de la selva

two terms I picked up from this guy I met at STInt training:

(1) the "wife-respecter". He used it where the rest of us use "wife-beater", the tank top-ish thing that is always white, sometimes made of that mottley material that long-johns are made of and are often heavily tied to the kind of men who would beat on their wives. A lil while ago I decided that I should avoid this term because I don't need to make light of domestic abuse, nor do I need to refer to it anymore frequently than is appropriate, lest I decrease my sensitivity.

• What I enjoyed about the moment was that he slipped it into his sentence seamlessly (though that is how he talks all the time - he wasn't trying to pull a fast one on us) and not one of the other three people listening made a comment about it, let alone batted an eyelash. It's entiely possible that he was too quick for them to pick up on it, OR they've heard it before (and I'm the last to know), OR they're just too dang ol jaded. Either way, I enjoy that it works.
• What I enjoyed even morely was that satisfying click!-into-place that I felt when I heard the term and watched the reaction (or non-reaction). I have had a little void in my vocrabulary which has been crying out for a quicker-than-not way to refer to that particular article of clothing WITHOUT, as I mentioned above, making light or drawing unwarranted and gravity-decreasing attention. It's awkward to walk all the way round the block and up a ladder to get in the bathroom window....but I didn't get a single muddy footprnt on a carpet or handprint on a wall or doorknob and eventually I'll be rather adept with that alternate route.

(2) "color impartial". I've lost the original context - at least in specifics - but I can tell you generally that he was asserting that we, as a society, will never be able to be color blind. I suppose he meant that primarily in a literal way, that those of us who are blessed with sight cannot avoid noticing - or at least seeing - the color of other people. What's great about striving for impartiality (aside from it being a shout-out to James, chapter 2) is that it breathes reason and utility into what the phrase color blind intended. Without stepping into the argument on how much or whether we should "notice" color, I will claim that we should not concern ourselves with whether or not we see color, but rather whether we discriminate because of it.

Yes. "Color impartial." It works.

A friend of mine was refering to the Academy Awards ceremony where "all black actors won the major awards,"...I'm pretty sure it was just Best Actor and Best Actress and then Sidney P Toitier was given the Lifetime Achievement award but yeah - landslide or no, it was emphasized that some recipents were black. My friend stopped herself after that declaration and flusteredly tried to backtrack. "I don't mean to be racist or anything...."

...which I found rather irritating and frustrating as well as sad. It SADDENS me to think that we - the genral we, the majority of folk in Canada and the US - don't know what racism is anymore. The white man's been scared into submission and the oppressed are trying to "get theirs" in any way possible, doing little more than thicken the line between Us and Them. I tried to tell her, "If that's actually what happened, then NO, you're not racist; you're just describing events." She reluctantly assented -- but I'm not sure she was honestly convinced. We can hardly address a problem if we don't know what it looks like or where to find it. Pff....