By my experience, 'bitch' as a noun is still gendered, 'bitchiness' as an adjective is not and 'bitching' as a verb is definitely not. I do not like calling anyone a bitch, but I will tell people that I get very bitchy when I don't eat once every six hours, and I will bitch about nasty traffic. Verb and adjective both apply to behaviors. The noun applies to people. And, well, dogs, yeah.
Your point here is valid, and as a result I should clarify as I was being pretty general -- sorry about that.
I totally don't think that the crux of the problem is people being upset at being touched by strangers. I don't want to address the crux of the problem.
There are a LOT of problems here, obviously: the tone of theferrett's main post, the assumptions being made, the way that people who were upset were talked to, and the repeated, incredibly irritating implications that men and women are equal so the fact that men were part of the project means that it wasn't weighted in one direction.
What I was kind of addressing was the poisonous level of vitriol that the threads ultimately came to. When I talk about a "DO NOT TOUCH ME" attitude, I don't mean "I am skeeved by the idea of a stranger touching my breasts".
I'm more thinking about the people who said that after reading the original posts, they would surely never go to a con. I mean the name-callers. I mean the people who seemed to be more interested in calling other people out than in getting their point across -- the severe sort of behavior that I figured sheryl67 was referencing.
Threads where the above sort of rhetoric gets thrown around virtually never result in anyone changing their viewpoint. Nobody goes "Oh my goodness, I really kind of screwed up, didn't I? I had it wrong!" All that happens is that insults and criticisms become more and more clarified and people become more and more angry, and the people who were hoping to actually get a point across drop out.
I see a lot of the same style of 'discussion' on LJ communities where negativity or opposing something seems to be the main thrust. I believe that a similar principle that governs those communities is in effect here.
no subject
Your point here is valid, and as a result I should clarify as I was being pretty general -- sorry about that.
I totally don't think that the crux of the problem is people being upset at being touched by strangers. I don't want to address the crux of the problem.
There are a LOT of problems here, obviously: the tone of
What I was kind of addressing was the poisonous level of vitriol that the threads ultimately came to. When I talk about a "DO NOT TOUCH ME" attitude, I don't mean "I am skeeved by the idea of a stranger touching my breasts".
I'm more thinking about the people who said that after reading the original posts, they would surely never go to a con. I mean the name-callers. I mean the people who seemed to be more interested in calling other people out than in getting their point across -- the severe sort of behavior that I figured
Threads where the above sort of rhetoric gets thrown around virtually never result in anyone changing their viewpoint. Nobody goes "Oh my goodness, I really kind of screwed up, didn't I? I had it wrong!" All that happens is that insults and criticisms become more and more clarified and people become more and more angry, and the people who were hoping to actually get a point across drop out.
I see a lot of the same style of 'discussion' on LJ communities where negativity or opposing something seems to be the main thrust. I believe that a similar principle that governs those communities is in effect here.
I guess that's what I'm trying to say.