopt anything about geek culture and make it cool, can we adopt the bit where we pay attention to people's personalities and celebrate the smart and funny ones who have some character?

I wish I didn't secretly know that that is asking too much. Go listen to Frank anyway. He's lovely.

September 17 - Oddity

Twitter is weird. I'm not even going to pretend to fully understand it. It's just weird. Every now again, someone I don't know will find and favorite one of my random, untagged tweets from a week or so ago. How do these people find these tweets? They're not following me, they're usually not following my friends, so how do they find these old tweets of mine that don't have hashtags in them? Are they just reading everything? Are there people out there who read all of Twitter? 

And every now and again, I'll get a new follower for a day or two as a result of one of these tweets. Usually it's a company that, I presume, thinks I will instantly follow back, check out their website, and sign up for services. I hate to break it to those companies, but I'm not the sort to do that. I don't believe in the instant follow-back. I'm not trying to be mean, but if your content is irrelevant or dull, I'm not going to read it. If I'm not invested in you as a person, why invest my Twitter-reading time in keeping track of who you had drinks with over the weekend? If I don't use your product, why do I care about the sale you're having this weekend? So these companies that follow me as the result of some random tweet usually stop following me in a day or so when they find out I am not a viable client candidate. That's fine. 

Yesterday, a condom company started following me on Twitter. Now, it is entirely possible that someone who works for this condom company is someone I met at a conference in May, or that there is some sort of not-entirely-random social connection there. But I had to laugh at the fact that a condom company decided to follow me yesterday. Because I tweet about condoms so often? Or safe sex? Or personal relationships? I am the girl who is perpetually single. I did the math once, remember, to figure out exactly how single I have been throughout my life. Granted, during the brief stints in my life when I have had a boyfriend and sex was readily available to me, I have been an advocate of safe sex and condom use. I think it is up to both partners to take responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of disease. But even just before this conference I went to back in May, I received a large bundle of various and assorted condoms from one of the other attendees that have remained sitting untouched in a drawer. Because when I am not dating (which is approximately 95% of my life), I am not having sex so I have no need for condoms. And I'm talking about no sexual contact. I'm not doing anything with male organs at all, much less anything that sex experts would tell me should involve condom use. That's just the way my life goes. 

So thank you to this condom company for following me briefly on Twitter and giving me a chuckle. While I appreciate the work you do and believe in the value of your products, you are seriously barking up the wrong tree in targeting me for a marketing campaign. 

Now, should my relationship status change sometime in the future...

Meh. That would require effort.