The naming of parts
Not doing anything for Lent this year. I still can't get into it. When I was a Southern Baptist, one of the things we identified as was very decidedly Protestant; Catholicism was viewed with intense suspicion bordering at times on hostility...a religion where - despite protestations to the contrary - one worshipped Mary, saints, and the Pope, not (only) God and Jesus Christ. That was essentially idolatry to some Baptists, so anything that smacked of a Catholic practice was viewed the same way. Repentance should be a year-round thing, not just for a specific time of year, and if nobody mentioned Jesus doing it, it didn't get done. Now I'm with the UCC, which does do Lent, and I do see the value to Christians, but I still can't get over the upbringing. I'll readily admit that it's my own hangup, and I'm not sure quite yet what to do about it.
Couple of other things, which are almost certain to get me flamed, as they are on the subject of - intense air quotes here - "political correctness". As this is rather long, I'll do the first thing here, and then post later on the second one.
I've come to realize (as in it wasn't really a conscious decision) that I have developed a personal policy of only calling somebody that which they wish to be called. Again, when I was growing up, there were labels that everyone knew and used - Indians, gays, whatever. You even had the n-bomb, which wasn't a curse word then. Yes, as a child, I did, to other white people, actually use it occasionally, before I grew out of it and realized that I had to conduct myself in a different way. The word passed from a dirty thing said by whites to denigrate blacks to an actual curse word, not utterable on TV, used only by black hip-hop artists.
In fact, I had to change enough things, and had a tough enough time figuring out what was acceptable or not at any given time*, that I began to just simply view all labels as object-imposed: I ask what you want to be called, you tell me, and that's that. And nothing in response particularly fazes me any more. If your people are called "Indians", "native Americans", "natives", "First Nations", "Ojibway"...fine, just pick one and I'll use that. If your name is "Jim", "James", "Jimbo", "Bingle", "Count Dooku", or "Star Child Number 35", that's good by me. Just give me something to assign to that variable, and if it changes, let me know. I fully expect that by the time I'm sixty-five, someone I meet and ask hir name will respond with a squawking noise that wouldn't sound out of place on Animal Planet, and I will probably just say in return, "Well, okay, then, CAW-CAAAW-BRAK-SQUAAAAOOORT!!...you want to go get a bheer?"
Now there are some logical limits. For example, Ted Haggard now labels himself "straight", on the basis of, I'd guess, going a certain amount of days without procuring a gigolo for gay sex.** Most people with functioning brain cells would label that as "bullshit"...but if he wants to go ahead and say that's what he is, I suppose I'd just let him.
People who say they are opposed to "political correctness" - ordinarily conservatives*** - will often jump up and down about this, saying how silly or wrong or whatever it is. And I do understand to a certain extent. Names are powerful things, and I do believe you can change something just by naming it something else...you force people to think differently about the named thing, change their perceptions of it. But that doesn't seem to be their beef: they want to go back to the days where there was one name for one class of things - and they were the ones that made up the name. Doing it my way is supposed to be "political correctness", which is a subtle way of saying that it isn't actually correct. So how is that? Making up your own terms for yourself isn't correct, but making them up for others (and insisting everyone else use them) is?
* George Carlin has a similar routine, where he wonders at what point "dumps" became "landfills" and "jungles" became "rainforests" and such.
** Wouldn't that be a great sign for his church? Just like those signs that happily say "This Workplace Has Gone X Days Without an Accident!"
*** Conservatives sometimes have problems saying what their problems are. It's like they speak a language only they understand, because they'll talk about things among themselves and nod their heads a lot and say things like "Damn straight, Bubba!", but when you try to find out what the problem actually is, they'll say things like, "That's jest WRONG!" I mean, hello? Can we help you? Does the tie not match or something?
Couple of other things, which are almost certain to get me flamed, as they are on the subject of - intense air quotes here - "political correctness". As this is rather long, I'll do the first thing here, and then post later on the second one.
I've come to realize (as in it wasn't really a conscious decision) that I have developed a personal policy of only calling somebody that which they wish to be called. Again, when I was growing up, there were labels that everyone knew and used - Indians, gays, whatever. You even had the n-bomb, which wasn't a curse word then. Yes, as a child, I did, to other white people, actually use it occasionally, before I grew out of it and realized that I had to conduct myself in a different way. The word passed from a dirty thing said by whites to denigrate blacks to an actual curse word, not utterable on TV, used only by black hip-hop artists.
In fact, I had to change enough things, and had a tough enough time figuring out what was acceptable or not at any given time*, that I began to just simply view all labels as object-imposed: I ask what you want to be called, you tell me, and that's that. And nothing in response particularly fazes me any more. If your people are called "Indians", "native Americans", "natives", "First Nations", "Ojibway"...fine, just pick one and I'll use that. If your name is "Jim", "James", "Jimbo", "Bingle", "Count Dooku", or "Star Child Number 35", that's good by me. Just give me something to assign to that variable, and if it changes, let me know. I fully expect that by the time I'm sixty-five, someone I meet and ask hir name will respond with a squawking noise that wouldn't sound out of place on Animal Planet, and I will probably just say in return, "Well, okay, then, CAW-CAAAW-BRAK-SQUAAAAOOORT!!...you want to go get a bheer?"
Now there are some logical limits. For example, Ted Haggard now labels himself "straight", on the basis of, I'd guess, going a certain amount of days without procuring a gigolo for gay sex.** Most people with functioning brain cells would label that as "bullshit"...but if he wants to go ahead and say that's what he is, I suppose I'd just let him.
People who say they are opposed to "political correctness" - ordinarily conservatives*** - will often jump up and down about this, saying how silly or wrong or whatever it is. And I do understand to a certain extent. Names are powerful things, and I do believe you can change something just by naming it something else...you force people to think differently about the named thing, change their perceptions of it. But that doesn't seem to be their beef: they want to go back to the days where there was one name for one class of things - and they were the ones that made up the name. Doing it my way is supposed to be "political correctness", which is a subtle way of saying that it isn't actually correct. So how is that? Making up your own terms for yourself isn't correct, but making them up for others (and insisting everyone else use them) is?
* George Carlin has a similar routine, where he wonders at what point "dumps" became "landfills" and "jungles" became "rainforests" and such.
** Wouldn't that be a great sign for his church? Just like those signs that happily say "This Workplace Has Gone X Days Without an Accident!"
*** Conservatives sometimes have problems saying what their problems are. It's like they speak a language only they understand, because they'll talk about things among themselves and nod their heads a lot and say things like "Damn straight, Bubba!", but when you try to find out what the problem actually is, they'll say things like, "That's jest WRONG!" I mean, hello? Can we help you? Does the tie not match or something?