The latest intra-liberal-blogger semantic wars involve the use of the phrase "big girl" as a pejorative against a male Senator (Melissa catches us up here and here), and I'll have a bit to say about that in a minute but first I admit to some confusion, as I've never heard that phrase. The one with which I'm familiar (and from which "big girl" seems to be truncated) is the British expression "big girl's blouse," which this site says is also pejorative, but at the end it mentions a possible origin which makes a lot of sense to me - that the insult has nothing to do with a big girl, nor the blouse of a big girl (i.e., the word "big" is just a modifier) but the blouse itself, a rather frilly and ineffectual piece of clothing compared with the more solid "shirt." On the other hand, this site says
And we find ourselves back where we started from, which is that once again an A-list male blogger appears to have a willful blind spot where institutionalized and internalized sexism are concerned, so much so that, instead of being able to acknowledge his insensitivity even a little, he gets defensive and lashes out at those who would dare criticize his choice of words, seeking to marginalize and belittle their concerns. (Here's last year's winner in that category.)
People, we're bloggers, words are pretty much all we have here; it behooves us to know their power and use them wisely.
And speaking of words, here are some other good musings on this meta-subject (bearing in mind there's probably way more out there but my blog catch-up has been spotty):
• Lesley at Plum Crazy on the continued marginalization of important political stances by A-list male bloggers by labelling them "women's issues" - interesting how these same bloggers then chastise anyone who doesn't agree with their version of coalition-building.
• Rana at Frogs and Ravens with some great insights about the competitive nature of these A-list male bloggers, and how some people practice capital-P Politics (i.e., it's a game to them, the same way that some old Usenet acquaintances of mine viewed newsgroup conversation as necessarily a debate with winners and losers) as opposed to small-p politics (i.e., it's actual life, not some stupid oneupsmanship thing). I also suspect this capital-P Politics thing is what drives so many liberal bloggers to obsess overly about the right-wing blogosphere, which I rarely if ever notice.
• Bob Harris on English as a first language. C'est magnifique!
• Two posts on the Bitch being back, by Earlbecke at Alas (A Blog) and Piny at Feministe.
• Chris Clarke on cheap insults like fat-bashing and racist stereotyping that have taken the place of reasoned discourse or even on-topic mockery. One would think an inclusive movement such as liberalism is purported to be wouldn't stoop to this, but then one would think liberals wouldn't be sexist either.
• And Zuzu at Feministe follows up on Chris' post with two good ones of her own on anti-fat bigotry in the liberal blogosphere. I do take exception to her conclusion, though, that "Anti-fat prejudice is real, and pervasive, but the answer is not to insist that being obese is always perfectly healthy. The answer is to insist on the provision of better health care..." I think part of the answer is to work on separating outward appearance from actual health. Someone isn't automatically healthy if they're svelte, just like they're not automatically unhealthy if they're fat. I know lots of folks who are fat and fit; I used to be one of them.
Hmm, looks like we're back to that Big Girl thing. But hey, what do I know - in my world, being a Big Girl is just fine.
'Blouse' has for 300 years or more been English slang for a very unseemly woman, from 'blowze', which was slang for a slovenly woman, prostitute or 'beggars wench' as the OED quaintly puts it." [This survives today in the word "blowsy."] "This would suggest that some distortion or confusion led to the expression's development. It's easy to imagine that people confused the earlier meaning with that of the female garment and then given the feminine nature of the garment, attached the derogatory weak 'girly' or 'sissy' meaning.So however you phrase it, it would seem that "big girl" or "big girl's blouse" is probably sexist after all, in that, as the old saying goes, the worst insult one can fling at a man is to call him a woman.
And we find ourselves back where we started from, which is that once again an A-list male blogger appears to have a willful blind spot where institutionalized and internalized sexism are concerned, so much so that, instead of being able to acknowledge his insensitivity even a little, he gets defensive and lashes out at those who would dare criticize his choice of words, seeking to marginalize and belittle their concerns. (Here's last year's winner in that category.)
People, we're bloggers, words are pretty much all we have here; it behooves us to know their power and use them wisely.
And speaking of words, here are some other good musings on this meta-subject (bearing in mind there's probably way more out there but my blog catch-up has been spotty):
• Lesley at Plum Crazy on the continued marginalization of important political stances by A-list male bloggers by labelling them "women's issues" - interesting how these same bloggers then chastise anyone who doesn't agree with their version of coalition-building.
• Rana at Frogs and Ravens with some great insights about the competitive nature of these A-list male bloggers, and how some people practice capital-P Politics (i.e., it's a game to them, the same way that some old Usenet acquaintances of mine viewed newsgroup conversation as necessarily a debate with winners and losers) as opposed to small-p politics (i.e., it's actual life, not some stupid oneupsmanship thing). I also suspect this capital-P Politics thing is what drives so many liberal bloggers to obsess overly about the right-wing blogosphere, which I rarely if ever notice.
• Bob Harris on English as a first language. C'est magnifique!
• Two posts on the Bitch being back, by Earlbecke at Alas (A Blog) and Piny at Feministe.
• Chris Clarke on cheap insults like fat-bashing and racist stereotyping that have taken the place of reasoned discourse or even on-topic mockery. One would think an inclusive movement such as liberalism is purported to be wouldn't stoop to this, but then one would think liberals wouldn't be sexist either.
• And Zuzu at Feministe follows up on Chris' post with two good ones of her own on anti-fat bigotry in the liberal blogosphere. I do take exception to her conclusion, though, that "Anti-fat prejudice is real, and pervasive, but the answer is not to insist that being obese is always perfectly healthy. The answer is to insist on the provision of better health care..." I think part of the answer is to work on separating outward appearance from actual health. Someone isn't automatically healthy if they're svelte, just like they're not automatically unhealthy if they're fat. I know lots of folks who are fat and fit; I used to be one of them.
Hmm, looks like we're back to that Big Girl thing. But hey, what do I know - in my world, being a Big Girl is just fine.
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