25 Jan 2012
Image is a screen-capture of a headline reading Cynthia Nixon On Being Gay: ‘For Me It’s A Choice’, above a photograph of Cynthia Nixon. jeunetbelle: tylercoates: Well. Now Cynthia Nixon has gone and pissed me off.  “America Blog writer John Aravosis was among those to criticize Nixon’s choice of words… ‘Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.’” I can definitely relate to what she’s saying, but only because I’ve been in the same place. Straight people can’t relate to that and saying that being gay is a choice really conflicts with the idea of being “born this way” which I think is the only way many people begin to understand the roots of homosexuality. Nobody comes out of this looking good. I take your point, Sarah, but to me it seems like Aravosis and company come out looking a lot worse. I mean, when did political inconvenience become a valid reason to criticize a queer woman for the way she describes her own sexuality?  Exactly what kind of world is Aravosis working towards?  One where people can have civil rights as long as they’re prepared to subscribe to one particular model of human sexuality and describe themselves in its terms even if it doesn’t fit them? It’s worth just comparing a couple of Nixon’s comments with some of Aravosis’ response.  Here’s Nixon: I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. … Why can’t it be a choice?  Why is that any less legitimate? Here’s Aravosis (warning for binarism and ‘splaining): What she means is that she’s bisexual, and doesn’t quite get that most people aren’t able to have sexual romantic relationships with both men and women because they’re just not into both genders.  She is into both genders.  And that’s fine.  But she needs to learn how to choose her words better… Allow me to get sarcastic here, because, hey, wow, I would definitely like to sign up for the new rainbow utopia where your sexuality is whatever Mr John Aravosis tells you it is.  That absolutely sounds better than the one where people get to define their own identities and it doesn’t matter whether those identities are chosen or innate or constructed or whatever because it is generally understood that someone’s identity is their identity and that alone deserves a bit of bleeding respect. Okay, at this point my first draft of this post turned into an angry link-filled rant about how objectionable Aravosis is, but you can google him yourselves if you want to know about that.  That isn’t the point because he isn’t the only person saying this kind of thing.  The point is: If some people are going to use a queer person’s account of their own identity to bolster anti-queer bigotry, how about criticizing the bigots, not the queer person? If some ‘allies’ are only okay with queer sexuality as long as it’s innate and can’t be helped, how about challenging that view, not shushing anyone who isn’t prepared to collude with it? If we want a world where people can be open about their sexuality, how about supporting people who are open about their sexuality? If we’re trying to make things better for people, how about prioritizing and listening to actual people, not treating them like obstructions to ‘the cause’? Basically, how about having a movement that tries to be what it wants the world to become?

Image is a screen-capture of a headline reading Cynthia Nixon On Being Gay: ‘For Me It’s A Choice’, above a photograph of Cynthia Nixon.

jeunetbelle:

tylercoates:

Well. Now Cynthia Nixon has gone and pissed me off. 

“America Blog writer John Aravosis was among those to criticize Nixon’s choice of words… ‘Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.’”

I can definitely relate to what she’s saying, but only because I’ve been in the same place. Straight people can’t relate to that and saying that being gay is a choice really conflicts with the idea of being “born this way” which I think is the only way many people begin to understand the roots of homosexuality.

Nobody comes out of this looking good.

I take your point, Sarah, but to me it seems like Aravosis and company come out looking a lot worse.

I mean, when did political inconvenience become a valid reason to criticize a queer woman for the way she describes her own sexuality?  Exactly what kind of world is Aravosis working towards?  One where people can have civil rights as long as they’re prepared to subscribe to one particular model of human sexuality and describe themselves in its terms even if it doesn’t fit them?

It’s worth just comparing a couple of Nixon’s comments with some of Aravosis’ response.  Here’s Nixon:

I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.

…

Why can’t it be a choice?  Why is that any less legitimate?

Here’s Aravosis (warning for binarism and ‘splaining):

What she means is that she’s bisexual, and doesn’t quite get that most people aren’t able to have sexual romantic relationships with both men and women because they’re just not into both genders.  She is into both genders.  And that’s fine.  But she needs to learn how to choose her words better…

Allow me to get sarcastic here, because, hey, wow, I would definitely like to sign up for the new rainbow utopia where your sexuality is whatever Mr John Aravosis tells you it is.  That absolutely sounds better than the one where people get to define their own identities and it doesn’t matter whether those identities are chosen or innate or constructed or whatever because it is generally understood that someone’s identity is their identity and that alone deserves a bit of bleeding respect.

Okay, at this point my first draft of this post turned into an angry link-filled rant about how objectionable Aravosis is, but you can google him yourselves if you want to know about that.  That isn’t the point because he isn’t the only person saying this kind of thing.  The point is:

  • If some people are going to use a queer person’s account of their own identity to bolster anti-queer bigotry, how about criticizing the bigots, not the queer person?
  • If some ‘allies’ are only okay with queer sexuality as long as it’s innate and can’t be helped, how about challenging that view, not shushing anyone who isn’t prepared to collude with it?
  • If we want a world where people can be open about their sexuality, how about supporting people who are open about their sexuality?
  • If we’re trying to make things better for people, how about prioritizing and listening to actual people, not treating them like obstructions to ‘the cause’?
  • Basically, how about having a movement that tries to be what it wants the world to become?
16 Jan 2012

I try not to be reactionary about linguistic change in UK English, but seriously people, I do not think it is a good idea for the phrase ‘argue that X’ to be used to mean ‘advance the proposition that X is true’ and ’advance the proposition that X is false’.

Personally I would prefer the former, having been established in common usage for centuries, to remain in use and the latter to very kindly GET OFF MY LAND [brandishes shotgun].

But honestly either one would be okay as long as we can please not have people using both at the same time, otherwise the communicative value of the phrase will be nil and people will stop using it at all and then nobody wins.

Is this happening in other Anglophone cultures?

5 Oct 2011

Things that are slightly irritating:

  • Being asked to write a paragraph introducing myself to people and then finding that it has been cut down, partly rephrased, and partly re-written in ways that actually change the meaning, and then published without my being consulted about any of those changes.
  • Being made to feel like I’m being anti-social because I didn’t go to an event that I couldn’t afford a ticket for.
  • Being made to feel like I’m being anti-social because I don’t want to drink alcohol.

But in the interests of balance and not being a whiny so-and-so,

Things about my life that are basically pretty good:

  • Everything else.
  • Especially Pear.

So there we are.

27 Aug 2011
Image is a photograph of a lap-top screen in front of a rain-spattered window.  The screen shows the BBC weather forecast website declaring ‘Sunny intervals’ from 10:00 to 19:00. Sunny, BBC?  Really?

Image is a photograph of a lap-top screen in front of a rain-spattered window.  The screen shows the BBC weather forecast website declaring ‘Sunny intervals’ from 10:00 to 19:00.

Sunny, BBC?  Really?

26 Jul 2011

Spammit

A website I have never visited until today has been sending me junk e-mail for over a year.

I’ve always resisted clicking the thing at the foot of the e-mail that says ‘click here to stop receiving these e-mails’ for the entirely irrational and foot-shooting reason that I feel like by doing that I will in some way be accepting that they had some right to be sending me the e-mails in the first place.  Nonetheless, this evening I’ve finally had enough and clicked the thing.

It took me to a page with an option to ‘unsubscribe’ from this e-mail list (as if it were I who’ve changed my mind rather than they who should never have been sending me the wretched things in the first place — you see, this is why I didn’t do this before).  I ticked the box.  There was small-print below telling me that I might still receive administrative e-mails.

I saw a tab saying ‘account’.  Maybe, I thought, if I delete whatever manner of ‘account’ this site had convinced itself I set up, it will stop sending me e-mails entirely.  So I clicked the tab and was invited to enter my password, which in my case I have not got.  There was a link called ‘Forgotten your password?’  I clicked it, lying.  A new screen invited me to type in my e-mail address twice.  I did so and clicked ‘submit’.  The site said:

We’re sorry, we do not recognize the email address that you entered.

No.  No, of course you don’t.  It’s only the e-mail address to which you have been sending unsolicited e-mail since April 2010.

Herclé.

26 Sep 2010

Labour, I am disappoint

Now, I’m not the sort of person who takes a close interest in elections he can’t actually vote in.  So I haven’t studied the policies and voting records of the competitors for the leadership of the Labour party or for the Labour nomination to be Mayor of London.  I gather Ed Miliband, who won the party leadership on Saturday, is in favour of gay marriage, which is splendid.  And apparently Oona King, who on Friday failed to become Labour’s mayoral candidate, is a bit of a Blairite (though she denies it).  But I don’t know the ins and outs of all that.

What I know about the candidates in these two internal elections is, in fact, probably about as little as the average voter will know about the candidates when Londoners come to elect their next mayor and Britons come to elect their next government.  And what I know, mainly, is that today Labour could have been offering us a new prime minister and a new mayor who looked like this:

(Photograph of Diane Abbott under creative commons licence from the New Left Project; photograph of Oona King cropped from one by the Sphinx Theatre Company under a creative commons licence.)

… and in stead the party will be offering leaders who look like this:

(Photograph of Ed Miliband by ARCHIVED Department of Energy and Climate Change, photograph of Ken Livingstone by Topsy Qur’et, both under creative commons licences.)

And, you see, it’s easy enough, when all your choices look like that second pair, and when you look like them yourself, to not worry too much about what they look like and to read their policies and look at their voting records and all that.  But when you’ve been reminded that there are other possibilites, you find it difficult to look at these guys without realizing how flaming bored you are of all these pasty-looking men in suits.

So yeah, well done, Labour.  I may well still vote for your candidates when the time comes.  But only because I have to vote for someone.  You had a chance to get me to vote for your candidates because I was genuinely enthusiastic.  You missed it.

Disappoint.

funny animated gif

(Gif is a clip from In Bruges: Colin Farrel looks with dismay at something out of the frame, starts to move away, twitches his lip in disapproval, glances back, and then walks out of shot.)

22 Sep 2010
emilyswash: dykeinshiningarmour: (via idinamenzeldaily) No, look, sorry, I’m going to be pedantic here because this is a really awesome song and it’s important to understand what the lyrics actually mean.  They go like this: ‘We raise our glass — You bet your ass — To la vie bohème.’ What do we do?  We raise our glass.  To what do we raise this glass?  To la vie bohème.  In a toast.  What are the words ‘you bet your ass’ doing in this sentence?  They are an aside.  A parenthesis.  They indicate how emphatically true it is that we raise a glass to la vie bohème.  You may be so confident, members of the audience, that we are indeed going to raise our glass, and probably more than once, to la vie bohème, that you can bet your ass on it. It does not mean that we are raising our glass, and oh by the way you can also bet your ass to la vie bohème.  That would be a really crummy lyric.  You can’t bet something to something else.  You can bet on things, but you can’t bet to things.  And who would ‘you’ be?  Is Mark telling the various members of the audience that they are in the habit of betting their asses to la vie bohème?  No, he is not, because what on earth would be the point of that.  And if this were what the lyric meant, those first four words would be absolutely pathetic.  ‘We raise our glass.’  What kind of meaningful, inspiring statement is that?  ‘We have a drink’?  That’s about as glorious as ‘we put on our shoes’.  And what would be the connexion between that part and what follows?  Is it causal?  Whenever we raise a glass, it triggers your grammatically inappropriate reflex of betting your ass to la vie bohème?  Or is it simply saying that these things happen at the same time?  Or is it a contrast?  We, who are rather dull, do nothing more interesting than raising a glass.  You, on the other hand, marvellous member of the audience, bet your ass to la vie bohème. Sorry, no.  This is a good lyric, and it deserves a bit of respect.  O Maker Of Amusing Images, please take the time to listen carefully to this song and understand what it means.  It is witty and well-crafted and it will reward your effort.

emilyswash:

dykeinshiningarmour:

(via idinamenzeldaily)

No, look, sorry, I’m going to be pedantic here because this is a really awesome song and it’s important to understand what the lyrics actually mean.  They go like this:

‘We raise our glass —
You bet your ass —
To la vie bohème.’

What do we do?  We raise our glass.  To what do we raise this glass?  To la vie bohème.  In a toast.  What are the words ‘you bet your ass’ doing in this sentence?  They are an aside.  A parenthesis.  They indicate how emphatically true it is that we raise a glass to la vie bohème.  You may be so confident, members of the audience, that we are indeed going to raise our glass, and probably more than once, to la vie bohème, that you can bet your ass on it.

It does not mean that we are raising our glass, and oh by the way you can also bet your ass to la vie bohème.  That would be a really crummy lyric.  You can’t bet something to something else.  You can bet on things, but you can’t bet to things.  And who would ‘you’ be?  Is Mark telling the various members of the audience that they are in the habit of betting their asses to la vie bohème?  No, he is not, because what on earth would be the point of that.  And if this were what the lyric meant, those first four words would be absolutely pathetic.  ‘We raise our glass.’  What kind of meaningful, inspiring statement is that?  ‘We have a drink’?  That’s about as glorious as ‘we put on our shoes’.  And what would be the connexion between that part and what follows?  Is it causal?  Whenever we raise a glass, it triggers your grammatically inappropriate reflex of betting your ass to la vie bohème?  Or is it simply saying that these things happen at the same time?  Or is it a contrast?  We, who are rather dull, do nothing more interesting than raising a glass.  You, on the other hand, marvellous member of the audience, bet your ass to la vie bohème.

Sorry, no.  This is a good lyric, and it deserves a bit of respect.  O Maker Of Amusing Images, please take the time to listen carefully to this song and understand what it means.  It is witty and well-crafted and it will reward your effort.