I am told that Starbucks and various other public wi-fi providers have put the LA Blog in the same category as hard core pornography. This is almost certainly due to the free use by some of our writers of words like f**k, c**t, s**t – and, more recently, n****r.
This is to be regretted. If people cannot read our material over a cup of coffee, I am disappointed. But I am very concerned that many schools and public libraries may have put us on the same blacklist.
There may be little we can do about our classification at our present address. However, we are considering a move from free to paid on WordPress, and this will involve a change of domain. If this happens, we shall need to become more editorially strict to maintain our newly unsullied reputation. Therefore, I will ask our various writers, from this day forward, to be a little less colloquial in their use of the English language. Past offenders against our new rule include Ian B and Paul Marks – though I suspect that several quotations from the works of Mr Blake have not been entirely pure of naughty words.
I cannot give a complete listing of the words that should now be avoided. I will only ask that people should think before posting whether they would be happy for their words to be read by their wives and servants.
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Starbucks is a odd company (but then so many companies are odd these days that perhaps it is not “odd” any more). It targets leftists in its efforts to sell its over priced coffee – yet these same leftists are the ones who target Starbucks (to have its windows smashed and so on) whenever there is an “Occupy” riot.
Physical attacks from leftists (whether of the Red Flag or Black Flag sort) do not seem to change the opinions of the “corporate culture” of modern companies – on the contrary they (being dominated by people brainwashed at modern schools and universities) are ever more determined to force out anyone who expresses “incorrect” (P.C. Frankfurt School of Marxism – now, without irony, called “Critical Theory”) thoughts on “Gay Marriage”, “Global Warming” or indeed anything…….
There was a time when Corporations were accused of being “money obsessed” with “no concern for wider values”.
If only we could return to such times.
So it seems LA gives in to PC. Problem is they first came for your colloquialisms and then they came for your thoughts. It is a mistake.
Let’s hear all sides, then, of the argument. Our side is that, if we have to avoid the use of swear words not to be blocked across an important swathe of the Web, that is what we must do. I look forward to any credible claim that using the words in question is an important part of our message.
Sean and I had a chat, Peter, and we decided to leave the unwritten custom of the blog as it is.
Perhaps the Latin version or less expletive words can be used instead. Sadly we are all hornswoggled by political correctness furiosus adherents.
Frickin good idea Sean.
Hornswoggled efgd? Sounds like a terrible word but what does it mean?
It doesn’t matter what it means – just wash out that filthy mouth of yours this instant or don’t bother darkening these pages ever again. Darkening?
If you seriously believe that millions of present and future Libertarians are to be found in crawling, PC-sucking shitholes where coffee is drunk you are deluded. All you are doing is promoting the kind of PC tyranny you decry. One of the few real benefits of blogs like this is the chance to curse leftist filth as the murdering, tyrannical, inhuman vermin that they are.
Really Sean–if you want to run a Sunday School–go get yourself a dog collar.
Oh!
I find myself inclining unnaturally-positively towards what Mr Ecks says on this one, old friend.
One is sort of prompted to say, in an understated way…
“Fuck Them”.
Or if one was to prefer this way…
“GIVE THEM HIGHLY INTEGRATED AND STRATEGICALLY-FOCUSSED ADVICE, WHICH COMBINES THE BENEFITS OF SEXUAL PROCREATION WITH VERY FAR FOREIGN TRAVEL”.
I wondered why Steve Sailer once blocked a comment on his blog that contained the n-word, even though it was only in quoted dialogue from a film. Now I understand. Throwing in a few asterisks seems a small price to pay for not being blocked by censorship software on some public-access PCs.
There is a difference between ‘swear words’ and words which are ‘blacklisted’ by the thought police. I don’t care for profanities in what purport to be serious articles. I don’t like those who project swear words and obscenities into peoples’ living rooms via television or radio in what pretends to be ‘comedy’ these days.
However, I did quote the word ‘nigger’ the other day in the context of that happy and supremely inoffensive song ‘The sun has got his hat on’.
In my opinion, anybody who takes offence at that song, or at my quoting from it, has a problem. ‘Nigger’, is after all only a lazy Southern way of saying ‘Negro’. Today it is used as a term of abuse. Clearly that wasn’t the case in 1932, and clearly I wasn’t using it as such, which is why I put it in inverted commas. So if anyone wants to take offence where clearly none was intended that is their problem.
By all means let us refrain from using offensive words in our articles, but who is to be the judge of what is or is not offensive; shall it be we ourselves or shall it be the thought police? If we allow the latter to be the arbiter of what we can or cannot write then we might as well not bother.
If you believe that millions of potential recruits for the cause of freedom are busy slurping over-priced coffee in internet-equipped dens then bottling up our honest rage might be a useful tactic. However, the age of the coffee house as a place of political (and hopefully anti-political) and social ferment is long over. They are full of the staid and comfortable. Who believe whatever ordure (see, I’m trying) they see on their assorted flat-screen googleboxes and read (if they can or bother to) in the dud-tree press. Only massive economic collapse will put a hole in the Disneyland of these people and even then they will probably jump in the direction of more tyranny not less.
[…] have read, indeed with some sadness, that the Director says that this blog is blocked in certain providers of “free wifi”. I doubt that this only because we show a couple of rather demure pictures of pretty young white […]
Sean, Starbucks will be using a third party “internet safety” system which is almost certainly severely moderated not just for naughty words but for anything that may be offensive to anyone, including such things as politically incorrect discussions of tobacco, politically incorrect discussions of other public policies, and so on. I’m certainly happy to stop saying “cunt” even occasionally, but I suspect you’ll be on the blacklist anyway.
Remember, the blacklist companies are, firstly, set to the rectally enbroomhandled “decency” standards of the USA, and secondly the Mumsnetters have got them terrified of being suddenly outed in the press with “my three year old was on their wifi and saw something slightly unpleasant, these people should be killed like pigs” in the Daily Mail. Many of these services block sites like wine and beer suppliers, just about anything grown up.
Best of luck with getting off the blacklist, but it’s just as likely to be a link to VDare that got you cast into the outer darkness as the occasional deployment of “arse” in the comments. Anyway, I only just said cunt a few hours ago, most of the time I very rarely explete.
See David’s clarification of our ruling. What I really meant was that, so long as you avoid split infinitives and fused participles, you can eff and blind till the cows come home.
Why should anyone give an aerial act of copulation if these maternal coital coupling pudendas can’t cope with the vernacular?
Hard effluent
See, FIFY. 🙂
[…] have read, indeed with some sadness, that the Director says that this blog is blocked in certain providers of “free wifi”. I doubt that this only because we show a couple of rather demure pictures of pretty young white […]
I would never have imagined a Libertarian site asking their writers and contributers to curb their language or particular words because the organs of globalism and cultural Marxism seek to sanitise society and have banned the site from view.
Yet I can understand the frustration that these control freaks have blocked the site – and I can appreciate why Mr Gabb would ideally want people to stumble over the site in any location, at any time, as should be expected in a free society.
Unfortunately though, as Ian B hints, it could be all manner of things that they are filtering for.
I’m not sure what would be on the blacklist either, without there being some expose from an employee of the said globalist conformance monger coffee chain itself.
This is how these people want the internet to be – organs of “safe” commercialism and purveyors of “safe” discourse….which is of course ultimately determined by zealots higher up the chain.
They want people to be able to order their halal New Zealand lamb from Tesco and Sainsbury’s, head over to Thomas Cook to book a holiday, look at a new sofa at IKEA, catch the weather forecast and the sanitised headlines of the day (chosen for mass consumption and to “drive” debate in the direction they want), check the football scores, the soap opera news and that sort of thing.
Putty people, with putty lives, drones – sipping mocha latte expresso with sprinkle flakes as they read the Guardian and Huffington Post…..which will be allowed by default, I would guess.
It would be anything that will avoid them a court case in this world of the proffessionally offended and the people too inept to take care of themselves and parent their own children in these venues, so they clamour for the access points to parent everybody instead.
It is a problem. I don’t know what to do about it.
I hate the idea of there being such a world being built where corporation after corporation sanitise away our society, along with recent rulings to make ISP’s police the content on their traffic – and something I heard today about people having the right to force the removal of historic material about them.
It reminds me a bit of the old press for ID cards, where they were not going to be compulsory…… you still had freedom not to have one if you wanted…..only, to get a bank account in the future you would need to provide one, to get a loan, or go to a job interview, etc, you would need to provide one….. making it impossible to live without one, despite it not being official law to have one.
It is infuriating. Maybe there is some kind of software technology to bypass this kind of thing?
Ideally, people out there in society should not be putting up with this kind of thing…..but sadly, many are already putty people who are part of the hive mind.
I have heard of other people challenging libraries over their blocking of certain sites, but unfortunately I do not know what the resultant was of this, and nor is it ideal to have to plead to libraries and corporations to change their sanitisation softwares.
I can understand it for graphic nudity, but for the written word? It’s a travesty.
I wonder what it goes off? Is it just the main articles, or does it crawl the names of blogs listed, or the comments?….
Does it matter if the site is blocked? Yes it does. Because it seems to be some kind of violation against freedom.
Whether the act of compliance to the rules and regulations of allowed topics (and words) is the way to go about dealing with it, I don’t know. I would like to think not, but I don’t know where or how it could be changed.
As for these coffee chains, they don’t get a penny out of me. I cannot stand the globalist conformity of these chains and such places that can tend to squash nearby independent shops out of business and help make everywhere the same, no matter where in the world.
Therefore, I often take my queue from the Lancashire Hotpots and if I cannot find an independent shop I wait till I get home to “mek a brew”…… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM1jQ8cIFuU – lol!
It seemed a good idea at the time. On reflection, it wasn’t. So swear away as you will.
But that’s just it Sean. I very rarely feel the need to swear and be vulgar in things I write….in fact, I usually detest crude slurs and having to resort to the language of the gutter in order to make a point.
I do not think swearing and name calling adds any value to winning an argument, or to explaining ones position.
Nobody is perfect, we all drop the occasional word around from time to time when exasperated, but for me, I would tend to avoid using such language for the sake I mention above. Yet, I think writers and commenting people should be able to say whatever they want.
Also, the trouble is that filters are often quite crude themselves – in terms of lack of sophistication.
It may be a word like “slut” that the block puts under the theme of “pornography”, or it may be an image that kind of resembles a breast (by the computer detection software) that shuts down the whole site from being loaded.
Or like the case with the BBC radio presenter, it could just be “old language” or terms being quoted in context of their time, but these people and these filters are not interested in the context of what they are blocking.
In that respect, it is the classic case of word changes being controlled by “the left”.
If one called somebody a “spastic” today, they would probably be investigated and turned into social outcasts for being insensitive and using such “horrible” language that may cause “distress” to some people….. yet it was not so long ago that you had the Spastics Society and people were happy to wear the badges and donate money to the charity name.
Of course “spastic” came to be what these people say is “a term of abuse” and “had to be changed”….. but the unfortunate condition and what people mean by it as such never went away with it, and no doubt any new descriptions will be abused and used by bullies in the future. Then it would need to be changed again…
It kind of reminds of the film adaptation of 1984, where somebody is compiling and issuing a new dictionary of words that are acceptable.
Who are these people, and how can they be disposed of?!! (lol)
Should I repeat my comment to Sean’s next posting here? Its main points:
1. I think that Starbucks’ policies in this area are regressive in the extreme. But what can you expect of people who marketed Obama’s “Christmas” CD celebrating His Own Self in 2008?
2. One can always use *’s and other symbols to substitute for the letters in rude words. Everybody knows what f*** means. Also, a different but accurate phrase or word may substitute for the more usual, as in the (inspired!) “aerial copulation” above. It’s also easy to defeat spambots and censorbots who troll for unacceptable links. For instance, post UT period com /watch?v=vewsQtOBWqI . If the reader draws the obvious conclusion as to the domain name and types that into the address bar, then copies the slash and subsequent stuff and pastes that into the bar, voilá! C’est Prof. Thomas Sowell on The Economics of Race and Politics, Part 1 (from 1983).
3. It’s just not true that political and philosophical discussions don’t occur in Starbucks’. I have overheard them.
4. I sometimes find myself in a position where Starbucks’ has the only Internet connection available to me. When I am there, and Internetting *g*, I would be sorry to be unable to peruse, and occasionally throw things at, the LA’s postings there. I doubt that I am the only one in the known Universe who occupies the intersection of the sets “Starbucks customers” and “those who are interested in libertarianism.”
. . .
As for “spastic,” that’s one of those words with a real meaning (one who is subject to spasms is properly said to be spastic) that the under-15 set for awhile used as a term of abuse back in the ’50’s. Nowadays they say “lame” instead. And Concerned Briton’s comments on this above are quite correct.
This is not the same sort of thing as purposely and deliberately hijacking the word “gay” so as to give “homosexual” the pleasant, even desirable, connotations that the word properly has. Or pretending that “Negro” is a term of contempt and hence rude.
Sean and I agreed the blog’s customs for all you good people as being clarified here:-
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/does-it-matter-much-if-the-la-blog-is-banned-in-starbucks-and-peoples-offices-in-large-leftist-corporations/
My view really was that
(1) To appear to give in is to appear to go along with the puritanical strictures of those who wouldn’t piss on us even if we were on fire,
and
(2) We might as well be hanged for s sheep as for a lamb.
My innate psychological difficulty as a person is that I see what’s going on as a war: a Titanic battle between unsullied good and ineffable wickedness. When the wicked rack up the stakes, they Sow the Wind – my instinctive response is to Reap Them the Whirlwind, for them.
My paradaisical scenario is; The want war…the I will _give them war_ . I will force them to continue swallowing war, even after they fall down in the dust and beg for armistice.
Effing bastards, ruining, from inside, the least-bad civilisation even to slightly grace the surface of this planet, and doing it on purpose. Cancers (and cancer doesn’t destroy a human deliberately either).
Concerned Briton, Julie-
The point is that language does change. “Gay” wasn’t “hijacked”, it was a slang term like nancy boy, or “tart” for prostitute, and predates the gay rights movement. They simply adopted one of the many terms already in usage for gay people.
It is worth noting the inconsistency in CB’s dislike of “swear” words but also dislike of PC’s “swear” words. As I’ve often pointed out, Victorian Values- which deprecated a whole range of words relating to body parts, bodily functions and sex, was the first wave of political correctness- “PC 1.0”- and most people who consider themselves “conservative” in this regard are ironically maintaining a previous version of PC.
So here’s the thing; the word “cock” means a tap which emits fluid. We still use it for that; stop-cock in particular even among non-plumbers. But, it acquired a slang usage meaning “penis” (because a penis acts like that, too) and now it’s a deprecated word; and yes, it is on many internet naughty words lists, including until recently being on the Telegraph’s Disqus auto-moderate list. Likewise a pussy is a cat, but its association with being furry made it a slang term for the groin of a woman as with “beaver”. So they are similarly now swear words. But while everyone complains about losing “gay” or complaining about not being able to say “spaz”, the same people seem strangely silent about objecting to the loss of cock and pussy to the polite lexicon. “Pussy” in particular is entirely lost; it’s impossible now to construct a sentence using it that won’t cause sniggers. Not to mention “boob”.
Nobody better mention Scunthorpe. Or Arsenal.
Ian is quite right of course, our language is in constant flux.
One of the main reasons for that probably being that it’s now become a world language (unless one unexpectedly finds oneself in France of course).
So, here we see Julie (from near Chicago) reading and understanding the language in a slightly different way to Ian. Not only that, her coffee drinking experiences over there in the States, differs slightly to those generally experienced over here. Contrary to popular belief, the American coffee drinker usually shows just about twice the consideration shown by their European counterparts. Nearly always clearing up their tables before leaving and the men generally being more polite to the ladies. Something which never seems to happen in England anymore (I stopped being considerate because of the strange looks I was getting from the female staff who probably thought I was only cleaning up because I fancied stroking a pussy – right word is it Ian?)
I’ve been happily frequenting Starbucks for more years than I can recall; right back to the Starsky and Hutch TV series in fact. An American girlfriend at the time took me into the branch where it all started (so she said) in Hollywood. However, in all the years and the hundreds of times I’ve sat and happily chatted in Starbucks, I’ve never once felt a load of left-wingers to be inside crowding the place. More a general mix of political opinion I’d say.
In England, it tends more to be mothers of every persuasion with noisy children lousing the room up with never ending screams and crying (the kids usually drink pop from bottles brought in – which nicely explains it). The other thing that finally put an end to my visits, is the man who pays for coffee to go (slightly cheaper) then takes up a table for himself and his f..king laptop. Never once, in my experience, have such offenders been told to leave. Probably because it’s not company policy to offend offenders.
Weird or what? They’ll prevent someone swearing quietly into a laptop but allow a thief to occupy a space he’s effectively gained by deception.
But there I go arguing against myself, for isn’t that precisely what left-wingers are good at?
But why do people use Starbucks so often; or any of the other coffee chains for that matter? My view is, that they do so because the coffee always (nearly always) tastes the same and the space you’ll find yourself sitting in (if the bastard with the lap-top has not planted his arse already) will seem familiar. You can usually bet on it. From Moscow to LA the coffee remains broadly consistent. It’s only downside is that it’s a global chain and therefore unremittingly, sickeningly pc.
That part is a shame for sure; but I wouldn’t know how to change it.
Not without bullets, bullets, bullets anyway. Sorry if the word offends.
Promoted to front page.
That’s good. if you’d not done that, the Chimpanzee-Type-writers would have done it by themselves.
I was thinking of promoting also IanB (14th May 8.04 am) (see above) also. What do you think?
Yes
IanB, “pussy” has been used for “snatch” (there you go!) for decades. It’s only in the last few years that a FEW people with, however, loud voices have decided it’s a no-no word, and I doubt there’s anything behind that than a little “sanctimoniousness” and ignorance. If I say a man is a pussy, I mean exactly the same thing as when I say he’s a teddy-bear. Meaning under the crusty exterior’s he a lamb. This is the sort of appearance of slang in English that we expect.
But you’re flat-out wrong about the HIJACKING of the word gay. I stressed “deliberately” and “purposely,” and I explained why that word was chosen. Unfortunately I can’t give you the source, but the fact is the usage was dreamed in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s because the gentleman, whoever he was, wanted to get the so-called “gay pride” movement going and needed some word to prettify the condition. Before that, “gay” meant “gay” and nothing more. It was NOT a “natural” or “unpremeditated” arising of a slang term, and that is the central point.
. . .
Now people here are all up in arms because Starbucks will ban them from their wi-fi usage if they use certain words or link to certain sites. But they refuse to use the same reasoning when it comes to maintaining the breadth of ideas and concepts available in the English language. Why the double standard? It takes more brains and moral courage (not that much of that is required) to fight for the value of the symbols we think with, which are the words of our language–than it does to stick it to Starbucks by NOT SHOWING UP.
So, WE’LL show THEM!! we’re not going to change our stance on this issue, because we don’t intend to be told how we can speak.
OK, so we’re more interested in “winning” a tiny battle that no one will ever know about by abandoning the field, than we are in keeping and extending our readership. Fine. I know exactly how that feels, but although my first instinct was that Sean was “giving in” to the forces of thought-control, by the time I’d finished that first comment of mine I saw that in fact his initial response was the right one. Starbucks has a right to set the rules for using its wi-fi (however much we may disapprove of them), and the LA has a right to pick up its marbles and go home. Yet that’s not the only course available that’s both righteous and productive….
Whereas, the feeling here seems to be that there’s nothing wrong with giving in to demands that we stop using certain words in their original and valuable meaning just because those words have been PURPOSELY, DELIBERATELY foisted off onto the public in order to prettify what many see as a perversion (I am not among them, be it known).
I refuse to collaborate in this mischief, being of the opinion that “he who controls the language controls the discourse.” Whereas maintaining the broadest libertarian presence possible is easy while still keeping the LA Starbucks-friendly, as I noted either above in this discussion or in the other one.
And I still occasionally refer to some testy gent as a pussy. And I have no problem at all referring to a cock (stop-cock), or a cock (male bird) or a cock-of-the-walk. Ian, you’re too delicate. You need to get out more.
David, my main point is that when you write
this is a gesture only, and a counterproductive one at that. It’s diminishing your potential readership on the “I’ll show THEM!” principle (whereas actually, they’ll never even know) and frankly, it’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.
On the other hand, your words describe perfectly my attitude toward letting people dictate to me the meaning of my words, which is why I insist on using “gay” to mean “gay,” and “homosexual” to mean “homosexual.”
Nor do I feel particularly required to adopt the more innocent, genuine slang terms where I believe they rob the language, albeit inadvertently and with no ulterior agenda. But if somebody tells me I daren’t use “pussy” to mean either a kitty or “not so bad when you get to know him/a sweetie inside” (which is itself slang, of course) he will find himself butting his head against a stone wall.
Julie, it’s not me that is delicate. I have no problem with any of these words. It’s not me that compiles the “can’t say” lists used by websites fearful of retribution from the morality police.
But just for clarity, “pussy” as a “sweet, kind person” is normally “pussycat”. “Pussy”, applied to a man, is an implied derogatory feminisation meaning that he is unmanly and weak. “Bob should stand up for himself. What a pussy”. I certainly wouldn’t use it unless I meant to insult someone. It’s a more acid (American origin) form of the old English “Big girl’s blouse”.
As to “gay”, I really have no problem with it. If organised gays have become an annoying part of the PC movement, certainly back in the 1960s they had a very valid claim to persecution, and anything they could do to improve that condition, including preferring a kinder word than the likes of sodomite and pederast, was valid enough. The reality is that the homosexual usage of the word is in the lexicon now and there’s no going back, any more than you’ll stop people sniggering if you ask them if they’ve seen your little ginger pussy. Considering that homosexual is itself a clumsy neologism (Krafft-Ebbing) and probably ought to be “homophile” anyway, I have no problem with something that’s less of a mouthful.
Talking of homosexual/homophile, the terminology is all confused. If the “sexual” in “transexual” refers to sex-as-gender, then a homosexual ought to be somebody who believes they are the correct physical sex, and a heterosexual would be what we use “transexual” for. If “sexual” refers to sexual gender preference, then we ought to be talking about “paedosexuals”, not “paedophiles”. What a mess.
In his numerous articles and interviews for the gay press, Mr Blake prefers to use the phrase “all-male sex.” It’s both neutral and precise.
I think we should do that then. (Er sorry, didn’t mean it like that…I just meant “use the term”…no this is getting out of hand, sorry.)
I’ll just go and get my coat.
I’m rather fond of “manlove”. I mean, as a term, not an activity.
Possible ambiguity – couldn’t “all-male sex” be masturbation?
Some say it is
Funny thing is that if I were to say, at my point of origin on the planet, that this discourse was really just a bunch of twats talking a load of crap, no-one would bat an eyelid.
But cross the border to that cesspit in which the uneducated mangle the language in their ignorance and/or malevolent political do you all good ism, I find stupid people successfully trying to ban children’s books from libraries because they include the word twat, and so merely proving that it takes one not to recognise themselves for what they are, and even my better half roost ting to the rubbish of chiding me for using the word crap without recognising that that is contextually it’s reasonable use
The world is on a slippery slope. And I don’t mean the insulting kind to be found in some eastern parts of the globe. I mean the gradient that leads to the abyss of terminal idiocy in which the stupid seem destined to wallow forever, without, unfortunately, having the good grace to drown
‘roost ing’?
Resorting, more like. I hate it when this phone thinks it’s more clever than I am
And just wait till auto-correct has created its own lexicon of insulting terms. Sort of WongSum Galactics vs Dappled Douchepads
Ian, I know you’re not all that delicate, and probably not so sheltered either. I were jes’ teasin’ yer. 😉
But as to “he’s just a pussy,” that wasn’t Awful and Evil until Ann Coulter came out with it a couple of months ago. Such a fuss I never heard! Ridiculous. Yes, I know that since then we’re supposed to add “cat” on at the end.
I will give you all a story that’s actually rather private and personal, but it illustrates my point perfectly.
In the period before we became engaged, my Honey and I had grown rather close, and one day as we were walking down the street together it occurred to me that I would dearly love to sleep beside him in the bed. Sleep, as in, you know, count sheep, lose consciousness, knit up the ravelled sleeve of care. Well! I couldn’t think of any way to phrase it except the obvious, so I said, “You know … I would love to go to sleep with you.” But of course, he interpreted the words as the usual euphemism, and it took us half an hour to get it straightened out.
It really is important to use words correctly, for the sake both of clarity of THINKING and of communication. And that’s a fact. That word-usage changes over time and can at best be slowed down is a bug, not a feature, just as human aging and its miserable consequences are not avoidable forever but that too is a bug not a feature.
All: As far as the policies of the LA weblog are concerned, Messrs. Gabb and Davis rightly have the final say.
I just wanted to make my own position crystal clear. If it isn’t by now, it never will be. 🙂
Personally I will cling bitterly to the guns I don’t have, and (in some cases) to proper English usage.
(I will note that “homosexuality” is not a condition restricted to those who came equipped to be the plugger and not the pluggee, so the word and its relatives apply equally well to the female homosexual. As for Krafft-Ebbing: “Homo-” is simply a prefix denoting sameness. Herewith the Online Etymology Dictionary:
So “homophilia” would be a “love of sameness” or some such thing. But even pretending that the “homo” part refers to men, which it doesn’t, “homophilia” would as Sean indicates mean one who loves mean; the term not referring to sexual acts or preferences, and also not restrictive to the anatomically-male gender.)
“But as to “he’s just a pussy,” that wasn’t Awful and Evil until Ann Coulter came out with it a couple of months ago. Such a fuss I never heard! Ridiculous. Yes, I know that since then we’re supposed to add “cat” on at the end.”
Julie, it was always an insult. Ian was correct to demarcate it from “pussy-cat” and “teddy bear”, which both denote warmth and kindness, rather than cowardice.
As the saying goes: Don’t mistake kindness for weakness.
Julie,
The same would apply to paedophilia and other sexual philias (e.g. coprophilia). Paedophilia would simply be a liking for children, without sexual connotation. Like Francophilia or bibliophilia. So either paedophilia is wrong, or homosexual is wrong, and like I said it makes more sense to talk of paedosexuality. But then you’ve still got “transexual” which would be sexual attraction to changing sex, or something.
But then if we swtiched to “paedosexual”, it would be more clear that all of these attractions- including heterosexuality itself- are of the same character, just different sexual imprintings, and nobody would tolerate that.
Ian, if you want to put your shoulder to the boulder and try to institute the more proper “pædosexuality,” I’ll be glad to get behind you and help shove.
Personally I think a great deal of damage was done when sexual congress, fraternal “love,” familial “love” (child-parent “love”), and what we call “Romantic love,” not to mention “respect” or “honor” as in the Biblical injunction to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” all become enmeshed in the word “love.” It has led to extraordinary amounts of nonsense in much thought and discourse about social and political matters.
Along those lines, I admit to harboring the teensiest, tiniest traces of both Judeophilia and Anglophilia … although so far I’ve been able to restrain myself from videotaping myself having sexual relations with either Judaism or Britain, and then uploading the video to UT. :>))
“… In his numerous articles and interviews for the gay press, Mr Blake prefers to use the phrase “all-male sex.” It’s both neutral and precise….”
What about Lesbians?
Also, Paedophilia means a love of pre-pubescent boys. I forget the correct term when it applies to adolescents. And I have no idea of the correct term for one who has sex with young girls. No doubt Dr Gabb will enlighten me as usual!
All-female sex, of course – and koriophilia
No it doesn’t. Paedophilia is an (either exclusive or non-exclusive) sexual attraction to pre-pubescents. The term for attraction to persons above puberty but beneath the age of consent is Ephebophilia, which is a purely legally based construction.
The term you’re probably thinking of is “pederasty”, but that just means a homosexual tradition of older men with younger ones, with the ages ill defined, and primarily centred on adolescents and “young men”.
I don’t know if the L.A. should be using naughty words like “koriophilia” around Starbucks….