The future is a bright?
Aug. 19th, 2003 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4This has just irritated me mightily.
After the first paragraph, I was already gritting my teeth. The first flakes of enamel started fluttering down like dental dandruff onto my keyboard as I reached the third or fourth. By the time I got to "Children are too young to know their religious opinions" (ascribing a religion to a child is "child abuse", whereas writing them off as too immature to have an opinion is somehow not?) I was gnawing the table-edge and muttering "sorrel, sorrel" under my breath.
Despite the damage to my dental regions, I did manage to read as far as the point where Dawkins kindly decides to inform the "gay" community what connotations "gay", "homosexual", and "queer" have. No, I'm not about to be drawn into the deadly dance of self-identification; my objection is nothing to do with obsessive people-pigeonholing, much less poof-specific pedantry. (After all, I suppose it is understandable that he has failed to notice the Queer Rights movement, and thus still regards "queer" as unquestionably an "insult".) But to blithely limit the meaning of one set of words (and, like it or not, identities) while claiming to liberate his own smug subculture from the tyranny of being called a spade... well, I wonder what the current meaning of "double standards" is in Dawkins' ideolect?
Perhaps he is right, and "I am a bright" really does sound "too unfamiliar to be arrogant". Perhaps it really is "puzzling, enigmatic, tantalising", and will revolutionise the world with its daring and memetic (natch) approach to (a lack of) religion. Fortunately, his real message comes out wholly untainted (and unredeemed) by his religious bias, with the resounding familiarity of the shit hitting the bowl: "I am a self-satisfied waste of the planet's vital resources".
After the first paragraph, I was already gritting my teeth. The first flakes of enamel started fluttering down like dental dandruff onto my keyboard as I reached the third or fourth. By the time I got to "Children are too young to know their religious opinions" (ascribing a religion to a child is "child abuse", whereas writing them off as too immature to have an opinion is somehow not?) I was gnawing the table-edge and muttering "sorrel, sorrel" under my breath.
Despite the damage to my dental regions, I did manage to read as far as the point where Dawkins kindly decides to inform the "gay" community what connotations "gay", "homosexual", and "queer" have. No, I'm not about to be drawn into the deadly dance of self-identification; my objection is nothing to do with obsessive people-pigeonholing, much less poof-specific pedantry. (After all, I suppose it is understandable that he has failed to notice the Queer Rights movement, and thus still regards "queer" as unquestionably an "insult".) But to blithely limit the meaning of one set of words (and, like it or not, identities) while claiming to liberate his own smug subculture from the tyranny of being called a spade... well, I wonder what the current meaning of "double standards" is in Dawkins' ideolect?
Perhaps he is right, and "I am a bright" really does sound "too unfamiliar to be arrogant". Perhaps it really is "puzzling, enigmatic, tantalising", and will revolutionise the world with its daring and memetic (natch) approach to (a lack of) religion. Fortunately, his real message comes out wholly untainted (and unredeemed) by his religious bias, with the resounding familiarity of the shit hitting the bowl: "I am a self-satisfied waste of the planet's vital resources".
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-21 04:01 pm (UTC)No, I was talking to
I just really didn't feel like making jokes and having them heavily and slowly misinterpreted.
I know the feeling. As the nun said to the Nazi. Ho ho! Only kidding. Mary, Mary (virgin, mother, CRONE, WHORE), quite contrary (because that's the only way to FIGHT THE PATRIARCHY), how does your sorrel grow? Not to say, of course, that women should be gardening instead of FIGHTING and DRINKING.
Talking of w(h)i(t)ch... I'll never drink again.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-22 12:58 am (UTC)Phatic communion, tap it with a spoon-y-un. Sharing of experience through lower-class song.
Chastity as moon-y-un, ymdidanwreic's a boon-y-un, how to make it right when it FEELS ALL WRONG.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-22 01:04 am (UTC)"I don't recall reading that people on Venus talk differently; in point of fact, I was not aware that people on Venus talk at all, or indeed that there were people on Venus to do the aforementioned speaking. Correct me if I am in error, however.
I believe you are correct about the fact that I don't need to know better, but you are actually illustrating your own tautology by saying that that's because I already know better. Surely the very fact that I do know better is evidence of the fact that I need to know better? Often we already have the things we need, you see. To give an example of the above theory - I need air, and get to breathe it every day."
no subject
Date: 2003-08-22 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-22 03:30 am (UTC)He knows it teases
Date: 2003-08-22 04:06 am (UTC)Anyway, I'm backing down because J-P is cleverer than me.