Word Spew

So, in class the last few weeks we've been looking at representation in movies & TV and we've even had a wee visit from the equality & diversity officer lady. It got me thinking about how things can be taken utterly out of context,and be totally misunderstood, and how we may think certain things are acceptable but really, they're not.

Like for example, the questionaire thing we had to fill out; it had a list of words like 'homosexual' or 'queer', 'chairman' or 'lady doctor', 'half caste' or 'mixed race', etc etc, and whether we thought they were (yes) respectable, (no) unacceptable or (it depends) it depends. There are no wrong answers, said officer gender-non-specific. She claimed political correctness was a dirty phrase, and that it too was often misunderstood. She liked my pink hair. So far, so groovy.

Until it came to revealing our answers.
"YOU MUST NEVER CALL SOMEONE HALF-CASTE" "Yeah, but what if someone describes themselves as that then?" "THEN YOU MUST ENCOURAGE THEM TO SAY MIXED RACE" "...well, that seems a lil patronising, but OK, you're sitting right next to me and I don't wanna be stabbed by that viciously sharp looking pen you're holding...."

Surely people don't want to be told what to call themselves? It's like the furore over whether people quote their nationality as being Scottish or British. Or even European. People don't want to be told they have to be 'British', or not that I've found anyway. I could be wrong. I have found however, that words change meaning, and people embrace them, like in the mid-20th century. The common opinion was that homosexuals were repressed and miserable because of their clandestine lifestyle. However, the soon-to-be-called-gay community took on 'gay' to describe themselves because really, they weren't very miserable at all. They used the word in phrases like 'gay abandon', to describe their carefree, unattached lifestyle. Plus, 'homosexual' is a lil bit clinical, innit? And so, like words do, the word 'queer' became part of the gay vernacular. You can do courses in Queer Studies, and 'queer culture' is generally an accepted term. Yet apparently YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY IT AROUND GAY PEOPLE.

OK. But you said we shouldn't shy away from, uhm, saying 'blackboard'. Or 'brainstorm'.

At least she had the decency to admit she was being self-contradictory. But still, the whole thing caused me to have a serious thought-shower whilst I jotted down some ideas on a board with which to write things on when I was already having a rubbish calorifically challenged day. Baa baa, fluffy sheep. And hillbillies like to be called sons of the soil..........