But the abbreviation “poly” is already in use
Listen up – you have to stop saying “poly” when you mean “polyamorous.” Aida Manduley says so.
In case you haven’t stumbled upon this (I just heard about it two days ago myself), here’s the scoop—a Polynesian person on Tumblr made the following call to action:
Hey, can any polyamory blogs with a follower count please inform the palagi portion of the community that “poly” is a Polynesian community identifier, and is important to our safe spaces.
Using “polyamory” is cool just like using “polygender” and “Polyromantic” and or Polysexual” is cool. But the abbreviation “poly” is already in use.
Oh well then, that settles it. An abbreviation that’s already in use can never be used by other people for other things.
Being on the receiving end of “stop using a word” or “you’re being oppressive” isn’t an easy pill to swallow. Whenever I get called out for something—most likely ableism since it’s an axis of oppression I don’t personally experience and am still learning a lot about—there’s often a knee-jerk reaction in there. A “don’t tell me what to do” demon on my shoulder who loves getting self-righteous and hates being wrong, whose first line of defense is “it’s not even that big of a deal.”
You can tell what’s coming, though, can’t you. You can hear it far away up the tracks, just the faintest vibration so far – but it’s moving fast. She’s going to tell us that she overcomes all that because she’s such a good and justicey person.
But then I take a breath and realize I’m being ridiculous even if it’snormal.
I’m not being my best self in those moments, and I need to hold compassion for my own feelings but also push past them if they’re not serving my values of kindness and justice.
She’s so justicey she bolds that part. Her values are justice and kindness, unlike those other poopyheads who keep using the word “poly” to not mean Polynesian.
Overall, individuals and communities are perpetually trying to find ways to describe themselves and their lives, and that can be really tough especially if the words are related to identities that are devalued and marginalized. While “labels are for soup-cans” and we’re so much more complex than words could ever describe, language is a powerful thing that helps both reflect and create our world. It helps build communities, express our emotions, and even pass down our histories. It helps us name our struggles, craft banners for solidarity, and connect for change. It makes sense people have a lot of feelings about it!
She’s such a good person. She’s kind of a dull and didactic writer though. “Language is a powerful thing” – you don’t say.
Language is ever-evolving and it’s a beautiful thing when more words can become available, when more ways of understanding our world are accessible. But that doesn’t happen without friction. Sometimes our knee-jerk reactions to new words or identities come from a place of holding onto what we’ve been taught and being uncomfortable with change.
Oh gosh, that’s so wrong of us.
What I mean is that we need to hold space for growth and be willing to move in new directions with our terminology—that regardless of how defensive our initial “Don’t Tell Me What To Do” shoulder-demons might be, we MUST move in a direction of empathy and kindness, particularly to those in marginalized communities with long legacies of experiencing colonialism and other forms of structural oppression.
Like Polynesians, god damn it. Their name starts with poly so that’s their word, you colonialist shoulder-demon shits.
So what we’re talking about here is clarity as well as empathy and willingness to listen.
Whether these Tumblr folks represent a few dozen, a few hundred, or a fewthousand, the questions remain the same: what are we, non-Polynesian “poly” people and our allies, going to do to provide clarity to our language and stand in solidarity with however many Polynesians want this change? More importantly, what does this situation, and the pushback from members of “the polyamorous community,” tell us about language adoption and resistance to change in our communities?
Um…that we’re doing it wrong? That we should apologize and promise never to do it again? That we’re not nice people after all? That we don’t bold things enough?
As someone in the sexuality field AND a polyamorous person with a big tech geek streak, I value useful search terms and disambiguation. Heck, as a super Type A person that drools over nice spreadsheets, regardless of other sexual or racial identities, I think it’s crucial that we make the Internet an easier, more organized place to browse.
Bahahahahahaha, I’m happy for her and her nice spreadsheets identity, but I’m still calling my parrot Polly and she can’t stop me.
I am so glad tumblr wasn’t around when I was young and, well, tumblrish.
Also, I’m betting that English homographs are very very problematic. Polish the nationality must mean we have to eliminate polish the verb. And don’t get me started on rape the crime and rape the name for an oil seed crop of which *canola* is a cultivar.
We should probably stop growing canola, just to be sure we have safe space.
I’m sorry, but as someone who has periodically built things, and who has an older home periodically needing I deal with such materials, ‘poly’ is vapour barrier. I will accept no other use for this morpheme*. Go find your own.
(*/Oh, okay, fine, then! I’ll also accept it for exterior house wrap. But even this seems suspiciously like appropriation to me.)
… erm… requiring I deal? How did that even happen?
(/Okay. You got me. I’m actually an AI.)
So… Polynesian isn’t a foreign, colonial word pushed on them? They didn’t have a different name for their peoples that might make more sense to say is something they don’t want appropriated?
Good grief. I know people in the construction industry who use poly to refer to polyethylene sheeting, polyethylene and poly propylene insulation and polystyrene blocks, sheets and slabs. Similarly people in the printing and plastics industry. Chemists, well yeah, when talking in slang. The possibilities just go on and on. Best of luck trying to get everyone in the world to drop a common abbreviated slang on a common root word, just because you want to appropriate it.
For that matter I’ll have to ask some local Poly’s why/if they are really keen to hang onto an identifier coined by a Greek speaking Frenchman in 1756.
Side note. I just realised I felt uncomfortable writing ‘Poly’s’ in that context because it is used as a slang race identifier here, and not always with affection.
If only more people had read The Library of Babel; Borges is good for perspective on the human condition and its absurdities.
http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/library_of_babel.html
Let’s hope the Greeks don’t want their word back.
Maybe the Greeks should license out use of their language pieces, and use the fees to get out of debt. :)
latsot, ‘pan-‘ exceeds ‘poly-‘. :)
Rob, trivial, but I note you’re using the grocer’s apostrophe there.
(It’s a plural, not a possessive)
@Samantha:
That did not go unoccurred to me.
@John:
If those ancient Latin-speaking people want their words back too, we’re fucked. Fortunately, we’d still be able to use “fucked” to describe our plight
Latsot, pan- is a Greek prefix, not Latin.
(The Romans did borrow a fuckload of stuff from them, but. Like their gods, where Faunus is their version)
Someone had better alert Black Lives Matter about their acronym.
Someone who isn’t me.
Chris @14, Bacon, Lettuce & Mayo?
These seems like such a micro problem.
Oh dammit. that’s because, ummm, urrr… Oh! Look over there!
@ Chris I thought I was the only one getting confused: why is the Bureau of Land Management confronting Hillary Clinton? Oh.
John
Live by the apostrophe, die by the full stop and auto-correction. :)
Is it called a grocer’s apostrophe only in Britain? Are grocers the world over notorious for apostrophe misuse?
Yes, I know, My “joke” was about what would happen if we stripped Latin out of English as well as Greek.
That certainly wasn’t clear from my post. It wasn’t even a good joke.
But I’ve been thinking about things and my identity as a computer scientist is being widely disrespected. People keep talking about “bandwidth” and “rebooting” and “coding” and “bugs” and “defragging”. Those are our words and people all the time be using them wrong. You Morlocks should make up your own words when you talk about our magic.
Clearly, the LGBT community clearly needs to apologize to the people inhabiting the island of Lesbos. Well, just the L’s, I guess. It’s already in use!
Also, a casual google reveals that the very term “polynesia” is itself a colonial term coined by a Frenchman (FRENCHMAN). Not going to link, because “etymology polynesia” is quite easy to type into a search field, but … yeah, no. This seems comparable to an Alaskan indigenous group fighting to keep the mountain named McKinley.
More infuriating is that I missed Rob’s comment at #5, which made the same comment about etymology. Don’t know how I did that — sorry Rob!
Nah worries Mate!
(That’ll get the Aussies after me. Mind you, we’ll be in trouble anyway for daring to find humour in something again)
@ Rob: That’s mighty British of you. :) /runsaway
@ latsot, #12:
Not so!
That’s right. You’ve just been fisted by Latin!
The Lesbians appropriated a term for the inhabitants of a particular island, but the gays appropriated *happiness*. People who identify as “bi” have appropriated bilateralism!
Will noone think of the poor polyglot!
Or polytician, or polyp, or polywood (or other bored)
Let’s all chip in.
Well this certainly inspired a lot of good jokes.
Yes, this tiny, alternative sexuality/lifestyle/lovestyle/whatever group is oppressing all up in their faces by using one of the most common abbreviations ever… this must certainly be happening.
Samantha @26 not just bilateralism. I would argue that mathematicians own the prefix bi-. We have binomial, bisection, bifunctor, bifurcation, and bidual, just to mention a few. (“Bidual” sounds a bit redundant, but it’s the dual of the dual. So there. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to clear that up.)
I’m somewhat curious how language policing got raised to its current status as the Ultimate Social Justice act. It’s one thing to call people on using known derogatory epithets, and new terms do become considered offensive over time (“retarded” was a common insult when I was growing up and is now generally agreed to be best avoided).
But the way people act in some corners of the internet, you’d think that there is some special merit badge that gets awarded if you manage to get a new word or phrase* put on the verboten list. An academic paper on the emergence of the language policing hobbyist would make an interesting read.
*”Drink the Kool Aid” and “Circle the wagons” are 2 of the more creative attempts I’ve seen.
Harald– yep. I’ve taught high school classes, and actually, you have to pause for the snickering when you introduce the term “binomial” because some kid will always think of bisexual.
However, since all vertebrates and many invertebrate lifeforms are bilateral, I thought that was the best choice to represent how large a group was having their descriptor appropriated.
Samantha – you’re kidding, right? No, I think you’re not. Reminds me how someone told me that in the US, you should always wipe the blackboard with up and down movements instead of side to side, as the latter will make your butt move in ways the audience will consider “interesting”.