What Is Wrong With Directness?
Rosemary Esmay
I'm sick of politically correct, mealy-mouth words. What is wrong with saying what you mean? Are we so sensitive a society that we can't own up to our own feelings and beliefs?
I don't mean rudeness, although I employ it regularly, I mean directness. Saying exactly what you mean and meaning exactly what you say. I'm tired of having to interpret people because they are too sissified to be direct.
Here is a list of words that should be abolished and replaced with the more direct word.
- Old Word : New Word
- Pro-Choice : Pro-Abortion
Stop. Seriously, save your breath. You are pro-abortion and no amount of explaining why you are for choice but personally against abortion will change that. It's fine. Just stop trying to have your cake and eat it with this mealy-mouth bullshit about choice. You either think it is okay to abort or not. Stop justifying yourself and own up to it. Those of us that think drugs should be legal aren't for it because we personally all want to start shooting up or whatever. We just think that the government should stay out of it. I also don't think someone should go to prison because they want to smoke a doobie. Doesn't mean I want a doobie, get it?
- Pro-Life : Anti-Abortion
You can keep pro-life, if and only if, you are against the Death Penalty, and in no way support or defend the bombing of abortion clinics, doctors, and etc. If not, then face it you are not pro-life.
- Affirmative Action : Racial/Sexual Discrimination
Anything that promotes one person over another based soley on race or sex is discrimination. Doesn't matter why they do it, it's still discrimination against someone else. Justify it all you want but it is what it is. And it IS discrimination (Definition of discrimination: Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice).
- African/Asian/American or Hispanic/Latinos: Pick A Country not a continent American or Pick A color if you must use an adjective American.
Seriously.
BTW, am I the only one that thinks Latin America is a totally whack name for an area completely void of Italians? A true Latino would be Italian, no? Who thought of that? Do they speak latin in Latin America? No, they speak Spanish and maybe Portugese but no latin. Whatever.
Anyone else Pro-Directness? Got any suggestions?
Anyone against it? Go for it, I live to argue!
Sex Worker = Rent-a-C***
Pro-drug legalization. Nope, not misleading.
As I understand it, "Latin America" means those parts of the Americas where the dominant colonists spoke the Romance Languages. And Romance Languages means those languages most directly derived from Latin. And that means Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French; but since the Italians weren't colonial powers, that leaves Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
The term "Latin American" thus serves as a contrast to what might be called "Anglo-Saxon America" or maybe "Germanic America": those parts colonized primarily by speakers of Germanic languages (generally English and Dutch). But I never hear that term used.]
Hmmm, I'm pretty sure they used to and they still use it at the Vatican, smart guy...
Exhibit A: affirmative action
Exhibit B: There are a variety of light and dark skinned races in India and Pakistan. But when come to America, they are all considered to be of the "Asian" race in spite of their skin color. In reality, Asia is a continent, not a race.
Exhibit C: The EEOC and the Census Bureau have different political definitions of race. The later may even argue with you as to what race you are.
So if race is a political construct, it seems to me that the term African-American acknowledges that. It is a race unique to America.
Still, if we were to be correct on this, it would be fair I think for many Canadians and Cajuns to call themselves Latin Americans, hailing as they do from areas that were once French colonial territories. Yes?
In reality, Africa is a continent and has people with several distinctly different skin colors inhabiting the continent including the European whites who settled there.
"the term African-American acknowledges that. It is a race unique to America"
Why is it necessary to use a term to give uniqueness only to Americans of African ancestry? The rest of us are unique as well - whites/European, yellow/Asian.
Africa includes white people who've been living there for thousands of years, actually, not just European colonial descendants. Egypt has been a true "multi-cultural" society since the pharoahs....
In the U.S., I'm white. In India, my race would be "angrezi" (English) I think.
We all seem to be in agreement. If you assigned a race for each population, that would pretty much demonstrate that the 3-6 races don't really exist as broad partitions of humanity. That is the subtext of what I was I saying. The labels don't really matter that much.
Actually, they do speak modern Latin in Italy, they just call it "Italian."
The terms we actually use here are Mexican and Hispanic, either of which make more sense to me.
Pro-Abortion is fine, Pro-Drug is fine, Pro-Prostitution is fine....how about for an all-encompassing Anti-Morality Police?
Rose, move to Texas. Do NOT move to DFWA or Houston. Move to TEXAS. We don't buy in for that shit and don't take kindly to carpet baggers that try to force it on us.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck...guess what it's a FR*KIN DUCK! To call it a 'water fowl' so as to not offend it's terribly fragile little ego is stupid and wastes my time.
Society's 'job' is not to make the whigniest, most annoying members happy. It is to further the goals of society (normally continuation and spread of said society). The world is not all about 'me' or anyone else for that matter. Grow up and deal with it!
Terms that bug me:
African-American--it's ambiguous. And it's anti-assimilation. As a matter of fact, it pick out the descendents of people from ONE continent for lack-of-assimilation. PLUS: it's seven syllables long, when the previous terms to describe the very same people were 1-2 syllables long. Unforgiveable. Also, it appears to be part of a game plan to make the English language "dance!" by shooting at its feet every 30 years.
Hispanic--WTF does that mean?
non-White--unless applied to Asians or Blacks. This habit of talking as if Arabs, Latinos, Native Americans/American Indians or even Jews aren't "white" is just silly. I'm strictly a 1962 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica girl, and if we're going to recognize races, I'll grant three and three only.
Things that bug me less:
Asian--this should bother me enormously, but somehow it doesn't. It's just the current term to describe that thing that happens with people's eyes when they are Japanese/Chinese/Korean/etc. We probably need something more precise for that particular "look," on those occasions that we find we need one. (Usually it's young urban men talking about what they find hot in women, of course.)
I understand that my sensibilities are 100% inconsistent and irrational, of course.
Whenever I get into this discussion, I bring up a famous golfer who is a dual citizen in America and his home country. His name is Ernie Els. He is a "white" guy, but he was born and raised in South Africa. So by our crazy PC standards, is he white guy or an African American?
Personally, I consider myself mostly pro-choice, mostly anti affirmative action and pretty much completely anti discrimination.
dale
Now for the lame niggling.
Hmmm, I'm pretty sure they used to and they still use it at the Vatican, smart guy...
They never spoke Latin in Italy, they spoke Latin in the Roman Empire. Which included at least parts of Italy, France, Germany, Egypt, Libya, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Turkey and elsewhere. Italy and the Roman Empire are not the same thing. The area that was the ancient city of Rome is mostly not in Italy. It's in the Vatican.
I don't know if they speak it in the Vatican, but that ain't Italy.
They did speak Latin in Mass in almost every country in the world so either almost every country is 'latin' or none or one, the Vatican.
I don't know if Spanish is the deciding factor as I'm pretty sure Brazil is included in Latin America and they don't speak Spanish.
I would sooner expect rationality from (political comment deleted) as from the English language.
There, now that I've been a niggling jerk, I'll stop.
Hispanic derives from Hispani, Latin for Spanish. In that sense, Hispanic is probably the best descriptor.
Hank Barnes
It reminds me very much of how, in the days of Jim Crow, Creoles were classified as "black" simply because of their skin color. Never mind that their heritage led back to Europe and the Caribbean instead of Africa. Today's simplistic skin-tone Balkanization of America is just as bad in a lot of ways as old Jim Crow and is based on something just as silly.
By analogy to the drug bit earlier in the comments, I am pro-abortion-legalization, *not* pro-abortion.
As for "Latin America" - given that Spanish and Portugese are every bit as much an outgrowth of Latin as Italian is, I think your view here is a stretch, at best.
Dean - it would be unusual, but perfectly legitimate, for Acadians, Quebecois, and Cajuns to call themselves Latin Americans.
Man, if having some pamphlets sitting in a rack in the lobby is considered "harassment", I've got a very good case against a whole lot of people in my dentist's office, my doctor's office, my chiropracter, the convenience store, etc. I'll be rich.
But I thought this thread was to bash people who are hypersensitive?
Most people who are opposed to distributing pro-adoption literature in abortion clinics imagine the latter is what is happening, and that's what they're opposed to.
It's not clear to me if the problem is that they're misinformed (although, were such distribution to be *legally mandated*, it's more likely to be the latter than the former - the "[] law requires us to show you how adoption is better" pamphlet tacked on right behind the "federal law requires us to give you this information about our privacy policy" pamphlet). But that *is* what I've always assumed is meant by "placing adoption literature in clinics".
* * *
Re: abortion. I'm actually pro-choice as a legal matter, but I'm very against the cultural zeitgeist that pressures girls and women into doing this.
And those on both sides of the abortion divide need to ask themselves this question: why doesn't either side trust the other to provide counseling? (Answer: because we suspect that they are going to push the other side's pet choice, and I want them to make the choice I want them to make.)
Michael, there's no way to "prove" something that's simply out in the ether and is never spoken of out loud (out loud, we get this "safe, legal, and rare" nonsense). But I'll give you my experiences:
1) When I was 14 I had a pregnancy scare due to a late period. At that time I was seeing a psychotherapist, and when we discussed the possibility that I was pregnant, I said I didn't know what I'd do. She raised her eyebrows and said, "get an abortion?" as if it were the obvious answer.
"I don't know whether I think that's moral," I answered. (I had mixed feelings about it, despite considering myself a radical feminist.)
"Now, why am I getting *angry*? she suddenly asked out loud. Why indeed? (Because my making the "wrong" choice would have gotten her mad. Because there is only one right choice.)
2) When I got pregnant at 19 my then-boyfriend pressured me into an abortion, when what I wanted was to have the baby and have it adopted. There's your "ONE case," Buddy--and I have to live with it for the rest of my life.
3) Whenever the benefits of abortion are discussed, the pro-abortion people always make the comparison between what it would be like for the child to "not ever exist" vs. being raised by a (usually) young) (usually) single mother. If they were really fighting fair, they'd be comparing abortion to adoption, but they don't want to discuss adoption, because it transforms most of their "hard cases" into cases that aren't nearly as hard.