5 Reasons Why The 20s Kick the Ass of the Teen Angst

Published on by Lisa Category: Some Better than Normal Writings

Recently I was in a lunch with a few colleagues, talking about the plight of teens these days. The massive alter ego inside, the one that believes whatever pain I am going through supercedes anything else, spoke in defense of all the 20-somethings out there. What is this belief that teens have it bad? Oh, it must be the theory that claims teenhood is a confusing, body hormonal war in a terror tunnel, and homes are echoing because no one’s home to help with calculus homework.

Yes, it’s terrible, like the sound of dying cows with no tongues.

But, take all of that and apply it to young adulthood where one begins to make decisions that must be made, owned, and made manifest by your own self. No one else is responsible to teach you, guide you, ask you to come home, or tell you not to indulge in sex, drugs, food, work, or alcohol. It’s ultimate freedom with ultimate consequences and absolute responsibility for Y O U R O W N L I F E. The book would be called, “What Happens When Daily Life Begins to Elbow You Repeatedly in the Lung Area for 10 Years.”

THE TOP 5 REASONS 20 SUMTHINS DESERVE SUMTHIN BETTER

5. For those pursuing higher education, you enter your early 20s with a debt comparable to your first job’s salary. In addition, having a bachelor’s degree is not a big deal anymore. A master’s degree will soon be the common degree. BRING ON THE DEBT. If you are a college bound teen reading this, mark my words: Sallie Mae is an ubiquitous big mama.

4. People are living longer. Dying at 70 is considered young. A full life is croaking at 93 – 101. Do you really need to know by 25 how you will spend most of your days? Weeeellll, yes – because if you don’t know, you’re perceived as a) lazy b) capriciously indecisive c) unmotivated d) scared
To be in your 20s means every conversation is laden with really large fonted labels being awkwardly wrapped around you like a deformed Christmas gift.

3. Community. A fairly cheesy word to describe the undeniable need to have support around you. In the age where 20sumthins are more nomadic than ever, it’s difficult to feel a sense of belonging, of roots. Work buddies are a toss-up, one can never be certain of finding a happy hour playmate or someone to just connect with in the office. Family is family; not the same as having a non-blood related, warm, soul-social network.

2. Attempting to find a primary relationship will always be the most contentious aspect of a young adult’s life. Without relationships, you are a cold, cold human with nothing to look forward to. Even with a buttkicking job that smiles into your life and bank, finding a meaningful human with whom you share a few ideas with can be a daunting and perilous element of the 20sumthins juggler. Also, for those who choose the single, not twin icepops of a lifestyle, defending your chosen singlehood can be an oppressive experience with a society obsessed with soulmates and “we” attitudes. READ MY LEFT HAND – MARRIAGE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE.

And the number one reason why it’s so damn hard to be youthful and full of untapped potential in 2006:

1. You still need time to figure out who the hell you are when society is ringing the alarm that your time is up. The niche, your thing, a call, a place in the world…Say it’s identity development, say it’s a quarter life crisis, say it’s life. Whatever you call it, you need MORE time to define it. You hear a teen slamming a door and label it annoying, but expected. Fast forward 5 years, you hear a slamming door and it’s usually a mental health practitioner closing a room containing a 20s person in a straight jacket.

One Day, One Day with No Rape

Published on by Lisa Category: Feminism

If there was one thing that I could memorize and deliver, it would be this speech. If I could write something powerful, it would resemble this. I want to cry with overwhelming inspiration because of the chilling symphony that parades up and down my back each and every time I read this.

The holidays are upon us and it a time where people jingle change into red buckets and give their unwanted coats to the needy. I challenge you to do more than charity. I set a challenge each of us to become more than what is expected, to do more than what is needed. To exceed. I dare each and everyone pair of eyes that reads this to become an nightmare for those in power: an educated wo/man who loves enough to act for those who cannot speak.

(This was taken from here.)

Andrea Dworkin gave this speech (excerpted here) at the Midwest Regional Conference of the National Organization for Changing Men (the name has since changed to the National Organization for Men Against Sexism) in the fall of 1983 in St Paul, Minnesota. Originally published under the title Talking to Men About Rape, in Out!, Vol. 2, No. 6, April 1984; then under the current title in M., No. 13, Fall 1984, © 1984 by Andrea Dworkin. This speech was reprinted in Andrea Dworkin’s Letters From a War Zone, Writings 1976-1989. The full speech is also available on Nikki Craft’s Andrea Dworkin tribute site, www.andreadworkin.net.

I have thought a great deal about how a feminist, like myself, addresses an audience primarily of political men who say that they are antisexist. I have watched the men’s movement for many years. I am close with some of the people who participate in it. I can’t come here as a friend even though I might very much want to. What I would like to do is to scream: and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women’s silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

And if there would be a plea or a question or a human address in that scream, it would be this: why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don’t have forever. Some of us don’t have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape and we are very close to beating. And we are inside a system of humiliation from which there is no escape for us. We use statistics not to try to quantify the injuries, but to convince the world that those injuries even exist. But I hear about the rapes one by one by one by one by one, which is also how they happen. Those statistics are not abstract to me. Every three minutes a woman is being raped. Every eighteen seconds a woman is being beaten. There is nothing abstract about it. It is happening right now as I am speaking.

And it is happening for a simple reason. There is nothing complex and difficult about the reason. Men are doing it, because of the kind of power that men have over women. That power is real, concrete, exercised from one body to another body, exercised by someone who feels he has a right to exercise it, exercised in public and exercised in private. It is the sum and substance of women’s oppression.

It is an extraordinary thing to try to understand and confront why it is that men believe — and men do believe — that they have the right to rape. Men may not believe it when asked. Everybody raise your hand who believes you have the right to rape. Not too many hands will go up. It’s in life that men believe they have the right to force sex, which they don’t call rape. And it is an extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to hit and to hurt.

That is the way the power of men is manifest in real life. That is what theory about male supremacy means. It means you can rape. It means you can hit. It means you can hurt. It means you can buy and sell women. It means that there is a class of people there to provide you with what you need. You stay richer than they are, so that they have to sell you sex. Now, the men’s movement suggests that men don’t want the kind of power I have just described. I’ve actually heard explicit whole sentences to that effect. And yet, everything is a reason not to do something about changing the fact that you do have that power.

Hiding behind guilt, that’s my favorite. I love that one. Oh, it’s horrible, yes, and I’m so sorry. You have the time to feel guilty. We don’t have the time for you to feel guilty. Your guilt is a form of acquiescence in what continues to occur. Your guilt helps keep things the way they are.

I’m sorry that you feel so bad — so uselessly and stupidly bad — because there is a way in which this really is your tragedy. And I don’t mean because you can’t cry. And I don’t mean because there is no real intimacy in your lives. And I don’t mean because the armor that you have to live with as men is stultifying: and I don’t doubt that it is. But I don’t mean any of that.

I mean that there is a relationship between the way that women are raped and your socialization to rape and the war machine that grinds you up and spits you out: the war machine that you go through just like that woman went through Larry Flynt’s meat grinder on the cover of Hustler. You damn well better believe that you’re involved in this tragedy and that it’s your tragedy too. Because you’re turned into little soldier boys from the day that you are born and everything that you learn about how to avoid the humanity of women becomes part of the militarism of the country in which you live and the world in which you live. It is also part of the economy that you frequently claim to protest.

And the problem is that you think it’s out there: and it’s not out there. It’s in you. The pimps and the warmongers speak for you. Rape and war are not so different. And what the pimps and the warmongers do is that they make you so proud of being men who can get it up and give it hard. And they take that acculturated sexuality and they put you in little uniforms and they send you out to kill and to die. Now, I am not going to suggest to you that I think that’s more important than what you do to women, because I don’t.

But I think that if you want to look at what this system does to you, then that is where you should start looking: the sexual politics of aggression; the sexual politics of militarism. I think that men are very afraid of other men. That is something that you sometimes try to address in your small groups, as if if you changed your attitudes towards each other, you wouldn’t be afraid of each other.

But as long as your sexuality has to do with aggression and your sense of entitlement to humanity has to do with being superior to other people, and there is so much contempt and hostility in your attitudes towards women and children, how could you not be afraid of each other? I think that you rightly perceive — without being willing to face it politically — that men are very dangerous: because you are.

The solution of the men’s movement to make men less dangerous to each other by changing the way you touch and feel each other is not a solution. It’s a recreational break.

These conferences are also concerned with homophobia. Homophobia is very important: it is very important to the way male supremacy works. In my opinion, the prohibitions against male homosexuality exist in order to protect male power. Do it to her. That is to say: as long as men rape, it is very important that men be directed to rape women.

As long as sex is full of hostility and expresses both power over and contempt for the other person, it is very important that men not be declassed, stigmatized as female, used similarly. The power of men as a class depends on keeping men sexually inviolate and women sexually used by men. Homophobia helps maintain that class power: it also helps keep you as individuals safe from each other, safe from rape. If you want to do something about homophobia, you are going to have to do something about the fact that men rape, and that forced sex is not incidental to male sexuality but is in practice paradigmatic.

Some of you are very concerned about the rise of the Right in this country, as if that is something separate from the issues of feminism or the men’s movement. There is a cartoon I saw that brought it all together nicely. It was a big picture of Ronald Reagan as a cowboy with a big hat and a gun. And it said: “A gun in every holster; a pregnant woman in every home. Make America a man again.” Those are the politics of the Right.

If you are afraid of the ascendancy of fascism in this country — and you would be very foolish not to be right now — then you had better understand that the root issue here has to do with male supremacy and the control of women; sexual access to women; women as reproductive slaves; private ownership of women. That is the program of the Right. That is the morality they talk about. That is what they mean. That is what they want. And the only opposition to them that matters is an opposition to men owning women.

What’s involved in doing something about all of this? The men’s movement seems to stay stuck on two points. The first is that men don’t really feel very good about themselves. How could you? The second is that men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this.”

And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.

Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there on which you can say these things loud and clear, so as to affect the actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don’t like pornography? I wish I could believe it’s true. I will believe it when I see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business because there are no more male consumers.

You want to organize men. You don’t have to search for issues. The issues are part of the fabric of your everyday lives.

As a way of practicing equality, some vague idea about giving up power is useless. Equality is a practice. It is an action. It is a way of life. It is a social practice. It is an economic practice. It is a sexual practice. It can’t exist in a vacuum. This is not to say that the attempt to practice equality in the home doesn’t matter. It matters, but it is not enough. If you love equality, if you believe in it, if it is the way you want to live — not just men and women together in a home, but men and men together in a home and women and women together in a home — if equality is what you want and what you care about, then you have to fight for the institutions that will make it socially real.

Equality is a discipline. It is a way of life. It is a political necessity to create equality in institutions. And another thing about equality is that it cannot coexist with rape. It cannot. And it cannot coexist with pornography or with prostitution or with the economic degradation of women on any level, in any way. It cannot coexist, because implicit in all those things is the inferiority of women.

I want to see this men’s movement make a commitment to ending rape because that is the only meaningful commitment to equality. It is astonishing that in all our worlds of feminism and antisexism we never talk seriously about ending rape. Ending it. Stopping it. No more. No more rape.

In the back of our minds, are we holding on to its inevitability as the last preserve of the biological? Do we think that it is always going to exist no matter what we do? All of our political actions are lies if we don’t make a commitment to ending the practice of rape. This commitment has to be political. It has to be serious. It has to be systematic. It has to be public. It can’t be self-indulgent.

The things the men’s movement has wanted are things worth having. Intimacy is worth having. Tenderness is worth having. Cooperation is worth having. A real emotional life is worth having. But you can’t have them in a world with rape. Ending homophobia is worth doing. But you can’t do it in a world with rape. Rape stands in the way of each and every one of those things you say you want. And by rape you know what I mean. We’re talking about any kind of coerced sex, including sex coerced by poverty.

You can’t have equality or tenderness or intimacy as long as there is rape, because rape means terror. It means that part of the population lives in a state of terror and pretends — to please and pacify you — that it doesn’t. So there is no honesty. How can there be ? Can you imagine what it is like to live as a woman day in and day out with the threat of rape? Or what it is like to live with the reality? I want to see you use those legendary bodies and that legendary strength and that legendary courage and the tenderness that you say you have in behalf of women; and that means against the rapists, against the pimps, and against the pornographers. It means something more than a personal renunciation. It means a systematic, political, active, public attack. And there has been very little of that.

I came here today because I don’t believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we are not in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.

As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I’ve talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place.

And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less — it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don’t mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can’t begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives — both men and women — begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love.

Revving Up Old and New Engines

Published on by Lisa Category: Psychology and Mental Health

When a person is in therapy, there is a dismantling of problems that occur. From the dismantling, one can see connections between problems, the depth of rootedness, and what is springing forward in new vines.

When a person is in therapy, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Therapy, contrary to popular belief, is not being told things will be alright. Therapy is being told things are, actually, quite NOT alright and the sole holder of misery and also power to change the course of misery is yourself.

Depression can show itself in many forms, in many waves, and in many frequencies. I do not have clinical, postpardem, seasonal affect, or manic depression. I have the depression that comes in surprises, at night, when the fullness of the day is over and I am left to think about what I did or did not do. The kind that couches me and makes me think of all the things I’d rather be doing: traveling, photography, writing, and yoga when I must be doing other things. This morning, I woke with a feeling of dark glum; buried in feelings of nothingness, apathy, irritation, and profound sadness. I do not know why.

I don’t want to “feel better,” I want to live better. Living better, for who I am today at 27 years old, means I will take reasonable control of what I can in my life and CHOOSE to fight. Self-indulgent thoughts can include over-brooding your life and problems. I CHOOSE to limit my self-indulgent thoughts and move forward. I CHOOSE to move forward in my controversial family, my evolving with bumps along the way marriage, my No Through Way job and limited access to my soul friends who live so far away.

If there is one thing I got from therapy, it is that we must BUILD into our lives what we want to get out of it. You want joy? You must build joy into your life. You want comfort? You find comfort and build its accessibility into the seams. I want health. I must build health.

Moving from the margin to the center of your own life is taking life in your fist and refusing to let go. I refuse to give into depression. As I found a delightfully open and fortunate parking spot this morning, I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror and saw a fierce woman I remembered. I told her and whatever was looming inside this message, “You gotta come at me with more than that. I don’t back down. I’m more than this.”

J E A L O U S

Published on by Lisa Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes you just have to be honest. Seriously honest. And to be honest, I have to admit that I have jealousy bugs crawling over me all the freaking time. It’s not in earnest to be someone else. It’s jealousy when others have found HOW to be themselves and make a living out of it. Me? I want to be known for a passion, something great, something so profound. I guess we all do. My problem is I’m passionate about 42 different things.

When friends, like Keith, get to hop on plane and go to China simply to shoot pictures, I turn chartreuse with envy. I feel like I could die. A travelling photography trip to China for fun? You might as well tell me that bell hooks stopped by my office when I was out to lunch. It’s the same kind of suicidal disappointment.

It’s not just about photography. It’s the same kind of envy I feel when someone under thirty publishes a book. I feel the hourglass start shaking; precious sands hurtling downward, marking my inevitable end of life and I have so much still that I want to do. I want to write my life, write my story, write my way into a place I cannot see from here. I want to photograph emotion from strangers, peace from petals, and horror from war. I want to go places and see things, and FEEL, Goddammit! FEEL!

It is not enough for me to “have” a job that is aligned in social justice. I must DO justice; DO meaning; DO great things. I must give something to this world after all it has given me, after all I have taken from it; after all I have ingested.

Yesterday, I went to a lecture from the first women editor of the New York Times editorial section. What did she emphasize beyond politics, journalism, and writing? PASSION. Passion is what drives; PASSION is what does and will make you distinct.

Afterward, I skipped a lecture from Sandra Day O’Connor. I decided to be passionate on my own. Knowing this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and wondering if I would regret it like I did when I skipped a lecture from Coretta Scott King, I still knew what I truly thirsted. It wasn’t more advice from another pioneer. I didn’t need to hear what I already knew: it’s truth, passion, and goodness that propel. What I needed was quiet. I craved one night to myself, time to sculpt myself. I must be distinct.

You Won’t Sleep If You Read This Link

Published on by Lisa Category: International Violence WAR, Links

Some mornings, I pray for peace. I really do. I pray for a peace that we cannot attain. A morning where only the sun burns and not human flesh with violence and war.

Other mornings, I wonder what is going on in the world. As I wake up and make love and drink tea, I ask myself what is the world feeling and thinking.

And then there are mornings when I receive answers and find this.
These are the mornings when I cannot comprehend the world and where we are going.

*REALLY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF VIOLENCE ARE ON THIS LINK.*

Rozzi

Published on by Lisa Category: I Wanna Talk 'bout ME

My beauteous car, Rozzi, has breached 100,000 miles today.

I’m having a mini-party for her. I appreciate anyone that sticks with me for this long, even though I adopted her at 54K. Seriosly, for as indecisive as I am and for as many illegal u-turns as I’ve pulled, not to mention how many profane retorts I’ve shouted out of her windows, I am honoring the wonderful companion that is my darling girl, Rozzi.

Lolo

Published on by Lisa Category: I Wanna Talk 'bout ME

Lolo, in Tagalog, means grandfather. Since Tagalog is so heavily influenced from Spanish, my parents say that likely, LOLO, came from ABUELO…LO…LOLO….

My adorable newphew cannot say much. Knowing only a handful of words, he calls his mother by his first name, SSSSTHSSUZI, his Dad – DADDA. His aunts, TITA (more Tagalog), but the person he loves most is his grey haired LOLO.

My Dad loves it.

Respond

Published on by Lisa Category: Some Better than Normal Writings

Today, I spent several hours writing a response to an article. Here is the article, followed by my response.

Holiday Political Correctness Solves No Problems

Tom Speaker

Get ready, everyone. December is just around the corner. Soon, it will be time to light the nondenominational holiday tree.

“Nondenominational holiday tree?” you ask. “I thought it was called a Christmas tree.” Indeed it once was. Unfortunately, we live in a culture where political correctness and over consideration of people’s feelings supersede history and common sense.

The “nondenominational holiday tree” actually has very Christian roots. Its tradition traces back to Western Germany in the 1500s. The trees were called “paradeisbaum,” or “paradise trees.” They were annually brought into homes Dec. 24 to celebrate the Feast of Adam and Eve. The trees reached America in 1700 and became popular by 1850.

Christmas trees have clearly been a part of the Christian culture for hundreds of years. Given Christianity’s ubiquity in America, people often try to neutralize the trees so that everyone can feel accepted. But this leads one to wonder: How would other cultures and religions feel if their own symbols and traditions were universalized? Would people sit and smile if the Jewish menorah was renamed the “Nonreligious Nine-Branched Candelabrum?” How would Muslims feel if the star and crescent was retitled the “Cosmological Simplistic Representation of No Specific Creed?”

The Christmas season (whoops, holiday season) isn’t the only example. This brand of over-sensitivity and revisionism is permeating society to ridiculous degrees. A few years ago, the University of Dayton sent out a letter stating that the term “freshman” has too many negative connotations and must be replaced with “first-year” so that people aren’t afraid of their class identity.

Several people see the phrase “mental retardation” as too pejorative (given the widespread use of insults such as “you’re retarded”), and now it’s nearly impossible to determine what to say – is it “challenged,” “developmentally disabled,” “developmentally delayed” or “mentally subnormal?”

Some feminists view the terms “woman” and “women” as symbolic of the historical and continuing subordination of their sex and suggest that society find replacements for the words, such as “womyn,” “wimmen” or “womon.” One European circle even proposed eliminating sex in profiling altogether.

The problem with modifications such as these is that they change history and terminology so that people will feel better about themselves. Unfortunately, taking such action prevents people from adjusting to the world on their own and facing its realities. It is one thing to erase blatantly offensive labels (such as the infamous N-word), but history and neutral commonplace words are something else altogether. Holiday trees, nondenominational or not, still have Christian origins.

The “developmentally delayed” will face ridicule, no matter what they are called. And whether you’re a “first-year” or a “freshman,” some people will always assume that you are naive and inexperienced.

People will be more prepared for the real world if they deal with these stereotypes, prejudices and facts of history on their own instead of through a sensitive vocabulary.

MY REPLY

A mixture of genuine curiosity for one portion of his article and blatant disagreement with the other motivated me to write a response to the November 7 publication, “Holiday Political Correctness Solves No Problems,” by Tom Speaker.

Mr. Speaker calls the current culture we live in a place where “political correctness and over consideration of people’s feelings supersede history and common sense.” Highlighting the once called, “Christmas tree” now synonymous with the “non denominational holiday tree,” Speaker uses this example as illustration of society’s “over sensitivity” to be politically correct. After providing references about the origins of the Christmas tree, he jumps to, “How would other cultures and religions feel if their own symbols and traditions were universalized?”

Christmas is two things. The Christmas holy-day, in its religious origin, celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas, the holiday, has evolved to be winter celebration of seasons, Santa Claus, and other proverbial winter icons. The tree holds significance for both. The effort to call the Christmas tree other names may very well be an effort to be mindful of non-believers, agnostics, or atheists, but it is certainly not in the name of religious diversity and faith inclusion. Even if the symbolic broadening of the Christmas tree is done in the name of “political correctness,” it’s still problematic to use a symbol with Christian heritage. The underlying assumption is that everyone recognizes and agrees with this symbol.

On October 26, the University Multicultural Council sponsored a Religious Diversity forum where calendars with different religious holidays and symbols were distributed. This simple gesture, featuring Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Wiccan, Jewish, Jain, and Orthodox Christian traditions, demonstrates there is indeed a societal and University need to be more inclusive and open-minded of other religions and cultures. It is not a call for Christian symbols to change its history. It’s not a call even for Christmas-goers to share the holiday fever. It’s a call for all individuals, to bring themselves to a higher level of integrity and intentional respect for other religious practices and beliefs.

What I found most disturbing is the article then jumps to language use as further illustrating how “ridiculous” and PC our society has become. Speaker cites the University of Dayton’s stance that the term “freshman” is too negative and must be replaced with “first year” as pictorial hypersensitivity. Perhaps the administration of UD should not be criticized for taking action against the underlying problems of hazing and other problems that come with seniority issues. Perhaps UD viewed the term, “fresh-man” as too narrow and ignoring issues of gender identity and is attempting to model a new viewpoint.

Speaker also goes on to write, that “several people” find the phrase mental retardation as “too pejorative,” and complains “it’s nearly impossible to determine what to say.” What I found backward is that Speaker finds fault with “mental retardation,” an actual diagnostic terms for persons born with lower levels of cognitive ability and not with the population that nonchalantly uses “you’re retarded” as a degrading verbal hit. But, according to Speaker, these human beings “will face ridicule, no matter what they are called.” It is the incredulous ignorance and abuse of our language, not our “political correctness,” that is superceding common sense.

Also, Speaker identifies problems with the terms “woman and women.” As a feminist of color, I am curious as to what group of feminists Speaker is referring to when he writes “some feminists and one European circle.” Feminism is a naturally evolving term with respect to race, class, gender, age, ability, and religion. It is a lens to view a world of difference to promote equality for all persons. Some of my feminist peers and colleagues do prefer alternative spellings, such as “womyn.” However, their reasons are not to “change history and terminology so that [they] will feel better about themselves,” it is a personal preference to express their own dissent in opposition to systematic privilege based on gender. It is an action to heighten awareness, hardly an attempt to feel better about themselves and the state of patriarchy.

It’s the lack of cultural competency, not vocabulary modification that is the real problem. Malicious labels, insults, and misinformed use of words create a prejudicial climate that panders to the lowest opinions in our communities. Speaker states that vocabulary adjustment will not change the world, but I disagree. As Martin Heidegger states, “Language is the house of being, and [you] must exist in that house.” It’s not just about the language, it about the climate those words create.