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Stoneygirl76 -> RE: Words and Their Power (5/23/2005 6:59:33 AM)
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Heh.
I, too, get irritated sometimes, over the tendency of society at large to label individuals whose behaviors exceed the expected norm.
You like to be tied up and spanked, you're a pervert.
You like to smoke a joint, you're a druggie.
You like to explore sex and are open with your desires, you're a whore/slut/tramp.
Not that anyone is interested, but here is a rant I wrote (on another message board, to explain the context in which it was written) about people using the fact that a woman's child was born out of wedlock as an attempt to insult and verbally hurt her.
quote:
I've held my tongue about this one, but I've wanted to comment on it many times. I refrained because I knew saying anything would open up the floodgates for the same types of things to be said to me.
Whatever though. Who cares if that happens. On with the rant...
I was just reading comments toward ML about her bastard child. I have never, ever understood how, in today's world, people can honestly, with good conscience, say things like that. I mean, it's meant as an insult to the mother, I suppose, but in essence what it's doing is degrading a child's existance. A child has nothing to do with the manner in which it's brought into this world. What sort of human being could speak in such a hurtful, ugly manner about an innocent person?
So a kid was born to a mother who wasn't married to its father. So what? What, in all seriousness, is the awful, bad, terrible thing about that? How many people these days never get married at all? How many get married and live together in misery for the sake of their children? OR do get divorced and go on to have more children with other people? Or get divorced and the non-custodial parent leaves the ex and children behind to start a new life?
How many single people adopt or open their homes to orphaned children? Gay couples adopt? Grandparents assume custody of grandchildren for whatever reason? Are any of those families less admirable or worthy of respect because the children in question weren't born to two people who are considered married by...by who? by what? by the church? What if you don't worship that god? By the state? Do you live your life by what the government tells you is the appropriate fashion?
And what of the men who help to create these pitiful bastard children, who can only be spoken of in condescending, unflattering terms? Why are they exempt from the barrage of insullts which the mother is forced to endure, who did the right thing and decided to raise her child/ren? Throughout history, when men would have liasions, typically while married, and produce a child out of wedlock with a mistress, the man was never ostrasized socially, yet the women always were (see: The Scarlet Letter) Why is this? Did the woman have more of a hand in it than the man?
I think not. I think those attitudes, and those types of attacks on a person are wrong. They get my panties in a wad, in case that isn't apparent by my rant.
De-personalize it. Step back for a second, and forget you just called someone's child a bastard.
Pretend you're in 1930's middle America. There's a woman who is known around town to have a child born out of wedlock. You're standing around outside the barber shop, chewing the fat with your cronies, talking about how you saw Miz So and So at the drug store the other day, dragging that bastard child along behind her...when you turn and see the child standing there hearing every word you say.
It's not about the fact that you typed a word on an adult forum which ML's child will most likely never see. It's not even about the fact that you simply want to wound ML, and this is (in your mind) the easiest way to do so.
It's about perpetuating a stigma that does, indeed, trickle down to the children, eventually. And those children, hearing the viscious, malicious ways in which bastard children are talked about by people who want to hurt other people however they can, feel about themselves, when they have done absolutely nothing to contribute to the situation having occurred.
You might never say to a child, you're a little bastard whose mom fucked someone when she wasn't married, but by using those ideas to attempt to insult a woman, you may as well be, because you (and I mean that in a generic you = anyone who does what I am writing about) are expressing those sentiments, which will, I promise, one day be heard by the child of the mother, who gave birth to a bastard child.
The point of all that? What good does it do to personally judge others, in an attempt to disparagingly label them? Who among us even has the right to do so?
And why? Why try to hurt others, simply because you would not have chosen the path they have?
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