Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Nomenclature rant, again.

Just wondering..

If people refer to "books written by young women for young women" by the rather disparaging term "chick lit", why do we not have a name for those written by young men for young men? Those of the Chetan Bhagat genre, for example?
Drone Tome, anyone? Or maybe, "d**k lit" ?? Hah.

Yeah, sometimes the feminist in me just erupts, and I bristle in annoyance over demeaning terms like the above, and also over the fact that the term "woman" is still often used as a qualifier or adjective... such as woman doctor, woman entrepreneur, woman lawyer, woman writer etc. This subtly gives a message to the subconscious mind that these are rarities or aberrations, and therefore not to be taken quite as seriously as they should be.

Darn it!!
One would think we're still living in the 19th century :-(.

3 comments:

A G said...

Ahem ... take it easy! :)

Now, I know its easier said than done and that there are things that we all feel strongly about ... nevertheless, I think a lot of people do so out of sheer habit and not out of maliciousness ... for example, the use of a he while presenting a use-case.

On the whole, I am now reasonably certain that

- people do seemingly bad things out of stupidity rather than malice
- it is rather useless (and stupid) trying to get a logical debate going with stupid people - after all, if logical debates were something they could take, they wouldnt act so stupidly

Thus, chill ... the world will be a better place in 50 odd years ... maybe ...

Rocky Singh said...

Woman Doctor/entrepreneur/lawyer/writer.... whats wrong with that really?

These are rarities and aberrations. And no man, woman or feminist can dispute that!

The question is, why do you feel that just because something is rare, unusual or uncommon it has to be taken LESS seriously? If anything exceptions are taken seriously in just about everything. It simply highlights that something is SPECIAL, not lacking.

Think of the word "woman" as used above as an adjective, not a noun. you will see that it improves on the profession.

Maybe if some feminists stopped complaining and did their jobs(whether at home or office), they would have nothing to complain about. There's enough trouble out there in the world already. We can do without the ravings and rantings of yet another so-called feminist. There are enough women working their rear-ends off to prove their worth. In case you think that is something only women need to do, please keep in mind that ALL men have the same problems when it comes to proving their worth.

Oh! and by the way, we do have a term for books targetted at men... its called PORN!

Rocky Singh said...

meri amma!! mujhe maaf kar de! galti se panga le liya tujhse!!!

uff!!