Oh dear lord, I am BOOKMARKING THAT PAGE.

Yep. That about sums it up.

Thanks!!!!

>> ^gwiz665:

Seriously though, I just stumbled on this which reminds me of your post
http://oglaf.com/amazonlinguistics/1/
and I thought it was hilarious.
>> ^bareboards2:
For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

Seriously though, I just stumbled on this which reminds me of your post
http://oglaf.com/amazonlinguistics/1/
and I thought it was hilarious.
>> ^bareboards2:

For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

Alright alright, we're sorry. They're fags.
>> ^bareboards2:

For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

>> ^bareboards2:
I'll stop typing now and await your answer to that last question. Would you argue with a black person about their experience of racism in America?


Yes I would and I have, because @speechless, race is another thing we should just stop banging on about. It's an even less useful signifier than gender.

You should probably discard all your experiences as a woman. I've had a couple of experiences as a woman and a few more as a man; and let me tell you, compelling as they were, they don't influence my politics. We should endeavour to distance ourselves from anecdotalism and consider every issue intellectually and impartially - that's the best way to learn.

If we are going to continue then we have to revisit context, where we obviously haven't been able to understand one another. I don't want you to 'see my context'. The point I want to get across to you is that while any word, like 'boy', will have many connotations - age, sex, gender, race, power, innocence and many more, and subtly shaded combinations of any number of these; the application of that word in one context, by the stereotyped southern sheriff say, doesn't retroactively change the meaning of the word used in another context, "Dear Dan Savage, I'm a boy..." You have to think of these as distinct 'meta-words' rather than a single word that you imagine is being used wrong.

However much you might object to a perceived cultural infantilization of women, which I contend isn't a meaningful grouping anyway, playing the word-police is a truly bizarre and useless way of opposing it.

>> ^bareboards2:

@gorillaman, oh! We can keep going if you want to. I just thought we had hit a wall. If you don't think so, then by all means, let's continue.
I carefully avoided using the word sexist, until you used it first. It is such a charged word, fraught with emotions on both "sides." It is shorthand for a very complex subject. And sure enough, you have taken exception to its use, understandably.
I wish you could just take a second and consider that maybe my experiences as a woman in this world are very different than yours are. Would you argue with a black person about their experiences with racism in this country? Are we a racist country? There are some racists. Not all our citizens are racists. Does that mean that a black person can't say "man, I live in a racist society"?
I wouldn't dream of arguing with a black person on that topic. I would listen and listen carefully, because they have experiences I will never, ever have. And the only way I can learn is by listening and letting in new information.
So would you? Would you argue with a black person about their perceptions of racism in America? Are they "anchored to the idea of an eternal, pervasive sexism racism that they want to keep fighting forever"?
I'll stop typing now and await your answer to that last question. Would you argue with a black person about their experience of racism in America?


Hi, I talked with some other black persons and we all agreed that it would just be really great if you didn't use black persons as a way to try and prove whatever point it is you're trying to make.

Even the most profligate girl-labeller would use 'grown woman' to refer to the other kind of guy in that scenario.

This is actually the key to our disagreement.

Are you unwilling to allow that the same words can suggest completely different meanings in different contexts?
I'm not talking about 'bear' and 'bear'. I'm not even talking about 'boy - a five year old male' and 'boy - a forty year old black guy'. I'm talking about 'boy - a forty year old black guy' and 'boy - a forty year old black guy'.

We're both aware 'boy' and 'girl' can be used in denigrating ways, so can, say, 'liberal', 'geek' and 'yankee'; and all of these have neutral and positive applications.

In fact no word has a meaning independent of the context in which it's used, this is literally true - words depend entirely on interaction with each other and on the circumstances of their transmission to impart information; rhetoricians call this 'interinanimation', dictionary writers call this 'damned annoying'. It's also true that no communication is possible where words have meaning only to their speaker. Consequently, language is an ongoing negotiation.

So, my position isn't that these words are literally interchangeable, in every context, but that they are interchangeable in a lot more contexts than you will admit. You have to look to the attitude of the speaker; to do that you have to examine what they're saying contextually. Monitoring individual word usage is a cheap, futile shortcut to understanding where a person is coming from.

>> ^bareboards2:
I still think it is mostly about power, though, and your example of "grown man" kind of proves it to me. Why couldn't you say "grown boy"? If boy is the same as man, just as girl is the same as woman? A grown boy is indeed a man, yes? It actually is more accurate than "grown man."

I don't know what that means [edit -- wall of text thingy]. The Sift is the only place I have ever hung out and commented.

It isn't often that someone has such ... discharge.... maybe we don't really need it here? Even though I don't know what it means?

In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
>> ^bareboards2:

Oh gawd. What a fricking long post. Sorry.


We need comment tags like wall-of-text, maybe? Used to have those a lot on GEnie.

>> ^bareboards2:

Oh gawd. What a fricking long post. Sorry.


We need comment tags like wall-of-text, maybe? Used to have those a lot on GEnie.

You are so cool, I can't hardly stand it.

It is weird to have antenna tuned to these four words, isn't it? If nothing else comes out of this exchange, knowing that that happened for a day or two, and that you noticed the noticing, is deeply fascinating to me.

Thanks!

(You know, reading an online article with the word "man" in it counts towards this experiment. A biography of Einstein would have the word "man" in it...)


In reply to this comment by Stormsinger:
>> ^bareboards2:

Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

Have yet to run into any use of any of those words, other than your post... It's rather what I figured would happen. We'll see if it happens over the next day or two.

FWIW, I'm definitely primed to notice any of the four now though, which is a rather odd feeling in and of itself. :

>> ^bareboards2:

Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

Have yet to run into any use of any of those words, other than your post... It's rather what I figured would happen. We'll see if it happens over the next day or two.

FWIW, I'm definitely primed to notice any of the four now though, which is a rather odd feeling in and of itself.

I've wondered before if this sort of thing isn't a generational divide. Did your cohort become so used to arguing with your parents, who were actually sexist and racist and homophobic, while feeling you had to pay such careful attention to your own attitudes and vocabulary to avoid becoming like them; that you're not equipped to understand your children, for whom all that nonsense is so far behind and beneath them they don't bother to trammel themselves in the same way, when they try to explain why calling something 'gay' isn't a symptom of an underlying prejudice?
Nobody cares about that any more. None of the smart people anyway, who are themselves the most viciously oppressed and under-represented group in modern society.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the decline of gendered nouns and pronouns in general. It's such a bizarrely inappropriate way of communicating, the equivalent of appending "(...and by the way I'm talking about a male here)" to so many words that don't call for that detail.

Your two example sentences honestly, HONESTLY read exactly the same to me. This ought to be welcome news to you. It means the war is over, you can climb out of the trenches into the sunny world of a post-feminist future.

I'm running your experiment in a casual way, though as has been mentioned already those words come up too infrequently and in the wrong contexts to get much out of it so far. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed or assume bad faith if we report an underwhelming experience, but if we find these words as harmless as we say we do then that's all we can report.
Your 'radical' version is unsound because it involves projecting a specific attitude directly in to the experiment. Of course you'll find chauvinism - you put it there.

What do you think is the #1 reason 'girl' as a synonym for 'woman' is in more common usage than 'boy' for 'man'?

>> ^bareboards2:

I was reading Dan Savage's column yesterday (love that man, every bit of his potty mouthed being). The first sentence in one letter asking for advice was this:
"I'm a man who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great girl."
So if we do the experiment, the sentence now becomes:
"I'm a boy who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great woman."
gorillaman Stormsinger SevenFingers, do you honestly experience those two sentences exactly the same way? Are they conveying the same information?
Or are you startled by the experimental sentence? Is a different story being told about the relationship of these two people? Who has maturity? Who has, excuse me for using a charged word, more power? And with that power, do they have more responsibility?
Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

Since I am post-menopausal, if that Crazy PMS comment was directed at me, it misses the mark. No PMS. Menopause is behind me.

I'm practically a man now, hormonally.

>> ^SevenFingers:

Wow... Such a stupid debate on what girls/boys/men/women mean. Since Girls/Women are the same sex and Boys/Men are the same sex, wtf does it matter if one was used and not the other? What about Guys/Gals? Ladies/Germs? Dicks/C nts? Rational-doesn't-use-his-emotions-to-control-his-thoughts-asshole/Crazy-PMS-Over-reacting-Bitch?

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

>> ^SevenFingers:

Wow... Such a stupid debate on what girls/boys/men/women mean. Since Girls/Women are the same sex and Boys/Men are the same sex, wtf does it matter if one was used and not the other? What about Guys/Gals? Ladies/Germs? Dicks/C nts? Rational-doesn't-use-his-emotions-to-control-his-thoughts-asshole/Crazy-PMS-Over-reacting-Bitch?


Taking it a bit fucking far, aren't you dude?

>> ^bareboards2:

@Stormsinger... then maybe you should do it for a week, if those four words don't show up in daily life? Two days? Three days? Especially if you don't watch TV.
If the sample size is too small, then the scientific and social experiment won't have enough data.
It'll show up in videos though. Titles on videos. Comments on videos. That might be a good source. After all, it popped on this video, which prompted this whole conversation!
FYI -- Your "different views" aren't different to me, which is why I say it is the same conversation. I have heard all this before, at various times over the past 40 years. It may be new to you. It isn't to me.
Really happy that you are up for it. This is something new for me, asking folks to try this. I'm really excited to learn about your experience. However it plays out.
Yippee!

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter how many conversations you've had...what's going on -here- is three separate conversations, not one. Just because they blur together for you, doesn't actually unify them.

Nor is the conversation new to me...although the last time I had it, was in college with my then rabidly feminist girlfriend. The girls I grew up with, and the women they became, made it impossible to think that they were in any way less than men. So even then it was mostly just tweaking her...she was cute when she got all wound up. She still is, but she's mellowed quite a bit and reserves her energy for fights that will make an actual difference.