I Return, With A Vengeance! (well, a pet peeve...)

I realize I've been neglecting you, my dear moppets, and that you have, like baby birds, been languishing, hopelessly, with beaks open and bellies hungry for clove-flavoured cancer, cheeping piteously for my attention and love.

Well, you'll have to keep cheeping.

I've broken my blogging fast not, as I'm sure you've been praying, to bring you more pearls of kretek wisdom, but rather to discuss a pet peeve of mine that has manifested itself in an unlikely place.

You may have noticed, if you've read ANY of my posts, EVER, that I am thoroughly smitten by flowery language. Hyperbole, metaphor, exaggeration, how those things light a fire in my soul. Humour, sarcasm, venom, and romanticism, who can live without them? Certainly not I!

Well, apparently, quite a lot of people can. As if that wasn't bad enough, those same people insist that everyone else should live without metaphoric language, as well.

Another thing you may not know, is that apart from loving clove cigarettes and anger, I also adore science, and am quite taken with (shame of shames) silly girly things, like makeup. Thus, the new blog title and description. I've decided to branch out! No longer shall I be a one-trick pony! But back to that makeup. I've been following the blog of one Doe Deere, whose line of brightly colored cosmetics I'm currently infatuated with. Her blog is full of color, and happiness, and an obsession with unicorns and fairies and such. As someone who is decidedly not a gleeful, unicorn-oriented person, it seems a bit odd, even to me, who was recently described as 'a cauldron of endless, spewing hatred,' how much I actually enjoy this daily dose of cutesy technicolor cheer.

This Deere is never negative, always pleasant, often giddy with excitement, and is just rainbows and puppies all around. So, when she posted about being creatively inspired by 'madness,' :

 "I’m inspired by madness. Its special allure lies in the fact that a madman is free. He thinks and does however he likes and never cares what anyone thinks. Sometimes when I’m struggling creatively, I like to imagine that I’m simply crazy — before I know it, all kinds of “outside the box” ideas start popping up in my head." - Doe Deere

 I never expected a backlash of nerd-rage proportions. Especially not on a makeup and fashion blog. I mean, really, who would? Rainbows and puppies, I tell you! But that is exactly what happened. Several people commented about how it was offensive to use the term 'mad' in a positive light. Several people called her a terrible, insensitive person (although in much simpler, and more offensive terms. Oh, the irony!). Of course, some of Ms. Deere's defenders were just as clod-tongued as her haranguers, but on the whole it was a very interesting debate. There were in fact several impressively cogent arguments (mine among them, if I do say so myself), that did much to raise the caliber of the discussion, on both sides, and turn it into an intellectual debate, rather than a back alley argument.

On the one side, glorifying mental illness is a bad thing, sure. On the other, lighten up, she didn't mean anything negative by it. On the third hand, maybe using terms like 'mad' can actually help people with mental illness to cope and improve. You can read all the comments to get a full idea of the debate, how it raged, ebbed, and flowed, and how very little was solidly accomplished, being held within the forum of a fashion blog. The fashion industry and its fans are not, after all, particularly known for their prowess at sociology, disputation, or, for that matter, logical thought. (Politically Correct Disclaimer: This is not to say that fashion people are necessarily bad at these things, or incompetent, or daft, so go on and swallow that misplaced indignance. None of that nonsense, please.)

What upset me most, however, was the gall of some people to suggest, self-righteously, that certain words are inherently bad. Compassion for others and understanding people in different situations is all well and good, but it was taken to extremes. Quite stupid and ill-informed extremes. Intolerant and patronizing extremes. Hypocritical and pathetic extremes. You get the picture here.

This blog, linked as a response, in particular struck me as characteristic of an upsetting and ill-informed trend in modern culture.

"Look, using disability as a metaphor tends to come from one basic problem: linguistic laziness.  There are SO many other words that can be used!  Foolish, ridiculous, thoughtless, senseless, hampered, troubled, restrained, naive.  Just to name a few.  When you use disability metaphors, you hurt those of us who actually have disabilities.  I am NOT your metaphor.  Find a new one." - brilliantmindbrokenbody

These comments show political correctness at its worst. Apparently, we're not allowed to use terms like 'blind' or 'lame' or 'crippled' as metaphors, but nor are we allowed to use them to describe people with disabilities! Handicapped? No, they cry, We are Handi-Capable! Disabled? How Dare You, they exclaim, We are Differently Abled! Dare to use colorful language, like 'the politician is blinded by greed,' and all the visually impaired people are supposed to rise up in arms, shrieking that this is offensive to them, and that blindness should not be used as a metaphor for an inability to plan, or as a way of describing someone who is obsessed with something to the exclusion of everything else.

Come on, now. Humans use language based upon their experience. We are organisms whose environment has out-evolved our bodies, and we are still, though many would deny it, creatures of the flesh, of instincts and glands and sensory input. We are highly visual, almost to the exclusion of other senses such as smell and hearing, and so much of our vocabulary relating to planning, relationships, and other such intangibles leans heavily on perceptions of sight. 'I see what you're saying,' we say to each other. 'I see now what I should do,' we exclaim. 'It all seems clearer in hindsight,' we lament. Vision is so built into our brains, that we can't help but view (there we go again) the world as if it was a series of pictures.

Being bipedal also highly influences our communication patterns. Having only two legs with which to travel, we tend to prize them highly. Losing the function of one or both, even if it's just from wearing ill-fitting shoes, or stubbing a toe, means a serious and frightening reduction in our ability to escape from danger or predators. This is what our brain tells us, whose instincts are stuck several million years ago, when if you couldn't run fast, you were tiger meat. So of course terms like 'crippled' and 'lame' creep into our vocabulary, not necessarily as denigrating terms for people of the locomotively challenged persuasion, but as metaphors for things not being the way they ought to be. 'The economy has been crippled by irresponsible financial practices' does not advocate mocking your neighborhood limbless WWII veteran, but rather uses an ingrained, instinctual, species-wide fear to illustrate that Things Are Not How They Ought To Be.

That being said, yes, it's terrible that people are stuck inside bodies that don't work the way they should do, but either deal with it and transcend your disabilities, suffering pity from no man, or sit in a dark room and cry while insisting (unreasonably) that everyone wait on you hand and stump. YOU CAN"T HAVE BOTH!

If Stephen Hawking can do what he has done, then you have no fucking excuse. Suck it up, princess, and stay the hell away from my right to free speech.