Words I wish would go away

[sesquipedality]

A rare post from me, because I wanted to get this out of my system somewhere where it would stay around. There are some words (apparently largely neologisms) that are so colossally unhelpful that I feel the world would be a better place if people just stopped using them. Why? Because they seem tailor made to polarise, insult, and genuinely prevent constructive dialogue. Here are the three I can think of. Please suggest more in the comments.

Chav

Seriously, there are many good reasons to hate people in this world. The fact that they dress and talk in the same way that all their friends do isn't one of them. I remember being at an LRP event once where a bunch of people in orc masks were discussing the working class' terrible taste in clothes. It's not that any of the people who were doing it were bad people. It's more that the word chav had just labelled people as other. It encourages people to judge others on what they wear how how they speak rather than what they do or what they say. And it carries a strong implication that working class people are scum. It's stereotyping pure and simple, and I'd like it to stop.

Cager

Descriptive noun sometimes used by cyclists and bikers to describe car drivers. Again, this word smacks of superiority. It's sometimes quite difficult to get car drivers to engage with the idea that cyclists are road users too, but this word does nothing except polarise and anger the very people cyclists are trying to reach. There are a lot of entitled car drivers out there, but being derogatory to them only lowers the debate to their level. Cyclists are a minority, and if we are to effect change, it won't be by promoting an "us and them" mentality which is ridiculous, since many (most?) cyclists drive as well.

Mansplaining

Yes, it is very annoying when one expresses one's frustrations on the Intarwebs, only to elicit a bunch of 'helpful' responses when all you really wanted was sympathy. It can be patronising, and being patronised is generally annoying. However, there are a couple of problems I have with this term. Firstly, the people doing the patronising are doing so because they've misunderstood the nature of your communication, and in their own way are expressing sympathy by trying to help with the problem. Geeks tend to be solution rather than emotion focused, and emotional content of written messages is enormously difficult even if you're very good at understanding emotional content face to face. So when someone is accused of "mansplaining", they are essentially being slapped in the face for offering the wrong kind of sympathy. This same message can be expressed succinctly and less judgementally by the phrase, "thanks, but I was actually just venting".

But "mansplaining"? Isn't that right on a par with "hysterical" for gender biased assumptions? I concede it's likely that on average women focus more on the emotional content of a message and men focus more on practical solutions, but like all such generalisations, this one is essentially meaningless. I've spent years working at a job where my main role is to help people come up with practical solutions to problems. Without wanting to make this about me, I'll admit that I have, from time to time, "mansplained" or "misread a request for sympathy as a request for help" as I like to call it. And frankly I'm sure there are many men who are excellent at telling the difference between the two and never "mansplain". So why make it about gender? It's the behaviour that's problematic, not the gender of the people doing it. Isn't doing that just implicitly asserting that men are emotional cripples? Which to me seems about on a par with suggesting my genitalia oblige me to like shoe shopping.

Labelling the activity in this way might be cathartic, but does it accomplish anything else other than to piss those misguidedly trying to help off? Again, it just doesn't seem constructive.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Good stuff. Coincidentally I have been desultorily looking for a good alternative to “hysterical” (in the actually-nothing-to-do-with-wombs-whatsoever sense). “Overwrought” fits well enough many cases, but it lacks the require punchiness in something like “the sack of the Lindisfarne monastery in northeastern England in 793, to which the English reaction was nothing short of hysterical”.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Cager is used by motorcyclists too.

[triskellian]

Totally with you on 'chav', but I don't think 'cager' and 'mansplaining' are in the same category, because in both cases they're words used about members of dominant groups by members of less-powerful groups (as a driver, I find 'cager' kind of rude, but that's partly the point of it, although of course I'm also a cyclist so probably not best placed to judge).

Mansplaining doesn't actually mean 'offering advice instead of sympathy', it means being a man offering patronising advice which assumes the female recipient of said advice is stupid and in need of your greater wisdom, and it's more usually done by acquaintances or strangers than friends - there's an implication of overstepping bounds in offering advice at all. It's a label for a rude behaviour, not for someone who is genuinely and politely trying to help but doing so misguidedly.

[knightclubber.livejournal.com]

I'd only heard one of those words (chav) before this post. Your efforts to destroy the others have thus slightly backfired :-)

[lnr]

Oh, for me I see "helpy" (as opposed to helpful) used for what you're using mansplaining for - and tend to think of mansplaining as more along the lines of the Urban Dictionary definition: "To explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening." Which I guess could be in the context of advice when someone's not actually asking for technical help, but I see it more often in other contexts.

Although it's a useful *concept* I still agree that a term which didn't include the gender-stereotyping would be a much better one - and I try to avoid using it.

I like your characterisation of all three words as polarising - it helps me put my finger on one of the things that makes me uncomfortable about them all too.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Someone accused me of mansplaining recently (I had to look it up), so in return I suggested she didn't worry her pretty little head about it because she was just "Womanoverreacting".

That seemed to kick things off nicely.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Something I see a lot, working where techies fraternise with fashionistas, and studying a subject where mathematicians rub up against humanities-types, is someone from one discipline getting hold of terminology from another, and then proudly using it in every borderline-tenable circumstance. Every ludicrous disaster scenario senior management dreams up becomes a "failure mode". Brian, who's only doing Econ 202 to make up points for his Philosophy degree, proudly announces his subjective preference as a "dominant strategy", because it's obviously the best.

I've got this special in-group indicator word, they think, so I'm going to use the sweet merry hell out of it, and it will make that group respect me because it's in their language. If only they knew.

My personal bugbear is the word "intermittent" sneaking into the general lexicon of computer users. Most of the time they mean "sporadic", and the distinction is obviously an important diagnostic criterion. I've given up on fighting it by this point; I may as well argue with the sea.

Such terms that worry me especially are ones that aren't rigorously defined, but also come packaged with a probably-inappropriate explanatory narrative. For example:

GENT: I'm sorry; I've already asked once, but will you please be quiet? Other people are trying to watch this, and your incessant talking is just rude.

LADY: Are you negging me?

GENT: What?

LADY: "Negging". The pick-up artist technique where you subtly insult me in casual conversation in order to lower my self-esteem, make me seek validation, and ultimately aid in seducing me.

GENT: What!? No! I just want you to shut up!

LADY: Oh, you totally are. I'm going to tell all my friends about the creepy guy who tried to pick me up in the cinema.

GENT: You're mental.

LADY: There you go again...


Being an insufferable smartarse who loves the sound of his own keystrokes, I'm amazed that no-one has yet accused me of "mansplaining", but in the event that someone does, it doesn't really exist to communicate to me that I'm doing something objectionable. It exists to communicate to other people why my correspondent is dismissing me. Whether that dismissal is warranted doesn't really enter into it, but having the word makes it that little bit more likely to happen.