*Transcendental *Logic

When trying to rectify society’s many ills, how important is policing the use of sensitive words?

Concepts is one thing — I’m all in favor of dragging bad thinking out into the light and making everybody watch while you shoot it in the face.  But what about words, just words, not used as a part of any particular concept; for instance, when a sensitive word is used as slang to refer to something completely different from its normal usage?

Recently, on The Consumerist, an article about credit cards had in its first sentence the phrase, "So-and-so is getting raped with a 24% interest rate…"  …And many of the feministas went ballistic.

I’m caught in the middle on this one.  I care deeply about issues surrounding rape, but I think those issues are things like "dismally bad prosecutions", "negligence in reporting", "lack of victim support", "lack of education for both sexes on the topic", and "perpetuation of concepts that portray women as inherently submissive and men as forgivably aggressive". 

Much as I ponder it, I just can’t see "rape used as a slang term for egregious violation" being something that, if addressed, will make any positive impact at all in the frankly disgusting way much of our society views and deals with the obscene crime that is the real thing.  At best, it will make people recoil from the word itself , as we do with all societally-unapproved words — but what good has the national recoil from the N-word done for civil rights?  What impact on extramarital sex has been made by our societal repugnance of the f-word?  I tend to think that focusing on the word is diverting focus from the issue.

I don’t like being the person who tells anyone trying to speak up about an important topic to shut up and quit making those of us who are serious about it look bad, I really don’t.  My hometown is a racially-charged area, which is probably part of where I get both that tendency, and the phobia of giving in to it.  But I can’t help it:   I do think the women going on about how awful and inappropriate and insensitive it is to use the word "rape" in a way they don’t approve of sound whiny, over-emotional and generally ripe for a good Ignoring The Hell Out Of.  Plus, I have a good bit of knowledge about the language, and "rape" has been used as a hyperbolic term for violation for so long, and by so many people, that in some dictionaries that particular usage isn’t even listed as slang anymore.  I’m also a writer — to me, all usages of all words are permissible if they work, and a word itself can’t really be guilty of anything.  It’s the concepts that are dangerous, and I confess openly that I don’t see anything wrong with the concept that usury in the form of a 24% monthly interest rate is akin to a terrible, nonconsentual violation.  It’s not an exact comparison, but nor is it supposed to be…it’s called a metaphor, and darnit, people who overreact to metaphors (assuming the concept itself isn’t harmful) just strike me as dumb.  Now, if the sentence had been about how women shouldn’t manage their own finances, or how everything started going to shit when women started buying sex-toys, or about how so-and-so was so angered by this interest rate that he might just have to rape a customer-service rep, well, that’d be different!

Based on those arguments, I’m mad at these women for potentially making people who might otherwise listen more likely to roll their eyes the next time someone brings up rape.  I really think it cheapens the severity of the real issues to act like a traumatized kindergartner every time someone says a word that makes you cringe.  Not that I can’t understand why it’d make you cringe — to this day, I can’t watch even a mild rape-scene on TV or in a movie without feeling sick to my stomach — but learn to separate your emotional reaction from the issues that people who don’t know you need to be educated about, eh? 

Now.  Whenever I get angry like this about, say, complaints about what seem like minor or overblown aspects of racism, delivered by people of color, I default to "shut up you don’t know what you’re talking about" mode — as a person of little pigment myself, I feel I don’t really have the right or the background to say who should be speaking up and how.  But I am a rape survivor, as are many (close to most) women I know, and that makes me all the more anxious that the topic receive the treatment it deserves, and not get derailed by childish nitpicking. 

So, I honestly can’t tell if I’m right or wrong here. 

What do ya’ll think?

An hour or two ago, I paused mid-office-stroll to be impressed at the beautiful sunrise I could see out across the parking lot.

Just now, I looked out my window and holy crap, it’s dark out!

If I were a workaholic office-junkie like I sometimes fear I am, I know what I would have thought:  Jeebus, I just worked all day without stopping!

BUT, thankfully, I am and remain fundamentally a science-fiction junkie, because seriously, I kid you not, my first thought was, "Holy crap, is time going backwards?!"

(If it is, my computer’s clock is wrong…and if I’m going to have faith in the order of the universe, darnit, that faith begins with CMOS.)

So, behavioral conditioning can blunt the fear-response.

In short, the Litany Against Fear ought to work quite well in “real life”.  You repeatedly expose yourself to it while relaxing–probably while meditating–forcing your brain/body to associate those words with a safe, un-stressful experience.  Then, when the shiznit hits the cooling device, you mumble those words, Fear is the mind-killer…fear is the little death that brings total obliteration…I will face my fear…and Lo, you feel better.  It’s not really the content of the Litany that does it (though it probably helps, on a cerebral level); as the experiments show, even a simple auditory tone or other stimulus could do it.  The trick is simply to “remind” the brain of a safe situation; to cause the subconscious expectation of safety, even if it isn’t actually warranted at the moment.  Master that — with the Litany, with anything — and poof!  You’ve achieved a superpower:  The ability to banish fear, overcome anxiety and eliminated unwanted stress.

I love it when science catches up to science fiction! 

::goes off to rehearse the Litany::

Matthew Good’s writeup on psychological torture will scar you in useful ways.

In the mood for a good conspiracy?  How about the story of a CEO who tried to warn Wall Street years ago about the terrible risks of naked short-selling (basically the behavior that caused the current fubar), and was rewarded with a slew of falsified Wikipedia entries and other fabricated news-reports that he was off his rocker, all of which can be definitively linked to the Wall Street Journal and other industry players?

I know it totally puts the surreality syrup on my Monday.  Especially since I remember reading some of the articles about how batshit this guy was; in fact, the ruse worked so well on me that when I saw his name on this article, my first response was, "Oh yeah, that crazy guy that nobody should listen to."  Yeah….whups.

(via /., because I like /.)

(Also, neat quote from the forums there:  "Stay tuned - the music has stopped on Wall Street and everyone is looking for chairs.")