politics of language
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Researcher decodes prairie dog language, discovers they've been talking about us (Video) The results show that praire dogs aren’t only extremely effective communicators, they also pay close attention to detail.(via thothofnorth)
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The Speed of Language - Found on visual.ly
Cool
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“Most Whites find it easy to ignore residential segregation. I experienced a good example of this inattention when I told a lunch-table’s worth of White colleagues at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences about the linguist John Baugh’s project on “linguistic profiling” (Baugh 2003). Baugh has developed a matched-guise test in which a single speaker uses a “White professional,” a “Latino,” or a “Black” voice in making telephone inquiries about the availability of advertised rentals in the San Francisco Bay area. The “White professional” voice is much more likely to yield an invitation to make an appointment to look at the property, while the other accents are more likely to result in a response that the rental is no longer available. My colleagues, all sophisticated scholars, were genuinely surprised at this result; several mentioned that they had thought that this sort of discrimination had long since disappeared.” —Jane H. Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism (via wretchedoftheearth)
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This is like when me and my white soon-to-be husband were looking for places. I’d call up and they’d say, “Come on down! Get an application!”. Because I don’t “sound” black.
Then I’d walk in 2 minutes later and they’d be all, “Oh. Sorry, we just rented it.”
Then I’d send him in and he’d get an application.
The best part? Walking back in while he was completing the application. “Oh, they gave you an application? But they told me it was just rented. ODD. THAT. I’m going to report them so let’s just skip this place, m’kay?” The looks on their faces and the pathetic apologies were just too much fun.
Used to deal with the same thing with road trips. Hotels would tell me that there were no vacancies, but my white roommate would go in and get us a room, usually cheaper than advertised.
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(via faboomama)
I do similar stuff at restauants and other places of business with my white bf. At least it makes it easier to know where not to go!
(via 23andchildfree)
Reblogging again for the commentary
(via darkjez)
But we’re just supposed to *trust* and think everything is an *isolated* incident.
(via hamburgerjack)
Not so sophisticated scholars, were they? I mean this really, really shouldn’t be all that surprising.
(via stfunithingas)
It shouldn’t be surprising, but I guarantee that most white people find it unbelievable
(via wretchedoftheearth)
I’m going to reblog this every time I see it on my dash. My parents pointed out how this phenomenon worked when we were moving to PA (they’d get steered to crummier neighborhoods and have to insist on being shown others). Housing discrimination is still pretty widespread and the gatekeepers? Tend to either intentionally or due to unchecked bias reinforce the status quo.
(via invisiblelad)
It always floors me the things people are surprised at. Meanwhile, every person of color is sitting here like, “Oh. Must be another day that ends in Y, and in other news, water is wet.” Like, really, people are surprised by this, and whenever they show surprise at learning stuff that we go through, I have to poker face, lest I end up giving them the most disbelieving side eye in history because how do you NOT know this? But then, you know. Some people have the privilege of being able to be unaware it because it’s not a problem they have to deal with. :/ (via lori-jaye)
Reblogged again for commentary
(via covenesque)
Sounds like my friends when they were looking for a place in Midtown memphis(mostly white liberal middle class area)… they said people would invite them to see the places and then would either suddenly become unavailable or they would just ignore their phone calls.. but the Obama’s said “no more excuses.. work harder”…
(via jcoleknowsbest)
Sort of had this issue with an acquaintance of my boss. The application was approved and all systems were go until the potential tenant (a Black person) faxed in a copy of their picture ID. Suddenly, the landlord didn’t want to rent the home out anymore. A real estate agent on behalf of the client threatened to pursue legal action and the acquaintance asked us for advice.
I read the email and was like, “pbbft, your landlord fucked himself over. what do you want us to say? have fun getting sued, you should’ve known better.”
(via sara-huynh)
(via paradelle)
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Eat, Travel, Oppress: Travel Discourse and Imperialist Nostalgia - Shameless Magazine - your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth The self-obsessed language through which travel and travelling is typically talked about in our culture is rooted in an imperialist mode of thinking that sustains itself through othering poor people of colour. In fact, the ways of talking about travel have made it so that travellers going on vacations for fun, or trips to help others, do so in manners and behaviours that are strikingly similar to the trips that European colonizers took centuries ago when they first came to “civilize” the rest of the world.
In this light, travel discourse is directly perpetuating colonial ways of thinking: it markets travelling as an apolitical, carefree, schism-free and fluffy experience, unaccountable to historical and present violence caused by ongoing colonization. It ignores the reality that the actions of global powers are the main causes of the poverty and oppression in travel destination countries. We need new ways of talking about travel that does not equate gaining personal fulfillment at the expense of poor people, Indigenous people and people of colour.
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Screencapping someone’s post in order to criticize it is kind of douchey and if I could reblog this I would, but I can’t so I’m just gonna say:
Wow? I am really alarmed by and not cool with this?
Applying (relatively) niche sexual terminology to kids + an implicit tolerance for ignoring other people’s “no” is not…what? what?
Am I just being too sensitive? I’m open to the possibility that I’m being way too sensitive. But I’m also having a really hard time coming up with scenarios where it would ever be acceptable for parents to institute a practice with their kids that does have a primarily sexual meaning in the “real [adult] world”?
I dunno. I feel like the concept can be desexualized for use in other contexts, like this one, and I don’t really find it problematic in that sense. I agree that it would be far better to just take “no” as NO without having to dress it up with other words like this, and there’s the major difference between the sexual use of it and this non-sexual use - that the concept originated because in a kink context people don’t always want no to mean no, so there had to be a way to convey “no” without binding it solely to the word “no”. Whereas in a non-sexual context, I’m not sure I see a reason for no not to mean no. On the other hand, it’s true that kids get such shitty mixed messages around boundaries and saying no to adults - “It’s okay to say no to someone touching you if you don’t like it” but then “Go give Grandma a hug [whether you want to or not]” and that sort of thing - that while ideally they could learn and practice “no” on its own as an inviolable boundary, in practice it’s not so simple. So this strikes me as a pragmatist’s solution to the issue - yeah, it’d be better if we could just say “no” but that’s kinda complicated so let’s give them another tool to help reinforce their boundaries. So it’s not entirely unproblematic but I’m disinclined to really come down on it. Though that may be my own bias showing, because I’d have shanked a baby for a way to get my dad to NO SERIOUSLY STOP TICKLING ME when I was a kid. So YMMV.
Whereas in a non-sexual context, I’m not sure I see a reason for no not to mean no.
But it happens. I used to have nightmares about hands that tickled and hurt me and wouldn’t stop. My dad was rough (I don’t think he realized it) and didn’t know when to stop.
I honestly don’t see an issue with this at all.
I see no issue either. I like the idea of generalizing lessons about consent into non-sexual play. There are instances where it would be useful. For instance, in games of pretend, where one kid is pretending to be a damsel in distress and “no!” is part of an act. If that kid becomes uncomfortable, an obvious safeword is useful and I’d argue necessary.
Also, as an autistic person here, let me tell you that we’re usually raised not to say no to anything. The way a lot of kids are raised to always hug grandma and shit whether or not they’re comfortable with it is often multiplied by ten for us. Autistics are taught that they’re “good boys/girls” when they comply with every demand, whether it’s a healthy demand or not, and are simultaneously not taught to say no properly. So it starts with forced hugs and cuddles to “socialize” us (especially the nonverbal ones), and then we’re shocked when over 90% of autistic girls are sexually abused in their lifetimes?
Teaching consent matters, and we have to teach it young.
What the fresh hell is this commentary. (aside from personal experiences — of course those are relevant to you but I don’t know why we’re bringing this conversation back to kink at ALL).
Having a situation where you say ‘absolutely no’ ‘time out’ ‘game over’ is not somethign that needs to be de-sexualized. Nor does it mean you disrespect other forms of ‘no’. WHAT.
yeah wow uh teaching your kids that “no” and “stop” are not inviolable is not teaching them consent
i remember being a kid and people continuing to tickle me when i begged them to stop but you know what the problem wasn’t that we didn’t have a safe word to make it clear i super special meant it THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY IGNORED ME TELLING THEM TO STOP
we absolutely need to teach kids bodily autonomy and consent and we ABSOLUTELY need to teach it early but the way to do that is to not disregard their requests to stop it is to pay attention when they say no, there is a simple solution to this and it’s “don’t fucking disregard your children’s bodily autonomy just because it’s socially awkward to do so”
sooooo is no one else going to talk about the situation where the kid is not the one declaring ‘pudding’ but the one hearing it, and how if that works for the asker’s family as a practical stopgap for the problem of toxic mixed messages from the surrounding culture about the validity of ‘no’, maybe shitting on it from our armchairs is not the answer
no?
ok.
wow ok congrats on the passive aggressiveness there
i fail to see how discipline isn’t a plenty practical stopgap which unlike ‘we’ve make a super special word that super special means it because you are essentially free to ignore no and stop’ doesn’t explicitly reinforce that toxicity
“I’d have shanked a baby for a way to get my dad to NO SERIOUSLY STOP TICKLING ME when I was a kid.”
Discipline is always one-way, tho. Sometimes tickling or teasing or whatever is supposed to BE a punishment for something, just a light one. Just adding my voice to the people seeing the safeword as something I needed in a shitty situation.
No way my dad would’ve ever accepted “respect your kid’s bodily autonomy” as a general rule. He would’ve instantly come back with, “well what if they were running into the street and you needed to yank them back,” or, “well what about when they’re not respecting each others’,” or, “well when we’re going to visit Grandma they can’t comb their hair down flat yet so I just grab them and do it,” or, “in this family tickling/punching/sudden hugs are a form of affection,” or a dozen other arguments just to argue, just to keep doing things the way he was comfortable doing them. I’m not saying any of these arguments are good or correct debate-enders (especially not in the Tumblr world of endless discourse) just that he had a hundred delaying tactics and derailings available to him when we argued about ‘no means no’ as a phrase. And we did.
A safeword would have been a relatively arbitrary way of sidestepping all of the ingrained socio-cultural mess around ‘no.’ A safeword would elevate the situation beyond the million minor exceptions.
Ideally, yeah, I would like a full instruction manual on how to raise a kid in our toxic nonconsent culture without violating their bodily autonomy, both for myself and to travel back in time and beat my own immediate family around the head with. But since “you are essentially free to ignore no and stop” is the overwhelming default, adding a “BUT you are NOT free to ignore Safeword” is easier, way easier, for the kid as well as the parent, than going “even though everyone else basically ignores no and stop, our family is different and the meanings of these words are different within our home than they are on TV, in school, or at daycare. Our rules are different from the rest of the world’s.”
That second option is better. No question. For one thing, it requires the parent to explicitly acknowledge that we are living in a rape culture.
That’s exactly why my dad never would have done it. And my brother never would have gone along if he did.
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The Best (and Worst) Languages in the World Though there are over 7,000 living human languages, only a dozen of them actually matter. The majority of languages are holdovers from cultures that should have become extinct generations ago.
who the hell is gavin mcinnes?
(via thothofnorth)
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“ ‘You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!’
It’s an odd little speech. But if you went back 15,000 years and spoke these words to hunter-gatherers in Asia in any one of hundreds of modern languages, there is a chance they would understand at least some of what you were saying.
That’s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then.
The traditional view is that words can’t survive for more than 8,000 to 9,000 years. Evolution, linguistic “weathering” and the adoption of replacements from other languages eventually drive ancient words to extinction, just like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era.
A new study, however, suggests that’s not always true.
A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”
The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.
”—The Washington Post, “Linguists Identify 15,000-Year-Old ‘Ultraconserved’ Words.”
Amazing.
(via inothernews)
(via iggymogo)
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“Canadians often point out that while the American constitution promises “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the constitution of Canada–written in the 1860s in England–sets a more modest goal: “Peace, order, and good government.” This difference reaches into every corner of the two nations. My favourite example is a book of medical advice. It was written by a Canadian, Judylaine Fine, and published in Toronto under an extremely modest title, Your Guide to Coping with Back Pain. Later, American rights were acquired by New York publishers; they brought out precisely the same book under a new title, Conquering Back Pain. And there, in a grain of sand, to borrow from William Blake, we can see a world of differing attitudes. Our language reveals how we think, and what we are capable of thinking. Canadians cope. Americans conquer. Canadian readers of that book will assume that back pain will always be with them. Americans will assume that it can be destroyed, annihilated, abolished, conquered. Americans expect life, liberty, happiness, and total freedom from back pain. Canadians can only imagine peace, order, good government, and moderate back pain.” —Robert Fulford
(via propertyofcanada)i can cope with this analysis. —nb
(via naturallybent)
(via naturallybent)
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AHAHAHA NOT QUITE, OP, NOT QUITE
FUCKING NAILED IT
Omg humanists. *rolls eyes*.
We can all get along when you stop derailing and comparing isolated instances of bullying to systematic oppression. Till then, fuck you.
Humanists just shut your ignorant faces plz
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How We Talk About Ideas
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful created a chart that captures the unique hierarchy of words people use when they’re describing ideas. Every idea we’ve ever had should fit within one of these quadrants. Do you think McCandless is on to something? Where would this chart fit in… the chart?
(via Information is Beautiful)
