Gold-Diggers

Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold-digger, but she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke, broke.

Ah, the wistful complaints of a generation and a half retasked to greed. Actually, I don’t think old Kayne was far off here, thematically. It is true that using the word “gold-digger,” male to female, has invariably become a mirror on “whore” to the feminine ear. The notion’s more recent adaptation ‘ho,’ as now also heard when one utters the term “gold-digger” adds a smattering of gully racism to the already sexist vibe therein meant. Expressing that some one is a gold-digger, specifically a woman, is today like to elicit responses of an intensity one might use to verbally thwart off a rapist or to steer a rocket ship full of mental health consumers careening into the sun. Very much in opposition to the politically correct speech continuum, “gold-digger” runs that fine line between being both cuss-free and an arbitrary insult. It’s a PG-13 bullet. The word is never uttered in the positive and while then fully negative, is still a sort of cast-off wording as aspersions go like baldy, shorty, diva, blondie, yahoo, wing-nut, or peon. Kayne ain’t sayin’ it. I ain’t sayin’ it.

I, of course, do not believe that almost any woman is a true gold-digger. Yes, I still have my penis. Traditionally the term is understood as a woman who chooses to marry for money, big money, in the absence of all love, maturity, self-respect, and couplehood. That’s pretty harsh. Yet, as harsh as it may be, there are one or two people out there who’ve done it and pretty much ruined the romance game for everyone else. (I’d make an Anna Nicole joke here, but it’s in poor taste to speak of dead boobs.) Still, the modern take on the word “gold-digger” has evolved far beyond its original affronting intent. So, while no woman deserves to be referred to in such a sexist way, it might also be incumbent upon an intelligent woman with relationship interests to know all the new permutations the notion has taken on.


Why? Well, to explain that, let’s look at a far more despicable word like “bitch” to illustrate. I am going to take it fore-granted that all readers agree as I do that a woman should not be called a bitch. It is a word originally meant to compare a woman to a female dog whose job it seemingly is to immediately bend over and acquiesce to sex as it is dished out, no conversation, no strings, no complaints. Bitch is a morbidly demeaning word in its linguistic heritage, an insult timeline that includes both the typical American tendency to insult through sex words and the typical European tendency to insult through comparison to lesser animals. It is a word used to subjugate, to battle, to goad, and to sometimes reassert a fictional manhood all too fragile to withstand fair debate. Given its origins, it is little wonder why in a society striving for equality we ponder as to the term’s usage at all. Any man worth his salt has set forth a pattern in life to either minimize, eliminate, or to never in the first place find function for the term. That said, and heard resounding in the ears of all the women out there who’ve actually found themselves a good man, have any of you ever wondered, despite how infrequently your man speaks it, how often he’s thought it? How many times has your man, in his head, thought you were a bitch? See, coming to the near collective agreement that the word “bitch” is bad to say, we never truly attacked the root of the issue, perception. We never really considered how much worse it might be to be thought of as a bitch than to be called one once or twice in a lifetime. Both are bad, yes, but is not the thought worse? Is not the word only a reflection of the thought and therefore a revealing of the true self, the underlying barbarian, the invisible demon within? Your man may have never called you a bitch in the entirety of your relationship, but I guarantee even the most evolved among us has thought it on occasion and amongst a small minority even been convinced of it on the regular. Asking does no good. Most men deny it. Those who will not deny it can’t really talk about it now that we’ve labeled the curse off-limits. Admitting this fault for a man is admitting the beast from whence he comes and topples all other hopes at his civilized efforts. He could solve world hunger, but his wife might never let him live down the one time the B-word slipped from his lips as he muttered in his sleep. Plus, let’s face it; nobody can control what another person thinks. It’s just not doable, nor is it ethical.

So, what can be done? Nothing? I disagree. If you work in I.T., for instance, and are thought of as the go-to tech guru of Cinnabon Corporate, but are trying to break the ceiling into management, there are actions you can take. You can change people’s perceptions of you. You can refrain from certain practices, conversation, even projects and engage in newer tasks and interactions shaped to highlight your leadership attributes. “China needs sweet cakes!” It takes a lifetime commitment on your part, but such an outcome is very probable. Well, the same holds true for the perception of you, even the vastly false perception of you, as a “bitch.” Perhaps you are content in the word not being uttered. That’s fine. But if there is even the slightest desire in you for others to never reach that false conclusion, you can change practices in much the same way. You can gain control. You can positivize people’s perception of you, leaping thoughts out from the stagnant realm of cusses and insult and into the domain of mutual respect, perhaps even admiration or hero worship.

Should you have to do that? NO!!!! Not for the pea-brained morons who’d think you a “bitch.” You should not have to change anything about yourself to curtail these bleak prejudgments. After all, the word “bitch” only contains what power you give it, and not any power the speaker wishes to lend the term. But just because you should not have to change these perceptions, does not mean that you cannot. Seizing control is an option. If you had been somehow academically availed of all the practices that lead your husband or your boyfriend or your lover to draw that faulty conclusion, it would be in your best interest to address those points. Mature people will address them in conversation, some in arguments. Others might seek third party psychological help for the man to address his issues. Yet, for those women who might also wish to help the process along, to take responsibility for an outcome that is not her burden to bear, well a neat list of practices that lead to false perception would be invaluable. A tidy database of all the now different male definitions for the word “bitch” would come in quite handy.

I still say “bitch” is off-limits. It is somewhat insulting for me to even suggest that a woman take on the burden of changing another person’s sexist mind. The term is just far too off par to be a genuine behavior-changing motivator. “Gold-digger,” on the other hand, is a far less heated label. Perhaps there are one or two women out there who would actually welcome a useful list of all the ways in which modern men secretly jump to the conclusion that their wife is a gold-digger. Sexist ways, yes. But I am talking about an otherwise secretive mental fact, not a method whereby to defend the unjustified thought. Wouldn’t you like to know what your man thinks? Moreover, wouldn’t you want to change what he thinks if it were to prove unflattering? Asking or ordering him to refrain from a thought is not going to change squat. In fact, most people when told not to think something, picture that something all the more lucidly. Quick, don’t think about a panicked chameleon on a plaid shirt.

What follows here is a compendium of how the term “gold-digger” has socially evolved in the U.S. Each time a woman engages in one of these practices, she runs the needless risk of her husband jumping to a false “gold-digger” conclusion about her. Most do not even fit the idea’s main construct, but it would prove a grand mistake to assume that this popular, figurative definition is the only explanation and to ignore these very common permutations. The list is mildly comprehensive. Given some of the stretches herein to make sense of a male’s sometimes animal mind, each item on the list should probably have a separate name apart from “gold-digger,” but let’s face it; if this were a list of 2000 practices, that would be 2000 more insults we’d have to coin and then overcome anyway. Yes, we’ve a faulty, sexist lexicon used to depict men as well. Bum, deadbeat, slacker, loafer, scrub, small, mooch, leech, couch potato, are among our favorites. Yet, only men can work the change in a woman’s perception of them, just as I here hope to aid women who might choose to do the same. “Gold-digger” is a truly loaded thought. It can be pre-empted.

He’s at fault, yes, but you can still refrain from poor practices nonetheless. Outside of the label “gold-digger,” any person of any gender should understand that all the practices which follow are destructive with regard to relationships, sometimes lives. Do not think that because somebody close-mindedly molded your gender into these faux-pas that the insult taken would justify you continuing the action. For many of these, there is responsibility on both sides of the misogynistic characterization. I reiterate; he does not get to call you a gold-digger based on any of these. Period! Yet, you should perhaps not be engaging in almost any of these practices regardless, and if how you might be perceived mentally, daily, by your husband is motivator enough to change what you are doing, I simply spell out the truth of our unevolved male thoughts here. Check them out. A few are somewhat surprising.


What Modern, Married Men Mean By "Gold-Digger"

Any woman who fits the original definition above, whether or not she is married to the man in question.

Any woman with a career of her own who refuses to contribute equitably or equally to the household expenses, particularly the bills.

Any woman who bounces checks.

Any woman who refuses to work out a household budget.

Any woman who refuses to adhere to a household budget.

Any woman who cannot discuss household finances without the discussion ending in an argument or tears. Both are a means to change the subject from even approaching a remote tangent to her spending habits. The truth is that, even if anger and tears are involved, it is incumbent upon both in a couple to work all the way through to good financial decisions. This is a conversation that doesn’t end at all. It is one that starts and continues on or gets revisited all throughout life together. Ending the conversation, by whatever means, is, in effect, the same as never having had the conversation in the first place. Just as judges will take into consideration who threw the first punch in a case, it is wholly important to realize that whoever ends a conversation about household finances first is usually in the wrong.

Any woman who does not keep an accurate and balanced check register. Not-knowing is a guilt-assuaging tactic used by very small minds.

Any woman who considers bankruptcy as any resort other than the final one. She doesn’t want to do the work to fix the problem; she just wants to throw in the towel and start over, dragging the entire family, unethically, down with her.

Any woman who insists upon opening a joint savings account and who never contributes funds to that account. These tend to be the same women who deduct from the account regularly, even if their spouse never makes a withdrawal.

Any woman who has any untreated addiction, especially a shopping or gambling addiction. Getting help is the first step. If one is unwilling to take the first step it indicates and possibly outright proves that she is willing to do NONE of the work to fix anything.

Any woman who shares a car or cars with her partner and who regularly visits the gas station, but only fills the tank part of the way. These tend to be the same women who insist that men always fill the tank completely, who never count the cost of gas in a household budget, and who consume the majority of both the gas they’ve purchased and the gas their spouses have purchased. These also tend to be the same women who will lend a car to friends or share a car with a spouse while always leaving the gas gage on “E” when others need the car.

Any woman who makes the claim, “If I was a gold-digger, then I wouldn’t be with YOU.” Such is a comment on how “little” money you make in her eyes and an expression of her desire for you, not her, to make more. Yes, she doth protest too much.

Any woman who reserves the right NOT to go camping with you, but additionally dislikes the fact that YOU are going camping. Many women do not like camping simply because it is dirty and time consuming and difficult. That is their prerogative. But when those same women do not want YOU to go camping, it is for a much deeper reason. They will claim that it’s a desire to spend time with you. That’s false. They could have spent time with you while camping. Some women do not want you to go camping because they do not want you to realize that minimalist living can be perfectly doable and involve much happiness. They do not want that notion to even enter your head. They are phobic of you finding truer happiness in simplicity and the basics.

Any woman who lies about birth control.

Any woman who jokes about trying to get pregnant so that you’ll have to move to a larger home.

Any woman who insists she’s only slept with one man, making a baby, but for whom DNA testing proves otherwise. Interestingly, we rarely hear the sexist term “gold-digger” for these few because the label gets buried under the somewhat more sexist term, “slut” when this occurs. Forget not, however, that failing to know a baby’s father is an altogether common mistake. The lying insistence that she’s only been with one man, on the other hand, is a deceitful attempt to entrap a particular man’s skills and bank account and father potential.

Any woman who asks for a very expensive gift, even for holidays, and then never or almost never uses the gift.

Any woman who wishes to go green or to reduce a household’s carbon footprint by cutting back, reducing, reusing, and recycling, but only does so in a way that impacts the spouse’s belongings and not her own, the spouse’s pleasures and not her own, the spouse’s needs and not her own.

Any woman who does not know her net income off the top of her head.

Any woman who insists that her spouse work overtime when his boss does not and when she, herself, does not work overtime.

Sort of the inverse of the immediately above, any woman on salary with a partner on hourly wage who would prefer that her partner spend LESS time at work. While this can be a legitimate concern, for instance, when the partner is a workaholic; it can also be a negative practice. In some cases, the only way for that family to achieve a greater income is for the person on wage to work more hours. The salaried person will hold earnings steady over the year. If income is the family concern, the wage earner, given a high enough wage, should perhaps milk their job for more time. Short of finding new jobs at higher pay, or additional jobs to the ones they already have, allowing the wage earner to max out his time is the only short term solution to boosting income. Asking him to be home more often to help with household duties is fully ethical, but really stupid when it comes to income decisions (doubly so if in debt). This would seem to run contrary to the “gold-digger” notion, but it is not. By asking for this time at home, one is attributing an exact dollar value the man’s personal time. If the man would have earned an additional hundred dollars per week by working said hours instead of coming home, you are directly stating that the loss is worth it. You are directly stating that his home time, rather than being priceless, is worth one hundred dollars per week (one hundred dollars per week you now do not have and cannot get). Attributing an exact dollar value to one’s family time, even accidentally, is demeaning and begins the speaker on the shaky path to affixing a momentary value to everything else that is intangible. His sex is worth twenty bucks, his compassion a few Benjamins, his hopes and dreams a cold, plug nickel. Once a person unwittingly starts along this road it is not a far journey from gold-digging. “He should write that cookbook he wants to write because we can sell that easily, but he shouldn’t be spending his time exercising at the gym because it produces no monetary return.”

Any woman who unilaterally makes the decision on how a couple’s joint income tax returns and refunds will be spent.

Any woman who complains about her income tax returns having been larger as a single woman than as a married woman…as if that were the husband’s fault and not the fact that two completely different formulas are applied by the government. By the way, the same perceived, but not factual, “loss” holds true for the husband as well. These tend to be the same women who insist upon monetary recompense (a larger share of the return) to make up for their fictional “loss.”

Any woman who cannot sit down with her partner in a single session having produced the original of every current bill she has. At least some of these women feel that doing so is a trust issue. They feel they should simply be able to tell their spouses about amounts owed and to which accounts. They feel estimates and guesstimates are legitimate data. Sadly, without account numbers, full disclosure, proof of that full-disclosure, interest rates, payment plan details, and a breakdown of costs and fees within arm’s reach, no legitimate plan can be made to curtail debt, save properly, or cut back on expenses. In so doing, the woman will have left that burden to be fully dependant upon the man to resolve, sometimes without even half as much of the data any person would need to do so. Hence, gold-digger.

Any woman who refuses to have any of the household bills in her name.

Any woman who insists upon having ALL the household bills in her name.

Any woman that wants you to finance her parking and moving violations, either directly with cash/credit, or indirectly by cutting back on the household groceries and needs in order to pay her tickets.

Any woman who cooks two separate dinners regularly, one for each partner in the couple. This is a practice that frequently masquerades as benevolence in that it looks like the woman is going out of her way to please the husband. In fact, the masquerade is a simple one to pull off because a great many spouses do, in fact, make a different plate for her/his partner simply to be altruistic. There are a rare few, however, who cash in on this perceived benevolence when deep down, they, themselves were too self-righteous to eat something the husband likes. Those few usually do this believing that a grocery budget is for the birds.

Any career woman who chooses a single household chore that she fulfills on the regular and mentally offsets that chore against multiple expectations she harbors for her husband. For example, a woman who complains that her man should do the dishes because she cooks, but who also insists her man should scoop the litter box, because she cooks, and who further uses the fact that she cooks in every chore discussion that crops up. This is an over-estimation of either what her one chore is worth or what her career time is worth as compared to her spouse’s. It is a devaluing of her spouse’s time, income, and status in the home (even if he makes more, works harder, and completes more) that sets her up never to be satisfied with any chore the man achieves. It is the foundation of a power vacuum, the woman never satisfied and the man never able to do enough to fill that void. Inevitably he always works harder and more in futile hopes that simple money will turn the emotional tide. (Incidentally, number one complaint in couples therapy made by women… “He has no ambition.” Number one complaint in couples therapy made by men... “Nothing ever satisfies her.”)

Any woman with access to free job search tools, services, and materials before she quits who does not take advantage of them until after she quits.

Any woman who conducts job search from a couch.

Any woman who only applies to one job at a time, waiting to hear back before going on additional interviews.

Any woman who cannot stand a husband being out of work, but who thereafter also complains about which job the husband lands and the strictures of said job, despite the fact that those strictures are out of one’s control.

Any woman who leaves money in pockets in hopes of being surprised when she finds it later.

Any woman, at any given moment, who has more shoes than dollars.

Any woman that has ever mentioned aloud that she HAD TO buy something because it was on sale.

Any woman who cannot go a month without making a purchase.

Any woman who frequently buys two similar items with the understanding that she will simply return the one that doesn’t work out. This is baseless overspending on purchases, on gas, and on time.

Any woman who keeps buying batteries, but never uses her rechargeable ones.

Any woman who’ll accept a gift without a card, but not a card without a gift.

Any woman who plans free calling to your cell phone from hers, but then frequently calls your cell from her landline and frequently calls your landline from her cell, quadrupling costs.

Any woman who has multiple phone numbers, but who regularly fails to pick up any of them. The multiple numbers presume the need for and the ability to contact her, but ultimately waste the caller’s time and money as he will have to make multiple calls for every one piece of information he’s trying to exchange. An added layer of waste occurs when the same woman fails regularly to check her messages.

Any woman who doesn’t pay her bills on time.

Any woman who creates rolling late charges and fees, mitigating the new delinquency costs as a split responsibility between the she and her husband.

Any woman who welches on bets, financial in nature or otherwise. Her willingness to make a bet, but not adhere to the outcome, is a win-win for her and a lose-lose for the other. These tend to be the same women who cannot adhere to a household budget. It’s a fear of future money needs as if one cannot plan ahead.

Any woman who buys the household groceries, then marks off items the husband is NOT permitted to touch, and who finally helps to consume the remaining items while her “safe” stuff goes uneaten. This is a practice that guarantees that “her” foods last while the “shared” goodies go twice as fast. The result is that the husband perceives his wife always having something to eat while he does not.

Any woman who buys milks out of sync with cereals, sandwich contents out of sync with bread, and main ingredients out of sync with ancillary ingredients. This is an unconscious attempt to both stretch food supplies beyond the next planned grocery trip in hopes of affording more exciting food stuffs and an attempt to increase the regularity of eating out. Eating differently and eating out should simply be decided upon via agreement in a couple. If no such agreement can be made, a woman cannot hope to trick the situation into existence with underhanded tactics.

Any woman whose household brings in more than three times the divider amount that is the national poverty line, but who stands up and claims you are poor. One’s poor handling and decision making with money IS NOT the same as the act of making too little money. This declaration is disgusting.

Any woman who simply cannot save up for a major purchase.

Any woman with a credit rating in the toilet.

Any healthy woman who cannot remember most of the gifts you’ve given her.

Any woman who gives you more sex and/or better sex when more money is coming in.

Any woman who would pay for something she could get for free.

Any woman who uses time that could be spent at work clipping coupons, and then allows the coupons to expire.

Any woman who will organize things at work, but not at home where she doesn’t get paid for it.

Any woman who asks her husband to purge belongings for space, sometimes more than once, and then rents a storage unit to fill with her stuff.

Any woman who has more dollars on her than her children have had books.

Any woman with more credit cards than will fit in her wallet/purse comfortably.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a priority.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a basic necessity.

Any woman who takes sick days from work to do something fun and/or costly, but who goes in to work when sick.

Any woman who, if she were to die today, would leave her husband with marital or secret debt that he could not afford.

Any woman who cannot stand for her money to be in one of her husband’s accounts or portfolios, sans access, even if that money is earning more of a return than she ever could or would. Again, we see a marital trust issue here. The problem is that the perception of her husband not being trustworthy with “her” money can only stem from her own secretive dealings with funds. It’s psychology 101.

Any woman who insists that while the husband earns more money than she does, he should pay a greater share of the household expenses, but who does not or can not do the same when she suddenly makes more than the husband.

Any woman who doesn’t pay taxes.

Any woman who defrauds the government to get checks.

Any woman who has raised one or more frivolous lawsuits.

Any woman outside of the entertainment and intelligence industries who has multiple aliases.

Any woman who’ll wear clothes that the husband likes while she’s out at work or out with her friends, but that she’ll never wear for more than a few minutes while at home with her spouse. While this speaks more to a feeling of dejection in the man, the practice often mentally qualifies in a male’s eyes as “gold-digger” pursuant to how it seems as if the woman is putting on airs, building a façade. He sees it as an indicator that her home life is not good enough to be dressed nicely, ever.

Any woman who CANNOT leave the house without make-up. Men jump to the conclusion that this indicates a gold-digger simply based upon the stereotypically feminine attitude that accompanies the act. Men give little nod to a culture that demands appearance driven professionalism. However, the deeper root of gold-digging here is the woman’s treatment of the make-up musts as normal, somehow balanced and on-kilter. Look, “balanced” is a way of saying, “all things being equal.” Well if all things were equal, even allowing for forced cultural mores, there would still be some days with just as much chance you’d leave the house without make-up as days when chances were you’d leave the house with make-up. It wouldn’t be 50/50. Almost nothing’s 50/50. But, whatever the chances, the “equal” chances over time, non-make-up days would occur. They would happen. They would take place and the woman would be okay with them. If non-make-up days NEVER occur, it shows then all things are not equal. It is an overt display of the mental control a woman exerts to negate any chance of being seen without make-up. It prominently tips her hand and shows how she thinks. She is under a perpetual delusion that she should ALWAYS look better than whom she actually is. It’s the ALWAYS that speaks to gold-digging. Always having make-up will cost the most money possible. Always needing to look better is to never feel good about your natural self to be satisfied. In search for greater satisfaction with one’s self, there will be endless related purchases over a lifetime, few or none of which will bear the fruit of contentment.

Any woman who, in practice, fails to treat her partner’s belongings or the household assets with care and respect. The simple, nitpicking peeve of maintaining ones belongings has a direct bearing on finances, both past and future. A cavalier attitude that undermines or negates this maintenance therefore speaks directly to a frivolous belief that one can always buy and consume more. That attitude applied only to belongings not exclusively her own is a further devaluing of the husband.

Any woman that destroys or discards bills, statements, check copies, passbooks, notices, contracts, agreements, and other documents before they’ve been totally reconciled. This practice reads a little bit in a relationship as “destroying evidence” and, at the very least, indicates the woman’s knowledge that what she is doing is in some way incorrect.

Any woman who will not sign a pre-nuptial agreement based on the fact that it is a pre-nup’ and not based upon the document’s content.

Any woman who believes her job search is open ended, but that her husband’s has a limit to time and date.

Any woman who does not consider the gift of tickets a “thing” because tickets are not a perpetual, physical object that she gets to keep. Most women, I think, do in fact like the gift of tickets, but those few in this rare category tend to expect or insist upon another gift in addition to tickets to be pleased.

Any woman who always chooses the most expensive of all available options.

Any woman who always or almost always chooses the second most expensive of all available options “to save money.” You are not fooling anybody.

Any woman who refuses to revisit spending decisions of the past in order to readjust spending decisions in the future. This is usually a practice highlighted with short fight-ender statements like, “That was two years ago,” or “What does that have to do with anything?” One can only learn from the past, even with finances, and a failure to do so is a simple, foundationless hope that money or a financial solution is going to fall into ones lap before death.

Any woman who reserves the right to be a homemaker, but disallows the same option for her husband.

Any woman who gives her spouse gifts that aren’t remotely within the realm of what he might like or want. Such will sometimes tend to occur naturally after couples have been together for many years. They “run out” of gift ideas. It does not change the fact, however, that some men view this as gold-digging, especially (though selfish) if their own gift choices to her still go over well in kind. Where it is the thought that counts, a woman gifting presents that her husband would never want shows the lack of thought therein. No thought indicates that she hoped the cost of an item would be the sole impressive instrument between them. It might further indicate that she expects the same expense in her gifts, like them or no.

Any woman who relies consistently upon her partner for donations to charity or church.

Any woman who only “volunteers” when paid to do so.

Any woman who doesn’t want you playing in a $5.00 poker game because it costs money, but who would ask you to take her to a $200 dinner.

Any woman who buys or receives electronic equipment that she never learns how to use.

Any woman who talks about passers-by in the negative based upon appearance. This is a self-aggrandizing practice not always exclusively related to bigotry, fashion, humor, or narcissism, but increasingly to a comparison of taste expressed through cost in modern times.

Any woman who will not sit down with a financial advisor.

Any woman who will dismiss multiple candidates from becoming financial advisor to a household based upon the advisors disagreeing with her poor money management.

Any woman who sends her husband constant email links, pictures, videos, and texts of things the couple cannot afford, but that she would have the husband buy out of his own pocket.

Any woman who plays the lottery regularly, but has not paid her bills.

Any woman who PLANS on winning the lottery.

Given a lump sum or repeated payout on a lottery win choice, any woman who finds fault with the husband for choosing the option that she would not. This practice is actually engaged in most frequently by women in couples who’ve never won the lottery.

Any woman who spends more on her portion of wedding payments than she pays in household contributions in the first five years of the marriage combined.

Any woman who cuts back on necessities to pay a bill, rather than cutting back on what the bill is for.

Any woman who uses multiple payment types and sources without ever consolidating the results into an itemization of what she spends overall.

Any woman who cashes bonds early and pays penalties when she doesn’t have to.

Any woman who invests time, money, and assets in herself, but not her relationship.

Any woman who argues, delays or ignores her half of the responsibility (when present) for the cost of couples therapy, pre-Cana, household financial advisory, rent, mortgage, insurance, or vacations.

Any woman who refuses to include yearly or one time charges on a household budget because they are a seemingly lesser concern than monthly charges.

Any woman who refuses to include line items on a household budget because to her they are invisible or intangible like insurance, student loans, gas, car repair, interest, internet access, taxes, fees, entertainment, dues, club membership, subscriptions, mass transit, charity, tolls, heating oil, landscaping, child care, medical co-pay, online purchases, tips, and so on.
Any woman who cannot make it from work to home on the regular without making a stop or purchase in between.

Any woman who regularly commits to meeting her husband at a certain time and is instead regularly or always late. Again, while this might not seem too much like a gold-digger offshoot, it screams that time is money. A husband waiting, she’s forced you to push off all other things that might have gotten done had you been uncommitted to the time slot. This, in turn, builds up and collectively impacts a person’s maximum possible work schedule, not to mention long term earning potential. When this happens on the regular, husbands WILL make less money, not only less money than they could have, but less money than they should have in their current positions. They will get less sleep, get fewer chores done, get fewer errands run, acquire fewer opportunities to make extra money, land fewer opportunities to properly network, have less effectual mental time, be on a tighter resultant schedule; cleanliness will suffer; caring will suffer; personal time will fly out the window; stress will increase…all because one’s wife does not value his time. All of these negatives accumulate and spill over into one’s work environment. So, if a person is going to make LESS money, why does it qualify as gold-digging? Because anyone who values her own time significantly more than her chosen partner’s time is just selfish enough to still expect that the husband perform up to his maximum potential despite the collective obstacles she’s inflicted. He can’t put in the hours, but she expects him to bring home the same check. Men view women who always make them wait as gold-diggers simply because men value their time more than they value their own money.

Any woman who talks about what would be a second, complimentary purchase to the single purchase she is making at that moment.

Any woman who does not take an overt, unprompted, verbal interest in her husband’s day and career.

Any woman who, on the regular, talks about something she’d someday like to buy before asking about her husband’s day.

Any woman who continues to dream about being someplace else after she’s moved several times.

Any woman who has to go out every single weekend or travel every single month to keep up her self-esteem.

Any woman who refers to shopping as a meditative state or a stress reliever.

Any woman who nostalgically prefers the freedom of her youth, as afforded by funds from her parents, to the idea of making her own living or living up to the vast responsibilities of her current relationship.

Any woman who would take over the household finances by having her husband hand over his paycheck each week, but who would not hand hers to him if the tables were turned.

Any woman who mitigates cost/value via quantity as opposed to quality.

Any woman who enjoys getting flowers from her spouse “for no reason,” but always waits for an occasion to purchase niceties for that spouse.

Any woman whose finances are so out of control that she needs to skip gift-giving occasions with her spouse or children even if her spouse does not.

Any woman who calls her husband’s work number to check that he is at work. While some of these cases have to do with suspicions of infidelity, others are actually a direct attempt to control when the man is earning money and at what times. The latter scenario is the rarer of the two, and of course men cannot tell outwardly which is which in any given phone call. Some calls might be just to see how he is doing or to tell him that he is loved. However, the caller DOES know the reason for her call. She knows if she’s checking up to make sure he’s pulling a paycheck or working hard. If she is somehow unaware of her own intentions, she is the one, the only one, who can and must examine her inward motivation. Have you ever called your husband just to see that he was working?

Any woman who thinks that actually going bankrupt is okay so long as she is not going spiritually bankrupt.

Any woman who makes a mess that outpaces her capacity to clean it. This is an addiction of sorts that once again demands of the spouse excess time to correct her mistakes, time that could be better spent with family or earning. It not only falls into the “gold-digger” category for the same reason as some of the “less money” practices above, but also because a select few selfish women out there have additionally forced this issue as a medium through which to hire a housekeeper or to move to a larger abode.

Any woman that is incensed by any time or effort her spouse spends entering a contest, but who insists upon half of the winnings when the husband hits the jackpot.

Any woman who votes based on looks. This is a power hunger that speaks secondarily to money.

Any woman who frowns upon her husband improving himself by unpaid, non-career means. This closed-mindedness covers a wide range of practices, everything from women who can’t allow a man to read more than a few pages of a book without interrupting, to more complex doings like finding fault with a man’s quest to climb a mountain or to reconcile with an adversary. Women in this category show no qualms about a man improving himself in a bankable way.

Any woman who simply cannot play a game with built-in limits. I’m put in mind of a game we used to play. It was a little, conversational question about what three things you’d want if you were stranded on a desert island. For a select few ladies, three was a limit with which they could not feel comfortable. Those women could not stick to the one parameter within the question. In fact, the discomfort of having been imposed with a limit was such a huge burden to some, that they would refuse to play despite the fact that the game was complete fiction. I’d never again seen such a frightening indicator as to how some women feel limitlessness is the only way to think.

Any woman who would keep a teaching job she fell into when she doesn’t know about the subject being taught.

Any woman who wants to be well off enough to move to a country wherein she would not learn to speak the native language.

Any woman who finds fault with her spouse’s personal decision to not want riches or fame and the inherent problems that come with them.

Any woman who uses any amount of money given to her for child support on any purchase or payment that does not support the child.

Any woman negotiating a divorce settlement who defines “the lifestyle to which she is accustomed” in terms of a lifestyle she had with a different man or in terms of a lifestyle she hasn’t yet achieved.

Any woman who would accept alimony, but under inverse circumstances never pay alimony.

Any woman who insists that her husband not set bad examples of any kind as a father, but who would teach her child, by example, poor money management habits.

Any woman who outstretches her arm and leaves it extended, waiting, in an attempt to hand her husband an object while both of his hands are already full. While this is not a practice that might readily force your man to jump to the conclusion that you are a gold-digger, it is an indicator. Build up enough indicators cumulatively over time and their indirect nature may eventually and directly lead to the same false conclusion as other poor relationship practices on this list. This particular practice is a forceful attempt, on the woman’s part, to unburden herself of whatever she has in hand, even if it lends triple the burden to her husband. Such can additionally be viewed as the woman exercising license to remain completely oblivious to the man’s state while insisting he recognize her own state. Both give rise to the gold-digger indicator. A great many American woman actually engage in this tiny practice to an addictive extent without realizing it. Culturally, this gesture derives from older, feudal cultures wherein women were stuffed into impossible clothing, made to balance on precarious footwear, and fed so little that they were physically weak if not all out ill. Plus, at times, they were generally looked down upon for keeping fast to any possession, possessions to which a female frequently did not have the legal right. Pre-pocketbook, men held and carried anything that would not be tied onto a woman’s garment. Note how very many other historical cultures did not show this to be the case, the woman’s doll-like lot. Females from northern hunter-gatherer tribes in the Americas did all the work, for instance, chewing every inch of seal skin ever slaughtered in the bitter cold of the arctic to soften the material for domestic use. Women of polygamist, communal sects in this nation sling 60 pound bags of feed over their shoulders, dig wells, prep entire sides of beef. Tribal Amazon women of the mid-to southern Asian continent are described as having purposely severed a single breast from their bodies to give them superior accuracy with their warring bows on horseback. Try moving up the corporate ladder or getting equal pay for equal work if you are a woman in modern day corporate America. No, women in almost all cultures have always carried the brunt of the nastiest, most laborious tasks. So why do women today socially look so longingly back to one, solitary, feudal example? Why do they idealize the only culture that did not exhibit their strengths? The example has been romanticized. If you were a woman stuffed into a corset, it was “romantic” for a man to realize that and to help you carry. If you were so weak you could not lift a pea or even bend over to do so without getting dizzy, it was “romantic” for a man to understand your circumstances, particularly a handsome stranger. This minority of women receiving such treatment, however, was of the court, walking trimmed gardens and frequenting secure, stone dwellings. It is neither to the greater populous of the Italian Renaissance nor to the throngs of feudal serfs that modern women reach for this false romanticism, but to the ever so tiny court culture. They peer back to perhaps one of only a handful of social settings wherein men made it proper for men to help women in this way. They look to a time where only the richest women with the richest clothes and the richest expectations would need hand off a balance-impacting trinket. They look so steadily and with such a fixed eye to the tiniest “romantic” pocket of all the cultures that have ever been that they’ve unwittingly preserved a gesture from second-class citizenry which no longer has any factual gravitas.

Any woman who will risk a $65.00 parking ticket to save a quarter.

Any woman who before marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “his possessions” and “her possessions” and who after marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “marital assets” and “her possessions.” These women are mentally practicing the very same archaic notions that once legally banned women from ownership.

Any woman who borrows luxury items on more than just special occasions.

Any woman who has never changed her vision of a perfect life, even once, since junior high school. Dreams are fine. Inflexibility is not.

Any woman who does not take an active part in even one of her husband’s hobbies when invited. While hobbies usually have little to do with finances, most of them cost at least a little doe and a significant amount of time. Not taking part in any single one when invited, the woman shows that she wishes to use that potential together time, instead, on a separate hobby of her own. Not always, but in some rare cases, this translates in a woman’s mind and demeanor to “For every hobby he has, I should also get one.” That attitude can be costly. He should take part in one of yours. You should take part in one of his. This will decrease the number of household hobbies by two and save dollars. Otherwise, the problem is a practice that ignores relative cost and instead compares the number of hobbies in a 1 to 1 ratio, as if that has any bearing on life.

Any woman who cheats. While this too gets buried under the other comment, “slut,” the ire that results in a man’s response is a “gold-digger” sourced ire. When a man cheats it is either about sex or having been dehumanized in his existing relationship. When a woman cheats it is because she wants more than she already has, whether that’s more sex, more money, more understanding, or more love. She’s mining for gold from another mine.

Any woman who demands that her husband literally write her a blank check or checks to save time. Again, this sounds like more of a trust issue with regard to what amount the woman might fill in on a blank check, but the fact is that the woman has squandered her valuable time to the point where the mere moments it would take to write down a few numbers and words is a concern. It is once again the husband bailing the wife out of a sticky situation in a way that requires no trust or risk on her part, but both trust and risk on his.

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Midwest v. New Orleans Surprise!

It was bound to start eventually.

Here's a good piece on the current hard-working, small-town whites > shiftless, urban blacks crap.

I'm Callin' Bullshit
There's been a recent spate of right-wing blogs all saying the same thing:

"Now, I'm not racist, but how come all those small-town Iowans are so much more supportive and self-reliant than those big city New Orleans folks were during their disaster?”

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...it takes a special sort of blinded gall to ignore Iowans getting reimbursed almost entirely for their damages and then complain that Katrina victims are sucking on the government teat...

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Of course, Iowans are a lot more likely to receive giant agricultural subsidies, but I understand that accepting such money does not in any way make you less self-reliant or salt-of-the-earth.

Interesting stuff in the comments, too, such as:

I’m not sure why the right-wing pundits are crowing about Iowa. We have a Democrat governor and a Democrat majority in our state congress, plus the majority of our national congressmen are Democrats.

This would be funny if it wasn't so fucking infuriating. Check out the actual blogs he links in the post.

Thanks to the Mighty God King.

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With a cherry on top.(why do we even bother?)

Some of the readers here probably remember JP. He came to atheism as an ex-Catholic by way of various Protestant experiments, just trying to figure everything out. Most atheists have made a similar journey and a great many people tried to help him with it. Now he's gone back to the Catholic Church. I thought perhaps his time trying to sort out belief vs. non-belief would have given him more insight into the thinking of non-believers that he could now convey to his brethren. Maybe dispel some misconceptions. So I stuck around. Made comments here and there. Shared his frustrations.

And this is what I get for my trouble. Indeed, what we all get for our efforts to help this man.

Here is how I see atheism: Imagine, if you will, a big pile of dog feces. On top of it, you see whip cream with a long stemmed cherry. From a distance it might look pretty good but the closer you get to it, you realize it stinks and it's misleading. That is atheism.

What I hold to be true is a pile of dog shit. With a cherry on top.

Thanks, JP. It seems your journey back to ignorant and superstitious bigotry is now complete.

Have fun.

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Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

The ideas expressed herein are written in direct response to Selwyn Duke’s piece in The American Thinker entitled Stereotyping 101. While I tend to disagree with the author’s content outright, my main purpose for this response is to challenge Bullet with Selwyn Duke’s same task here in My Pants. Content aside, I feel that the column did a poor job of laying out its argument, end-to-end, and I very much feel that Bullet might achieve the intended anti-PC result in a far more insightful, logical, and convincing manner. I’m listening. Teach me.

Selwyn Duke’s take on PC speech and text is, by far, not the only such sentiment out there for the public to consume. From Lou Dobbs’ multiple allusions to Orwellian thought to televised, impromptu debates over Don Imus’ shock jock tactics, from complaint blogs by the thousands to the “legitimate” media jumping on every brain fart and every slip of the celebrity tongue; there is no shortage of Americans out there who simply feel painted into a corner when it comes to politically correct speech.

I chose specifically to rebut Duke’s piece in that it is exemplary of the relatively insupportable arguments used to counter PC mores. It is a very typical assertion about the stereotypical. By addressing this one commonplace tack, I hope to address several.

First, I submit that politically correct speech is not, as many might portend, a restriction on speech or an enforcement of one opinion over another. I further submit that it is neither an inherently righteous practice to use terms equated with political correctness by choice or by social coercion. Politically correct speech has seen masses of people dividing into two camps as if it were a yes/no question. In one camp are folks unfairly labeled as bigots, fundamentalists, and the brain-dead simply for questioning PC. In the other camp are very similar people just as unfairly labeled autocrats, elitists, and hypocrites pursuant to them voicing insult or finding merit in PC. Substantively, PC is not as simple as a true/false scenario. It is not a pro-life/pro-choice type issue. Treating it as such close-mindedly ignores all the many and often complex shades of understanding that reside between these two extremes.

Political correctness, among other permutations, is a linguistic movement. It is one of many thousands of otherwise benign movements in language that have added richness and depth to the freedom of speech we hold in such high regard. Language is constantly reshaped and evolving. It is contorted and challenged through slang and cussing. It is enlivened and intensified through new compound words, brand names, and fictional offerings. It is diced up and constructed anew via professional telephone decorum, sales pitches, improvisation, poetic license, correspondence, legislation, contracts negotiation, commercial ads, books, words borrowed from other languages, critiques, science, investigation, humor, and a never-ending stream of expansive usage. Language is a confluence of every communication ever attempted in every form by every person who’d ever existed. Therefore, language carries with it all the strengths and all the flaws of its infinite participants. Metaphorically, language exists as an ocean of ideas shared in countless word combinations and artistic expressions. This ocean is so vast it is without shore, but familiar enough to evoke patterns, like tides and currents. Much as real tides work through the night while we all sleep, so too do immense and powerful linguistic movements usually go unnoticed.

I describe some other linguistic movements for the sake of example, here.

PC is a simple, neutral, linguistic movement like any other. It, like many, represents language’s constant penchant for self-correction and precision. Wherever there is even a modest need for proper grammar and an interest in accuracy, that’s where you’ll find this particular linguistic movement manifesting itself in conversation.

One might ask, then, why we hear about this morphology so often while others remain silent. The answer seems obvious. These are the words we use to describe people. When language drifts around correcting terms for, say, flowers, the flowers can’t answer back.

That stated, I find Duke to be a very forward and rational thinker. The referenced entry, Can We Please Define Racism? made compelling arguments that were both insightful and balanced. Perhaps this is why I was so disappointed in the methodologies used for Stereotyping 101. I took the piece to be a flimsy assertion as opposed to a good argument. Arguments can be divided into parts: premise, inference, and conclusion. These parts did not stack well.

Duke’s premise was essentially “Are the generalizations true?” Well, frankly, no. Generalizations are never true for very elementary reasons.

Firstly, if generalizations were true, the word generalization wouldn’t exist. We already use a wide, almost poetic, vocabulary to nitpick at any idea’s proximity to truth. Take the words truth, fact, accurate, realistic, exact, axiomatic, self-evident, veritable, on-the-nose, correct, right, assuredly, and precise. They are all expressions defined directly by their perceived CLOSENESS to accepted truth. Conversely, words like generalize, approximate, about, relative, estimate, abstraction, almost, and theorize are a family of expressions specifically defined by their DISTANCE from perceived truth. Their very meaning attempts to imply that no matter how closely they might approach a truth, they can never be one.

Secondly, while generalizations are, by definition, untrue, and therefore frequently false, they additionally fail the litmus test of truism because they are intrinsically subjective. Truth, itself, to whatever degree it does exist is by all means objective. Truth needs to ring true regardless of all perceivers, a practice that generalizing cannot accomplish. Objectivity wins out over subjectivity in every conflict and such is the inequality between truth and generalization.

Duke’s premise is a two-fold disprovable notion, as above, before it even deals with some of the detailed examples meant to illustrate the point. Yet, even as it goes on to cite the case that spawned the blog entry, the common sense purpose of the example in Duke’s text refutes itself further. Referenced are alleged profiling/stereotyping entries in police training documents. The highlighted passages inform about behaviors and weapons of choice particular to ethnic groups. What jumped to my mind outright was the danger this text poses to officers of the law. It was obviously meant to protect our keepers of the peace, when instead it puts them at risk. Police MUST be so skilled and so savvy when sizing up situations in the moment, that even a split second of thought or decision can cost them their lives. An officer need take in every relevant element of her/his surroundings in order to effectuate the best course of action possible. Imagine, if you will, a police officer, during a truly split second decision, expecting a Latino suspect to pull a knife when instead the perpetrator pulls a gun. That finite miscalculation could be a life-ending mental burp. That officer, in all ways, would have been improperly trained to handle the situation, a matter of course that hinges upon a notion as short-lived as the speed of thought. Logically, if the example is meant to assert that officers are better equipped to handle calls with profiling in their training, my idea discounts that. If instead one wishes to counter me by saying these deaths never happen or that we trust our officers to be savvy despite the training text, well then the profiling language doesn’t need to be in the documents in the first place. Either way, the example is a defunct note.

I also feel compelled to point out that this particular example’s phraseology is part of Duke’s problem with carrying the argument through convincingly. The verbiage quoted smacks somehow personal. Hispanics generally do this. Hispanics tend to do that. Hispanics prefer these. Hispanics predominantly choose A over B. I didn’t think I could put my finger upon why I was so personally offended by statements of this sort, even though Duke never wrote any such thing. I know I disagree, but an articulated reason had been escaping me. Finally, I figured it out. This is the same type of language styling that hunters and trackers use to pursue wild animals. Think about it.

The Sunderbans tiger prefers to attack from behind, stalking through both water and on land, but opting not to reveal himself in open water if at all possible. This killer tends to go for a throat strike first, but will drag human prey by a limb to an invisible location before finishing them off. Without an alpha male structure Sunderbans tigers are generally rogues seeking out meals singly rather than in groups.

Language like this is used as simultaneous warning and disclaimer to educate hunters, trappers, trackers, and zoologists about the dangers of the breed while also covering one’s liability should the creature instead decide to leap from a tree or attack in a group. It’s a litany of probables profiling lesser life forms on the basis of their instincts. Humans, on the other hand, deserve not to be treated as prey or as lesser life forms, even in language, especially language that dictates, controls, or instills training for authority figures. Humans, by contrast to animals, make choices rather than instinctual judgments, thereby indicating that police profiling language structured similarly to the hunt is completely baseless. We would not use, say, the now very well recognized speech patterns that precede our ride on a roller coaster to welcome us to our MRI.

Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you’re having a great day here in New York City and welcome you to the MRI Room 12! Please keep your hands, arms, and torso completely still at all times! There are no metal objects allowed on this slide! Enjoy your scan and thank you for choosing Six Flags 51st Street Diagnostic!

How then did hunting and tracking language and speech patterns for animals get lumped onto people? While there would be something equally as tactless in both applications, the profiling language is being learned by an individual with a firearm. The insult is clear.


Duke’s premise put in a double spotlight of failure and the originating example also discounted twice over, I now move on to the inferences portion of the argument. This is where Duke normally excels with contributions and insight. As such, I must say that the following quote from Stereotyping 101 is a golden nugget of food for thought:

“While we must judge everyone as an individual, there are differences within groups but also differences among them. Thus, it makes no more sense to paint every group with the same brush than it does to paint every individual with the same brush.”

This is the inference, eloquently stated and thought provoking, that Duke thereafter tries to prove out. The piece enmeshes linkages, points of order, bold statements, and correlations into an entire matrix of support that I think falls far short of doing the job. Duke may have been better off making the statement quoted above and then leaving well enough alone. Why? Again, I can think of two reasons overall.

The first is a lesser ingredient, but an important one nonetheless. Readers should not interpret tactic as argument. An argument is a clear, concise string of related statements that hash out the conclusion in an agreeable manner. A tactic is a practice of mixing words so that the reader/listener is forced to comply either consciously or unconsciously. Everybody who has ever had a door slammed in their face knows about tactic. Everybody in this country is familiar with the number of times Iraq was mentioned in the same breath as 9/11 as a tactic. Duke’s piece, wittingly or no, contains both inference and tactic. It is the reader’s responsibility to sort the tactic out from all the assertions and then intelligently judge if what is left constitutes an argument. The Iraq-9/11 tactic is one that is used here.

In the same set of paragraphs, Duke mentions stereotype, profiling, generalization, leftist agenda, biases, thought police (a menace to civilization), political correctness, diversity, and ideology. Duke interrelates these terms, and masterfully so, in such a way that the reader is meant associate them. I am supposed to conclude that political correctness and thought police are related. I am supposed to conclude that the negativity of bias is somehow similar to the positivism of ideology. I am supposed to conclude that Iraq, first and foremost, is directly responsible for the events of 9/11. This is tactic and nothing more. It is the practice of choosing the ideas one wishes to degrade and sinking them into a pool of otherwise poor associations with language that we know invoke distasteful connotation.

Philosophy 101, to parody Duke’s title, includes an exercise altogether demonstrative of this practice. Students are asked to think back to the beginnings of civilization and list ideas that might have been perceived as basic, universal opposites. Inevitably, through common sense, students list right and wrong, light and dark, on and off, good and evil, man and woman, yes and no, happy and sad, and other appropriate notions. The problem with the structure of supposed universal opposites is the result. Woman is somehow placed on a list with wrong, dark, evil, no, off, and sad. This is the very tender root of association as used, even by accident, for prejudicial effect.

I am certain that there are strong arguments to be made that Iraq’s very outlook under Baathist control had something to do with 9/11. Constantly mentioning Iraq in the same breath as 9/11, however, is not one of those arguments. It is a tactic. It is guilt by verbal association. Similarly, immersing a neutral linguistic movement like political correctness into a bath of stereotypes, generalizations, and agendas is not a supported argument. It is the exact same tactic, meant to be used in place of connectivity. I submit that Duke’s usage of all the listed terms are not connective at all, but disjointed hopes that the reader will fill in the gaps autonomously, or read without questioning. Duke’s subjective opinion of PC clouds the notion in with the very bully language that the PC movement is meant to address, to self-correct over time. It is incumbent upon the reader to sift out this tactic from the argument and decide if what is left still constitutes a valid point. In the case of Stereotyping 101, what is left is a disconnected list of highly separate talking points without any connective tissue. Those points, each standing alone, are my second foray into rebutting Duke’s inferences. Alternately said, each point on the list can be discounted of its own merit, allowing the argument itself to fall apart.

I counter some of those individuated points here.

Duke concludes with a call for people to stand up for truth in all its forms, restating the claim that there is, at least, an element of truth to profiling or stereotyping or generalizing (an element of untruth to PC). Duke seems savvy enough to draw this conclusion without supporting those who’d abuse said truths and for that I applaud. Still, the most important distinction I’d hope readers might draw between Duke’s conclusion and my own is that more than one truth can exist at the same time.

It is entirely possible, to the point of being numerically probable, that part of a whole is coincidentally true, while the whole itself is true, while the linguistic movement meant to explain those truths is factually neutral. I conclude that it is this simultaneity of legitimacies that put PC in an agreeable light, without actually being pro’ or gung ho for PC. I believe it is my allowance for multiple truths in our one reality that quashes Duke’s more singular perspective on stereotyping. While “Oriental” was once used to refer to a group of people, the word “Asian” is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While some people in our country prefer to be referred to as “black,” those who’ve chosen the moniker “African-American” might note it is ADDITIONALLY TRUE. While many use the word “white,” the terms “Caucasian” and “European-American” are ADDITIONALLY TRUE. PC is not a question of one word verses the other. Both pro-PC and anti-PC camps fail to realize this. The pro’ side would do better not to enforce and the anti’ side would do better not to point fingers. PC, as a linguistic movement, is about language’s constant forward momentum, a momentum that can no sooner be necessitated than it can be stopped. If PC were all positive and not neutral, advocates would not have to fight for its use. The change would evolve naturally. If PC were all negative and not neutral, nobody would elect to use it. Language would jump to the next logical stage of evolution for this family of words with another, similar movement we might as well call PC2. That’s the beauty of language, all parts of language. It self-corrects. To whatever degree PC terms are currently inaccurate or hypocritical or elitist, our language will eventually correct those as well, but not if we don’t start down the road.

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Linguistic Movements: Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

This selection is condensed here and meant to be part of my lengthier blog entry

Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

• There was once a staunch abandon of contractions in what was considered proper speech. Contractions were looked down upon as common. They were viewed as the product of lazy, uneducated tongues. It took an overpowering, linguistic, grass roots movement to see to it that most modern American English is now contracted beyond what can be represented on paper, huge portions of which are today considered proper English.

• Punctuation and text formatting are also parts of language. More recently there was strong opposition to alternatively formatted business language when put to paper. There was one accepted format and all others were deemed inappropriate. It took a movement spurred on by email and the fact that differing email servers handled simple paragraph indents adversely to change this language component. Today, it is okay to send a business to business email without paragraph indents, in many places preferred, so that digital text isn’t interpreted by local machines to belong in all sorts of weird places on the digital page, thereby appearing unprofessional. The change sparked much creativity and many new formats.

• Differing pronunciations of the same words in the same language across the various, fantastic dialects of our free nation all resulted from unseen linguistic movements as language evolved.

• The “Me” Generation more greatly intensified language that centered on the self, in explanation and in literature.

• Einstein inadvertently brought focus to parts of speech that were based in mathematical notions.

• Edgar Allan Poe made up words when he didn’t have one express that which he wished to describe, words that are now in every American English dictionary worldwide.

• Lexicographers find themselves constantly revamping their approaches to proper definitions as science continually serves up new proofs and new discoveries.

• Even efforts like the completely fictional Klingon Dictionary stem from fantasy origins that create linguistic movements, in this case movements so overwhelming that Oxford’s English Dictionary added terms like “Klingon” and “warp drive” to their volumes during the early part of the 21st Century.

• To add, Leet or LeetSpeak is an entire subculture of tech based slang that constitutes an enormous linguistic movement of its own, which in turn impacts other linguistic movements and language. You can read more about "l33t" here and here.

• When looked at from a number of points of view, there is a linguistic movement that seems to state, "If you film an American movie about anything that took place in a language other than English, forcing the actors to use all upper class British accents will lend credibility to the piece." Sure, we English speaking Americans realize that our mother tongue and the pronunciations within it are not the fountainhead of the English form. We are far from the originators of most English words and we look up to even standard British as a form superior to our own in classy usage. However, this does not necessarily mean that a tale from ancient Greece, a ditty about Julius Caesar, and a character study about Gingus Khan must include British accents of any kind. Somehow we grapple onto the idea that anything older than America's Old West is somehow more believable if done in English with a British accent. Yes, Americans generally hate reading subtitles. Yes, some stories actually take place around Brits. Still, American cinema's use of British English to represent any older form of any language highly (and wrongly) expands our existing perception of British enunciation as more chic. Before, such pronunciations were pure, coming from Brits and British actors. Now, most come from American actors attempting and frequently failing to master British pronunciation thereby spurring the populous on to think of these lesser and mistaken sounds as the haut speech. Our minds lend the British speech patterns greater importance in that we are inundated with them through film, while our ears poorly refabricate these patterns into something we turn around and call classy when it is not. Just look at the five year stint that Madonna tried to speak with a sudden British accent in order to make up for her own, stupidity laced, guttural pronunciations. Then, an entire half-step generation of fans began doing the same because it was so neat. Thousands of poor examples of "new" pronunciation and slang got folded into our existing lexicon, just from that one move on Madonna's part.

• What seems like over usage of the word LIKE in today's vernacular drives me personally crazy. However, even I have to acknowledge that it is simply a neutral, linguistic change that language vamps around whilst redefining its structure. Everything below is quoted from an article by Patricia T. O'Conner in The New York Times Magazine showing that lexicographers agree.

On Language

Like

By PATRICIA T. O’CONNER
Published: July 15, 2007

Like is a friendly word. As a verb, it gives off affectionate vibes. In other parts of speech, it’s a mensch as well, emphasizing what things have in common, not what separates them. But there’s another like in the air, a gossipy usage that has grammar purists — and many parents of teenagers — climbing the walls.
This upstart like is the new say, and users (or abusers, depending on which side you take) find it a handy tool for quoting or paraphrasing the speech of others, often with sarcasm or irony. Linguists call it the “quotative like,” but any 16-year-old can show you how it works.
For example, like can introduce an actual quotation (“She’s like, ‘What unusual shoes you’re wearing!’ ”) or paraphrase one (“She’s like, my shoes are weird!”).
Or it can summarize the inner thoughts of either the quoter or the quotee (“She’s like, yeah, as if I’d be caught dead in them! And I’m like, I care what you think?”).
Like even lets a speaker imitate the behavior of the person being quoted (“She’s like . . . ” and the speaker smirks and rolls her eyes).
This like is not to be confused with the one that sticklers see as a meaningless verbal tic (“The band was, like, outrageous!”). Linguists would argue, however, that even that one has its uses — to emphasize something (“I was, like, exhausted!”) or to hedge a statement (“We had, like, six hours of homework!”).
But back to the like that’s used as a marker to introduce quotes (real or approximate) as well as thoughts, attitudes and even gestures. Parents may gnash their teeth, but language scholars like like.
“It’s a shame this poor little usage gets such a bum rap,” says Jennifer Dailey-O’Cain, an associate professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and one of several people interviewed by e-mail for this column. Dailey-O’Cain, who has published an often-cited study on the use of like, says, “It’s innovative, it serves a particular function and it does specific things that you can’t duplicate with other quotatives.”
The other quoting words commonly used in speech are say, of course, along with go (“He goes, ‘Give me your wallet’ ”) and all (“I’m all, ‘Sure, dude, it’s yours’ ”). But like definitely has legs. In just a generation or so it has spread throughout much of the English-speaking world.
O.K., the new like is hot and it’s useful, but is it legit? Aren’t some rules of grammar or usage being broken here?
Linguists and lexicographers say no. It’s natural, they say, for words to take on new roles. In this case, a “content word” (one that means something) has become a “function word” (one that has a grammatical function but little actual meaning). Academics call the process “grammaticalization.” It’s one of the ways language changes.
So is the new like proper English? Well, the latest editions of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary now include it as a usage heard in informal speech. That’s not a ringing endorsement, but it’s not a condemnation either.
As for me, I’m convinced that this is a useful, even ingenious, addition to informal spoken English. But let’s be honest. For now, at least, it smacks of incorrectness to a great many people. In writing my grammar book for kids, I wrestled with this problem. In the end, I suggested that the usage is O.K. in informal conversation but not for situations requiring your best English.
Contrary to popular opinion, like is not exclusively a kid thing. Grown-ups use it too, men and women about equally, according to Dailey-O’Cain.
“Part of what inspired my study was the fact that my mother (who was in her 50s at the time) used to complain about other people using like,” she says. “But once I started pointing it out to her every single time she used it herself, she stopped making those kinds of criticisms!”
The linguist Geoffrey Pullum, an author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, finds the usage “quite logical and reasonable.” And he agrees that it’s not confined to youngsters. “My former student Jessica Maki caught her 65-year-old aunt, who grew up in North Carolina, saying, ‘I’m like, don’t answer the telephone!’ ”
Yet part of the resistance to like may be due to its youthful rep. “People see it as associated with teenagers,” says Arnold Zwicky, a visiting professor of linguistics at Stanford. “In general, variants associated with young people tend to be disdained.”
Another unfounded assumption about like is that it’s used by the less educated among us. “A lot of people are going to say that the variant just ‘sounds uneducated,’ and no amount of factual evidence is likely to counter this judgment,” Zwicky says. “Here we have another factor contributing to people’s disdain for quotative like, especially in their own children: nobody wants their kids to sound uneducated.”
I’ve always believed that young people are capable of knowing when to use formal versus informal, written versus spoken English. Zwicky’s experience with like-mindedness seems to bear this out. “It’s a specifically spoken form,” he says. “I don’t see it in writing, even from my students who are heavy users of it in speech, except when they’re producing writing that they intend to sound like speech.”
A word to parents: Loosen up. You may be using like this way yourselves without even realizing it. I have a confession to make. My husband caught me in the act only the other day. He was like, “Did you hear what you just said?”

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Patricia T. O’Conner’s most recent book is “Woe Is I Jr.: The Younger Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English.” She is working on a book about language myths and misconceptions. William Safire is on vacation.

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Disconnected List: Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling

The following selections have been condensed here to serve as a part of my lengthier blog entry

Fun With Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Profiling


Duke wrote:

Modern dogma holds that diversity is one of the greatest qualities a society can enjoy, that it bestows many advantages. But what does this imply? Well, by definition "diversity" refers to differences among groups. Now, not only is it illogical to assume that every one of these differences will be flattering, the supposition that diversity is beneficial implies otherwise. After all, if diversity is beneficial, it is only because certain groups bring qualities or strengths to the table that others do not. And, if a given group possesses a certain unique strength, then other groups are wanting in that area relative to it.

I respond:

No. Difference is only one definition of diversity. Multiformity is another. Diversity is beneficial not because of the visible strengths one group brings to the table, but the variant IDEAS each individual at the table will be able to offer having been immersed in an entirely unique culture. Diversity is not a matter of measuring intellectual strength verses physical strength verses capable strength verses potential strength verses statistical strengths across ethnic lines. Diversity is the championing of IDEAS that challenge our own, tons of valuable IDEAS that any one individual could not have conjured solo. Diversity is the acknowledgement that the widening of an idea pool is beneficial in all regards, therefore culling new ideas from sources as vast as separate historical cultures. There is no culture, to use Duke’s word, “wanting” in the area of ideas.

Duke wrote:

Stereotypes often arise because they have a basis in reality.

I respond:

No. Stereotypes arise because they have a basis in ignorance. Ignorant to environmental or cultural reasons why any two of the same culture might partake in a practice askew from the perceiver’s culture, the perceiver makes her/his observation in a vacuum. That’s the stereotype. I’ve a friend who’d put the issue quite succinctly. He, of a generally anti-PC stance, still said of stereotypes, “The logical defect is the assumption that one can judge the whole by the part [and call it reality.]” Sadly it’s the ignorance that’s the reality, not the observation that proved the onlooker ignorant.

Duke wrote:

…often it has been remarked that Irishmen liked to drink. Once again, intelligent people know this doesn't mean that every Irishman is a drunkard, but informed people might know something else: Ireland ranks number two in the world in per capita alcohol consumption next to Luxemburg.

I respond:

…which begs the question, what mass mental shortcomings are at work for the stereotype NOT to have been applied to Luxembourgers?

Duke asked:

So then why are the Maryland State Police probably going to have to pay money for saying what these academics got paid money to say.

I answer:

Because academics are not entrusted with the use of deadly physical force. In fact, life and death situations, the likes of which we empower our law enforcement officers to control, are pretty much the opposite extreme from anything remotely academic. Academics is words, ideas, books, debates. Law enforcement is physical, practical, direct, personal, street smart, and life threatening. It deserves to be consistently fine-tooth-combed for potential flaws pursuant to its life-threatening architecture. Some of the only effective censure we have on the life and death power we’ve granted them is financial censure when those potential flaws are revealed.

Duke wrote:

And here is another truth. I have only one thing to say about the idea that Hispanics are reluctant to learn English: I've never been asked if I wanted to press two for German.

I respond with several truths:

A) We and Duke do not live on the border of Germany.

B) We and Duke do not live in a nation where within a few years an estimated 25% of the country’s population will be descended from German speaking nations, but rather we do with regard to Spanish speaking individuals having achieved legal U.S. citizenship. Readers might otherwise know them as Americans.

C) Duke and I are both smart enough to understand that when one is trying to support a family on minimum wage, it doesn’t leave a lot of cash around for English classes and tutors; while the many American Spanish speakers excelling at careers who would otherwise earn solvent wages already have a decent enough handle on English to render classes unnecessary. Excuse me for slacking on the English here, but the nonsense word “DUH” comes to mind.

D) I find it interesting that the very U.S. Census Bureau information cited in Duke’s piece to push the humor about “pressing two for German” is a collection of data that completely excludes almost all Spanish speaking groups. It would have been interesting to see how the two sets of data stack up side by side. Duke’s cited data is here. The groups used to collect that data, just two clicks away, are listed here.

E) Call me silly, but I just have a hard time aching for a person who is pained by pressing a button approximately once every fourteen days. I suppose waiting that extra second before the automated voice continues in English is far too long for Duke.

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