The Slacktiverse

@Brin: It's very common to use the subjective case for "[person] and I." This is because of a rule of etiquette* that you always name yourself second, which was usually presented as "Jane and I, not I and Jane." This then got twisted into "Always Jane and I," implying you should never say "Jane and me."

Of course I'm a strict descriptivist--grammar isn't a set of rules passed down from on high, it's a description of how people write and talk. If "the rules" don't reflect the way people communicate, it's the rules that are wrong.

*By which I mean a bunch of arbitrary rules designed purely to serve as a class marker, as opposed to politeness, which is about respecting and caring about others.

If "the rules" don't reflect the way people communicate, it's the rules that are wrong.

This pretty much sums up my attitude as well. :)

(People are always surprised that I have an English degree because I'm so virulently against grammar policing in my workplace. For some strange reason, engineers can be terrible about grammar policing. I have been 'corrected' so many times by co-workers; most recently because I offended by pronouncing the word "route" as "root" instead of "r-owww-t". Yeah, I know.)

In some dialects of English "root" is slang for fucking, so since I learned that I pronounce "route" as rowt, even though in my native dialect of English route is root.

Well I've had to get rid of root; my girlfriend laughs at me everytime I say it. :)

But yeah, anything can be an innuendo, if you say it in a certain way.

The version of "X and I" that I learned is "take away X" - if you'd say "I" if you weren't mentioning the other person, you say "I" when you are, and the same for "me". This has the virtue of making sense, which goodness knows English often enough doesn't.

(While I have some grammar-policing tendencies, (a) I know it often doesn't go over well so I tend to avoid it, and (b) the non-UK terms used for English grammar are entirely alien to me - I can work out what Froborr means by "subjective case", but I've never heard it before - so even if people wanted explanations of why something was wrong I probably wouldn't be able to do it.)

I'm of the school of thought that says everyone falls somewhere between descriptivist prescriptivist.

If we're going to meaningfully communicate some rules have to be followed. So if someone says, "The boy bit the dog," when they mean that the dog was doing the biting and the boy was doing the being bitten, that's simply wrong and the sentence will not convey accurate information. Communication fails.

The answer to this is to be a prescriptivist and say, "The correct way to describe the situation is either, 'The dog bit the boy,' or, 'The boy was bitten by the dog.'" The situation of the incorrect sentence calls for someone to step in and say how language should be spoken.

On the other hand if people had been doing that about all rules all the time then the English language wouldn't exist at all and we'd all be speaking Proto-Indo-European, assuming that no language preceded that.

For a language to live and thrive it needs room to grow and change, and the only way to keep track of a language like that is to be a descriptitvist.

When Shakespeare writes, "Between you and I," when everyone knows that I is the subject and me is the object so the object of the preposition "between" should be "me" instead of "I" the appropriate response isn't to say, "Well Shakespeare was a fucking idiot and no one should ever do that again, DO YOU HEAR ME? NEVER AGAIN!" Instead the appropriate response is to point out that for hundreds of years people have been using, "and I" in place of "and me" and while speculation as to why may be indulged in, it's firmly lodged in the language by now.

In other words, the situation calls for one to put on their descriptivist hat.

The interesting thing is that everyone seems to draw the line in a different place. What for some people might be a perfectly acceptable bit of linguistic evolution is for other people a travesty.

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I probably would have gone with "her and I" which grammarians would credit as being half right. And that kind of shows you where I stand. Some deviations from "the rules" (scare quotes because who gets to say what they are?) I accept as if they aren't even deviations without a thought or hesitation, others I don't.

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And in closing, anyone who says that the subjunctive mood ought to be allowed to die off is dead wrong. But more on that later.

Oh for the love of fuck,

Damn it, I cant seem to keep track of what account I'm logged into. Plus I've had a long day that was mostly hellish and stuff.

I was logged into that account, as you might expect, to check the email so I could work on the weekend post which I swear is coming.

Actually, if someone uses "the boy bit the dog" to mean "the dog bit the boy", they're not wrong because of prescriptivism, they're wrong because of descriptivism. Collectively as a whole the native speakers of English, use "the boy bit the dog" to mean that the boy used his teeth to hurt the dog. Word order is important in English because that's the way native speakers use the language, not because there's a rule that we were all taught.

If someone decides to refer to the thing we comb our hair with as a pencil, they're wrong, not because the dictionary doesn't define pencil that way, but because native speakers don't use the word pencil way.

That's what descriptivism is. Something is right if that's what native speakers of that dialect say, and it is wrong in that dialect if no native speakers of that dialect say it. If I say I drink from a paper glass in English, I'm making a mistake, but glasses cannot be made of paper: glasses need to be made of glass, or at least see-through plastic that looks enough like that glass that no one complains. Not because this is the sort of thing we learn in English class, but because if you describe how native speakers use the language, that's what you get.

Descriptively, "me and my friend" is all right in many dialects of English because native speakers of those dialects say it. It's also descriptively wrong in some dialects of English where no native speakers say it. And the same goes for "she saw my friend and I". Wrong in some dialects, right in others.

Actually, if someone uses "the boy bit the dog" to mean "the dog bit the boy", they're not wrong because of prescriptivism, they're wrong because of descriptivism. Collectively as a whole the native speakers of English, use "the boy bit the dog" to mean that the boy used his teeth to hurt the dog.

First, sorry it took days to get back to this.

Second, descriptivism can never say that something is wrong, only uncommon. It can say, "You are the only person to say things this way," but to make the leap to, "Therefore you should not say things this way," is to make the leap to an inherently perscriptivist place.

Descriptivism can say, "You're the only person on earth who does that." But it can't say that that's a problem. Because it's not, in itself a problem to do something that most people don't.

For example:

Almost no one dresses like me. In fact, we can describe precisely how few people dress like me. Take the total population of the world. Subtract one. Divide that figure by the total population of the world. That's the probability that a given person, chosen at random, does not wear my clothing. Multiply 100 and you get the percent of the population that does not wear my clothing. Another way to say it is that roughly 7 billion people, out of roughly 7 billion people, do not wear my clothing.

Does this mean that it's somehow wrong for me to wear my clothing when 99.99(many nines) percent of people don't?

No. Of course not. It'd be bizarre if I didn't wear my clothing. Besides, I'm only wearing 8 articles of clothing right now, so even if I were trying to be more like the rest of humanity by wearing not-my clothing I'd still be only be being like 8 out of roughly seven billion (and which eight people's clothing would I be wearing?) which still leaves roughly seven billion of roughly seven billion people I'm not being like.

Descriptivism can tell you how common or uncommon something is.
Perscriptivim tells you what to do.

In language descriptivism provides the necessary basis for any intelligent perscriptivism because commonness is directly related likelihood of being understood, which is generally (though not always) the point of saying/writing something in the first place.

But to actually come out and say, "You shouldn't say it that way, you should say it this way," is a fundamentally prescriptivist thing.

Which in turn has it's own effect upon the descriptivism side of things because what we tell people is right and wrong affects their usage, and that usage is what the descriptivists describe.

If you want to tell someone that "He splangit the a dog took," is a unique sentence then you can do it as a pure descriptivist. If you want to tell someone that it is a bad sentence then you must step at least partially into the bounds of perscriptivism. If you want to tell someone that it's the kind of sentence that one should not say if one wants to be understood, that's very prescriptivist in nature.

Karen Healey's "The Shattering" is a great YA book with a lesbian lead.

Unrelatedly, one of Karen's other books ("Guardian of the Dead") prominently features an asexual teenage boy. Both books are more-or-less urban fantasy, I guess.

I don't know much yet about her third book, it's not out in the US yet (Karen is in New Zealand).

Well, bear in mind that I'm wearing the Great Big Privilege Suit, but it seems to me that if/while you are in a relationship that makes you happy then you don't really need to consider other potential relationships - and the chromosomes and appearance of those hypothetical partners are in any case nobody's business but your own.

While the hetero/homo division is clearly over-simplified, I think that even the Kinsey scale is deceptively un-complex. I've known a surprising (to me) number of men who were straight, or gay, except with one particular person who happened to kick over the right neurons.

Dang and blast Blogger and its refusal to accept the <blockquote> tag.

If anyone of any gender has sexual thoughts or experiences about both women and men… it’s not up to the rest of us to say that they’re “really” bisexual. Or, for that matter, that they aren’t. It’s not up to the rest of us to say whether these thoughts or experiences are trivial or important. It’s up to the person thinking them and having them.

"Is Everyone Basically Bisexual?, by Greta Christina.

Re: Hollowstone, it probably needs a content warning for misogyny. A group of writers at fail-fandom looked through the book and found some problematic stuff. Unfunny_fandom also collected some links about Upkins, his book, and his problematic history here:
[CW: misogyny for all links]
http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunny_fandom/14997.html , and another blogger, Korrina, wrote up some more excerpts here: http://alphamaleneo.tumblr.com/post/9010862834/professional-author-dennis-r-upkins-is-a-giant

On the book:
[CW: Misogyny].


From: http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/17095.html?thread=73874119#t73874119
"gurer'f cntrf bs guvf zhfvp grnpure vafhygvat rirel crefba ur pbzrf npebff, naq bs pbhefr ur znqr gur ovttrfg, onqqrfg wbpx pel sebz gur furre sbepr bs vafhygvat uvf bobr cynlvat. Naq zber frkhny unenffzrag gura lbh pna funxr n fgvpx ng. V whfg pnzr npebff n cnffntr jurer ur vafgehpgf nabgure fghqrag gb trg evq bs ure thz ol "qbvat jung lbh qb jvgu unys gur sbbgonyy grnz naq fjnyybj.""

From the book itself, quoted here: http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/17095.html?thread=73564615#t73564615

(this line is spoken by the music teacher):
"Pvaql jnygmrq gb gur sebag bs gur pynffebbz jvgu ure pynevarg va gbj. Yvxr Zneiva ure cresbeznapr jnf vzcerffvir, ohg gur ohytvat irva va Abyna'f sberurnq vaqvpngrq gung ur jnf yrff guna unccl. "Zvff Eboovaf, sbe gur fnxr bs lbhe zhfvp naq lbhe ybir yvsr, V qb ubcr gung lbh yrnea ubj gb oybj cebcreyl. Vf gurer ab bar va guvf pynff jub unf n zbqvphz bs fxvyy?"

Good grief! Thanks for the heads-up. Those are two wall-banger passages that would have me screaming profanity at my e-reader.

TW: Misogyny

Christ.

If you're just joining the thread and thinking about diving into those links, but you have a limited stomach for misogyny, take my word and don't bother.

I thought I was beyond being triggered by misogyny, but the graphic description of his he'd made his wife take birth control three times a day literally made me physically ill. I think I'm going to go take a long bath and throw the fuck up.

Thank you, ZMiles. (I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically. Thank you.)

Grr. My kingdom for an edit button. "the graphic description of his he'd made" s/b "the graphic description of HOW he'd MAKE"

You're welcome.

Argh. Damn it. Should've read the book before recommending it. I find the guy's blog mostly OK, but your mileage may vary. Sorry, no spoons to un-ROT13 the quotes right now.

In response to Firedrake's comment: To me, it's important to know how I should be identifying myself to other people, whether I should consider myself a member of the QUILTBAG community, and the like. To me, labels matter because labels mean things, regardless of what my future is likely to hold in terms of relationships. Does that make sense?

@kisekileia: I'm in a similar boat--cismale, in a committed long-term heterosexual relationship, never been in any other kind of relationship, but not long after this one started I realized that I am probably a little bit bi. I generally don't identify that way, however, because taking the label feels appropriative to me.

If it comes up, which is not very often, I tend to describe myself as "[made up number more than 80 but less than 100] percent hetero" or, less often, "[made up number less than 20 but more than 0] percent bi." It feels more precise to me than playing around with coarser-grained labels like Kinsey numbers or the gay-bi-straight trinary, and doesn't feel like I'm laying claim to a label that rightfully belongs to people rather less privileged than I.

I also don't really feel like my attraction to some men is a fundamental part of who I am. It's just sort of there, and if it weren't there everything else about me and my life would be exactly the same. So again, it feels like labeling myself with someone else's identity to call myself bi.

Some of my ambivalence about all this may be tied to being... well, I coined the term "microsexual" a couple days ago. I'm not asexual, but I suspect I'm closer to that than anything else in the QUILTBAG spectrum. But again, I don't want to use the label because I have a low sex drive, not none. But I'm not going to go around identifying as microsexual, either, because again it's not really a part of what I think of as my identity.

But that's me. Ultimately I think your identity is something you and only you can construct.

It seems like the thing is that with notably few exceptions, everything is on spectrum. There are very few things in the condition of being a person that function like a switch, most of them function like a dimmer, so answering the question of, "Am I really [whatever]?" becomes the question of , "Where on the spectrum counts as whatever?" and those answers are always messy and arbitrary.

Another thing that comes to mind is gender identity. At Typepad Slacktiverse there was a conversation between two cis-women who you'd think would experience gender identity in very similar ways, but in fact they were completely different. They weren't at different places between cisgender and transgender, they were at different places between "Strong gender identity" and "No gender identity" (note that they weren't polar opposites, just in different places) which I wouldn't have even thought was a spectrum had I not read the conversation.

Alas, a lot of Huff/Pierce stuff isn't available on ebooks, I've found. But thanks for the link; I'll check!

Erm. As another actual person with a disability, I disagree with you on this topic. Strongly.

We cannot judge what people's circumstances are when they say they don't have the spoons for something right now. We don't know if they mean "genuinely triggered" or "mental health" or "physical health" or anything else. We don't know; we can't jump to conclusions.

Assuming people mean it flippantly when they speak of spoons is completely inappropriate, just as it is inappropriate when people assume we disabled people are healthy because we don't look or sound or act a certain way. I don't look disabled, but I am. I don't have the spoons to do X today, but I might have those spoons tomorrow. Tone policing over whether I spoke of my spoons in precisely the right tone is silencing and inappropriate to me.

For my two cents in general, I would strongly prefer it if people didn't call things appropriative when those things come from a long-term member of the community communicating in apparent good faith and not exercising any ableism in their language. I've had enough flamewars over what people "meant", and I frankly think that's the last thing this community needs.

For this thread in particular, since the community standard is that authors moderate their own threads, and since this I am the OP author, I think my opinion on this issue matters. I'm declaring the spoon-discussion off topic for this thread; if people want to discuss it further, they can write an OP for the community and moderate that thread as they please, or they can open a thread in the forum. Case closed, move on.

Thanks, Ana.

Seconding the recommendation for the Young Wizards series. They're seriously awesome books. The earlier books were written in the 1980's, so that's probably why it's not mentioned in the text that the two characters in question are gay, but it's a great portrayal of two adult men living together, having pets together, and working together as wizards without anyone blinking an eye about it. Her other series are more open about sexuality, but maybe too open for your niece's preferences/slipping safely under the radar.

-- A different Anonymous

Anon, while the Last Herald-Mage isn't particularly graphic I found it rather preachy, and therefore I think it would fail the "under the radar" test.

Romantically, I'm attracted to males; sexually, only to females. Very hard to explain to anyone.

"Androromantic gynosexual" seems like a perfectly understandable label to me, but I suppose there's a fair bit of groundwork needed to get to the point where it's understandable.