From: orc@vpnet.chi.il.us (david parsons)
Subject: Re: Purity
Organization: Department of Atomic Text Units
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:38:39 GMT

In article <93005.004022SAUNDRSG@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> Graydon <SAUNDRSG@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
|In article <1993Jan4.223344.7425@tcsi.com>, miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner
|nmscore Assoc.) says:
|>Well, you stopped, anyway.  Is it so much harder to say something
|>like "labels don't work for me," and try to elicit from people
|>memories of situations in which *they* have been unpleasantly labeled
|>(an almost universal experience)?  And how is it less "adult" to
|>do so?  Especially by comparison to responding using the diction of
|>a three-year-old?
|Ok - it is possible to use 'an instance of an human being', but it
|doesn't communicate clearly as often as 'a people'.

   Which depends on the person you're talking to; for me, 'a
people' makes no sense at all, except in a vague surrealist
fashion.

|If I want other people to respect which shutters I have closed in
|my mind, it behooves me to respect theirs.  Which means, to me,
|that I can refuse to provide them with a label for myself, or do
|my best to refuse their attempts to label me, but that I ought
|to leave my opinions of their shutters out of things as much as
|I can.

   There are cases where labels are very useful.  I call myself
bisexual, and ignore all the negative baggage that tries to attach
itself to the label, because it's a commonly known label, and a lot
easier than saying "well, I'm mainly sexually attracted to women,
but I'm also sexually attracted to men, and I've found that even
though it's difficult for me to become romantically attracted to
men, that I have on occasion done so."

   I would say (speaking as a non-linguist) that a large part
of language is the convenient labelling of objects, so we can
actually communicate.  There are many labels that I can apply to
myself, and I am perfectly happy to apply them in the proper
context (what is "Orc", if not my label of choice(*)?  When I call
myself an e-slut, I'm describing my behavior, and just as well as
if I say "I'll happily proposition and fuck my friends, as well as
the occasional cute stranger and acquantance, because it's fun, and
this fun overrides the possibilities of spectacular emotional
disasters of I forget to do the important step of communication
while becoming entangled with these people", but with the benefit
of not taking thirty-five minutes to describe myself.)  I can, if
needed, elaborate on my definition of the labels I use, but those
labels get the information I wish to relate across quickly and with
a minimum of confusion on everyone's part.


(* note that even though friends will know that this particular Orc
   is a promiscuous bisexual bottom who's into trains, computers,
   travel, books, and socialism, not very many other people will.
   This makes it a bad label for _describing_ myself, and I thus
   just use it for identification.)


|>>Ever run into H. Beam Piper's test for an adult?  That reaction fails it.
|
|The defintion in question, which I continue to find a good thumb
|rule, asserts that someone is probably an adult if, when you say
|something they do not understand, ask you what you mean, rather than
|telling you you are crazy.

   It's a bad rule, because some statements don't deserve a "what
do you mean?"  If someone says to me "so, you're a bisexual; this
means you're promiscuous?", I don't fail any test for being a
adult by telling them they're an idiot.  Badly considered questions
and comments deserve what they get.

                ____
  david parsons \bi/ export PEDANT_MODE=1
                 \/
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