Holy mother of God *is horrified*

[elspethdixon]

Oh my God, every time I wincingly look back at the ongoing Cultural Appropriation bitchfight of doom, it gets worse. I'm not otherwise going to get involved, but here, I just couldn't help myself.

So, for those, like me, who hadn't seen or heard about Teresa Hayden's post wherein she expresses her anger over people badmouthing her husband (at least, that's what I assume she was doing from the descriptions - I haven't read any of the stuff involving him, either, but apparently he said things that offended people, refused to appologize when called on it, and then deleted his journal because people were yelling at him): Holy fuck, she calls fans of color and those who support them nithings.

In terms of offensiveness, as a former student of old English? Fuck, people, that's, well, not as horrible as the other n-word (which, please God, I hope no one's actually said), but it's pretty god-awful. Like, enough that I was reduced to staring at my computer screen in horror.

She has basically stated that all the people who disagree with her husband (including but not limited to, fans of color) are hateful, malicious, deformed, insane, sexually deviant, possibly cannablistic, sub-human or less-than human things. Because that's what that word means. It means monster. It means Not-a-Person. It means Grendal in Beowulf, the Ring-Wraiths in LotR, the in-bred, cannabalistic degenerate monsters in Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear."

That's what she's saying fans of color are. Maybe she doesn't really know what the word means and implies, but even if she just thinks it's an old spelling of "nothing" that would be offensive all on it's own.

And to think I used to respect her so much...

ETA: Apparently, there are differences between the Old Norse and Old English definitions, with the Norse one being a far worse insult and the Anglo-Saxon version being a little less on the digusting monster side and more on the outlaw side (see the discussion of several people with more expert knowledge than me in comments). Both versions are still insults, though.

Comments

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

I really would advise everyone to calm down and check your facts. "Nithing" merely means a person whose actions have made them an outlaw. It has nothing to do with monsters, sexually inclined or otherwise.

Likewise, "draggle-tailed" merely means untidy it's an adjective, not a noun and has never been a term exclusive to women, nor does any meaningful definition of it include the word "slut".

Maybe, if people can stop becoming hysterical over words they don't fully understand, this discussion could leave the realms of playground bullying and tackle some of the issues that all the drama queens pretend to care so much about.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

OED: "[a] draggle-tailed person; a woman whose skirts are wet and draggled, or whose dress hangs about her untidily and dirty; a slut"

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang: "draggle-tail n. 1 a prostitute, thus draggletailed, draggled, promiscuous, a general abusive term."

Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: "DRAGGLETAIL or DAGGLETAIL. One whose garments are bespattered with dag or dew: generally applied to the female sex, to signify a slattern."

I think it's pretty clear who "fully understands" the words involved.

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

Draggle-tailed can also refer to male clothing. I have heard it used so.

I know it's a nice feeling to be able to get all offended over words, but it's not really sensible, especially when your overreaction to those words is based on misunderstanding.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

You know, I think this post sums up the quality of the debate quite well.

laura_holt_pi arrives to inform us that the criticisms are totally wrong and should quiet down because we are criticizing words we "don't fully understand".

I then triply source that every single point laura_holt_pi made about draggletail is wrong: it is a noun. It does mean slut. And while it may occasionally have been used about a man, it is a gendered insult primarily aimed at women.

She then blankly ignores this and repeats "your overreaction to those words is based on misunderstanding"

Here from Metafandom

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It does seem like the defenses of words people "don't understand" is just repeating the idea that first caused offense. Whether you add a sexual connotation to "draggle-tailed" or the monster connotation to "nithing" they're all expression the same thing, aren't they?

Draggle-tailed refers to the hem of one's clothing dragging in the gutter. "Nithing" separates the person from the cultured people indoors.

So there's the one side who are out in the gutter being loud-mouths, and they're bothering the cultured, educated people who are trying to have an actual conversation with their opinions. And only the cultured people know the "correct" meanings of their insults, which are apparently just bad enough to show how clever and witty the cultured person is, but not bad enough that the person insulted has a right to accuse them of being vulgar. Even if the person knows that these words have historically meant slut, sexually promiscuous, disgusting and less-than-human--well, they're still showing how uneducated they are for not realizing what definition is correct. So even if you look up the word in a dictionary you're still just showing how incapable you are of following the conversation.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Could she and Carol Thatcher be pulling from the same meta-narrative?

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to realize that many people(well, many white people, at least) pull from the same narrative in these situations.

1. Get offended and insist you've gone nothing wrong
1a. Get explanation of what you've done
2. Insist explanation is wrong
2a. Get more explanations + public censure as you make yourself look worse and worse
3.'Recant' and offer an apology that isn't actually an apology, like "I'm sorry anyone was silly enough to be offended by X offensive thing." Present yourself as the victim in the situation.

[elf]

At its least offensive, it means "outlaw who should be killed on sight; deserving of no human decency; having no right to exist." The meaning of "outlaw" has been drastically shifted over the last few hundred years.

It was used to describe monsters, sexual deviants, evil sorcerers, and deformed people, on the theory that one's soul was visible in one's body.

As an insult, it's as strong, if not stronger, than the other n-words that might've been thrown around.

(On "draggle-tailed," I have no opinion; Elizabethan/Victorian insults are mostly opaque to me. But "nithing" is actively used in modern Pagan communities--to describe child molesters and rapists.)

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

That modern pagans misuse the word is neither here nor there.

I know very well the meaning of the concept of outlaw, and you're wrong. It means someone who has done something that puts him or her outside the protection of society. It has had that meaning for well over a thousand years.

It's not a pleasant thing to call someone, but having seen some of the disgusting (and, in many cases sexist) abuse aimed at the woman in question, I'm not surprised she doesn't want to be polite.

(frozen comment)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I can understand that she and her husband are both upset, but her post went beyond simply not being polite. It was openly insulting, even if you use the mildest interpretations of "draggle-tailed/nithing/etc."

Also, while I've seen quite a bit of criticism of her (much of it deserved), some of which is very harsh, I haven't seen anything that I would call sexist. Though I also haven't been reading everything.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I don't know about draggle-tailed, but according to wikipedia, nith/nithing has a much stronger meaning than simply "outlaw" (and damn it, I wish I could figure out how to get lj to let me type eth and thorn). Grendal in Beowulf is called a nithing, for one, which is where the monster implications come in.

It implied someone who had committed such a heinous crime (cannabalism, sodomy, evil & murderous magic, etc.) that they were legally dead as far as society was concerned. And calling someone a nithing was considered justification for homicide.

There's also an Old Norse called a "nith," which is a kind of malevolent spirit.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%AD%C3%B0)

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia is wrong.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

There are several people fluent in Germanic languages who agree with at least the spirit of the wikipedia definition, if maybe not the particulars, so I'll defer to their expert opinions and assume that it's insulting and demeaning regardless of the exact definition.

[laura-holt-pi.livejournal.com]

It's undoubtedly insulting, but nothing close to what your post says it is. Someone has answered below with far more erudition than I can claim, but it is a fairly mild insult compared with some of the vile things flying around on all sides.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

Not my field of study, but I know how to track down articles from sources more reputable than wikipedia. I dug one up that indicates nithing is as serious an insult as it's being made out to be. In other words, my school's JSTOR subscription, let me show you it.

ETA: I can also provide a .pdf copy of the article on request. It's actually quite interesting.

Nithing was a status term, very similar to outlaw, but carrying an even greater opprobrium with it. A person could be outlawed as a killer and yet not be a nithing. A nithing was the lowest of the low; he was a violator of trust, a truce-breaker, a betrayer of friend, kin, or guest, the murderer and more. Conviction of certain crimes carried nithing status with it automatically*; in other cases it appears that naming someone a nithing was itself a solemn juridical ceremony. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates how Earl Swein Godwinesson, through deceit and treachery, slew his cousin Earl Beorn. King Edward and the whole army convened and declared Swein to be a nithing. The effect of the designation was immediate: six of Swein's eight ships deserted him, and Swein was forced to flee across the channel to Flanders.

*Here Miller cites Larson, Earliest Norwiegian Laws, which states:

In medieval Norwegian Gulathing and Frostathing laws, an outlaw forfeited all his movables but not his land; land, however, was forfeited for nithing crimes, which both the Gulathing and Frosthathing laws specifically enumerate.

Both the quotation and the footnote are on p. 186 of the cited text.

Miller, William I. (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wimiller/cvnet.htm) "Choosing the Avenger: Some Aspects of the Bloodfeud in Medieval Iceland and England." Law and History Review 1 (1983): 159-204.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

It does look interesting - thanks for the citation! I'll have to see if my local libray's databases have a copy (one of the few things I miss about College Park now that I've fled DC and its environs is access to the University of Maryland's academic databases).

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I think I'm most excited in that this might actually be useful for the Medieval Women class I'm raking right now. Fandom and academia collide!

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this citation.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :)

(On another note, it feels really good to be able to use the controlled chaos that is MLA after semesters in APA hell.)

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Grendel is actually called a niþgrim (nydwracu niþgrim, nihtbealwa mæst), which is translated as nithing in at least one major translation (need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest), but isn't niþing itself. I had the same thought as you, that I had heard it in Beowulf, but upon the note below about it not being in Beowulf I checked the original. Sadly, I don't know enough OE/Norse to know how closely the words are related/connotated.

But really, even if you ignore the Norse meaning of a demon in human form, a non-person, I can't say I find the implications of "someone who could and should be killed on sight" to be much of an *improvement*.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Completely irrelevant to the larger issues here (which has gone well beyond my limited knowledge!), but to use ð and þ in html or lj, you can just type ð and þ instead of the letters . (Ð and Þ get you Ð and Þ )

(Finding excuses to do that is one of my minor joys in life.)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Þat is deeply awesome, þank you.

-Elspeð (yay, I can spell my name right now!)

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Even TNH agreed that she meant the "slut" connotation of "draggle-tailed."

(ETA: I'm going from memory, since the post is locked, but I'm pretty sure that's correct. It's just possible that it was someone else defending TNH's use of the word, but I think it was TNH herself. IIRC, she said this in the context of debating whether or not there were racist connotations to calling a group composed largely of women of color "draggle-tailed," since there is a racist stereotype that women of color are "slutty". She said that she intended the "slut" connotation but felt it was foolish to think there was anything racist about it. Apparently calling a bunch of women sluts for disagreeing with you is OK, though...)

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Apparently calling a bunch of women sluts for disagreeing with you is OK, though...

*head desks*

Gee, knowing that she just intended to be sexist and not racist makes it *all* better. [/sarcasm]

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it just? I felt warm and tingly all over.