How A Hug Lasts Forever

A friend of mine remarked the other day how I really like touching people physically. Everytime I meet a friend, I'll give them a hug. Before they leave me, I give them a hug. I don't really touch people otherwise normally, but on occasion I do love a good cuddle with the people I trust most.

So this morning I was dwelling on this, and I remembered something that happened to me in my first year in Halifax.

I was walking down South Park St. on my way to Spring Garden Rd, passing the front of an apartment block (Haligonians will probably know what I'm talking about), and walking towards me were a group of adolescent girls. They couldn't have been older than fourteen. I don't know how to gauge age anymore.

One of the girls looked like the "different" one of the group. She wasn't talking to them, just walking with them. I wouldn't say she was differently-abled, but I got the feel of it from her. Mostly because she was the one walking right in front of me, and when I moved to the side to let her pass, she moved in front of me.

I moved to the left, she followed suit. Right, and she still blocked me.

You could tell it was done on purpose, judging by the smile on her face. I don't know why she did that - maybe just to aggravate. Maybe just to see me try to push her aside.

But it was clear she was going to block my path, so I threw my arms around her into a hug.

Her friend burst out into laughter, but she hugged me back and when I let her go, I think I patted her on the head and said something to the effect of "have a nice day." Or maybe I didn't say anything. This all happened in the space of a few seconds.

While they walked away, I heard her friends say, "that was awesome!" and in two seconds I hear running steps towards me.

I turned around, and she was bolting towards me with her arms wide open, so I opened my arms too, and she hugged me tightly. I hugged her back, and then she stepped back, grinned at me and ran back to her friends.

I never met her again.

Reading: Lakoff

Part II: Why Women Are Ladies

#1 This is so dated. So so so dated. However, her impression that women use more tag-questions ("Nice day, isn't it?" because they're socialized to believe that assertion is unlady-like) is not so outdated, but these days, men also use the tag-question hedging technique.

#2 "Women's language" consists of: specific stock of words, empty adjectives (divine, charming, cute), questioning intonations, hedging, "so", hyper-correct grammar, super-polite terms, lack of humour, italics (emphasized words). According to Lakoff, male academics are most likely to use all these instead of just a few as opposed to other men, that "the decisive factor is less purely gender than power in the real world". There's the implication that male academics use this because they do not have "power in the real world". I question that conclusion.

#3 "In any event, it should be clear that I am not talking about hundred-percent correlations, but rather, general tendencies." Correlations is not causation!

#4 Cheris Kramer surveyed this and found that men and women did not find there to be a particular women's language. Lakoff returns with that this language is likely to be used in situations where women do not feel assertive. To which I say, they are also likely to be used in situations where men do not feel they should assert themselves. (Of course, Lakoff is writing in the 70's; today men actually feel the need to be "nice".)

#5 Lakoff also ignores the fact that men speak "men's [neutral] language" because they are pressured to. Just because women speak "women's language" and are thus not taken seriously doesn't really mean anything today. We hedge because we fear being offensive, and this isn't limited to females. Maybe I'm just getting offended because language is so much more fluid today, and I've heard all these peculiarities to women also used by men.

#6 "... it is true that more women than men are institutionalized for mental illness ... fighting the paradoxes a woman necessarily faces tends to break down a woman's mental resources..." Well, now, there's a stereotype I haven't seen in a long time. There were more women than men because men faced the pressure NOT to be institutionalized, not because they did not need it. Even today, men are expected to "take it like a man" and not go to the doctor/counsellor if they face emotional problems.

#7 The passive voice in academia is NOT to appear "cool and above it all", but to show an objective detachment from the writing and research subject. Conclusions that are made with too much involvement with the subject are not quite as trustworthy. Being too wrapped up and too involved means that something could be missed in the research. Distance is therefore necessary, not just a formality.

#8 Deference does not always mean an unwillingness to assert. Some people just like to plain fucking respect others.

#9 Grice's Four Basic Rules of Conversation:
Quality: Say only what is true.
Quanitity: Say only as much, and just as much, as is necessary.
Relevance: Be relevant.
Manner: Be perspicuous. Don't be ambiguous. Don't be obscure. Be succint.
What am awfully boring man Grice must be!

Reading: Martyna

Wendy Martyna - Beyond the He/Man Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language

#1 I have previously tried to use "s/he" in place of pronouns before, to be met with resistance by a friend who would rather I wrote "he or she" (or "she or he"). Something like that, however, brings up the issue of "which one comes first? Does it become an issue?" and the unfortunate thing is that it DOES seem to become an issue after a while. "S/he" thus becomes the next viable alternative - we just don't know how to pronounce it.

#2 It can be agreed that "man" does not always "embrace woman", and even today, the word "Man" lacks the holistic sense that "human" does. I'm not sure why men would take issue to this, though, probably because I grew up with a language that doesn't really have male-centered terms. (Let's face it, Malaysians, we don't say "Sejarah Lelaki" as we would say "Sejarah Manusia".)

#3 I think I once said to Nolan about how gender roles don't so much matter, how loving someone shouldn't be about how male or female they are, but rather for how human they are. So when Martyna writes "the nonsexist language I and others envision will be humanized rather than de-sexed", I can't help but agree. (Again, this is being written in 1980, so it's rather dated. The equation of "maleness" to "humanness" no longer stands. Are we seeing some progress?)

#4 Ann Bodine: "Despite almost two centuries of vigorous attempts to analyze and regulate it out of existence, singular "they" is alive and well" - referring to the use of "they" in place of "he", to the detriment of grammar rules. I've seen "they" being used quite often, even in the singular form, and I think grammar rules these days aren't so much about the mathematical equation on paper, but how it SOUNDS. If "they" sounds right, of course it's going to persist. There's nothing anal grammarians can do about that.