| On feminism, me (cause I am egocentric) and colourful language |
[Feb. 22nd, 2009|07:16 pm] |
Now that I'm reading The Apostate's blog again, I have to say I really, really adore her writing. It will probably not surprise any of you who know me at all that I *love* things like this:
Her response to one "Francis W Porretto" in comments here: Apostate - Dreaming of Parenting :
Francis's closing statement : "Murder, enslavement, and the abrogation of property rights and private rights of conscience: the naked face of the Left’s ultimately anti-human agenda. Like the portrait, Miss “Apostate?”
apostate, on February 20th, 2009 at 6:51 am Said:
Francis, I love it. I have abortions for their sheer entertainment value and eat babies for breakfast.
You don’t know the half of it.
and this:
(posted in the comments section here: What if the feminist blogosphere is a form of digital colonialism? ) :
The feminist blogosphere is VERY correct and proper. There is a huge orthodoxy, on race issues, on sexuality issues, on major progressive themes, on language. on religion. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but it makes it hard to embrace outliers like me who might otherwise contribute to the conversation. For instance, I personally violate the religion orthodoxy (I hate Muslims and Islam and religious people in general), I am not all that sensitive about language (once called an Islam-apologist feminist a bitch, insist on continuing to use verboten words like “lame” and I like my gendered insults, such as prick), I refuse to include Sean Bell in my list of feminist issues, I often say I hate men, I am publicly glad when misfortune is visited upon my enemies (anti-choice Andrew Sullivan is HIV positive - yay! Marc Ambinder is ugly - yay!) and other such horrifying things. No wonder nobody links to me!
Haha.
For the record, I *loathe* Andrew Sullivan but there are very few people I would wish AIDS upon, and I don't loathe him *that* much, and neither do I think that calling Marc Ambinder ugly (whether he is or not, I dunno what he looks like) is the best way to address his journalistic credibility or lack thereof, and I'm quite fond of numerous religious people. But I would rather read someone colorfully expressing themselves well in an entertaining fashion and most of all, Saying What They Really Think, than a bunch of self-appointed language police tiptoeing around tripping all over themselves to make sure they don't say anything that could possibly offend anyone anywhere. While I think there's room for and a need for both, when it comes to politics and culture, at least, give me Hunter Thompson, occasional offensiveness and all, over an academic treatise 100 times out of 100, and if you have to ditch one or the other, I'll take the Twains and Thompsons and what have you even for pure educational value, totally aside from a personal preference for angry poetry over academic writing.
But here is where the Apostate and I part ways, and why I have been thinking of late more than ever that I really don't belong at all in most of the feminist blogosphere. I don’t think this is a bad thing. In particular with regards to language usage, I do think the orthodoxy in feminism is a bad thing.
Take the complaints about "ableist" language, which appear frequently in Professor What If's thread linked above and in a post over in Octagalore's blog, where she takes issue w/the word "nutjob" (as applied to Nadya Suleman, iirc). Some of you more sympathetic to this sort of thing might point to my headshaking over the complaints about the use of blindness and deafness as offensive to the disabled and say "you're not these things, so you can't know!" But with regards to "lame" and "nutjob", amongst others, I am well qualified to speak. I'm the walking definition of lame right now, and likely to be for the rest of my life however long or short that may be, I'm manic depressive and a poster boy for ADD, and many of my nearest and dearest have mood disorders as well, so I can speak with firsthand knowledge on this. I like to use the word "nutjob" and intend to keep using it where appropriate (quite often for people who are being willfully blind, morons or fools, not just for people w/disorders of some sort or the genuinely crazy) and it's not because I'm a self-hating manic-depressive. Nor am I a self-hating gimp. I just happen to have what I suspect is a permanent limp combined w/permanent pain (and prior to this I already had permanent off and on pain in both feet and both knees that I was able to ignore, so I gots history w/lameness), and while I hate having *that*, and I even moreso hate my ability to forget and lose things, and my easy distractability, I'm quite fond of myself. Most of the time. (see that whole "depressive" thing. for the exceptions, and my tendency to get really angry w/myself when I screw up, and . . . but still, I basically like myself, love myself, etc. I certainly like myself better than I like most other people.) Not only have I never gotten offended by these words used as an insult, I don't know a single other person with any of these problems who gets offended by them, either. If any of you do, please let me know. I may or may not take it under advisement. (hey, I quit using "brain-damaged" for the most part, even tho I thought the people most vociferously criticizing me for it were dipshits, and when one of them asked "why are you oppressing me?" I managed not to say "Oh, you have brain damage. That explains it." I thought very seriously about saying this, but I didn't. Aren't I sweet? At least, I wasn't quite pissed off enough to be quite that cruel. I actually tried really hard to be polite and serious, and did in fact, thanks to other people who were not being dipshits, decide to chill w/that particular bit of phrasing.)
But anyway . . .
I love reading all sorts of people with whom I disagree (hell, I disagree w/everybody about something), as long as I think they're well-meaning, intelligent and have interesting things to say. And I certainly intend to keep on being feminist, anti-racist, etc, and on most real life issues I'll still be on the same side as the language police. But if even people like the Apostate and Octogalore think this sort of "if someone is offended, they must have a right to be" garbage is on net balance a good thing, I am in the wrong places. This is hardly my only complaint, but all the rest are similar. I'm just not patient enough anymore. |
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