Let’s break the taboo! No not that one! The other one!
Let’s break the taboo: Menstruation is a natural part of life, and having reliable access to safe and affordable period products improves the health and well-being of all who menstruate.#MenstrualHygieneDaypic.twitter.com/gl1RY0j43h
— United Way Centraide Canada (@UWCCanada) May 28, 2024
Let’s break the taboo on talking about menstruation, but let’s enforce and promote and flatter the taboo on the filthy word “women.”
At least they’re using the passive “…who menstruate”? I just got a spam email the other day from Shoppers Drug Mart waxing poetic about some event/offer thing* they’ve got going on for menstruators. :-/
*I was so distracted by their dehumanizing language I couldn’t be bothered to read through it and just deleted the thing reflexively.
Not passive. It’s an active verb in a restrictive relative clause (i.e., a relative clause that defines or restricts the referent of the noun–note the difference between “people who have two legs” (as opposed to those with just one) and “people, who have two legs”).
WaM, thanks! Sincerely, not sarcastically :-) I’m usually more of a stickler for grammar, and I knew as I typed it that it wasn’t quite right, but didn’t have the strength to look it up ;-)
ibbica, you might have been thinking of the whole “person-centered language” thing that’s been around for a long while. A good example of this is the shift from “the diabetic in room five” to “the person with diabetes in room five”.
diabetic : person with diabetes :: woman : person who menstruates
The reasoning seems related to the euphemism treadmill that George Carlin skewered in his bit on soft language.
I would have a horrible time trying to explain the rules of using commas. I just tend to put them where they “sound” right. But after all my years of teaching EFL, I know from restrictive relative clauses.
@ibbica,
Yeah, I get pedantic with the passive voice, perhaps overly pedantic sometimes. Comes from my studies, I suppose.
Nullius – but is the shift from “the diabetic in room five” to “the person with diabetes in room five”? Wouldn’t it much more normally be the woman or the man with diabetes in room five? Unless the staff are all gender crazies of course. But gender crazy aside, people don’t normally talk about “a person” when they could say a woman or a man. It’s just not idiomatic.
Commas and rules. Rules shmules. I don’t know the rules either – except for the one that I think is a bad stupid rule: the one about omitting the comma if you use “and”. [I also break the rule about putting the “” after the punctuation, as I did there, because sometimes it looks wrong.] Commas are there to do a job, and doing the job is far more important than the rules. Writing should be about meaning, aesthetics, pleasure, argument, explanation, wit, style.
Yeah, Word keeps trying to persuade me not to use the comma with and. I’ve also been in a bit of a discussion with those in my writing group about the comma and punctuation. It seems to me that the punctuation should not be in the punctuation marks unless that is ALL it is punctuating, which it often isn’t.
Related, I think: a short “sports history” post I came across was about the winner of the Olympic decathlon in 1976. The winner’s name? Jenner. No first name, no pronouns referencing him in the entire article. It did mention that the event was the men’s decathlon, which was redundant because the only decathlon at the Olympics is a men’s event. It was bizarre, the linguistic wrangling used by the writer to avoid a pronoun.
At least they’re using the passive “…who menstruate”? I just got a spam email the other day from Shoppers Drug Mart waxing poetic about some event/offer thing* they’ve got going on for menstruators. :-/
*I was so distracted by their dehumanizing language I couldn’t be bothered to read through it and just deleted the thing reflexively.
Not passive. It’s an active verb in a restrictive relative clause (i.e., a relative clause that defines or restricts the referent of the noun–note the difference between “people who have two legs” (as opposed to those with just one) and “people, who have two legs”).
The art of the comma. So many journalists and editors are so sloppy with commas. It drives me nuts.
WaM, thanks! Sincerely, not sarcastically :-) I’m usually more of a stickler for grammar, and I knew as I typed it that it wasn’t quite right, but didn’t have the strength to look it up ;-)
Still gross :-P
ibbica, you might have been thinking of the whole “person-centered language” thing that’s been around for a long while. A good example of this is the shift from “the diabetic in room five” to “the person with diabetes in room five”.
diabetic : person with diabetes :: woman : person who menstruates
The reasoning seems related to the euphemism treadmill that George Carlin skewered in his bit on soft language.
@Ophelia,
I would have a horrible time trying to explain the rules of using commas. I just tend to put them where they “sound” right. But after all my years of teaching EFL, I know from restrictive relative clauses.
@ibbica,
Yeah, I get pedantic with the passive voice, perhaps overly pedantic sometimes. Comes from my studies, I suppose.
Ayup.
Nullius – but is the shift from “the diabetic in room five” to “the person with diabetes in room five”? Wouldn’t it much more normally be the woman or the man with diabetes in room five? Unless the staff are all gender crazies of course. But gender crazy aside, people don’t normally talk about “a person” when they could say a woman or a man. It’s just not idiomatic.
Commas and rules. Rules shmules. I don’t know the rules either – except for the one that I think is a bad stupid rule: the one about omitting the comma if you use “and”. [I also break the rule about putting the “” after the punctuation, as I did there, because sometimes it looks wrong.] Commas are there to do a job, and doing the job is far more important than the rules. Writing should be about meaning, aesthetics, pleasure, argument, explanation, wit, style.
Oh, yes, I’m with you on all counts. Especially on punctuation and quotation marks.
Yeah, Word keeps trying to persuade me not to use the comma with and. I’ve also been in a bit of a discussion with those in my writing group about the comma and punctuation. It seems to me that the punctuation should not be in the punctuation marks unless that is ALL it is punctuating, which it often isn’t.
Ophelia: You’re right, of course. It’s definitely much more natural to specify man, woman, patient, or whatever than just a vague “person”.
Fun fact about the rule on where the comma/period goes in relation to a terminal quotation mark: the US and the UK have opposite rules.
Related, I think: a short “sports history” post I came across was about the winner of the Olympic decathlon in 1976. The winner’s name? Jenner. No first name, no pronouns referencing him in the entire article. It did mention that the event was the men’s decathlon, which was redundant because the only decathlon at the Olympics is a men’s event. It was bizarre, the linguistic wrangling used by the writer to avoid a pronoun.