Cosplay: The sincerest form of flattery

LOOK, I'M IN THE GUARDIAN! Part of agreeing to write there, however, is agreeing to reply to comments. And they're sort of ugly. Like, oh! I remember why I moderate ugly. So please go write smart things! I'll be eternally grateful.

And let me know what you think!

Also, since the word limit for this article was, like, crippling, I'll be writing a longer version on the blog soon, and include some of the great stuff I got from my interviews with cosplayers. (Real, live ones! Who aren't my friends!)

Weekend Update

Hey readers! I just wanted to let you know we're still alive. I took an unexpected road trip and Adrienne had her crazy birthday party, but we'll be posting again soon next week.

I was asked by the Guardian (yes, that Guardian) to write an article about cosplay for their Comment Is Free section. (They're paying me in pounds! I don't know how that works, but it feels so exotic.) I'll link it here on Monday when it goes live, so watch out for that!

Cheers!

Your Tuesday funny

And no, it's not the xkcd that I've seen linked fucking everywhere. Though it was pretty funny.

From the ever-wonderful Scenes from a Multiverse:

Mrs., Miss, and Ms.; or, being a woman is linguistically annoying

(Our first co-blogged post! Courtney brings the swearing and Adrienne the cute swear euphemisms!)

I didn't even know that the Queen's English Society was a thing. Did you? Apparently, English needs to be pontificated about by self-nominated pompous people. Not too long ago, this QES decided that Ms. (pronounced miz) is "bad English." For a number of stupid reasons, outlined well by Motivated Grammar:

The QES’s complaints are petty, insane, or both. Case in point: they’d like to see Ms. abolished. Why?

1. It’s an abbreviation, but it has no long form.
2. It’s “unpronounceable” since it lacks a vowel.
3. It was created by “certain” women who “suddenly became sensitive about revealing their marital status.”

 Regarding point 1, this is matter of being beholden to word labels. It reminds me of an objection I once received to preposition stranding; “preposition” suggests “in a position before”, and therefore a preposition at the end of a sentence, where it doesn’t precede anything, must be incorrect.

So it goes with abbreviations; if you want to be literal, an abbreviation is an abbreviated form of something. But Ms. doesn’t need to be a literal abbreviation to exist. It does exist, as anyone can plainly see. If it’s not an abbreviation, that doesn’t stop it existing any more than a mannequin not being human stops it existing. 

Ms. isn’t an abbreviation, but rather a blend. It’s a combination of the two words Miss and Mrs., and it happens to inherit the closing period of the abbreviation Mrs., making it superficially resemble an abbreviation. That’s all.

And if we’re doing an abbreviation witch-hunt, what is Mrs. short for? Missus, one might say, but that isn’t really a word of its own as much as a spelling of the pronunciation of Mrs. Etymologically, Mrs. is an abbreviation of mistress, but the meaning of that word has changed sufficiently that you’d be stirring up a good deal of trouble if you called someone’s wife a “mistress”. I would argue that in modern English Mrs. itself is no longer an abbreviation, but a fully independent lexical item, much like Ms. 

Regarding point 2, well, we all manage to pronounce Ms. pretty well for the lack of a vowel supposedly rendering it unpronounceable. How do we do it? Technically speaking, the standard pronunciation of Ms. doesn’t have a vowel. We were told in school that all words need to have vowels, since each syllable has to have a vowel, but that’s not quite right. Some consonants can function as the nucleus of a syllable, just like a vowel. This is more apparent in some non-English languages, such as Berber or Slavic languages. For instance, in Czech or Slovak, you can apparently tell someone to stick their finger through their throat by saying Strč prst skrz krk (audio), a sentence where every word has a nucleic r in lieu of a vowel.

English does this, too, albeit more rarely. We often reduce and down to a syllabic [n] or [ŋ] between words (as in the restaurants Eat ‘n Park or In-N-Out), and word-final [l] and [r] are sometimes syllabic as well (as in bottle [boɾl] or pepper [pepr]). As you might have guessed, [z] is another syllabic consonant, which explains how we are able to pronounce [mz] as a stand-alone word.

Again, I don’t mean to demonize Mrs., but if we’re getting rid of vowel-less words, wouldn’t we have to get rid of it, too? Mrs. lacks a vowel orthographically, and has to trade its r for two [ɪ]s and an extra [z] just to get pronounced (as [mɪzɪz])! Now that’s unpronounceable!

On the first two points, Gabe is right on. Neither of these excuses to abolish Ms. make any damn sense linguistically, and frankly, if you are in a society dedicated to a particular language, you should know better. But that's kind of the point, and one Gabe seems to miss a little bit. He goes on to argue that Ms. "isn’t some recent feminist invention," but merely a convenient solution to etiquette. As if it being a recent feminist invention would mean that the QES was right. Because feminists never have any good ideas, and the older something is the better.

But pretty much all linguistic criticisms, especially ones that want so much to argue that some linguistic device isn't logical or doesn't make sense, are political. A good example of this is something I hear an awful lot, which is the "logical" argument against double negatives. Double negatives, according to this argument, don't make sense, because they cancel each other out. This argument makes zero sense, because when a person says, that don't/doesn't make no sense, everyone knows that they don't mean that sentence positively. Most understand that it's actually a way to emphasize the negative quality of the sentence. That doesn't make sense is less emphatic than that don't/doesn't make no sense. There is no "canceling out" effect. Double negatives used to be a part of mainstream English dialects (Shakespeare used them!), and the only reason they are denigrated so much now is because they are only used in marginalized dialects, like African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Chicano English. Which means that arguments against double negatives are arguments saying that racially-based marginalized dialects are linguistically inferior. This shit is always, always political.

Which means that the whole point of the QES's argument is to force women to use Mrs. and Miss, and thus place them in a system in which a woman is judged by whether a man has found her worthy enough to grace her with his name. Even when one wants to use Ms. to step outside of this system, some people either won't accept it or habitually "forget." The QES has a quaint notion that creating a title for the unmarried single male makes sense and would answer the confusion and issue surrounding Ms. Gabe is very polite calling this an "inferior solution," but let's take a slightly stronger (oh yes, some of you will read this as bitchier) position. This is straight up a pile of crappola. Men are not judged like women are judged on the status of their romantic entanglements. In an interview, Mrs. matters. A woman's title can impact how she is treated, respected, and hired. Currently, one of the only ways out of this conundrum is for a woman to receive a title that replaces Ms., Miss, or Mrs., like Dr. And how shitty is it that only the privileged get this option. We're lucky. And yet, there is still pressure with the use of Ms. and Dr. to box women back into those societal labels of single or married (worthless or worthy).

I (Adrienne) have had a couple of uncomfortable experiences with titles as a teacher at a university. Frequently students call me Dr., and I explain that I am not a doctor yet and would prefer to be called Ms. I accept Professor because... well I profess, and students sometimes feel more comfortable with this designation. I don't go by my first name because as a fairly informal teacher and a young woman, I am already walking a fine line trying to be comfortable, fun, and me in the classroom while still having authority and respect. More frequently, students call me Mrs. Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. I'm not married, nor do I want to be married. And my marital status isn't important or any of their business. After picking up quizzes one day in a class a few years ago, I realized that more than half of the students had married me off on their papers. After picking up the papers, I announce that I'm not Mrs. and should be addressed as Ms. In response, a male student leered at me and asked "Does that mean you're single?"... Speechless, my face must have portrayed enough of the anger and disgust I was feeling because he immediately started apologizing. Thank you very much for trying to fit me tightly back into the category as clearly either available to men or not available to men. (And him specifically. Gross.) And thank you for refusing to give me respect or authority because I'm a sexual object.

This is personal. And it is political. And QES and Gabe should recognize that. It impacts our lives. Forcing women to wear Miss and Mrs. is always an attempt to undermine their authority. Female professors, especially young ones without doctorates, feel this acutely. I'm sure lots of other women in many different positions feel this too. Pretending we are living in a non-sexist culture that only has problems with confusion about language and status is damaging.

Feel free to share your Ms./Mrs./Miss/Doctor stories in the comments!

Verbal abuse and "toughening up"

(Trigger warning for descriptions of verbal and physical abuse and douchiness about those things.)

s. e. smith's wonderful "Dear Imprudence" series at FWD/Forward is one of my favorite things in my (ridiculously extensive) blog reading habit. Part of it is just that I find hiring incompetent and uncompassionate advice columnists fucking reprehensible. For example, the "Love Connection" column in the Maroon Weekly is a train wreck. (My inside information tells me that this author doesn't work for MW anymore. Let's hope they don't scrape the bottom of the barrel and finally get someone better.) And smith is great about calling all the shitty, shitty advice columnists out. Which is hugely important, I think, because no matter how bad the advice author is (see: Maroon Weekly), people will continue to write in to them. So we need to hold these authors to a high standard, because their bad advice will continue to affect people's lives.

Anyway, one of smith's posts really resonated with me recently: Dear Imprudence: Just Toughen Up Already! In it, smith criticizes the Ask Amy column for refusing to take verbal abuse seriously. The letter to Ask Amy is from a lady in high school who wants advice on how to deal with her verbally abusive brother. Amy's response is to tell this lady that what she is experiencing is not abuse, and basically that she shouldn't let it bother her. From smith:

Let’s be clear here. Hurt Sister is saying that what her brother is doing is actively hurting her. She cites that it’s a blow to her self esteem, and it makes her feel bad. She’s writing to ask for help. It’s worth noting that all over the world, every single day, people experiencing verbal abuse cry out for help, and they often get responses exactly like Amy’s.

[...]

You know what is verbal abuse? Something that someone identifies as abuse because that person is experiencing it. There are definitely degrees of verbal abuse, but they are all abusive. This is a short letter. We don’t know all the details. But it seems to me, reading between the lines, that her brother is constantly hounding her, is constantly making her feel small and worthless, is constantly saying that he is better than her, is constantly reminding her that she is ‘not doing things right’ and, you know what? That can become highly abusive when you are hearing it over and over.

Especially if you are aware of how it is impacting the way you feel about yourself. Hurt Sister is not writing in to say ‘this is annoying and it bugs me,’ she is writing to say this hurts me and I want it to stop.

Amy’s response is the equivalent of the old ‘sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ adage, with a side of ‘you shouldn’t let the things that other people say about you affect you.’ Well, guess what. Words hurt people. The things that people say about (and to) you affect you, whether you like it or not. It’s not always possible to make a ‘healthy choice’ to ignore verbal abuse, especially when you are a high school student, in your own home, a place that should be safe, and your family member is subjecting you to it.

THIS. This all over the place. Had I read this Ask Amy column without smith's commentary, it would have been triggering. Growing up, I experienced verbal abuse from my father. It took a long time for me to take it seriously, because I actually got the least of it in my family, because it never slipped into physical violence like it did for my other family members, and because when I talked about it, my friends pretty much gave me the same advice Amy gave this young lady. smith again:

There’s a prevailing and extremely dangerous attitude that verbal abuse isn’t ‘real’ abuse, despite ample evidence to the contrary. That attitude manifests in the way that people at all levels deal with abuse, from teachers handling bullying to human resource directors in offices with hostile work environments. If an abuser uses words alone to harm people, that abuser is far more likely to get away with it, and the responsibility for dealing with it will be placed solely on the victim. It’s the victim’s fault for being ‘too sensitive’ and not ‘toughening up.’

So, personal story time. This is not actually something I talk about much, because I've gotten the "you're being too sensitive" reaction a number of times. While most friends I've told about my abusive home growing up did not come right out and say "toughen up," most of them did act like I was overreacting to what they saw as normal parent/teenager conflict. It's taken me a number of years to get comfortable calling it abuse because of this. When I was a teenager, my father was abusive. Verbally to all our family members (my mother and my brother). That became more physical with my brother as he got older. I have reason to believe that his abuse of my mother was well beyond verbal, but we haven't really ever talked about it. We had a code of silence when I was growing up, which I think is fairly common in abusive homes. While we all hated Dad, there was an understanding that it was not okay to talk about it outside of the family. And even within the family, it had to be framed a certain way. Calling it abuse was not okay, because that word indicated a seriousness that would force us to tell someone else. If Dad shoved my brother, it was a "fight." If he yelled at us until he was red in the face for mostly imagined crimes, or told us that we were to blame for him and Mom constantly fighting (and, eventually, for their divorce), or when he basically told us we were (and made me feel) worthless, he was an asshole. But it was still not abuse. And my mother, because she was getting the worst of it, and didn't really want us to know (but of course we knew some, and suspected more), didn't talk about it at all. So breaking that code of silence after their separation when I was 16 was a huge breakthrough for me. But when I talked to my friends about it, I was silenced again. (I was the only member of our family that didn't go to therapy at this time, because we were broke and Mom and my brother clearly needed it more.) According to my friends, what I experienced wasn't "real abuse," and my talking about it downplayed the real abuse suffered by my mother and brother. I was just being too sensitive and exaggerating what really happened because I didn't like my father. For years, I thought those friends were right.

It's still rare for me to talk about this with friends, despite the fact that I'm a fairly well-adjusted adult now. But even as an adult, it's still rare for my friends to take me seriously. The other day, I was telling Adrienne about how my father would remove my and Justin's bedroom doors for days at a time when we were pre-teens and teenagers as punishment, usually for not ratting each other out. She was horrified, and sadly, I was actually surprised by her reaction, despite the fact that it's mine as well. But the taking-off-the-doors punishment usually elicits nothing more than, "Wow, your dad was an asshole." Well, yes. But he was also horrific and abusive. And sometimes I need to hear that from my friends. (Thanks, Adrienne, for being awesome!)

I still have certain family members that think I'm overreacting, or that don't understand exactly why I won't speak to him. It's hard to talk about with them, so they don't know everything. In fact, they know very little, and most of what they do know actually comes from him. They're his family, and he's supposedly turned a corner, so there's been a lot of reconciliation on their end with him. Which means they think a number of things, namely that his chief crimes to his children were being sort of absent and cheating on my mother.  He's manipulative, and their distrust of me, when they are good people and when they know me to be a perfectly reasonable and very smart lady, is plenty of evidence for me that he hasn't changed a bit. Whatever he's told them, it's probably mostly bullshit, and it sure hasn't been admission of abuse. I wish that I could tell them all this, but I can't. They're too sympathetic to him, and I can't talk to people about this when they've been trying to get me to reconcile with him for years now. But, honestly, I think they should at least suspect. As I noted, I'm clever and driven and reasonable, not a whiny child. They know this, and they also know I haven't said more than pleasantries to him in over 3 years. That should indicate that this is not just a temper tantrum, but a defense mechanism, one I only need because something really fucking bad happened.

But I'm also afraid to tell them, because they might react the way that so many have: by telling me that it's not "real abuse," by thinking I'm overreacting, by thinking that I'm too sensitive. And, frankly, I can't handle being told all that again.

(Fun story: I was forced to invite my father to my undergrad graduation because of a guilt trip from this side of the family. Before this, when discussing it with them, I burst into tears and couldn't talk about it anymore. A side effect of this whole damn mess is that when older men make me feel threatened or patronized, I verbally shut down and can't stop crying. Can't do it. The male family member then said, "I'm kind of glad you're crying. It means you still care about him." I've never wanted to punch someone so much as I did at that moment.)

My father scarred me with words. He's made it nearly impossible for me to control myself when male authority figures patronize me (that was not the first or last time I've cried uncontrollably in front of older men, and the other times were much more embarassing, since they were university-related). He's made my relationships with the rest of my family strained and difficult. And he made me feel useless and unworthy of love for years.  And the advice of Ask Amy, the advice of most adults when something like this happens, enabled him to scar me.

Counter protest at Comic Con; or, God hates Jedi

So, the Westboro Church is protesting Comic Con this year, for "worshipping false idols." You can't make this shit up; apparently God hates geeks. So, geeks, being awesome, held a hilarious counter-protest. From Comics Alliance:

Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego's Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting "WHAT DO WE WANT" "GAY SEX" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT" "NOW!" while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom's finest stood and delivered.

Which is the best thing ever. More pictures below the jump.

Quote of the day

GOD COURTNEY LOOK WHAT YOU'VE REDUCED ME TO

-My friend Kaitlyn, who hadn't seen a single episode of Doctor Who a few months ago, after deciding to go to a coffee shop to research Doctor Who cosplay stuff for the Gally convention