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.

February 2 - And Therefore...

"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome."

Many people have heard the bit from Hamlet that goes, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Some say "our philosophy," some say "your," but the basic thought behind it is the same - there are things out there that we cannot understand or explain. People like to pull out this passage when talking about the occult or the paranormal, and often times (at least these days) it has a tinge of facetiousness about it. It's the end of an argument that someone doesn't want to be in anymore, a sort of Q.E.D. "Well, there's stuff out there we can't explain, so let's just move on to the next topic, shall we?"

But not nearly as many people know the bit that immediately proceeds this line, the line "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome." In the context of the play, Hamlet has just been told by his father's ghost that his father was murdered by his uncle. Hamlet is obviously devastated by this news and suddenly wondering who he can trust when Horatio and Marcellus show up, wanting to know what happened and what is wrong. Hamlet does his best to not say too much, and in his first show of "antic disposition," swears Horatio and Marcellus to secrecy, as they also saw the ghost that night. Horatio, thrown by the strange happenings of the evening and Hamlet's odd behavior remarks, "O day and night, but this is wonderous strange," the Elizabethan equivalent of, "What the hell is going on, Hamlet? You're being weird." Hamlet replies, "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome." He's pleading for Horatio to make a leap of faith, to show Hamlet that he can trust Horatio, to be on Hamlet's side. He's asking, "Yes, it's weird, but can you just accept it anyway?"

I like that sentiment. I like encouraging others to accept things that may be strange to them. Because think of all of the things that were once strange to you that you have now come to love, trust, and rely on - things as impersonal as your smartphone to things as beloved as your spouse or children. These things were once strange to you, but by giving them welcome, your life is now so much richer. So the next time something strange presents itself, perhaps adopting a welcoming attitude as opposed to one of fear and mistrust will bring something into your life you never knew you needed. 

"And therefore as a stranger give it welcome." A good thing to be reminded of from time to time, and words I am proud to have owned once. 

January 30 - Words

WARNING: This blog post contains strong language that may not be appropriate for young eyes/ears. 

I had a teacher in high school who firmly believed that schools should teacher a class in creative cursing so that kids would have more interesting ways to insult one another than but just saying "fuck you" all of the time. I agree. The English language has so many lovely words that can be strung together to paint a much more interesting picture than "fuck you." Like, imagine calling someone a flaming pile of maggot sputum instead of calling them an asshole. Fun, right? And it makes you use your brain to think of really disgusting  or descriptive things. 

That being said, I will say that there are times when "fuck" or "shit" is the best word to capture the situation. I think these words have their place and when used sparingly and appropriately, they can be very effective. 

Today, there were not enough fucks in my vocabulary to deal with all of the fucks around me. Using the word fuck as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb all within the same sentence did not cover the fucks I had to deal with. I tried replacing all of the "buffalo" in the perfectly cromulent sentence "Buffal buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" with "fuck" and it still wasn't enough. It was that kind of a day. Today, Malcolm Tucker was my hero for his wordplay and I was disappointed in my ability to keep up with his astoundingly creative cursing. I did not have enough fucks and could have used the assistance of a seasoned curser like Malcolm Tucker. 

On the up side, the day is almost over. Almost. But not quite. 

Fuck. 

November 4 - Words

I love the English language. I truly do. I love that it is an ever-changing thing, full of weird syntax rules and irregular verbs. I love that it is confusing and muddled and that twenty-seven words can all mean the same thing, but in just slightly different ways. And I love that we are always trying to come up with new words to describe new phenomenon in new ways. I love it.

And we have so many words at our disposal. So many. I, for one, am not using them very well at the moment, but I have, on occasion, found a brilliant word to describe a perfect situation and been really very proud of my deployment of, say, "emblandened." Even our jibberish is lovely (she says, as she mentions that "emblandened" is a perfectly cromulent word).

But my question is this: With so many words at our disposal, and the sort of blanket permission to make up new ones as the situation requires, why are so many people so afraid to use any of them?

October 5 - Mush

I have words.
To say.
About lots of things.
But not right now.
Words are failing me.
I would like to use my words.
But they are not mine now.
"I have nothing with these words. They are not mine."
"Nor mine now."
Tomorrow, I hope to be coherent.

Words.

June 19 - Thoughts from a Bus

I would like to propose a revision to the rules of Scrabble or Words with Friends. That being, if you play a word that is not a word but can provide a definition for that word within 60 seconds that makes your opponent belly laugh, the word is valid. I was very close to being able to play "Trogdor" this morning (which technically requires no definition), and was very disappointed to learn that neither the past conjunctive or thwarted  by methane versions of "flirt" were acceptable words, those being "flort" and "flart," respectively. 

Okay, maybe that only makes me giggle, and you could only use this rule with the actual board game, but imagine the evenings you could have. And you might discover new words to adopt into your vocabulary. It's a win-win.

All those in favor?

All those opposed?