(no subject)

Oh dear.

The picture of Anne McCaffrey on her Wikipedia article is extremely unflattering. With all of her fans, there must be a better, CC licensed photo that Wikipedia could use. I almost wonder if someone who didn't like her much put that picture there.

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Pretty stonework from Riverside Church. Probably a little over-processed and grainy (or maybe that's just the stone; hard to tell), but pretty.

(no subject)

To update, the writer of the RCFM newsletter with the questionable phrase decided to remove it. I think that's really cool of him!

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I'd like to think that it's not that I'm getting old. I know advancing years often divorce people from evolution of the vernacular, and the changing meaning of terms. I like to think that in my case, it's not related to pushing thirty; even when I was in my teens and early twenties I wasn't connected with pop culture and trends in language usage anyway, thank heaven. But there's some language use that seems to be societally 'ok' that I have a problem with.

What's the deal with furcons doing things like calling their sponsorship level membership "pimp" (FCN) or using the phrase "We love you long time" in a newsletter for a con with an Asian theme (RCFM). Am I just getting old or are those things as not cool as I think they are? They make me uncomfortable.

Is it just me? Has language evolved and changed enough to make it ok to refer to someone by a word that, historically at very least, though I see no evidence that it's not true in the present either, refers to someone who is in charge of a group of prostitutes, who often physically and sexually abuses them, and who in many cases gets them addicted to drugs to maintain control over them?

Has there been enough distance put between the sort of offensive Asian stereotyping that happened in this country's past (thanks, ankhorite for the pointer to the image) to make it ok to lightly use a phrase that was popularized by Asian prostitutes in a movie about the Vietnam war?

These are phrases and words that are, admittedly, context-sensitive. Especially the first one. But perhaps, rather than assuming that everyone who reads them is going to share your context, shouldn't these just be left out of official use, especially official use in a positive light?

Honestly, these are things that disincline me from attending these events. Perhaps not enough to make me decide one way or the other on their own, but they don't help.

What do you think, readers? Do you have any feelings on this, be they positive, negative, or otherwise? I'd love to hear them.