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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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Noblesse Oblige
Or, Was I Offensive to Little Girls?
There was a phrase in the previous blog entry on the 6-year-old kid, where I imagined the school staff: "Run in circles! Pull out your hair! Scream like a little girl!" Today Nancy in Illinois complained that was "sexist language".
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She writes: "I'm not about to accuse you of being a sexist, because everything of yours I've ever read makes plain you're not. It seems likely you wrote as you did just because the offensive phrase you employed has been repeated so much that its inherent derision has become muffled. But in the ZT piece, did you HAVE to phrase your justified ridicule as 'Scream like a little girl!'? It is tough enough as a girl to grow up feeling like a full and empowered member of the human race, when virtually all murder victims in TV fiction are portrayed as pretty young women. We females don't need an added implication that we ARE the weaker sex by an (even unintended) putdown suggesting we even start out less brave and more dramatically hysterical than boys. Just ask Kit."
Of course, Kit (my wife) didn't voice any problem with the phrase; like me, she's not particularly enamored of political correctness. The fact is, girls do scream more than boys, especially when they're little. When I said as much to Nancy, she replied, "Having raised both a boy and a girl, I'm not persuaded that their vocalization rates differ as significantly as claimed, but that is irrelevant. Your writing, while entertainingly intolerant of stupidity, bigotry, and meanness of spirit, consistently upholds high standards of courtesy to the innocent and well-intentioned. That is not political correctness; it's just politeness, perhaps even noblesse oblige [italics from the original]. The fact that your track record consistently has been so sterling is what made the exception stand out."
Nancy successfully avoided the knee-jerk reaction of "I've read you for 10 years, and thought you were wonderful, but now that I see one thing I disagree with, I've come to understand you're scum and I quit." -- which so, so many people have done in the past. (I appreciate that, Nancy!) I have to admit I raised an eyebrow at the "Just ask Kit!" part, as if any woman could instantly see what a man could not ...which I'm sure some would think was a sexist idea. But I passed it over to Kit again to ask specifically. Her response: "I get her point, but if your analogy had been 'screamed like a stuck pig,' would that have been bad or ok? It seems to me you hit a nerve."
Certainly! So that leaves the question: is this a case of my being insensitive, or Nancy being overly sensitive, even "politically correct"? From my dismissal of hysterical adults she made an immediate connection to murder victims and French chivalry. Since she did me the favor of not knee-jerking her reaction, I'm returning the favor by asking for feedback -- I'd be interested in what you think: comments are open below so we can get a discussion going.
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Posted by Rebecca, Clallam Bay WA on October 24, 2009:
To paraphrase Honest Abe: You can offend some people some of the time, everyone some of the time, etc., as the feedback indicates. Had you been a female reporting this, would it still be controversial? Offense is in the ear of the hearer.
While I commend Nancy for speaking up when she perceived something that was offensive to her, she has done what so many men cry foul about, especially during a tiff between spouses. (Yes, I'm married.) She dredged up all the "slings & arrows" flung against the female of the species down the ages unto this day. A very PC thing to do, & something I learnt in the Human Potential Movement as "NOT PLAYING FAIR." Argue only about the current strife.
When I ran a book review site, a New England high school student wrote worrying about the language in an assigned summer read. It was a best seller about commercial fisher folk set in this student's neck of the woods, & I'd highly recommended it. Having enjoyed the rough & tumble vocabulary, I was saddened that this student was stuck on the language, thus missing the whole adventure. Perhaps it was too "grown-up," more of a college level read.
Hot house children don't survive out in the real world where cold shoulders, barbed words & cliches are viral. Little girls shriek: about boy bands, Hannah Montana, mice, bugs & things that go bump in the night. That's why every Halloween movie ALWAYS has screaming females. Little boys find that hysterical. I know, wrong gender except hilarious doesn't sound squeaky enough.
There is something far more sinister at work here, though: that there are those who think we ought to pasteurize & homogenize our colorful colloquialisms into offend-none pablum.
Posted by Don, Cambridge MA on October 24, 2009:
Interesting comments from thoughtful people. I think the gist of Nancy's comment relates to screaming being learned behavior - and there being an overabundance of cues in our society which encourage girls to scream at the drop of an insect, insult, or inconvenience. The two daughters who scream at spiders obviously learned to do so from their mother. And screaming except in anger is a deliberate expression of weakness. It's annoying in little girls, unconscionable in women.
Obviously, anyone may scream if adequately stressed. But I can't recall ever hearing my mother scream, or any of my sisters. I'm not sure I know any women who scream at trivialities; certainly no woman I know would be proud of her ability to scream.
So yes, Nancy's perhaps a bit sensitive, but I certainly wouldn't dismiss her concerns as yet another instance of political correctness. Words do have power, and cliches can have subtle effects on cultural standards.
Posted by Barbara, Milwaukee on October 24, 2009:
Here I was reading this very interesting comment thread (it's amazing, Randy, that you'll not only accept criticism, but ask people to debate it on your own web space) while listening in the background to my favorite weekly radio show, "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me" (the perfect companion to This is True!)
NBC News anchor Brian Williams was the guest this week, and at the end the show's host, Peter Sagal, remarked that it was fun to have Williams on, because he was able to make him "cry like a little girl."
"Wait, Wait" is, of course, on NPR, which isn't exactly known for its conservative rejection of Political Correctness.
While I was reading and found the arguments on both sides compelling (when it wasn't wrapped up in overdramatic emotion), I was already coming down on the side of Nancy and her ilk being way overreactionary. But really: if radio hosts on NPR are willing to make virtually the same comments (and in this case simply to make fun, not to dramatize the ridiculous hysteria of public officials), I'm 100% behind you, Randy!
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And with that, I think everything that can be said has been. There's obviously not going to be an agreed-upon conclusion, so I'm going to close down comments now with this one, the 99th. I wanted a debate, and I got it! Thanks, all! -rc