…in the beginning, God was no size at all. Because there was no Space. And no age at all, because there was no Time.
God just was.
And perhaps, because she was lonely, God grew.
And when God grew, Time and Space exploded into being.
Stuff at colossal temperatures shot outwards, clumping into clouds of burning
gas and splashes of red hot liquid. Suddenly God was everywhere, because there was everywhere to be.
And God called Time and Space her Universe.
Time passed. Space spread. But still, God was lonely.
(And, with so much Time on her hands, she might even have been a little bored.)
God sighed, and said to the glowing clouds:
“Do you like this Universe I’ve made for you?”
But the clouds said nothing at all.
God said to the splashes of red hot liquid:
“Do you like this Universe I’ve made for you?”
But the splashes of liquid said nothing at all.
God waited.
The glowing clouds shrank into hot shining stars. Each hurtling drop of red hot
liquid cooled, and grew a rocky crust. Some went spinning round the stars,
becoming planets.
“Now this is getting interesting”, said God to herself.
And God said to the stars:
“Do you like the shining light the glowing clouds have lit for you?”
The stars said nothing at all. But God thought perhaps she heard them singing, high and faint, across the Universe.
And she said to the planets:
“Do you like the rocky mountains that have cooled to cover you?”
The planets said nothing at all.
But there was a roaring and rumbling, as the mountains threw out great fountains of molten lava, and clouds of ash, and steam, and sulphurous vapours.
From the mountain clouds, rain fell upon the surface of the planets.
God said to the rain:
“Do you like falling from the clouds that the mountain tops have made
for you? Will you flow into great lakes and seas for me?”
But the rain just rained, and said nothing at all. Except on one planet, where
God thought she heard the rain whisper “yes…yes…yes”.
Although it might have been her imagination.
God loved that planet, where the rain had spoken to her.
And she called it Earth, because she hoped that something interesting would
grow in it.
Earth grew cooler still, and more rain fell from the mountain clouds. Icy comets crashed into Earth, and melted. Soon the mountains were running with rivers flowing into lakes, and seas, and oceans.
God said to Earth:
“Do you like the rivers and lakes, the seas and oceans the skies have
made for you? Do you like being watered by the rain from the mountain
clouds? Will you grow something for me?
Earth said nothing. But when God listened very closely, she could hear a
muffled bubbling.
Hot lava was squeezing up through the rocky crust at the bottom of the oceans, heating the water, and squirting rich minerals into the muddy mixture.
God said to the boiling mud at the bottom of the oceans:
“Do you like these hot rich minerals the Earth has given you?”
The mud said nothing at all.
But God waited patiently. And something happened.
Something moved.
All by itself.
“Come out” coaxed God. “Come and talk to me.”
And though the creature said nothing, it wiggled a little. And divided in two.
“Well,” said God, “this is interesting”.
She watched and waited. Each creature divided into two more, and soon there were hundreds, and thousands, and millions of little creatures swimming around in the mud, feeding on the bubbling minerals, all alike. Or were they?
Not quite. Some were a little different. One had a tail. It divided into two more, each with tails. Now there were hundreds with tails, and some had mouths as well. Some started to chase and eat each other.
The longer God watched, the more kinds of creatures she saw.
God said to the creatures:
“Do you like the rich warm mud that feeds your wiggling bodies? Are
you happy? Does it hurt when someone bites your tail?”
But the creatures said nothing. They went on chasing each other, and dividing into more and more creatures, until there were so many different kinds that God nearly lost count.
And some of them were green.
God especially liked the green ones. They rose to the surface, and basked in the sun, and instead of feeding on minerals on the muddy bottom, they fed on sugar they made themselves out of sunlight and carbon dioxide from the volcano vapours. And best of all, as they made the sugar, they also made oxygen – pure fresh air!
God said to the tiny green plants:
“Do you like the light the sun shines down on you? Are you happy?
Will you make more clean fresh air for me?”
The green plants said nothing at all. But they carried on dividing, and making
more sugar and fresh air. Soon the skies and the foamy seas around the Earth
were filled with oxygen, and all the ocean creatures kept dividing and dividing,
until, from shore to shore, there were billions of them.
God looked closely. She saw that some had little feet. Near the shore where the water was shallow, they used their feet to cling to the rocks. Some grew long tentacles, and caught passing creatures for food. Some had several feet, and walked along the rocks. Some moved by squirting water. Some grew flippers and fins.
God said to the sea shore creatures:
“Do you like the shores the land and sea have made for you? The rock
pools left by the tide where the sun warms the water for you? And all the
different creatures you have to chase and eat? Are you happy?”
The sea shore creatures said nothing at all, but went on chasing each other,
eating each other, and producing more and more of each other, until the rock
pools were very crowded.
Some kinds were born who could trap water, and survive high up on rocks that the tides left dry each day. Some kinds were born who could breathe the fresh air the plants had made, and whose feet could carry them over the dry rocks to land.
And meanwhile, the deep sea animals and plants went on growing, with new
kinds appearing all the time. Enormous ammonites with shells and tentacles.
Soaring sea weeds that waved in the sunlit waters.
Plants grew on the land too, and in the forests, the creatures grew tall. Some ate leaves. Some ate each other.
God said to the great land creatures:
“Do you like the forests the plants have sown for you? The sun that
warms your bodies? The cool fresh air the plants have made for you to
breathe?
“Does it hurt when you fight each other? Do you weep when your
friends are eaten?”
And the great creatures roared with pain and anger. But still they said nothing.
Then, one day, a terrible thing happened.
A gigantic rock from Space smashed into Earth. The forest caught fire with the heat of the impact, and black smoke hid the sun. Earth grew cold and dark.
Plants died, because without sunlight, they could make no sugar. Plant-eaters
died, because there were not enough plants to eat. Meat-eaters died, because there were not enough plant-eaters to eat.
God saw the devastation, and she wept.
“Oh my creatures!” she cried, “how can I comfort you?”
But the creatures said nothing at all.
Earth was still. Or almost. Something stirred on the cold ashen floor of the
forest. Small furry creatures, who made their own body heat, and kept warm and snug at night inside their fur.
The furry creatures had survived. Their fur, and their own body heat, had kept them warm. Seeds had survived, and green shoots poked through the blackened soil.
Slowly, the forests grew again. And life was good, with the great angry creatures gone.
God said to the furry creatures, as their babies fed contentedly on their mothers’ milk:
“Do you like the peaceful forest the Space rock left for you? Do you like
the milk your mothers make for you? Do you love your babies?
And, though the animals said nothing, they purred, softly.
The babies grew, and had babies of their own. Most looked like their parents.
But some were a little different. Some were born with hands that were good for climbing. Some with tails that were good for balancing. Some had no tails at all. Some could make loud shrieks to warn each other when danger threatened.
Some learned how to poke tasty ants out of rotten logs with sticks, and they
showed their children how to use the sticks too.
God said to these clever creatures:
“Do you like your forest home? The fruit on the trees? The ants in the
logs? Your families? Do you weep when your children grow and leave
you?”
The clever creatures said nothing, but their eyes shone.
“Well”, thought God, “these are the cleverest creatures in my Universe,
but still no-one has answered my questions”.
And she sighed, and she waited.
And waited.
A baby was born. The baby became a child. The child thought about the tasty ants, and the sticks he licked them from. He thought about his mother, and the sweet milk she gave him. He thought about the trees, and the fruit he ate from them.
And he looked up at the stars in the midnight sky, shining on him from
across the Universe. And he heard them singing.
God said to the child:
“Do you like the shining Universe I’ve made for you? Do you like the
fruit from the trees, and your mother’s milk? Do you like the ants you
poke from the logs with your stick?”
And the child answered
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“I do too” said God.
“And I love you most of all, because you love what I love.”
And then God asked the child:
“And do you hurt when you fall, and do you weep when you are lonely?”
“Yes”, said the child.
“I do too,” said God. “And now we can comfort each other.”
And through the child’s ears God heard the stars singing, and through the child’s eyes God saw the shining skies. On the child’s tongue, God tasted the ants, and in the child’s throat, God felt the sweet juice from the fruit trees. In the child’s bones, God suffered the pain of the child’s fall, and in the child’s tears, God wept with grief.
And God was not lonely any more.
God said:
“Dearest child – will you lend me your hands, and your strong young legs
as well? Will you look after my beautiful Earth for me? Will you keep
the rain clean, and the skies clear, and the forests green and bright? And
all the creatures that roam the land and seas, eating each other and being
eaten – even though they do not answer my questions, they are all
precious to me, and they are your brothers and sisters and cousins – will
you love them, as I love you?”
And the child thought in deep silence.
But all he would say was:
“Perhaps….”
© Elizabeth Liddle, 2000
We are more closely related to what than to chimps? Genera are quite arbitrary units, and of course if we decided to extend the name Pan to the entire Pan + Homo clade, Ardipithecus ramidus would automatically be renamed P. ramidus. There are many traditionally established mammalian genera whose history is deeper than the human/chimp split — Canis and Felis, for example.
Gotta love the Church of England.
If every church was as civilized as they are, I’d have zero problems with religionists.
Note that the news article agrees completely with the points Lizzie has made in this thread:
Of course, we should also note the Anglican Communion, that is, the denomination in which CoE belongs, is facing schisms over the refusal by some groups to ordain women in any position at all or in any position higher than deacons or priests, ie consecrated bishops.
So they’re not all sweetness and light. But it’s a start towards a more just world for both halves of the human population.
I agree.
It’s just a story (much like all of the other theologies). Why would it need to satisfy?
Arbitrary at the beginning, maybe, but once they’ve accumulated a bit of a pedigree it becomes a bit less so in practice. Naming conventions are bounded by utility first and foremost, and it seems to me subsuming all hominins into Pan, essentially doing away with the subtribe entirely, would add to the arbitrariness and subtract from the utility of the current system. It’s bad enough mourning the loss of Pluto to the community of planets, I don’t want to be the one that announces that Homo, Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, and Orrorin, are no longer taxonomically distinct. The number of physical and behavioral differences between Pan and Homo are more than enough, I think, to rate separate genera. The dramatically different thermal control system, reproductive and locomotive modes would probably rate a noncontroversally different genera for any other pair of groups were it not us.
Yeah, no.
I don’t really believe in god, and the god I don’t really believe in would not have any gender to begin with and therefore would be accurately referred to as “It” (without implying any inanimate thingy-ness, just gender neutrality per the English language). But I can still answer why it’s different to refer to a god as “she” than to call it a “goddess”.
Words do have meanings and adding the suffix “ess” — in the world in which we have all been socialized — definitely, always, refers to the inferior or alternate version of a status/profession which is normatively male. Actor becomes actress, but actresses are somehow never quite as respectable, never viewed as committed to their art in the same professional manner as the males. Waiter becomes waitress, but waitresses are the ones who work at the truck stops and waiters are the ones who work at the we-take-food-seriously restaurants. Yes, those are silly generalizations, but language stokes and reinforces those generalizations in peoples’ minds and then their bias in turn reinforces the split in the word usage. How many young women dreamed of growing up to be a serious actor, compared to how many young men? It’s better now, precisely because we have collectively stopped using the female-limited term “actress” and have started calling them all what they are, “actors” equally.
Now that intersects in a peculiar way with the usage of “gods” and “goddesses”. I understand that the non-Abrahamic peoples who genuinely did believe/still do believe in female gods — such as Artemis, The Cailleach, Amaterasu, and Kali — see their female gods as being equal counterparts of their male gods, and might accept the term “goddess” if only it didn’t imply a lesser femaleness. But that’s exactly the problem here: Christianity stole the word “god” as the given name for their one-and-only god, and while all “pagan gods” are automatically seen as lesser beings, the male-normative culture exemplified in the “ess” suffix made “goddesses” even less important.
So, if you’re a person who believes equality is important and that excluding half the human race is not a good idea, the solution won’t be to encourage even more usage of an irredeemable sexist term “goddess”. (No more than it would be a solution to declare “Waitressing is a worthy profession. Why do females insist on being called waiters nowadays?”)
Specifically, this bit:
Okay, and there is a grand tradition of female writers in many cultures and we very willingly refer to all of them as authoresses. There is a grand tradition of female protectors of minors, and we very willingly refer to all of them as guardianesses. RIght?
Yeah, no, we should be reluctant to do that here.
You no longer accept that “authoress” is an equal substitute for “author”. And I don’t accept that “goddess” is an equal substitute for the name of the christian god. Because I may not believe in a christian god, but I do believe in little boys and little girls being raised with equal stakes in our culture.
^Yes.
In that case,telling me that I should have considered a specific tradition when selecting my pronoun is moot.
Right?
You might like to scrutinize the beliefs you express here.
No.
How would that even follow?
Glen Davidson
Sure.
I’m not the one who can’t even read what the other wrote properly, never understanding because I have a rigid ideological position. I don’t, and you don’t like that I don’t.
And what “beliefs” do I express here, other than that one should think, not merely follow the dictates of an ideology? I’m not pushing any position, save one of respecting other people even when you disagree with them, and you fault me for not being dogmatically committed to your unexamined beliefs.
Glen Davidson
hotshoe_,
hotshoe, where are you on “actress”?
Well, I guess there are particular values and assumptions here that you’re just assuming are universal, but that’s not necessarily so. Such as that “waitress” is automatically valued less than “waiter”, or “actress” is automatically valued less than “actor”, or that “goddess” is automatically valued less than “god”. That hasn’t been my experience. I see waiters and waitresses being essentially equally undervalued, actors and actresses equally worshiped and maligned, and gods and goddesses of generally equal stature. I don’t think Athena, for example, played second fiddle to the male gods in the Greek pantheon.
It also strikes me as a little schizophrenic when, in an attempt to equalize the female with the male gender roles you still seem to “accept” that the male term carries the higher status by adopting that one, rather than trying to bring up the status of the female term. Yet you won’t go for gender-neutral pronouns. On one hand, you acknowledge the continuing importance of the gender identification, yet on the other you drop the vocabulary of one gender in favoring the other. It doesn’t make much sense to me. If you want to take pride in your gender identity and maintain a “separate but equal” status, then by all means take pride in gender-specific nouns as well. Otherwise, if gender truly doesn’t matter at all, if it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion, then drop all references to it and adopt neutral pronouns.
Anyway, I still hold that the whole gender thing is a tempest in a teapot, and that the more important implications of Elizabeth’s essay have been completely ignored here.
Just stating things doesn’t make them so.
I would have used it without thinking twice a few decades ago and I still sometimes feel a shock when I hear “actor” out loud where a woman is being introduced as the actor. But I won’t allow myself to (knowingly) use any male/female delimited terms any more in my own speech.
I don’t recollect that I’ve ever corrected anyone about their choice to use “actress” if they still want to. Oh, that’s not because I’m more restrained anywhere else than I am here, it’s because the particular subject never comes up. I really do blurt out “Don’t say sexist things” to people I know in real life when they say some stupid that catches my attention.
And I’m decades too old to have college-dorm enlightenment sessions, but men and women do talk, and I’m not too shy to tell even my elders that they can fix their habits of speaking about women as less-then-men. Dunno if it ever works, but I’m mindful of my obligation to the women (including my mom, my hero) who paved my way towards something approaching social equality, so I try for their sakes as well as for the sake of my non-existent grandchildren.
Funny thing is, just yesterday I was identified online (by someone who doesn’t know me IRL) as a normal male. I don’t care, it doesn’t make me feel bad personally, in fact I actually like it because it means I will be taken seriously.
I mention it here only to point out that Elizabeth was exactly right when she says that grown women always know about male-normative language. We’ve been living with it all our lives and some of us just take a little longer to catch on than others.
We’re all (male / female / non-binary) raised that way: when in doubt or when you don’t know, default to the assumption of “male”: male is what is normal and female is something different, not necessarily wrong but at minimum “other than male” and needing to be specified. It’s NOT neutral or nearly-neutral even when it’s not intentionally done to cause harm. It is continuously harmful to half the human race to always hear themselves referred to as “other than”.
It doesn’t have to be that way; that’s not Natural Law, that’s cultural perceptions and gendered language reinforcing each other.
I’m in a bit of an odd situation. My daughter is a construction manager and my son is a stay-st-home dad, so I would argue that I did pretty well at not damaging my kids. But I do not stand on my head to be politically correct in my speech. Or in anything else, for that matter.
I’m OK with neutral words, but not OK with being corrected. I do not actively resist change, but if someone is offended by me, I simply scratch them off the list of people I talk to.
How about “mother” and “father”? Do you prefer “female parent” to “mother”? Or do you think one should never say more than “parent”?
Of course, Athena didn’t play second fiddle, so why would our male-dominated christian-dominated culture try to belittle her status by calling her a “goddess” instead of just calling her a “god”?
Take a guess, why don’t you.
I’m glad you live in a world where waitress is not “necessarily” valued less than waiter. You must realize, though, that when you notice that it’s not “necessarily” or “automatically” so, that means that sometimes it is true that waitress is more undervalued than waiter. But you never notice that it’s never the other way around. Waiter is never more undervalued than waitress.
That’s the function of male-normative language, and the solution is not to simply believe we’re in a better world where if we click our heels together and say “Waitress is just as good, waitress is just as good” it will magically become so.
Bullshit. Are you seriously talking to me? Me, who makes a constant practice of calling god the gender-neutral “it”? Me, who un-ironically uses the pronoun “xe” when writing about a person whose gender I’m not sure of? Did you not notice me doing that, or did you think I merely was making a consistent set of typos when I did that?
What makes you think it ever would be your place to begin with to question why I “won’t go for gender-neutral pronouns”? Who are you to scold a woman about that?
Yeah, sometimes I take the easier way out, and use ‘he” when I should use “xe”. And sometimes I find myself in agreement with Elizabeth that the mere act of using “she” where people don’t expect it can enlighten them. Good for Elizabeth!
We were all socialized in a non-neutral sexist society. And our language is always, every day, male-normative. But trying to live with that and work around that as best I can doesn’t mean I “accept” it — no matter what you think it “seems” like.
Yeah, I know you really really don’t get it. No one wants to live in a “separate but equal” culture. Really, we’ve been there, done that, and we know it never works. What we need and want is not a separate culture but an actual culture of equality.
Just a tip, boyo, if you wanted to talk about something you thought important which Elizabeth said that’s being ignored, your choice of opening was stupid. Because you’re the one who chose to open with a “quibble” directed – not at Elizabeth’s “important implications” — at two women’s usage of certain gendered pronouns or other. And then you couldn’t let your quibble drip, you couldn’t let my reply just sit there without attacking it as “schizophrenic”. For chrissake.
Physician, heal thyself.
When you decide what’s important to discuss, maybe you’ll finally stop wasting my time telling me I’m wrong about your “tempest in teapot” complaint and just get on with discussing it, whatever it is.
Interesting, I see why you have a question for me, because I did say I don’t use “sex-limited” terms. But I meant that to refer to the artificially-limited terms which our culture has created to limit the perception of female and male equality (actress, heroine). I had a mother and father, just like every other mammal born. I don’t use a neutral word for specific people who have a specific self-identity. To him, “Dad” is his identity (that is, in relationship to his children; though we hope not in relationship to his employees, etc.) To her, “Mom” is her identity (if I’m addressing her as my own mother, or if we’re talking about her as a specific person raising her family). Of course that’s subsumed in a dictionary sense under the umbrella “parent” so if we’re just speaking in a general sense about child-raising, if we’re speaking about someone I don’t know personally, I would just use “parent”. Eg: The parent should walk their child to school; it’s good exercise for them both. I’m horrified, nauseated, when I see the equivalent in some cutesy advice column: Mom should walk her child to school.
If I were talking to you in person, and didn’t know which of your family was taking care of you, I wouldn’t (I hope I wouldn’t!) use Mom (or any single gendered word) as a lazy default. I can hear myself asking you “Did your folks walk you to school?” or perhaps “Did your mom or dad walk you to school?” but never just “Did your mom walk you to school?” UNLESS I knew that you had been raised by a woman you called mom, and yet didn’t know if she was the one you walked to school with.
I’d like to think that I’m careful and consistent, but who knows, I’m a biased witness when it comes to my own slips.
I think mother, father, and parent are particularly good counterexamples to the artificial, sexist division imposed by “authoress” and “actress”. I don’t mean to fall prey to gender essentialism and time is too short for a perfectly nuanced discussion — but the separate terms father and mother do reflect a physical difference in the work the male does of, at minimum, making sperm; compared to the work a female does of, at minimum, making a baby. Our perceptions about what else “father” or “mother” means — guarding, nurturing, whatever — may be partly biological and partly cultural but at least there is one small bit of objective difference.
Unlike the complete lack of objective difference in “guardian” and “guardianess”.
So “parent” is a bit interesting, because as far as I can tell, it has always been exempt from the belittling impulse that adds “ess” to separate out the female role. “Parentess” hardly gets results in google; it has basically never been used as a real word. I don’t speculate why the word “parent” has remained neutral when so many other role-names have been corrupted by sexism.
One of my kids is adopted. I like to think I’m her father in spite of my lack of sperm involvement. I think she’d agree.
I almost referred to that ‘kid’ as a ‘daughter’. Would that have been bad? Was it OK that I used ‘she’?
Carrying a baby is hard work and risky, but males can and occasionally do the parenting usually associated with mothering. That lasts longer than pregnancy.
Dumb question. Would everyone be okay with eliminating awards for actress and just having one or two awards for actor?
Oh, don’t give me so much trouble, walto. Was I really that unclear? I try very hard to think things through and then to say what will make my thoughts clear to the other person …
Yes, father is definitely the term for the male-identified person(s) who is/are raising their child(ren). The reason we all agree that you deserve to be named father in your case is not because you happened to provide the sperm which jumpstarted that particular little one (or any one, at all). If you think of yourself as father, then you are, it’s that simple!
Fathers have basically never been sure about that in history, anyways, so if we only used “father” to mean the known sperm provider, it wouldn’t be a common word at all. In fact, it would be “sperm-donor”. (And when was the last time you saw a Happy Sperm-Donor Day card at the local store? )
Nonetheless, our ancestors weren’t completely stupid. They knew there’s a difference between what the male person does to get a child and what the female person does. I figure that’s a valid difference universally acknowledged by humans, regardless of how our varying cultures see the further roles of “mothering” or “fathering”. As far as I know every human culture reflects that minimum difference with the valid separate terms “father” and “mother”. The concept begins with the biological difference but since we’re (sometimes) flexible agents, the role gets extended to anyone who steps into the cultural work of being father or mother, even those who won’t/can’t use their own body parts to create more biological children.
But as I keep saying since my first comment in this thread (and hardly anyone seems to believe me; I don’t know how Ilm failing) this issue is about respecting the chosen nouns/pronouns of someone’s self identity, while encouraging identity to be as unlimited as humanly possible. It is NOT at all the same as accepting our cultures’ arbitrary imposition that the one-and-only god is male and should be called “He” leaving girls and women lesser in status. Nor as accepting that women can’t be true heroes and should be happy to settle for the separate “but-equal” heroine.
No! I won’t settle. We don’t live in a post-racist, post-sexist society. If/when we ever get there … words will still matter; paying attention to words which support equality vs those that suppress will be commonplace, and I’ll won’t have to try to explain to people as if they’ve never heard the concepts before.
P.S. Thank you for adopting a child who needed a good Dad such as you.
Thank you.
I mean, for doing pretty well at not damaging them.
Not for raising a construction manager or a stay-at-home dad. Maybe that’s the icing on the cake, but the cake is that you tried and succeeded at being a good parent by letting them grow up to be their own persons, not twisting them into one role or the other that your own preference might have been. 🙂
Hotshoe, my point is only that (like Holmes) I’m suspiscious of hard-and-fast rules. I think the respect is what’s important, and the desire to use terms that don’t cause (rational) pain.
I think you (generally) agree with me about those goals (and I’m always glad to have you as an ally!) but the thing is, I’m guessing Glen does too. He merely came to a different conclusion about what they require than you and Lizzie do. Not a mortal sin, I don’t think.
Thanks for your kind words about my parenting. My girls would agree on maybe the third Tuesday of each month.
And I want to add that it’s no more pleasant having posters imply that one is sexist than having them suggest that one is anti-semitic.
I know, though, that Glen would never ‘over-react.’
It’s okay with me. Why wouldn’t it be? I assume that child self-identifies as a girl and is happy to be called your daughter, as I assume she’s happy to call you dad (assumptions based only on what you’ve written here since I don’t actually know you, but balance of probabilities are that you’re conveying the truth and I’m perceiving it.)
This isn’t the correctness olympics. I’m truly sorry if I’m giving anyone that impression. We know that we have physical-and-mental gender identities which are important to ourselves. It’s crazy-making not to acknowledge that where relevant. It’s disrespectful to assign the wrong identity out of laziness or male-normativity while it’s a bit silly to assign neutrality where we know the person’s preferred nouns/pronouns.
I don’t see why you’d worry it might be a mistake to call your child “daughter” when that’s who she wants to be. Unless you are worried about the mere fact that you’ve revealed you have a daughter? Too much information for internet safety? Sorry.
It’s horrible sometimes being a parent, the things there are to worry about, the new pitfalls generated by social media, and the haters and creeps who have now have new tools to ruin your children’s lives …
Sorry. IF we both believed in god, I could say “I’ll keep you in my prayers” and you would know that I mean I care, at least from a distance. We’re missing an easy non-theist equivalent. “Wish you all the best”.
walto:
Poor walto. Determined to claim victimhood despite the evidence.
Nor am I.
I just don’t happen to think that it is disrepectful to other people to refer to a generic God as she nor to use the female pronoun as the default in other contexts.
Clearly we disagree on this. And I respect your right to disagree.
Quite compatible with my preferences. My preference is that they be competent adults. In my son’s case, his wife makes five times his best income, and he likes being a mom.
My kids had a stay at home mom, and I think it’s desirable, though not essential. But people are different. I don’t try to force people into roles.
I actually wrote something quite different from that. But it doesn’t seem to matter what I really write.
Glen Davidson
Well, communication is often difficult. I apologise if I misunderstood you.
My concern is: orders of magnitude more people are saying sexist things and acting out sexist tropes than are currently saying anti-Semitic things/acting out on anti-Semitism. The problem of being labeled anti-Semite, a valid concern in some other context, is a distraction here. The percentage of listeners who possibly will be splashed by any one sexist comment is a bit more than 50% of the whole human race, so getting our society to cut out just one single bad habit of sexist language could save harm to billions. I probably can’t fix even one sexist thing, but considering the stakes, it’s worth trying.
Sexism is such an ingrained part of our culture everywhere, no one has to be blamed for doing it “on purpose”. If I say “Stop saying sexist shit” I don’t intend for the person to take it as a moral failing that they unconsciously say stupid stuff; I hope and intend for a wake-up call,
Ya don’t have ta take it personally. No one has to take it personally,
And I do want to be clear, I don’t remember ever noticing you personally doing something that looked sexist to me, nor remember ever telling you personally to “stop saying sexist shit”. So I assume when you say “having posters imply that one …” you’re talking about some other (hypothetical) poster here or somewhere, but not talking about you and I.
Well, ya know, I’m pretty sure whoever that hypothetical poster is, xe is a big grownup who can use their own words to tell me if I’ve stepped out of line with them.
If I’m wrong, and you meant yourself, then you’ll have to walk me through it because I honestly don’t see it.
Oh geez, I don’t have to accept your definition of “sexist,” and not being stupid, I don’t.
Feminism is fundamentally like creationism, as most of its claims are of near-fiat production of oppression. The complexity of evolution and social interactions don’t play into the scenarios, unless one gets to Christine Hoff Sommers or the like, and the bulk of feminism basically write her off as unworthy of response for not backing their dictates.
You have no right to judge me, considering your intolerance, your ignorance, and your inability to even consider that someone disagreeing with you on these matters should have their arguments addressed. I am not going to get into this to any real extent, because it’s more than obvious that you’re not open-minded, not knowledgeable, and not fair. Because that’s exactly how you have acted here, and because you’re proud of your gross intolerance of others.
The fact is that all I ever wanted to say was that one should use the terms that believers use for their gods, and for that I’m being labeled a sexist and whatever other dishonest shit you can fling. You are no more able to consider another viewpoint than is your typical creationist.
You do not get to dictate what is right and wrong, at least not yet.
Glen Davidson
I can’t see why a self respecting female would want to identify with Jehovah.
I didn’t see him as claiming victimhood (perhaps I didn’t read closely enough). But I did see that he and a few others were confused by hotshoe_ and Elizabeth. For myself, I didn’t see it as at all confusing. And I’m pretty sure that if I slip up on a pronoun, neither of them will try to eat me alive.
I’ll put walto down as a tad confused, but aware of his confusion and trying to sort it out by testing for reactions.
Neil:
He claims that I accused him of anti-semitism. It didn’t happen, of course.
It was because of this:
As I said, I think a rule like that is too broad to be appropriate. It throws the baby (girl) out with the bathwater.
And, no worries; I didn’t think you’d suggested that *I* was sexist. I was trying to indicate that your (very sensible) goal of trying to avoid hurting with speech might actually be shared by Glen, who simply took a different lesson from it. {I think I probably expressed this better above.}
But in any case, Glen is anti-over-reacting, so I doubt much harm was done.
The jury found that I over-reacted to your little “joke.” I accept their verdict and take some comfort from the fact that Glen will not similarly over-react to your shenanigans here.
IIRC, he’s a big fan of yours.
walto,
It wasn’t a “joke”, and the “jury” found not that you “overreacted”, but rather that your accusation was false:
Let it go, walto. And lay off the false accusations.
No, me neither.
But that’s not really a thing women do.
In spite of the mean words I use about christianity’s odious god, both OT and NT, I do recognize that the Jehovah identity is not the only aspect of god which true christians believe in. So when I (and Elizabeth) talk about the women who are dispossessed from the relationship with the god called “he” and “Father” that their menfolk have with that same god called “he” and “Father”, we think they wish to identify with the aspect of god which would be better named “she” or “Mother” and are prevented from doing so by the decisions of the Patriarchs of the church, reinforced by male-gender exclusive titles. That’s exactly what the new Anglican bishops are saying, that’s what christian women have been saying for two millennia, and that’s what the usually-buried Sophia tradition meant as Elizabeth has reminded us.
I don’t favor christian women at all; I want every one of them to be wise enough to leave religion altogether. I wish that women were actually superior, smarter than men, more courageous in saying no to the church. I’m disappointed. But since I can’t have what I want, I choose to agitate for the next best thing: for christian women to have an equal relationship with their god as christian men do, free of the sexist-human bias — worked out in nouns and pronouns — making us all think that god always has male aspect but not always female. Or never female.
*Looks around nervously to see if Gregory is nearby*
Are you tender enough to eat?
Old coots like you are usually too tough!
*Just kiddin’ Gregory. Atheists NEVER eat people. It’s against our religion.*
Great, I’m glad we’re good with each other.
Catch ya on the flip side.
Glen,
Elizabeth used the word “her” to refer to a generic designer-God. Gregory criticized her for that, and you and William jumped on the bandwagon.
Yet by your own criterion, her usage was appropriate:
She wasn’t referring to the Christian God (link). Your criticism was misplaced and inaccurate.
That’s the spirit!
Glen,
Take a look at your own behavior, Glen. Hypocritical references to a “bourgeois fit of ‘concern'” and “the yapping bourgeoisie” do not convey respect to those with whom you disagree.
So that was what I was referring to?
I even mentioned that I wasn’t actually aware of what Gregory had written when I came in, and clearly it wasn’t just about the one reference by then, even if it had been in the beginning. It seems absurd to suppose that any complaint would be about a single instance, and it does not appear to me that even for Gregory it was about one instance (I don’t even think it was really about the generic usage, but it’s for him to say for sure, if he chooses).
Your belief that the first mention defines the scope of the discussion is rather unusual, to say that least (not that I agree about that, either, but it would hardly matter to subsequent discussion even if true). Why don’t you try to impose this strange little notion onto all discussions, and see how much sense it makes to people? But then, it’s not really a principle that you hold to, just a bizarre notion that you think to use against me here. I’ll assume it’s in good faith, but then that suggests that you think rather poorly, at least when questioning turns to the “wrong subject.”
Glen Davidson
Glen:
Yes, as I already demonstrated:
Moved some comments to guano, but I see the back and forth goes back for a bit.
Time to move on I think.
Please remember the rules (applies to me too – it’s been an unexpectedly contentious topic)
Well, it’s not like you understand much, of course. There’s nothing hypocritical about it, since I am apt to make similar statements about less bourgeois folk when it becomes all too clear that their particular prejudices are running their responses. You really don’t know about that, do you? You just think you know that it’s hypocritical because you are ignorant of what I do.
Or in other words, you’re being hypocritical, as is your wont.
The problem with the bourgeoisie, however, is that while religious prejudices, conservative prejudices (and there is certainly overlap with bourgeois prejudices there), and past bourgeois prejudices are well-known and acknowledged by the bourgeoisie, the overwhelming majority think that this is all past them. OK, so do other people, but then that’s again obvious and obviously wrong to the reigning (largely bourgeois) opinion, yet to the same reigning opinion their own prejudices are not prejudices but mere truth–increasingly not to be questioned. So thinkers have generally attacked bourgeois prejudice, not even because it’s really worse or different (arguably, it may be somewhat better) than other prejudices, but because those are the prejudices that matter a great deal.
So was Nietzsche hypocritical to attack the bourgeoisie? I took the “yapping bourgeoisie” from a translation of Beyond Good and Evil, because it seemed fitting (chattering classes, as more aware petty bourgeois types will ironically call themselves)? Am I supposed to sit by and be attacked by misrepresentations and labels without noting bourgeois prejudices and the like? Of course I know to attack, and can use leftish rhetoric to my advantage, but it’s not the slightest bit dishonest because I mostly don’t disagree with Marxist analysis (their solution, on the other hand, rather more), nor with the better Nietzschean analysis of power (which competent leftists do use, but by no means does it belong to the left, either by origin or by target–no one is really left out of Nietzschean recognition of power play), and I don’t see how the bourgeoisie should be allowed to pretend a lack of prejudice.
It’s different with the reigning powers, to be sure, and while I certainly do attack the prejudices of the less powerful at times, it is different with power and its structures precisely because they are powerful. So I’m not pretending to treat the powerful and the relatively powerless the same. However, there is absolutely no good reason to do so, either.
So was Nietzsche hypocritical in attacking the “yapping bourgeoisie”? Why or why not?
Glen Davidson