I haven't been much with the talky feminist shit lately, I've been too tired to deal with the fallout, but I got accused of being "politically correct" recently
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I think the term itself is exactly what I said it was: too sanitary, too distant. Too polite, yes. And yet, it's bossy. Prissy. It's very schoolmarmish, and that's a really negative mental image to raise in the minds of most people who don't operate in a life = school metaphor -- which is most people I know, frankly. I know I hate that shit, and it does not surprise me that the wrong phrase would bias other people against the concept from the word go.
To me, feminism isn't prissy or bossy. It's primal, bloody, powerful, sexual, and very, very far from polite. It is everything we have been told we should not be -- and we are often told to be polite, which leaves "bossy" as one of the few modes of expression open to us if we want to exercise power, since "bossy" and "polite," as I'm using them here, are not mutually exclusive.
I was thinking of the language metaphor while brushing my teeth, oddly. If you want something translated, you ask a person who speaks the language and is very well acquainted with idiom. If possible, you ask several people, as not everyone knows the same slang. And this way, you don't wind up asking for some perverse sexual act when all you wanted was a sandwich.
And yet people persistently speak to me as though I, as the native speaker of my own goddamn life, have no idea what the fuck I am talking about, and they specifically discredit me because of my close acquaintance with the "language" or cultural biases I grew up with.
This makes no sense whatsoever, and you're right, it's the worst of the bunch because it wads up so many things into one ball of hate. To begin with, it's patronizing as fuck.
I don't have the spoons to get into discussions with the closed-minded, so I'm often silent when I want to and should call someone on their bullshit; it's just that I really can't deal with the results, y'know?
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I think the term itself is exactly what I said it was: too sanitary, too distant. Too polite, yes. And yet, it's bossy. Prissy. It's very schoolmarmish, and that's a really negative mental image to raise in the minds of most people who don't operate in a life = school metaphor -- which is most people I know, frankly. I know I hate that shit, and it does not surprise me that the wrong phrase would bias other people against the concept from the word go.
To me, feminism isn't prissy or bossy. It's primal, bloody, powerful, sexual, and very, very far from polite. It is everything we have been told we should not be -- and we are often told to be polite, which leaves "bossy" as one of the few modes of expression open to us if we want to exercise power, since "bossy" and "polite," as I'm using them here, are not mutually exclusive.
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And yet people persistently speak to me as though I, as the native speaker of my own goddamn life, have no idea what the fuck I am talking about, and they specifically discredit me because of my close acquaintance with the "language" or cultural biases I grew up with.
This makes no sense whatsoever, and you're right, it's the worst of the bunch because it wads up so many things into one ball of hate. To begin with, it's patronizing as fuck.
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I don't have the spoons to get into discussions with the closed-minded, so I'm often silent when I want to and should call someone on their bullshit; it's just that I really can't deal with the results, y'know?
Thank you for articulating all of this so well.
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"Why are they protesting? It's not like any of them are going to see the movie..."
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