Feminism. I strongly believe in the idea of gender equality - that is, total removal of societal gender roles, and complete ignorance of a person's gender with the exception of possible sexual preference, which is really the same a prefering a certain eye or hair color, or certain personality. No different cultural dress codes, no different personality or interest requirements, no different names, no different pronouns, no difference wages, no different career opportunities, no different legal treatment (take the hopelessness of men getting justice after being raped by a woman or a woman by another woman), no different job titles, and the list goes on. People don't get to pick what gender they end up with, so it isn't fair to punish them for it either way.
That's why feminism bothers me so much. It doesn't want equality, it wants a society where women are superior. It refuses to acknowledge that men face discrimination, and it makes us out to be sex-crazy monsters. All the standardized tests over here now have Female positioned to the left. I personally don't care either way, and it hasn't taken me long to adjust to filling in the second bubble, but its the principle of it. Why must the standard be changed just to do that? It's equally unfair one way or the other, and therefore, only selfish bastards, and not someone looking out for overall good, would consider it worthwhile to pester the test makers to rework an entire standard.
Then there's the he/she BS. I've managed to make a habit out of it because I know if I don't, someone will make a harsh remark about how I falsly "assumed" a cheerleader was female or a hockey player was male. It's about probability. I like to use "Ze" instead of He or She in my personal writings, but no one else understands that, so I have no choice by to take a wild guess or use really awkard/broken english to avoid making a minor, insignificant mistake. I personally would prefer the ladder if it didn't result in so much pissing and moaning. Think about this, if assuming the wrong gender is sexist, then why are dishonorable roles that more likely have men, such as rapist, still assumed to be male, while more honorable roles that most often have women, such as teacher, are assumed to be female? More importantly, why is it that women do it too and make the exact same assumptions as the men. My Mom automatically referrs to all drivers as male when we're out on the road. That doesn't mean she thinks women shouldn't be driving, because SHE'S DRIVING.
Then there's english spelling and grammar rules. They seem to just be an NT way of getting in an intellect pissing match. For example, I did not capitalize "English" in the first paragraph. Did anyone even notice? More importantly, did it affect your abiliy to understand what I was saying? We read mutilated crap on the internet all the time, and unless it's exceptionally piss-poor it doesn't stop us (technically "Internet" is a proper noun, and should thus be capitalised, but no one knows, nor cares, except for the English teachers and clippit.). Let's not forget why language is a benefit to our species in the first place - it enables us to share our thoughts with eachother. Grammar and spelling are getting so rediculous that it's actually interfering with that core purpose.
Spelling in English has just gotten silly. The grammarians have kept spelling from changing as people's accents change. These accents can change very quickly, and normally, the language would change with it do, but if I try to say "alot" instead of a lot, or "geranteed" instead of "guaranteed", I get pestered for doing it "wrong". Hence, letters have now lost all purpose except as constructs for word appearance. They are no longer used to actually pronounce things. Every time I come across a new word, in writing, I don't know how to prounounce it. Every time I come across a new word by word of mouth, I don't know how to spell it. That's because there's simply no rules anymore, and with rougly a million words in the English language, that's too much memorization. Any "proof" of intelligence language offers, despite already being inherently pointless and innacurate, is now surely lost thanks to the invent of spell checkers. I really don't care if a big company I'm doing business with can't spell "dallars", because that has nothing to do with the services they provide.
As for grammer, it's also getting quite stupid. Commas used to actually mean something; they were a way of indicating to a read that they are to pause for a moment. Now, they must be placed as part of specific sentence structures, regardless of whether or not a comma actually belongs there. Likewise, if you want to simulate a stammer, you can't say anymore "Well, I, um, yea I did it." because that's not grammarically correct. Instead it's "Well I um yea, I did it.". Hence, commas now have absoluetely zero purpose in using language what is was meant for, to communicate an idea, and now only serve to make learning the language harder. We still have three dots, but that's really meant for longer pauses, and it just isn't the same.
21 Sep 2006, 2:32 am
