Alt Right goes Alt Banksy with amazing(ly dumb) Adidas meme

@ ohlmann

Ah yes, the whole ‘tu/vu’ thing. I understand there’s a similar thing in German.

@ POM

Yeah, I can see that. Although then theres that almost verbal tick thing. Ah well, if we can transition from thee thou thy I’m sure we’ll eventually suss this one.

@Weatherwax

It’s such a perfect picture of the pre-war intellectual set. Varying positions on feminism – from the Dean’s magnanimity to Miss Hillyard’s crusading anti-femininity; varying stripes of classism, even (perhaps especially) by the protagonists; general agreement as to the benefits of eugenics; little deliberate racism, but certainly a massive tonal discord for modern readers; and, generally, wonderfully written and full of insight.

Re: pronouns: certainly, the singular “they” is linguistically sound and well-supported, and I feel fairly confident using it in everyday conversation… but I feel have that slight sense of impersonality, which leads me to be happy to use “he” or “she” for myself but hesitate over “they”. Funny, innit?

‘They’ is a little weird but not too hard to say. I already say ‘him’ and ’em’ similarly, so that’s not an issue. Reflexive case is the thing that gets me tho. Everything in my being rejects ‘themselves’ as singular, leaving ‘themself’. That’s not even a word. Rock and a hard place, ya know? Luckily, reflexive case is avoidable in most situations, so I scarcely hafta use it

Re: mad white people (not getting at anyone here. Venting generally)
They can have a seat. I’m so sick and tired of the white middle/working class and people tryna understand them. Fuck em. You’re not special. Any grievance you have, somebody else, white or otherwise, will be able to discuss it just as well as you. Preferably somebody who isn’t supporting a fascist for President. And what even are these grievances? What’re the unique challenges faced by the white middle class? Not rhetorical

And that gets to the bigger point. The white middle class is taken seriously while everyone else’s issues are diminished. Black people hafta start a fuckin movement in order to get people talking about how cop killings are maybe a bad thing. Meanwhile, Chet from Iowa and Linda from Nevada are separately, nebulously incensed at ‘the establishment’, and everybody’s lining up to solve their problems

And of course, they’ll go on and on about making the country ‘great again’ and how everything’s worse than it was. Yadda yadda, dogwhistle dogwhistle. They don’t feel like they have a voice, so they’ll elect as their voice a person who’ll take away everyone else’s voice. Like I said. Fuck em. They’re human beings, Murican citizens no less, and a lot are seriously suffering. But as far as I’m concerned, as soon as you throw everyone else under the bus like that, you can take a number and go all they way to the back of the fuckin line. We’ll get to your grievances. Eventually…

What does ‘shiv-right’ mean? I’d Google it but I’m scared.

Also, I started to take Heartiste’s hot girl test, but then I was supposed to do shit like measure for a hip to waist ratio, and I decided I didn’t care that much about accurate results. I’m doing laundry and writing a history test instead.

Funny story about the singular they:

In my brief stint as Writing Center Coordinator* I once got a blistering reply from one of the English faculty for daring to use “they” as a singular pronoun to ensure tutor/student confidentiality.

Two weeks later, that particular English faculty member posted a link to a Washington Post article about how they were officially transitioning to a singular they as a gender neutral pronoun and all the English faculty seemed pretty excited about it.

I felt secretly vindicated.

English is bizarre and confusing, and the singular they is awesome.

*I was a Math Specialist but we lost our Writing Specialists and the new one wasn’t hired yet so they were like “CONTRAPANGLOSS! You wrote papers as an undergrad! Manage the Writing Studio for us!”

You can guess how well that worked. I was extremely happy when a real writing specialist was hired.

I took Monzach’s remarks to mean, not that English has no non-gendered third person singular, but that English might be better off if it only had non-gendered third-person singulars. Which, I suspect, is true.

And what even are these grievances? What’re the unique challenges faced by the white middle class? Not rhetorical

The only one I can think of is being racist scum. Not joking. If the white middle and working class could get over that one, they’d be sitting pretty.

Seriously. “An aggrieved sense of entitlement” technically counts as a unique challenge, but, well, there’s one solution and it’s not one any outside person can provide.

I took Monzach’s remarks to mean, not that English has no non-gendered third person singular, but that English might be better off if it only had non-gendered third-person singulars. Which, I suspect, is true.

You is also plural.

@PoM

I am inclined to always think that any individual is the #1 expert on what is in that person’s best interest, and that that person will operate to achieve that to the best of their ability. If we think that someone is operating against their own best interest, the question we really need to ask ourselves is why we think that we know that person’s best interest better than the person does

*applauds*

@Dali

The only one I can think of is being racist scum. Not joking

I got higher incidence of drug addiction and maybe something something farm stuff. Completely blank beyond that

Their platform explicitly addresses economic justice, and all the things they propose would help the white working class too

Key word. White people (but dudes mostly) aren’t “too”. Everyone else is supposed to be “too”. It’s not about solutions, it’s about their solutions. So long as they or someone like them thought of it for them, it’s OK. Ugh…

@Alan

I think perhaps Trump is exploiting the fundamental selfishness of panicking human beings; and feeding/creating that panic

Yep. And your ‘punishment’ for going along with that panic is the back of the fuckin line

The calm sensible person saying there’s room enough for everyone can get drowned out in such circumstances

I see what you did thar ?

@Diptych

An aggrieved sense of entitlement

I shall use this phrase henceforth. Thankee kindly 🙂

Also, I suspect that the reason that the singular they seems distancing is at least in part that English speakers have long used it to indicate ‘person I don’t have enough information about to determine a gender for’. So saying ‘Someone called from the bank? Did they leave a message?’ sounds natural, and so does ‘If someone slips and falls on that ice they’ll probably sue’. But ‘we worked with Amelia on the last project and they were awesome. They walked us through every step.’ sounds odd, because if you had such a great frickin’ experience with Amelia, how come you don’t know if Amelia is a guy or a gal?

That will change, I imagine. I’m old enough to remember when calling one man another’s husband sounded weird in liberal circles, and now it doesn’t. Language changes pretty fast.

@Alan

Ah yes, the whole ‘tu/vu’ thing.

It’s ‘vous’, not ‘vu’. /nitpick

Having a familiar/formal (and singular/plural) split in second person words is pretty common in a bunch of languages. Du and sie, in German, tú and vos in Spanish, etc. English actually has a familiar(/singular) second person word too. It’s ‘thou’. It’s just been phased out of our language and sounds incredibly archaic now.

Re: pronouns

Oh you lucky lucky bastards, who only have to deal with third person prounouns and occasionally an old relic of a gendered word.
Even in a language like French, which is more gendered than English, you still have second person as neutral, and the verb forms tend to be the same for male and female.
Semitic languages, though? Nope nope nopity nope. (Specifically speaking here of Hebrew and Arabic, being the ones I know, although I think the general rules apply to others as well.)
Wanna say “you”? You have to choose if it’s את (“att”, feminine) or אתה (“atta”, masculine). Wanna choose the plural instead? Sure, pick אתם (“attem”, m.pl.) or אתן (“atten”, f.pl.) and so on.
And verbs are gendered, as well; even our “neutral” (the equivalent to “one does”, or the more modern “you do”) is usually based on the masculine plural present participle. You can’t win.
The only places where you can bypass that are first person singular/plural (but only in past or future tenses, because our present tense is the participle so you have to choose again between אני כותב [“ani kotev”, I write / am writing, m.] or אני כותבת [“ani kotevet”, same, f.]) and, in a way, the third person plural forms (past/future/imperative tenses only, again because of the participle), which is technically the masculine form but has been used for both male and female since a very early time – so much so that in past tense, third person plural doesn’t even have a feminine form (other tenses have a feminine form which tends to sound more archaic). The latter is only true for Hebrew; as far as I know, Arabic does still make that distinction, although that might be different in different dialects.
And even then, it’s kind of a crappy solution, because you’re still using the male as default, and erasing the feminine. It isn’t a truly neutral form.

Some activists have taken to using the feminine form as default, in protest, and to try and change what looks “natural”. I still can’t get myself to do that, even though I appreciate what they’re doing.