I was compiling an amusing listicle of groups believed to be the targets of the “last acceptable prejudice” (Catholics, Christians who may or may not be Catholics, gingers, fat people, “emerging adults,” women in sports, Mormons, and this Christian music CD), but then, of course, because of the nature of the internet and how Cylons will ultimately be created anew and Skynet starts differently every time, I aggravatingly came across a defunct blog that used to do this for two months in 2010, thus totally spoiling my sense of being fun and original.
So, let’s take this in a slightly different direction. The reason that talking about “the last acceptable prejudice” is so ridiculous, of course, is that the acceptability of prejudices is completely dependent on the very small pond in which you swim and experience the world, and even within your very tiny pond, right, you’ll find all the old boring prejudices hanging out and sunning themselves on rocks in perfect comfort (RACISM IS OVER, DID YOU KNOW?), unbothered by their acceptability, un-jealous of how you can talk smack about gingers on Tumblr without fear of social disgrace (YOU CAN’T, DON’T TRY, you’ll be bombarded with pictures of those hideous Weasleys all over your dash.) But, okay, maybe it would be interesting to wonder what’s coming down the pike?
What are we wrong about now? Let’s fast-forward to our nursing homes, and our bored teenage grandchildren. What are we horrifying them by saying?
No, yeah, you’re great, whatever, but even if we somehow divested ourselves of all the existing prejudices (“If You Put a Ginger in the Sun, Does it Not Burn?” – appearing on the Wesleyan Mainstage in June 2035), what are we being wangs about right now that will embarrass our descendants in the future? And by “we,” for this purpose, I mean people who self-identify as progressives and who try not to be wangs but suck at it like everyone else.
I think about this a lot with mental illness, generally, because I make a decent effort not to say “crazy” anymore, because I’ve heard the case made by people with mental illness that it’s a slur they find offensive, and so I work on it, and everything, but I feel GRUDGING about it! Like “ughhh, but I love saying that, come on, everyone says it” and I’m absolutely in that place where I am trying not to say it to avoid being offensive, but without really internalizing that it’s offensive, if that makes sense. And I wonder if I’ll eventually move into “oh, yeah, that’s a gross thing to say,” or if I’ll just move forward, basically unchanged, but not saying it. If you say it with your friends but choose not to put it in your writing, this is not super-amazing of you.
But, ableism aside, what horrible things are we doing that future generations will find horrible? This is when forced-birthers say KILLING BABIES, and vegans say ARE YOU SHITTING ME? LOOK AT THE ANIMALS! and everyone says WEALTH INEQUALITY and people fighting the good fight against our incarceration policies just start slamming their heads on the table, but I do really wonder and worry about the things that aren’t even on our radar.
So, hey, what do you think? Why are our grandchildren ashamed of us?
Tags: gingers have no souls, prejudice, the future, the internet
Improv comedy
Grammar policing. My grandmother gave me a slap upside the head WITH HER EYES every time I said “me and Ben” instead of “Ben and I”, and now “literally” is being used to mean figuratively and soon “cat” will mean “dog” and no one will know what a noun is oh the humanity.
but yeah on the “old prejudices still hanging out” tip – it DEFINITELY depends on your social circle, because people I’ve been thrust into contact with (via work, or via the kids or whatever, rather than by choice) are NOT SHY about being fucking assholes for sure (will not go into examples because of that piece on here that said not to, but hooboy).
Ok, this is my pet peeve that I need to dispute here:
“Literally” is NOT being used to mean “figuratively.” People are — broadly speaking — using it not incorrectly, but hyperbolically. People don’t mean “I figuratively almost died”; they mean (hyperbolically!) “I literally almost died.”
Here are some other words we use in just that way: actually, seriously, really (and also “for real” and “no joke” and other not-strictly-truthful modifiers that indicate hyperbole).
“Oh man, he’s so pissed off, he is seriously going to kill me.”
“I am so hungry I am actually going to die. No joke.”
“He is the hottest guy who has ever existed, for real.”
Etc.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I know this wasn’t your actual point I’M SORRY. It just drives me nuts that this usage is seen as an error. People are literally using the word figuratively, and that’s ok!
Sorry sorry done now.
NOPE. not buying it sorry. you are correct about the other words, they used to mean what literally means too, but literally was the last one we had left to make the distinction, and I don’t want to let it go!
do you still use “nice” to mean “stupid”, like we did in the 1300s? It derives from the Latin “nescio,” which means “unlearned,” so any other definition is objectively incorrect.
We stil have a word that means “literally.” It’s “literally.” Words don’t lose their old meanings when they take on new semantically related ones. You can tell which meaning of “literally” is meant from context, just like you can with thousands of other English words that have multiple meanings.
SORRY TO SOUND LIKE A DICK BUT THIS ISSUE IS ONE OF MY PET PEEVES 🙁
Crap, I always thought the old meaning of the word “nice” was “precise.”
Seriously! Did Good Omens lead me astray??
No, not astray! It meant “precise” about 200 years after it meant “stupid.”
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nice
Also, in addition to “crazy” is “nuts.” And I am not just picking on you, ableism-wise. I find myself doing this A LOT, and by know I ought to goddamned know better. I hope we get some serious side eye in the future for the use of that sort of language.
I hope we are laughed at in the future for saying anything with the word “PC” in the sentence except when referring to computers. I also hope we are taken to task for fat shaming.
The thing about this is it’s mostly racism and classism (and sexism! and lots of other isms) rolled up into a nice neutral “it’s just correct grammar!” burrito. For instance, the relative acceptability of AAVE, or valley girl speak, etcetera.
you are correct and I would submit “privilege blindness” to that list as I was rightly called out for being a jerk to someone over grammar without thinking about the fact that not everyone has had the educational opportunities (or the granny) that I had.
Well, not saying “lame” is something I’ve only become aware of very recently, and the mental illness thing probably will gain traction in the coming years -not just “crazy”, but things that get flippantly misused like “OCD” or “psycho”.
I don’t get why people are offended by “lame” to be honest. No one has used it referring to an actual disabled person for like, a century? I think people MIGHT still use it in regards to horses. I’m not saying no one’s allowed to be offended, I’m genuinely confused by that one.
I know people get offended by the R word but what about stupid, moronic or cretinous? Those were all legitimately used to describe actual levels of mental disability and aren’t any more. I guess assholes still would call actually mentally disabled people retarded so we can’t have that one yet.
I feel like “crazy” has gone the way of “moronic” where it no longer means what it originally meant. I have mental illness and I don’t get offended by the word. On the other hand, depression isn’t the kind of illness that tends to be described as “crazy” (as opposed to a condition associated with erratic behavior, perhaps) so maybe my opinion doesn’t matter. And on the other other hand (how many hands do we have?), no mentally ill person can speak for all mentally ill people. Anyway, I do try to catch myself when I’m about to say it, but it’s proving to be a hard habit to break.
Someone I work with now uses the word “re-TARD” as spoken by Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover, which he seems to think is more clever/acceptable than calling someone a “RE-tard.” It bugs the shit out of me.
I have encountered people on the internet who think using “moron” or “stupid” as an insult is ableist. I can’t say as I agree with them, but it’s also not the hill I want to die on, you know?
pretty much. I might rol my eyes in private but I’m not going to tell someone they can’t be hurt by something I guess. It’s kind of like the thing about the word “niggardly” – if you’re offended by it it’s because you don’t know the etymology of the word and you’re making an incorrect assumption, but on the other hand the only modern reason to use that word is to be smug about how people who are offended by it are stupid, soooooooo. Just use another word, we got plenty.
I think “moron” and “stupid” are different, though. Stupid is… it’s just more neutral. I think it can be separated from “person of lesser intellectual capability.” But moron used to be used in the same way retarded was, and it describes a state of being, or a self-hood. It was a diagnoses, basically.
It’s that part that makes me really not like it. The word in itself might be disconnected from the pejorative ableist use (although I think it still has that meaning, but I can see how someone might disagree). But a general lack of respect for/ recognition of the dignity of people with developmental disabilities still is common. Because of that, I prefer to not use/ have the use of that word out and about.
She said circuitously.
… ETA
Moron is a noun as well as an adjective. It was a noun first. But stupid is a description of a quality or type of action. You can be (as in act in a way that is) stupid. But you can’t be a stupid. (Well, unless you are using it like “I am an Old” or something.)
My feeling is, things that are unchangeable parts of a person’s identity/selfhood are not okay to use as insults.
but you can’t “act moron,” so actually no. and no one in this day and age (i think? i hope?) has their identity constituted by the word “moron” in its archaic sense of diagnostic intelligence level.
I mean, I’m not sure I agree but I’ve also worked really hard to expunge those words (and others mentioned) from my vocabulary because, like, why do I even need to refer to things like that? What am I even accomplishing?
Also, interestingly, I’ve been saying “bananas” for several months in place of all of those things and it’s SUPER interesting(/helpful) because 9/10 times, people take me literally and that signals something to me about the way people around me process language.
Years ago, I breezily referred to some mishap or inconvenience as “lame” in front of my smallish niece, who looked confused and quietly asked her mom what I meant.
My sister, a physical therapist who works mostly with children with difficulty walking, diplomatically explained it’s an old-fashioned term that used to mean “disabled” or “differently abled,” and that some people use to mean “not cool.”
She did not call me out for using the term, but she did give me occasion to think about the source of the word and the way hearing it might hurt one of her clients.
I’m not telling other people not to say it; I can see how it might feel like a term safely distanced from its medicalized past, like “idiot” or “moron.” And I wouldn’t be surprised if the word slips out of my mouth once in a while, just like “crazy” does despite my efforts. But she gave me a new perspective on it, and that was valuable for me.
I hate it that OCD is used so flippantly like “lol, i like to alphabetise my books on the shelf! i’m so OCD!” and then there’s this “CDO” joke (you know how it goes – “it’s not OCD, it’s CDO – it must be in proper alphabetical order!”)
It’s extremely belittling, and turns the very wide spectrum of OCD behaviors/symptoms into this single monolithic thing. And it’s not even correct! Of course it’s OCD and not CDO – the name of the disorder is an initialization, not some random grouping of letters.
If you’re just describing yourself as being very concerned with orderliness, then say that. Call yourself punctilious or anal or whatever. But stop co-opting my distress for a joke.
/end rant
ABSOLUTELY. A good friend from college and my boyfriend have OCD, and I want to murder everyone who uses it that way. I’ve seen the monumental stress and pain that this has caused people I love so much firsthand, many many times, and it just makes my blood boil that it’s used in such a careless way,
I’m more upset by the flippant misuse of actual diagnoses than by “crazy”. I have pretty bad ADHD and as a bonus comorbid depression and anxiety and it makes me SO MAD when people get distracted by something as joke that they’re “So ADD today”. NO. YOU DO NOT HAVE AN EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING DISORDER, STOP. /end rant
I agree it’s likely to be ableist stuff, like “that’s just crazy!” or “how could you be so blind to the consequences?”
Huh. You find using ‘blind’ to mean ‘figuratively unable to see’ to be problematic? (I’m genuinely curious, not trying to ‘challenge’ or anything).
Well, it boils down to “how could you be so [A QUALITY A PERSON DOES NOT TYPICALLY CHOOSE AND CAN’T CHANGE, REALLY] to the consequences?”
Not being able to see is not the same as not being able to perceive or understand.
Basically, I am a fan of just not using “that is so [UNCHANGEABLE QUALITY AS NEGATIVE THING THAT HAPPENS AS A RESULT OF CHOICES]” constructs.
But that’s not really what blind means? I mean, sure it can mean “a quality that a person does not typically choose and can’t change, really”, but a person wearing a sleeping mask, or closing their eyes, or sitting in a dark room is also accurately described as blind. I guess I could see (!) the argument for saying it shouldn’t be used in those circumstances, but until we think up a different term for able bodied people who can’t see, it does.
I can definitely see that most times, what I am actually trying to convey would be better conveyed by “How can you be so unwilling to look at xyz” or “why are you refusing to think through the consequences?”
I work at a nonprofit that works with people who have an array of visual impairments. [Disclaimer that I’m obviously not speaking for everyone]: they make a point when people join the organization to mention that people with visual impairments accept that all sorts of language about vision, sight, figurative uses for the word ‘blind,’ etc. are part of the English language. My co-workers are going to think I’m weird if I ask if they “heard the game this weekend.” Similarly, nobody I’ve met has made any sort of comment about “blind devotion,” “love is blind,” or any other common uses of this phrase that appear.
It makes me strangely optimistic to think about what people will be horrified by.
But the answer is seriously anything that we as individuals do not deal with or encounter on a daily basis because we all still other the fuck out of everything, let’s get real.
Immigration. Like, there’s a good deal of high profile activism now, but in thirty, forty years, people will whip themselves up into a hurricane-level righteous fury about how terrible we were. Someone will write The People’s History of the Border and someone else will produce Roots, but about detention centers, and Mark Zuckerberg and his tame, hella-moneyed immigration coalition will be hailed as the Harriet Beecher Stowes of their time.
There will be museums that sixth grader are forced to go on field trips to, that display official forms used by the DHS and the INS. There will be a museum employee dressed up like Janet Napolitano and a museum employee dressed up as a “Dreamer” and they will recite some wooden dialogue that is supposed to “bring to life” the atrocities of turn-of-the-millennium immigration policy.
Every year, people will make pilgrimages to spit on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s grave.
“someone else will produce Roots, but about detention centers”
not to trivialize this incredibly serious issue but OH MY GOD I WOULD WATCH THE FUCK OUT OF THAT
I broadly agreed with you, but if Zuckerberg is hailed as the Harriet Beecher Stowe of our time (and not say, the DREAMers, or the many many coalitions that have coalesced around equitable immigration reform) I may have to flip the fuck out. I might be 80 years old by the time I first hear this, but yeah.. tables will be overturned unless Zuckerberg manages to completely change the face of how we deal with immigration and naturalization and, I don’t know, manages to single handedly halt the gentrification of the Bay Area.
The reason I picked Harriet Beecher Stowe was because I think she’s the most overrated, yet high-profile figure of the abolitionist movement.
That’s how I feel about Mark Zuckerberg. It’s nice that he’s bothering to be not completely terrible, but, meh. I mean, have you read Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Gross.
Ahhh yeah, sorry, totally missed that connection for some reason. ^^; I haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I’ve just read a lot about it.. including the terribly flat characterizations of black people.
Still gonna flip out about Zuckerberg though if he gets any attention/credit at all. Ha. Man, I don’t know what it is about him that gets under my skin. His derpiness + the fact that he’s my age?
I will gladly overturn bridge and bingo tables with you! Ugh he is the worst.
“Every year, people will make pilgrimages to spit on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s grave.”
From your mouth to God’s ear.
Our grandchildren will be aghast that we kept killer whales, dolphins and other intelligent mammals as our slaves for entertainment. They will be embarrassed by our backward attitudes regarding reproduction(you had the babies YOURSELF?) when excellent surrogate clone motherfathers could do the gestating. How primitive, they’ll say.
“when excellent [ROBOT INCUBATION CENTERS RUN FROM YOUR PHONE OR RATHER THE CHIP EMBEDDED IN YOUR RIGHT TEMPLE] could do the gestating”
Pets? [<-Why is that link such a stealth link]
At least according to Tim Kreider.
it better not be >:(
Tim Kreider is the best!
I too have been working on excising “crazy” from my vocabulary–not wholesale, like I’ll still say “WHOA DID YOU SEE THAT HORSE DRIVING A BUS THAT WAS CRAZY” and not feel too weird about it, but definitely in regards to people, which for me is where the kicker really is. Don’t call people crazy, don’t use the word “crazy” to dismiss their actions, thoughts, or feelings, don’t use it to try and delegitimize them as human beings! And I have at least sort of a horse in that race–a Shetland pony in that race?–so that’s my two cents on that.
I hope our future generations boggle at people of the current day who are just so fucking confused by folks of nonbinary gender and/or nonbinary sexuality. Come backkkk, come backkkkk, let me label youuuuuu
I like that distinction a lot! Don’t call people or their ideas crazy makes sense.
A friend of mine planted it in my head a while ago! She is a smart cookie.
Why would it be okay to use “crazy” to refer to something that isn’t a person and not okay to use it to refer to a person, while it is neither okay to use “gay” in a negative sense for either a person or a not-person? Is there a distinction that I am missing on this one?
I had not previously considered those two words to be equivalent–thinking about “crazy” as a descriptor of a situation, I think of it as a synonym for “unusual,” which I don’t think is negative. But I can see how you would feel it is. As someone with mental health issues, that’s my take on it, but there are certainly people who disagree with me.
I dunno, as a gay person, that word carries a very important part of my identity, so I think equating “gay” with “crazy” implies that crazy is an identity that people claim.
I think you’re comparing apples and oranges with this specific example. When someone uses a part of who I am as an insult, it is derogatory because it implies that being gay is bad and “uncool”. Calling someone or something “crazy” just reinforces negative stigmas associated with people who were once medically diagnosed as “crazy” which is not the same thing as calling something “gay”. I’m not clinically diagnosed as suffering from gay.
I know my nieces and nephews are going to point and laugh at my brightly colored skinny jeans paired with slouchy sloppy t-shirts and cute ballet flats but to them I say PFFT! Nothing will be as bad as the 1970s. /hypocrite
Less fashionably, but still speaking of fads, I hope that the pseudo-healthy living thing goes away and our era gets laughed at for it, the way we kind of point and laugh at Kellogg and his cardboard food diet 130 years ago. I mean, the idea that you can imbue water with memories by shaking it and diluting something in it a thousand times. Or that Secret nonsense that some people believe means you can meditate your way to a cancer cure. >:(
You shut your mouth about the 1970s, everything and everyone looked gorgeous and cool and The Eagles.
I mean, the idea that you can imbue water with memories by shaking it and diluting something in it a thousand times. Or that Secret nonsense that some people believe means you can meditate your way to a cancer cure. >:(
Please let these and the idea that vaccines cause autism die as soon as possible, oh my god. They are so aggravating and so dangerous.
This is a very minor thing on the scale of prejudices discussed here, but I think that physical hairiness, on both men and women, is something that people still feel very comfortable scorning and mocking. I always find it odd when women will bond about how gross men’s back hair is, especially when those women are self-identified feminists who would argue for the right to go unshaven. I’ve actually known a number of men who were tormented by their back hair in a way we don’t normally acknowledge men to be about body issues, and it all just seems so sad to me. Hair is harmless! It keeps us warm and soft and snuggly!
Future historians will regard the 1990s as the Nadir of American Facial & Body Hair Relations, a sad failure, after 120 years of struggle, to live up to the promise of the Ugly ‘Stash Rights movement of the 1970s or even the the Muttonchop Renaissance 100 years earlier.
Yes, I’ve always thought (or maybe just secretly hoped) that shaving body hair must be due to go out of fashion. I think pit hair is the weakest link. Isn’t pleasant to the touch like smooth legs, and it’s even visible in lots of clothes.
I do this same thought exercise too! What do we find totally normal and acceptable that future generations will think is barbaric and disgusting?
Really the one I keep coming back to is the way we treat animals. We’re discovering more and more every day that blurs the cognitive line between animals and humans, but even with what we know it’s a fairly weak case. I still eat meat though, and I’m not much of an “animal person.” But it seems like the conceptual justification for treating other living things as objects for our gratification gets weaker and weaker every day. Reflexive speciesism as a bedrock ideological certainty won’t cut it once we meet aliens or have genetically-engineered talking dogs, or whatever. Even sentient-seeming AIs would have to shake our belief in human specialness.
Future historians, feel free to dig up this comment and use it to prove how all my other great achievements don’t mean squat because I’m a bad person.
I submit that the “last acceptable prejudice” (with all the caveats outlined by Nicole) is making fun of people from the South. This was something I started thinking about when someone once told me I didn’t “look like” I was from Tennessee. Ten years later, I find that Southern accents are still routinely used as shorthand for “stupid” across the board in pop culture.
yeah I didn’t realize that until I moved here!!!
That’s where the term originated, I think?
Oh? I had no idea.
Argh, The Worst Meeting in the World ended last week with my boss saying she’d never go back to Tennessee because of the ‘Southern’ behavior of the men there. WITH TWO BRILLIANT KIND UNBEARABLY CAREFUL OF THEIR ACCENTS SOUTHERN SCIENCE DUDES THERE. I said nothing (cowardice, fear of inarticulately embarrassing them) but made an outrage face and she rolled her eyes and apologized insincerely. Everything about it sucked.
Yes! It really stands out, to give a recent example, when you look at what happened with Paula Deen’s racism and the media. So many people were quick to dismiss it as “well she’s an old southern woman,” “oh but she’s southern,” etc etc, despite the fact that racism is a serious national issue. She was pretty much used to shove racism under the Rug of the South again, like it almost always has been, and people not from around here were trying VERY hard to act like racism stops at the Mason-Dixon line.
Yup. Some people on the billfold a few weeks ago told me that southern white people didn’t “count” in the broad definition of rich white people culture, and some other stuff about having two first (Kelly Ann, Mary Sue) names was basically seen as trashy.
Oh I also think in general we have this Whiggish belief that “the arc of history bends towards justice” and things just keep getting better, etc. Like, things were probably better for black people in the US in the 1870s than in the 1920s. Immigration to the US didn’t start being restricted in a big way until the 1960s. The global economy was more integrated before WWI than it was in the mid-1970s. Et cetera.
I guess I’m saying, maybe things will just get worse?
But it’s a great big, beautiful tomorrow! We have a dream, which is just the start, and when we follow it with our minds and hearts, it becomes a reality – a dream come true. That great big, beautiful tomorrow just shines at the end of every day.
You know, if you ignore things like ice caps melting and the increase of infectious diseases that had been nearly eradicated and et cetera.
And if you don’t recognize that theme song of how the future is always an improvement on the past… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKz6qdexetY
Of course, the visuals actually kind of mock the entire idea, as each successive decade grows more complicated and difficult to understand/easy to break.
But non-white people couldn’t get naturalized until about the 1950s or so.. so everything just balanced out? ::cries::
Generally agree with you about countering the notion that we will somehow become more tolerant and more thoughtful towards others (or Others, hahaha) over time.
Well sure, if you’re going to take history by the decade. How about things 500 years ago, or 1000 years?
If you take that view than all of modern liberal democracy is a historical blip. I’d probably rather live in 12th Century Novgorod than 1920s Novgorod, for example.
I’d rather not die in childbirth or be executed for being a Jew. There has yet to be a perfect time for meeting BOTH of those goals, but I think I’ll take my chances with the present.
Also making fun of the Welsh.
Poor Welsh people. I’ll always love you.
Love ewe.
“I saw the fall of Troy. World War Five. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party. Now I’m going to die in a dungeon. IN CARDIFF.”
Not a prejudice, I guess, but I think future generations will be more aware of and critical of ideas of ecological justice (or maybe I just hope they will be). And things like NIMBY and worrying that parts of Manhatten will be underwater if the ice caps melt/mah economy!! while ignoring the fact that whole island countries will be obliterated by the sea level rise.
Maybe classifying/stereotyping/denigrating people on the way they dress? I’m thinking mostly about “hipster” here, but it’s certainly not the only example.
never, ever, ever gonna go away. i mean, “hipster” will, but there’ll always be something new. unless you anticipate some kind of Utopia-esque world where everyone wears identical government-issued gunnysacks. my bf’s rooting for that.
Obvs there are worse things people do than rag on hipsters (like say “rag on”?) but I agree that this is still totally acceptable prejudice. Even in my conflict-averse, pro-respect workplace I’m pretty shocked by the way people will openly assign all kinds of negative personal values to people that dress in ‘hipster’ fashions, or wear jeans to work, or have an “edgy” hairstyle/color, or dress ‘too professionally’, or whatever. It’s like people have generally accepted that things you can’t change about your appearance are off-limits but things that you can change are fair game for all kinds of assumptions.
I think the rights and concerns of transgender people are going to be why our grandchildren are ashamed of us. Most of the discussions I see about it are mostly on the internet and the far corners of LGBT activism, and most cisgendered progressives I know in person rarely discuss it or participate as allies. I’ve also thought about this in the context of “what if my hypothetical future children* or grandchildren was transgender? how would I respond? how would my husband respond? how would our extended families respond?” I think if you were to ask me 5-10 years ago I would probably respond with a lot of trepidation (and my husband doubly so) but I think over that time I’ve learned and grown a lot. Our respective parents, for instance? Hoooo boy.
*apparently I spend a lot of time thinking about my hypothetical future children
and not enough time trying to make them
heyooooooooooooooo
(sorry! haha! channeling your parents, I’m sure)
also if one of the BBs turns out gay they can be thankful I outgrew the anti-gay Christianity I was raised with.
Touche! Oh man though, on this note: I realized this weekend that I may have moved beyond “being hesitant about having kids but maybe it would be okay one day 5 years from now” to “I think want to have a kid within the next two years, WHOA is that what they mean by biological clocks, I didn’t see that desire coming?” and it’s been freaking me out.
Something to discuss during the cocktail hour. 😉
That is still quite an active-and-debated-right-now prejudice, though. I think/hope nonbinary people are going to become more recognised!
appearing on the Wesleyan Mainstage in June 2035
I think you mean “Weasleyan” Mainstage, as all centers of higher learning will be named after the Weasleys in the coming Ginger Supremacy
I thought that too. I can only hope that my children will be gingers since most of their father’s family are gingers. I want to keep breeding those adorable traits forever.
I dunno, we let genocide, rape, starvation, mutilation, and murder happen every day without pouring into the streets screaming ‘No, STOP!’
I’m already ashamed of us for this. We are a barbaric species, I hope we get better, and I hope it happens fast.
I was thinking about whether the Sex at Dawn/Dan Savage tribe will win and the whole idea of monogamy will look barbaric and unnatural to future people. God I hope not because I think monogamy is a beautiful thing, but I wonder if the kids will be in these complex line marriage type deals and going to their grams, “I NEED YOU TO RESPECT ALL 5 OF MY HUSBAND AND WIVES AND THEIR 13 BOYFRIENDS EQUALLY!” and Grams will be like, “but which one is your real husband?” and then the 20 or so people being introduced to her around the very long table all gasp, and then the grandkid runs out crying.
I know polyandry/monogamish is a legit thing for legit people that they feel is a need they have and how they have more communication and deeper love for their partners because of the freedom and whatnot, but the thought of sharing someone I marry with anyone else makes me feel so so sad, and also makes me wonder if I’m on the wrong side of history.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get to the point where people could say “I acknowledge that polyamory is a totally valid life choice” and just STOP THERE? Without feeling obligated to go on about how “but I couldn’t even imagine sharing my husband, ew”?
Seriously, accepting that other people can be poly doesn’t suddenly mean you have to defend your choices and lifestyle. Relax, OK?
It’s not monogamy that’s going to be looked at as barbaric by our grandchildren, but rather the privileging of it above all other family types such that non-monogamy is devalued and considered “just a fancy word for cheating” or “selfishness” or “not loving your wife enough to be satisfied with just her” or even “Did you just say your husband’s GIRLFRIEND?!” [at which point the conversation is irretrievable derailed] and “Oh, not me, I couldn’t do that” [as though anyone had ASKED you to] …or any of the thousand little cutting phrases that we hear we if we’re incautious enough to talk about our family as if it were normal. Because we must always be reminded of our moral abnormality, right?
Anyway, yeah, that. Would be nice if our grandchildren look back and think we were unaccountably strange for treating family as though it only had one acceptable shape.
Also, throwing my psychic weight behind the prediction above that body hair, and individual choices to do with it, will one day be totally no big deal.
yes. so much this. almost every time the fact that I’m poly comes up with someone new, I get ‘ohh, I couldn’t do that’, and I just want to go, ‘It’s ok, I’m not recruiting!’ I usually end up going for ‘well, it’s not for everyone…’
In Australia, we are currently treating refugees (including children) the way America treats terror suspects, i.e offshore indefinite imprisonment without a hearing, media access, or accountability.
That’s gotta be the one I think.
This is like, way, way low down from the experiences of refugees/immigrants/mentally ill/handicapped/etc, but I wish we could stop buying into the idea that pretty girls must be dumb and/or manipulative and that “ugly” girls must be smart. First off, the idea of pretty v. ugly is so subjective it shouldn’t even be a thing, but even with adhering to our amazingly flawed beauty standards, I have met gorgeous women who are brilliant, homely women who have never read a book in their lives, and lots of people with in-between looks and in-between intelligence.
There’s also this weird trend of smart women undercutting their beauty, as if it negatively qualifies their intelligence. Being beautiful doesn’t matter, but we can at least stop putting ourselves down, or stop using “pretty girl” as a backhanded insult.
and what about the ugly girls who are like “but i’m not even good at math”
hehehe
no, but I get what you’re saying. it cuts both ways.
i don’t get this. you think that people overcoming their judgments about whether people can or can’t be equally blessed in looks and smarts is going to predate a change in beauty judgment overall? seems very unlikely. also i don’t think this is a lady-only issue – what about “pretty boys” and “gawky” guys, etc.
it seems to me that with shifting genetic populations and (hopefully) altered body-image awareness, the most we can hope for (and i do) is that our definitions of beauty will be vastly expanded, to where this particular characteristic will cease to be as loaded as it currently is. that seems possible. but i don’t think people are ever going to let go of the idea that everyone should have some equal distribution of good qualities, even if it shifts focus to “smart but mean” or “athletic but can’t follow directions” or something. people are judgy assholes.
Circumcision! Sorry/notsorry. It’s INSANE that we cut our male babies’ genitals for no good reason.
perhaps you’ve never had to clean poop out of a teeny tiny foreskin *she said darkly*
Oh but HAVEN’T I?
(I have, but as a not-child-having person, I haven’t done it a lot).
But seriously, and I know this is a sensitive and controversial topic, I feel like circumcision is a really cruel and barbaric practice and none of the arguments for it have ever convinced me that it’s not. This is not an area where, to me, choice feminism applies.
Yeah, this makes sense to me too. Why not leave it up to them when they’re old enough to choose whether they want a piece of their penis chopped off?
I recently saw an NPR thing (I think) that the incidence was decreasing in the US West and staying mostly flat in a lot of the rest of the country.
About the small pond thing: on any day, my Twitter feed will have more people complaining (is there a word for “complaining” that doesn’t imply that the complainers are wrong?) about racism and transphobia within feminism than actual racism or transphobia from feminists. And I’m sure this is 90% because I largely don’t follow feminists who say racist or transphobic things.
(Also, 8% because when people do say it in front of me, I’m sometimes too white and cis to see it)
Venting?
I can definitely see that most times, what I am actually trying to convey would be better conveyed by "How can you be so unwilling to look at xyz" or "why are you refusing to think through the consequences?"
I dunno, as a gay person, that word carries a very important part of my identity, so I think equating "gay" with "crazy" implies that crazy is an identity that people claim.
I think you're comparing apples and oranges with this specific example. When someone uses a part of who I am as an insult, it is derogatory because it implies that being gay is bad and "uncool". Calling someone or something "crazy" just reinforces negative stigmas associated with people who were once medically diagnosed as "crazy" which is not the same thing as calling something "gay". I'm not clinically diagnosed as suffering from gay.