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

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Well, thanks, but I don't think me doing my dictionary-and-Corpus thing should lead to anything remotely approaching awe.

I'm awed by deepad, Avalon's Willow, K. Tempest Bradford, and ciderpress, to name just a few, who have really put themselves on the line.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I've been admiring them and their courage (and telling them so) since early on. It's just that this side-trip has piqued my "ooh, scholar stuff!" squee.

I was thinking of corpuses the other day, and of the enormous change computer databases have made -- all those pre-computer scholars laboriously, over a period of years, assembling concordances.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Now I feel slightly bad about characterizing the entire debate above, because no matter how foolish laura_holt_pi was being, there are a few people able to conduct interesting debate with facts involved on both sides.