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By David Futrelle
Some guys can’t take a hint. Or even several thousand hints.
Remember the dude who, only a few short weeks ago, had a Twitter meltdown after trying to “correct” a world-famous vagina expert on the proper use of the words “vulva” and “vagina” — a meltdown so epic that the folks at Dictionary.com felt compelled to step in to tell him that he was wrong?
Well, he’s back, and back on his bullshit again. Yesterday he popped up on Twitter, defiant as ever, with a 20-page (single-spaced) manifesto explaining why he was right all along.
The new tweet caused thousands of Tweeters to let out a sigh that could be heard around the world, and generated a truly astounding ratio: the last I checked, the tweet had more than 2000 replies — mostly from people telling him he’s wrong — and only eight retweets.
To refresh your memory on the original controversy. Bullen took issue with the word “vulva” being used in the headline of a Guardian article about a book of photographs of women’s, well, vulvas; he insisted that the “correct” word in this instance was “vagina.” When gynecologist Jen Gunter, author of the forthcoming book The Vagina Bible, reminded him that the word “vagina” refers to the inside stuff and “vulva” to the outside stuff, Bullen essentially suggested she was being a word snob because most people use the word vagina, informally, to mean that whole thing down there.
That’s certainly true. But he didn’t just say, hey, why not use the word vagina here since that’s the one people use colloquially to refer to both the vulva and the vagina. Instead, he insisted that the article’s correct use of the word vulva was incorrect.
And that’s what he does again in his new manifesto, in an even more convoluted manner.
“My opening gambit was to say ‘The correct word is vagina’ in response to a use of the word vulva where one normally would expect to see the word vagina,” he wrote.
I wasn’t denying that the things that we could see in the photos were technically called vulvas or parts of vulvas. I was claiming that the use of the word ‘vulva’ was solecistic in this non-technical context—although it I assumed it was intentionally so. And it may well no longer be a soleciscistic in certain circles.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the definition of solecism from Merriam-Webster:
So, yeah, he’s using this word incorrectly. There’s nothing ungrammatical, deviant, or even impolite about using the word vulva to refer to, well, a vulva. He continues on:
My general starting point is that the English language has evolved in ways that give some words both narrow and broad meanings. … One example of such words is vagina. Everyone knows it is used in two ways: (1) most commonly to refer to the female genitals in general and (2) to refer to one particular part of them. My position is that not only is this a descriptive fact about English language use, but that this descriptive fact determines correct use. Correct use here simply means that people will know what you are talking about and you won’t sound strange.
In other words, he”s insisting once again that using the actual dictionary definitions of “vulva” and “vagina” is “incorrect usage” because it “sound[s] strange.”
Then he takes aim at people like Dr. Gunter who use the dictionary definitions of these words because, in his mind, this is a violation of “standard usage.”
Just as people sometimes violate the law to bring about a revolution, people sometimes violate standard usage as part of a attempt to change usage. But these people are speaking “incorrectly” (coming across as solecistic) for the sake of making a change.
Again, the “change” Gunter and others are trying to make is to get people to use the words “vulva” and “vagina” correctly. But to Bullen this makes them incorrect:
That is where the issue should have been—whether there is sufficient reason to violate existing practice. … So there is a small number of women who say “vulva” when one would expect “vagina” as they are convinced it is the “correct” term. That’s pretty much where the issue lies.
Of course, the “small number of women” who insist on saying “vulva” when Bullen would rather use “vagina” are “convinced it is the ‘correct’ term” because it is in fact the correct term, as defined in the dictionary. As the people at Dicitonary.com reminded him.
His real objection to using “vulva” seems to be that feminists are using the term and he doesn’t like that, or them.
“I often resist changes in the language that are being made for what I take to be the wrong reasons,” he declares. After citing a number of not-particularly relevant examples — like “English speaking Canadians … pronouncing Quebec the way the French speakers do. And … Americans … pronouncing Chile the way Spanish speakers do.” — he gets to his real objection: he hates what he sees as “politically correct” language. He offers no logical explanation for this other than to suggest that such language is excessively euphemistic.
I may be willing to go along with saying disabled person rather than handicapped person, I am not willing to say person with a disability rather than disabled person. I am not willing to say enslaved person rather than slave. I was willing to switch from the perfectly good word Negro to black, but I was not willing to move again from black to African American. And I am not willing to say undocumented immigrant rather than illegal alien. There is a general neurosis caused by activists who like to announce every few years that an existing usage is problematic and should be replaced by what they say.
Well, that’s your right, dude. But don;t be surprised if people call you out for being the jerk that you are.
Still, it would seem that feminists insisting on the correct usage of the words “vulva” and “vagina” — using them according to the literal dictionary definitions of each word — would be different than introducing a new term, like African-American instead of black. But nope! In Bullen’s mind it’s all part of the same “neurotic” impulse.
So when I see attempts to say “vulva” where normally “vagina” would be seen, I suspect ideological influences or bad thinking. … I don’t jump every time an ideological faction says jump. I got off the euphemism treadmill awhile ago.
If I may eschew euphemism myself for a moment, he’s essentially saying: fuck you, feminists, I won’t say “vulva” because you want me to — even if the dictionary itself backs you up.
Bullen goes on reiterating points he tried to make in the original thread — suggesting that Dr. Gunter’s vagina expertise doesn’t count because we’re dealing with words and not medical issues, and even mansplaining the term mansplaining, which he insists he wasn’t doing. But you’ll have to sort through that yourself, as I’ve gotten tired of this pompous fuckhead and his fractal wrongness.
Sorry, I forgot that I’m supposed to be on the “euphemism treadmill” again.
Speaking of which, there weren’t a lot of euphemisms in the Twitter response to Bullen’s new and decidedly not improved mansplaination. “Dude, give it a rest,” tweeted Dr. Gunter. “This is egregious long form mansplaining.”
Others were equally withering:
It’s Stop O’Clock all right. At this point I can only conclude he’s keeping this going because he wants to get on Fox News as the latest brave man to stand up against the evil feminazi laguage police. But somehow I suspect that even the folks at Fox would find Billen’s long-form mansplaining a bit tiresome.
Get hold of yourself. As an editor, your job is to follow an established style guide to improve the readability of a manuscript. It’s not to impose your own ideas on a manuscript.
You’re also a human being. Again, get hold of yourself. Who are you to declare that you won’t say, for example, “person with a disability”? If you can’t stand to say a few more syllables, then maybe you should just be silent. Also, if you can’t stand the idea that disabled people have more rights than they used to, then you should prepare for pushback. More pushback. Pretty much constant pushback.
I get that technical jargon can be intimidating. I’m a physicist working in engineering. If I talk shop with a colleague people with different backgrounds are lost. Especially since we use industry specific abbreviations.
Being incomprehensible for the uninitiated doesn’t make technical terms wrong, though.
Vulva was used correctly. Everyone would have understood if the Guardian had used vagina instead. Still doesn’t make vulva wrong.
Colloquial terms existing doesn’t render technical terms incorrect.
I dearly wish people would stop misusing ‘quantum’, though…
I don’t regard “vulva” as technical jargon – merely an accurate label for a specific body part, in which respect it’s no different from an arm, a leg or a nose.
Mr Bullen may not use “vulva”, but frankly that says more about him than it does about anything else.
It seems obvious to me what happened here.
Mr. Bullen didn’t know what the word “vulva” meant (maybe he had never even encountered it before), so when he saw it on the Guardian article, he thought it was a euphemism for “vagina.” (Like calling a penis a ding-dong or something.) He couldn’t resist the opportunity to correct some women about using a euphemism for their genitals instead of the technically correct term, and posted “the correct term is vagina.” Note that he said the CORRECT TERM is vagina in his original comment.
The “dog-piling” didn’t happen until after a gynecologist and the dictionary told him that actually “vulva” is the technically correct term.
Unable to accept being told he’s wrong by anyone (especially not women), he made up something about “vulva” being TOO correct, and that’s why he’s right and they’re wrong.
But it’s really because he didn’t like feeling dumb for not knowing what “vulva” meant. He has to pretend that he DID know what it meant all along, and then come up with a 20 page manifesto (seriously? is it really 20 pages?) on why it’s actually correct to use the incorrect term.
Now I really hope that “to bullen” becomes a verb for this type of epic mansplaining. Mansplaining that won’t stop for weeks or months because the dude just can’t let it go.
Umm, what does “taking the L” mean? Is it like making the L-shape with your thump and index finger over your forehead to joking refer to yourself as a loser?
And what are all those mon references? They don’t seem to be talking about pokemon…
@CarrieV
It’s not a manifesto, it’s a treatise. ?
@Valkyrine
“Mons” is a reference to the mons pubis, otherwise known as the pubic mound, which is a pad of fatty tissue over the front of the pubic mound.
Google indicates that “taking the L” means “taking the loss” (in your stride), and it may be connected to sports terminology (“W/L” for “win/lose”).
“mon” references are to the pubic mound, the mons pubis, mons being the Latin term for “mountain”, which is then used as a play on “the hill you choose to die on” and The Sermon on the Mount.
EDIT: And ninja’d by @Victorious Parasol
@Ariblester
Yeah, I always liked that one. Until people like J A Wohl and Bullen appeared. Now it seems kinda nightmarish, like it involves some kind of horrible malfunction in the bits of you that grant you the ability to recognise your own failings, leaving you unable to do anything about the obviously stupid and awful things you’re doing in front of thousands of people to your own detriment, like some kind of curse.
“May you have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man”, like “may you live in interesting times.”
Thank you! ?
Also, typoed in the last comment. Should of been *jokingly, not joking…
Agree with Juniper. I have a good friend (a woman in my case) who does exactly this and it looks exactly like that. I love her, but sometimes she is insufferable in her inability to admit an error.
Bullen is trying to cover up for a minor but niggling instance of personal ignorance with displays of wild irrational public blustering predicated on a stanch implicit assertion that he’s always known what vulva means.
This may or may not be related to his man-aggrandizing proclivities, but it does draw attention to them and exposes him as a garbage person.
That twitter thread is pure gold. Thank you David.
Dude is still tweeting.
This douche. This fucking douche.
@dashapants:
Problematic. In Bullen’s case, I would accept “person of garbage” or “garbage-American”.
@ Paul Bullen:
Lemme bullenize this for y’all….
“Right” (and it’s corollary, wrong) is whatever y’all SAY it is… we get that. What you’re not understanding is, “humiliation” is whatever the Twitterverse says it is….
I have a new “I’m at my lowest point but at least I’m not THAT GUY” icon.
The article originally appeared in The Guardian, a paper whose target readership most assuredly does know what the word “vulva” means, and which therefore won’t find it the tiniest bit strange.
And it’s rather touching that he’s expressing such concern that others might “sound strange” given literally everything else that he’s posted on this topic.
@Moggie:
I’m looking forward to the weekly obituary installments, each one explaining why we’re all wrong for referring to it as “death” instead of the obviously correct term, “bid adieu to earthly scenes and entered into the joy of Abraham’s bosom”.
Why are we throwing away all these perfectly good words when there are starving bigots in Africa?
Bullen is the exact reason WHY the euphemism treadmill exists. New usages come about because marginalized people object to being referred to disparagingly as skin colors and body parts (calling someone “a Negro” is literally calling them “a black”). Often, when a newer and more neutral term is proposed, over time it acquires a derogatory connotation thanks to abusive supremacists and mansplainers, so a new term has to be found. It becomes a kind of arms race.
Being annoyed by this is like refusing to install system updates because you’re used to your OS being the way it is, and then writing angry letters to Microsoft demanding that they deprecate all the later versions.
Wouldn’t paper be a little less bulky?
This is from the Guardian’s house writing style guide…
@ Alan Robertshaw:
The example I once saw was “it’s like using ‘neck’ to mean ‘face.’”
(I mean, metonymy exists, but it usually involves using the name of part of a thing for the whole thing, not the name of a part that’s adjacent to the thing.)
@ Buttercup:
I… (oh, god…)
…
… Thanx for the comparison. I’m ashamed to say, I do this all the time. I don’t write letters to Microsoft, but I do gripe constantly about software changes. This is like a “light bulb” moment.
Wowwww… just… wowwww….
I mean, I’ve written my fair share of essay-length comments that in retrospect were probably a big waste of time, but just think of all the things that could have been done in the time it took this guy to just compound his own initially failure.
And sheesh, to who? Twitter randos? I’ve noticed social media has a nasty habit of inflating our sense of importance. Glib monssplaining is pretty low on the list of important things to do.
@Weird Eddie
To be fair, Microsoft patches often do break unrelated things and create extra headaches. Maybe a better analogy would be that Bullen’s head is a database schema with read-only privileges. He’s got his words for things all stored away, by cracky, and that’s that!
Huh. He talked himself into accepting the MOST PC term for disabled people – the term disabled people tend to prefer for ourselves – while trying to not be PC. Disabled people usually prefer “identity-first” language over “person-first” language: phrases like “person with a disability” implies that the disability 1) can be neatly separated from the person who has it and 2) is somehow undesirable and should be downplayed. It would be like calling someone a “person of femininity” instead of a “woman” or a “girl.”
@Buttercup:
The trouble with exposing your database ports to the Internet is that you tend to get owned, as Bullen has learned.