Our Flag Means Sappho

Squick is a noble word. It recognizes and honors your own personal taste while recognizing and honoring that your personal taste does not dictate morality.

"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.

in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."

this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.

this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.

we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.

now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.

he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."

which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples – idiot, imbecile, and moron – are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.

he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??

the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.

this is to apologize for using the phrase "devoid of empathy." it was a bad choice on my part because i framed the lack of empathy as malicious, which dehumanizes and demonizes people who lack empathy as part of their neurotype.

Lmao hi. Damn, I really have been neglecting tumblr huh.

I have been hyper fixating on different stuff, recently watched Our Flag Means Death. Bit late to the fandom but I have arrived.

Really wanna cosplay as Stede.

Anyway, how y'all been ?

Ed also seems to think that he needs Izzy. When Izzy tries to leave at the end of episode 4 Ed says all the things he knows will make him stay. At the beginning of Episode 7 Ed is ready to leave the revenge, and I think it’s because Izzy is no longer around. Episode 9 the first thing he does, even after Izzy’s betrayal, when he gets back on the revenge, is save Izzy and reinstate him as first mate. Even after the move with Calico Jack, even after selling him out to the British and then using him as a bargaining chip (Izzy didn’t buy Ed’s freedom in exchange for Stede, he bought Ed. Ed was turned over into the custody of captain Hands by the British which I do think is probably an important distinction) After all of that, Ed still puts Izzy in a position where he can control how the crew sees Ed, how Ed sees what’s going on on the ship, and who Ed talks to.

All of this of course culminates in Izzy being able to completely flip Ed’s emotional state in just one conversation. He basically breaks Ed’s spirit when Ed was honestly doing so well recovering from one of the most intense heartbreaks of his life. Every time Izzy hurls his verbal abuse at Ed, Ed either compartmentalizes and distances himself (”That’s Blackbeard, I’m Stede, remember?”) or he is violently reactive (”Chose you’re next words wisely, dog”) It’s fight or flight, and no one else has that reaction to Izzy’s verbal abuse. Lucius doesn’t give a fuck, Stede matches his energy. Like Izzy’s not a scary character, everyone but Ed treats him like an angry chihuahua when being insulted by him and yet he put’s Ed into survival mode with a word.

I also think it bares mentioning that as soon as Izzy looses his control over Ed he responds by doing something that could kill Ed (i.e. selling him out to the Brits.) He’s going to get back control by any means necessary.

Remember how Ed went into Kraken Mode to get rid of his father? He is in Kraken Mode when we leave him at the end of season one. What will he do to Izzy in that state? I don’t think the toe is enough. He has to confront Izzy and what he represents—his father, toxic masculinity, abuse—really confront it all and start to heal from all the pain.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.