Geek Service Announcment: And Now for Something Completely Different
So I belong to a very awesome community that happens to be very good for my health (when it isn't making me lose faith in humanity due to it's sheer existence) called Fanficrants. Simply put it's a community where people rant about the weird/crazy/cringeworthy stuff that happens in fandom. Got a reviewer yelling at you for not posting often enough and hour after you updated? Got someone making Hardison screw up his Dr. Who references? Got someone ficing about opening an umbrella up where the sun don't shine (you know where I mean)? Go rant there.
However be forewarned. As many of the rants are aimed at various ist language uses be careful. Don't say something's lame, it's ableist. Don't say something's retarded, that's also ablist. Heaven help you if you say something's gay and if you drop the N word just do yourself a favor and let them lead you out back and remove you from the gene pool.
Normally I kind of like this. Considering the number of my developing years I spent hiding in a corner with a book and hoping no one would try to talk to me one might argue my socialization with others left something to be desired. I learn how to interact more through observation than anything and watching the train wrecks unfold on Fanficrants occasionally has left me with some lessons of things to do or not do in the future. Not to mention most of the words are ones I've been quietly muttered "...yes, it is attracted to tests of the same gender as it but that's not really the point" or the like to myself for years. I am gay. I've mostly gotten used to just ignoring it when I hear it but every so often it's kind of nice to see a bunch of people who by every chance aren’t gay themselves speak up when someone uses a term for what I am as an indication that something is bad.
However there is one word that will get you dog piled on Fanficrants that I have to watch myself about. One I found slipped into my own comment to a post (luckily before the comment was posted). "Bitching".
I don't normally call people bitches (last clear memory was a particularly vile woman in freshman year of high school but I both digress and begin to see what my room mate means when she refers to me having a freakishly good memory for conversations). I do use the term bitching when the situation calls for it. I'm not sure the lovely folks at Fanficrants would see the differences and I've learned through the witnessed train wrecks once someone calls you out on language the only right course of action is to apologies and then shut up.
But this is a case of the use and baggage and history of language ruining a perfectly good word and I guess that's my whole point here. When I use the word bitching I'm thinking in my head about the little yappy dog one of my childhood best friends had who would raise holy hell if you did such atrocities as enter a room, leave a room, and possibly breathe. There isn't even really a "female" connotation in my head anymore.
I like words. I like finding the perfect word to describe something. That meaning in my head matches the meaning I use it for and what's more it feels right. Try saying bitching. There's just something satisfying about it.
But no matter what's in my head I can't get away from that connotation that that yappy little dog is female and of *course* all females are like that yappy little dog and a perfectly good adjective for the girl down the hall's tendency to complain loudly to anyone in her vicinity about her professor giving out too much work is ruined.
I need a new descriptive word.