Today I'm reading a cover article on CNN concerning the latest way to offend people, an ongoing research project of mine since the mid '90s. Turns out that "sir" and "ma'am" are currently what's cramping up people, and in particular, women who think it means they're old and pseudo-women and aggressively bio-neutral blobs who feel "misgendered".
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| Response To Me Showing Some Respect |
This would be something of a surprise to the 17-year-old burger flipper at Whataburger when I said "Thank you, ma'am," when she passed my order out of the drive-up window the other night. Because, it seems that even at her young age and lack of sophistication, she's not a fucking moron.
I call most females "ma'am", young, old, rich, poor, white, black, straight, gay, whatever, as do a working majority of the people around here. I was raised that way. It's a term of respect, one that practically anyone in the South and most black communities in particular will use to address practically any female who has a pulse, regardless of age.
Failure to use it as I was growing up might well result in a sharp "thwup" to the side of the head or ear by whichever educational unit (parental or otherwise) was handy, followed up by the question "Yes WHAT?" The proper answer was "Yes, sir" or "Yes, ma'am", depending on who was doing the thwupping and the object of the corrective lesson.
Well, I for one am to the teeth with this horseshit wherein every single human in the US bitches, whines, and redefines every single word in the English language to their personal specifications AND expects me to keep up with all 125 million or so variants. So I've developed my own general term of address that allows me to express every ounce of the respect I feel when running into any version of these clownshow dipwads.
Example: If I call a female "ma'am" and she bows up and pitches a bitch over it, I'll apologize for not recognizing that she's NOT a "ma'am" but is in fact a "HOT Girl". HOT being "Heavily Offended Twat" and "Girl" because they've demonstrated a degree of class about as "womanly" as a spoiled, snotty 5th-grader.In fact, it seems general-purpose enough for the entire "Offended As A Career" lifestyle.
I'd invent something that uses the "C" word, but wouldn't want to misgender some snot-slinging pseudo-broad when I try to show a little respect and they have a dramagasm over my unwokeness.
Fucking goofballs. And of course I mean that with all the love and respect in the world.
Haha I read that article too! I thought, man, with all the heavy shit going on in the world, from Ukraine to the price of gas, THIS is what you choose to get in a twist about? Geez! That said, every Monday I come up with a dumb peeve on my blog, but I think everyone knows I know it's super trivial. In fact, for the entire month of April I'm going to be trivial-peeving every day except Sunday. I've always been fine with "ma'am," though, not that I use it myself. I've never felt the need to append titles to peeps except for maybe Dr. (for a medical doctor). But I was brought up in the barbaric North...
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine (ok, recent ex-girlfriend) was from pretty deep in the Deep South and had a habit of calling everyone hun or honey. It was how she was raised and she didn't care if anyone objected. That sort of language did however get her in trouble with HR when she worked for some corporation in Dallas.
ReplyDeleteShe too had a wtf attitude about transsexualism. Until her daughter became her son and was a hair's breadth from suicide as people in their California farming town got wind if it and had the expected reactions. He's good now, thankfully. And pronouns are not an issue. He's fully a he and was the day I met him five years ago when he was still 17.
Glad he's ok, but that's a completely different conversation from the one about what he wants to be called, or whether I'm expected to know it or even care without some frozen-eyed, raging "DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER?!!!" whackadoo hag attacking tooth and claw like a rabid raccoon.
DeleteI retain my arms-length WTF attitude about "transsexualism". With the exception of a virtually zero % number of viable human Hermaphrodites throughout history and a handful of banana-slug-level examples from the animal kingdom, a bio male is a bio male and a bio female is a bio female, full stop. These are not value judgements. In humans, they are practically different species with different basic construction, different capabilities, different lives, and different minds, and no amount of medically-intervened fantasy world-building will change that.
Actually, very kewl, that -- one of my very favorite things about women is that they AREN'T men.
Now, let me be 100% clear -- I have no issue with how anyone else lives their lives, how they dress, who they're attracted to, live with, have sex with, or how many parts they have sawed off, glued on, modified, tattooed, plastic-filled, or Barbie-fied as long as they're consenting adults. It's simply none of my business.
My issue comes with the reverse of that concept -- when I'm expected to change how I look, think, feel, or live to fit THEIR worldview, even as they drift off into what amounts to a wholly created fantasyland.
If someone "identifies" as a dolphin I'm not going to start speaking to them in squeaks and whistles, nor will I be their supportive buddy. You're just not my cuppa, Flipper, and you can't mandate changing that real-world fact without some more-or-less undesirable outcome vis-a-vis our interaction if you get up my ass about it.
I'm like the guy who was mercilessly skewered on Youtube for answering a hypothetical situation "wrong":
Would you rather have sex with the oldest woman in the world, or the hottest transsexual?
After an initial "Neither, thanks," round and leaving aside the "ageist" value judgements (the inconsiderate, bigoted assholes), he finally picked the "old" female. Aghast, everyone asked "WHY?" And he said because he wasn't gay, and therefore preferred ANY female to shagging what amounted to a bio male with a mutilated dick wearing makeup.
Holy Jayzuz, by the reaction you'd have thought he was at the oven doors shoveling drag queens into the flames.
Reality is a hard pill for people to swallow. Again, not my problem, not my issue, and not my business up to the point that it affects me or mine. People want to be a full-time, sculpted, drugged and modified cosplay/furry/trans/gaming/Disney/Jabba The Hutt character because their real life sucks or doesn't conform to whatever fantasy-based world 'o magic their brain has led them into -- well, get after it is my vote, and no complaints from me. It's their life, what there is of it, not mine.
But try to apply pressure to me or pass laws insisting I cuddle up in that cartoon universe with you and make not mashing up your little feelers my main job? Naw, not so much.
This! Sums up my feelings perfectly. Consenting adult? Idgaf. Just leave me out of it.
Delete~Paula
Exactly. And I can't imagine that approach is a huge surprise to anyone who's been around me longer than about 5 minutes. My entire political, social, and personal approach to others has always been pretty much "we're gonna get along fine as long as you leave me the f**k alone." I'll interact, discuss, argue, hang out with, and otherwise play the game, and even make a few friends along the way -- right up to the moment someone tries to tell me what changes I'm going to HAVE to make to get along with THEM. Best case scenario is that I'll walk away from them without a backward glance. Not-best case, from their point of view anyhow, is that it strikes my sense of humor somehow. My sense of humor could charitably be described as non-standard and less generously as "sadistically corrosive". In any event, the interaction always seems to rapidly deteriorate momentarily thereafter.
DeleteMy boo's son has always been what we now call neuro-divergent - some variation along the autism spectrum, basically. He's unable to support himself, so he has spent his entire life - he's in his mid-thirties - living with one or the other parent, with grandparents, with cousins, with friends.
DeleteAt some point he went to stay with some cousins or friends in California and somehow came to the conclusion he was female. But then he began to feel that he was made up of many individual individuals. Last count was that there were 23 distinct people who shared his body with him.
He changed his name (not legally, just with respect to how he expects people to address him). The base of his name is Nai Pakhriti Bahravi (I may have misspelled that) but he always puts a modifier in front of that base that reflects the individual who is expressing themself at that moment - like "Cooking" or "Shrinking" or "Knife".
And while he prefers the pronoun "they", he INSISTS that when addressing him directly the person uses all four names. He will introduce himself to you as though he's never met you and provide you with all four of the names. At first he would be combative if you did not use all four names.
Happily, his father helped him to understand the frailty of other human minds when it comes to remembering names and suggested he provide people with a short version that he could live with and was easy for these poor simpletons to remember. They don't mean him disrespect; they're just lacking in ability. That appealed to him.
I avoid directly referring to him by any name. I don't generally initiate conversation with him these days because he bores me with his screeds and half-baked theories. When he was younger I would interact with him and listen to him and respond gently with him but not these days. He's too difficult for me.
Does anyone really throw a fit over being called ma'am? Australians don't say ma'am or sir, I remember how weird it was when an American boyfriend started addressing a male friend of mine as such.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there are really people who get offended. More so when I start laughing at them about it and fail to take their concerns "seriously". (sigh) Us patriarchal assholes just can't suit some people, y'know?
DeleteSurprised it's not more of a thing in the English-speaking Pacific basin -- many Indo-based and Asian languages call virtually everyone "sir" or "ma'am" in the local dialect/language. Indians and (to a lesser degree Pakastanis) call everyone "sir" or a variant in English, anyhow. Thais end practically every sentence wherein they're addressing someone with "Kup" or "Krup", which is the Thai functional equivalent (although which is used depends on the sex of the SPEAKER not the addressed), and Vietnamese commonly use some variant of "Thua Ba". I presume this to still be the case although I haven't set foot in the area since my tour on the American plan (off the beaten path explorations, exciting extracurricular activities, and all expenses paid, including as much ammunition as you could carry).
PS I wish you were on WordPress. Then I'd get to see your stuff when it comes out instead of having to go searching for it. Which I do, because I love it. But doesn't blogspot have a notify me thingo? Ok, complaints desk closed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, blogger and WordPress used to have options wherein anyone with a feed or email address could subscribe. If that's still the case, I don't know it. I presume there are still some third-party aggregators or services out there who will, but these tend to be something of a pain in the ass, and I was never a fan.
DeleteBlogger can and does bite it on all kinds of fronts, but having dipped into WordPress on several occasions in an attempt to make them do anything useful, I find that the only consistent thing that they've continued over the years is a downward-spiral business model that boils down to "Is It Possible To Suck A Little More This Month?". I just despise WordPress, or at least the part where I have to interact with it as a user. I do have a WordPress account specifically so I can interact in comments with everyone who is on WordPress, but I'll never again post more there than is needed to keep them from cancelling it.
I somehow stumbled on your WordPress I hate WordPress site, and all became clear. Ok, I respect your blog site orientation preferences.
ReplyDelete