If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. – George Orwell.
It is wrong, a dishonest and lazy thing to accuse someone of sexism or racism or of being patronizing without knowing them or bothering to even speak with them.
I never use those words on people I do not know, or even on those, I do. They are a gross misuse of language and demean the very words themselves. They are used so recklessly and cruelly that they are losing all of their meaning
Yesterday, I wrote what I thought was one of those upbeat pieces about strong women who dare to take risks and create successful things.
It was just one of those fun pieces about my dog and her entry into the world of grooming.
America being what it is, the attacks were quick in coming. We are a nation of victims and the aggrieved. Why was I spending money to groom a dog when I could do it myself?
The champions of feminism who wrote me didn’t bother to mention this creative and brave young woman starting a successful business all of her own in difficult times. They were too busy attacking me for using the word “girls” to describe her childhood.
Why was it sexist and patronizing to refer to a farm child (now an adult) as a “farm girl?” People love the piece and hundreds shared it. I had no idea I was being both wasteful and offensive.
It turned out to be one of those inevitable social media dustups that are a part of being a writer who writes in the open and shares essential criticism. (And oh yes, the word “treats” was misspelled as “teats” and a whole other legion of the outraged appeared. I don’t think anyone died or was harmed.)
Sexism and racism and the patronizing of women is an important thing to be talking about.
I liked this piece a lot and am proud of it. I referred to Kiley, the groomer, as one of those “farm girls” who learned much about animals when she was young and how this affected her grooming. I even said “farm girls and boys” to be safe. Read it for yourself.
This touched off some outrage and anger from women objecting to the term “girls” as sexist and patronizing. I believe they took the word out of context without giving it a thought, but still, it is a discussion worth having. Given what women have suffered and still suffer, there can hardly be enough discussion about sexism.
But in a story about getting your dog groomed?
Really?
I changed the references (Kiley was a “girl” when she worked on the farm, the phrase was accurate. She is a woman now.) It seemed quite obvious to me.
Writing anything on a public blog without offending someone is no longer possible. Most of the outrage came from people who call themselves conservatives; a lot comes from people who think they are progressives but who also try to dictate the words that are acceptable for other people to use.
It’s astonishing to see the tools of fascism so enthusiastically embraced by the people of the “left” and the people of the “right.” True conservatism and liberalism hardly exist any longer.
Everybody wants to tell me what words to use, and that is never a good way to talk to me, or to anybody else. As my readers know, I am all too human. Words like “sexism” and “patronizing” are not meant to educate or argue or enlighten. They are cruel and meant to hurt, not persuade.
And they do hurt. It is morally wrong to use them against people you know nothing about.
I must admit I consider the word obsession a kind of cultural fascism (Vladimir Putin has been telling people what to say for years), and it is one of the many reasons so many rural and non-urban people hate liberals and Democrats, (I plead guilty to being both, much as I hate labels.)
As our country moves to the extremes on both sides, it is almost impossible to be pure enough, and as usual, the criticisms come along with insults and righteousness. Being in the middle is like sitting in the bullseye in a shooting gallery.
You can’t just be wrong or asked to reconsider; you instantly become a cringe-worthy sexist, racist, condescending, clueless tool of the patriarchy or white privilege. That is not conversing, that is bullying.
And the two things I really do hate in the world are bullying and hypocrisy.
In a sense, all white people are guilty of some kind of racism, and all men are guilty of some kind of sexism. Will name-calling ease that? If we don’t learn to talk to one another in a civil way, our open culture will continue to be a cesspool of hatred and argument.
This issue is important; it affects our culture, freedom, and the idea of free speech.
The musician Lizzo is a hero of mine; she recently was accused of using a word in her lyrics that might be offensive to the disabled.
She wisely and instantly apologized, withdrew the song from future releases, and said she was always open to criticism.
I admire Lizzo and am not nearly as wise or intelligent a marketer as she is. It’s not so simple for me. Since someone somewhere objects to everything I or any other public person writes, there is already a chilling effect on thought and expression.
I don’t want to write with cautious devils in my head. Will people be offended by this word? This phrase? This sentence? I want to write freely and honestly and that means using the words I want to use. I dream of a world where people can challenge and correct me in a civil way, without insult or arrogance or the awful stench of superiority.
The criticism is rarely gentle or thoughtful; it always begins with outrage and insult. I’m sorry, but I am unwilling to surrender to that. Being a coward won’t help anyone.
I also see it is possible to be correct while being a jerk or an asshole. That’s the trick: get past the rudeness and hear the message. I might have written the piece in a clearer way, but that does not make me a sexist or an oppressor of women.
To be a free writer in America requires a big ego and a thick skin. I’m big on the former, working on the latter.
A total stranger named Emily G. said my piece on my blog posts – as innocuous a piece as I can remember writing – was offensive to her, and she said, was offensive to many of my readers, although she wouldn’t reveal how she might know that. Several other women agreed with her.
She even said she cringed reading it.
“Wrong, Jon. I’m another person who read “farm girls” and just cringed. Adult women who run a business are not “girls.” That sort of language is widely considered sexist and demeaning, whatever you or your wife might think about it. Would you think it ok to refer to an African-American male as a “boy”? Is Maria a woman or an “artist girl”? Calling an adult by a child’s designation implies that you are the only grownup in the room, and that’s why it’s patronizing. Many of your readers wince at openly sexist language like this, whether or not they call you on it.”
Emily has raised an issue worth thinking about it, as rude and obnoxious people very often do, and the issue is essential and should be discussed.
But think of the tone and the exaggerations and holier-than-thou ness and judge for yourself. I have never called Maria or any adult woman a “girl” artist or a “girl” anything, I have never, in my life and my writing referred to an adult male as a “boy.” That certainly would be sexist and racist.
I don’t need Emily to teach me that. How presumptuous. She has no right to speak for Maria or any of the thousands of women who read my blog.
She’s not inviting a discussion, but simply insulting and bullying in the epidemic and increasingly popular social media way.
People who write in public in America now do so in fear because of messages like this. There are millions of people out there just dying to attack them.
I admit to feeling the need to fighting for their victims and targets and also for me. I have been fighting this fight for years, and am losing ground, but I’m not into giving up.
That might be grandiose, no one has appointed me chairperson of free speech defense.
There is nothing more alarming to people who deal with the public and depend on them for support than being accused of sexism, racism, or any ism.
More and more, they just fold and run, like Lizzo chose to do. I’d like to land in the middle – to listen and learn, but never to ride or hide.
If my writing is worth anything at all, it is because it is written in my own, unfiltered, and honest voice. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is bad. It’s called freedom, and it is the sweetest and most wonderful thing.
Few people in the world have it. I won’t piss it away.
That’s why I am writing about it, not just to defend myself but to bring something important out into the open, which is my job.
In writing about Kiley as a farm girl, I was referring to her childhood, hot her present life. I explained how she learned so much about caring for animals. It was as a “girl” living on a farm, that is how she described it to me. To say otherwise would have been a lie.
I was unsettled enough to change all of those references; I don’t get off on offending people unless they go out of their way to offend me. Still, I changed them, which I feel was a sad but correct thing. But I’m not really sure.
I don’t know where this ends. I know too many people who will not write freely online because so many Emilys out there.
Here’s Gabriella’s logic in a message to me:
Because she found the word “girls” offensive in any form, then it’s perfectly understandable that other people would.
Except most other people didn’t understand, including me.
I got scores and am still getting scores of supportive and shocked messages from all over the country from people as taken aback as I was that this gentle and upbeat piece would be seized upon not just as “hazy” but as an “assault on women.” We go from the ridiculous to the sublime in a strato cloud of overheated rhetoric. We are now facing two political ideologies that are competing to be the looniest and most disconnected from reality.
Gabriella: “The term “farm girl” is what is known as a microaggression–Jon, you can Google the term if it’s unfamiliar to you. Whatever you meant by it, however clear it was to you, it’s an assault on women to refer to them as girls. (I don’t buy your clearly after-the-fact back pedal that you were talking about her life as a child growing up. Kiley lives on a farm now; in context, “farm girls” is a descriptor of Kiley. African American men were once boys, too; is it ok to call them boys now? If you had wanted to refer to Kiley’s childhood, you could have written something like “Children who grow up on farms really learn to understand animals.” Without the context that you’re discussing something that happened in the past and noting its effect on the present, your meaning is hazy. It’s perfectly understandable why people found the language offensive, since I did myself).
Gabriella, your letter is not micro-aggression (look it up yourself). It is aggression, pure and simple.
Here Gabriella dismisses what is obviously the simple truth – Kiley was a farm girl who learned to love animals. Those were her words, not mine. Gabriella considers that back pedaling because she doesn’t want to hear it. But truth doesn’t matter in the face of unthinking fanaticism.
Then she brings in African-Amerian children as if they are one and the same thing and I am now a racist also. Here we see the decline of rational progressive thought, and the death of the liberal mind.
Gabriella, ought to be working for Trump, the two of them think exactly the same way. It’s perfectly understandable, she says why people found the language offensive, “since I did myself.” But very few people found the language offensive, Gabriella, that might get a rational person to think.
It is possible to dislike or challenge my use of the word without accusing me of an assault on all women rather than of choosing the wrong word. As it happens, I think I chose the right word. But I’m not as sure as Gabriella and Emily that I am always right.
___
I am criticized every day of my life by someone offended one way or the other by whatever it is I write. That’s the way it is. I accept it, this is the life I chose.
Four or five people attacked me for going to a groomer at all; I shouldn’t have to tell them that I can’t bend down to do it myself.
And it is, of course, none of their business.
It was Emily’s business to point out something I wrote that could be offensive to some people. That is a discussion we should all be having.
The challenge for a writer like me is to be sensitive and thoughtful without succumbing to the barrage of ideologues and extremists (and angry people) who have turned social media into a nightmare for free people.
I never refer to adult women as “girls” or adult men as “boys.” And I don’t need to be lectured. I never think of Maria or any other adult woman as a girl. No one who knows me would believe that.
I might be white and know too well what it is like to be patronized. Women are not the only ones who suffer at the hands of men.
All white people are privileged in this country in one way or another, as whiny and resentful as so many are. Of course, I am.
Anyone who reads me regularly would know that is the truth about me, and I invited Emily to share the research she had done to speak for so “many” of my allegedly offended readers. I have yet to hear from a single one after her claim many others we’re cringing too. While accusing me of sexism, Emily is brazenly sexist and insulting to my wife, assuming when she says “you and your wife” must be thinking the same thing and she could not possibly have a mind of her own.
I still don’t know if I made the right choice in changing it, caving in to the political correctness of the day is an awful way to think about writing. Life in the middle is tricky when there is no longer any middle.
Since Emily decided to drag Maria into the discussion, she should know that Maria read the piece and found the criticisms “ridiculous.” Maria has been an active feminist her whole life, making her feelings known through her art and life; she isn’t drawn to attacking people or telling others what to do or write.
I can’t say if I’m wrong to use the words I use. My readers will ultimately judge that, and so, I suppose, will history. But either way, those are the words I use, they are my words, my voice.
How very sad that in this quite wonderful country we are turning ourselves into a nation of social cannibals, finding nothing more meaningful to do than argue over a word an upstate New York blogger and the author used to describe a farm girl who became a successful adult. If the so-called feminists who are assaulting me think this will in any way advance their cause or hurt mine, they are as delusional as the broken people on the far right are getting to be. I see these people as struck with a fever that spans anger, righteousness, and cruelty. They are not advancing the cause of women in any way, they are encouraging countless people to hate the very idea.
I hate spending my time this way, but Liz Chaney reminds me that speaking the truth is not always free or easy. But it is worth doing. She is a strong and proud woman, I admire her even though we have so little in common. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. I am not fighting over the fate of Congress, but I do think I am fighting for the right to speak freely and openly. Disagreement is a sacred and healthy thing.
Cruelty and lies are not and should be challenged at every turn.
Sometimes, you just have to take the heat. It’s the toll for being free.
My challenge is to listen and learn, grow and change when I should, and stand my ground when I should.
I wish it were as simple for me as it is for others to live in the black-and-white world of the legions of righteous who always know they are right and live on social media looking for targets of their outrage and hurt.
We have forgotten how to speak in a civil and kind way to one another, and that it is harming free speech as much or more as any dictator or fascist.
I keep thinking that if it costs a dollar to hit the send button, people might have to think before they speak.
But we are far past that. If free speech is to survive and free thought prosper, people with something to say will just have to stand up and say it.
To run and hide would be a catastrophe, for the free mind, for the free country.
I agreev with your wife that these criticisms are ridiculous. But it worries me that they are meant to hurt and upset with nothing useful or constructive.
I think you need to remove them as soon as you see where they are going–no need to stay to achieve the writers’ aims of getting to you and upsetting you as much as they seem to.
By the way, they are nothing new; my father was a well known editor and author in the US and one of his secretaries’ first jobs each morning was to sift his mail for this cruel nonsense and bin it. As an Irish American he received plenty of it and this was in the 1930s.
Trevor Noah said pretty much the same thing you are saying regarding Lizzo and you making a mistake…People on both sides are shutting down discussion and that is never a good thing. Many years ago I read a book called Bowling alone…I forget the author….but his theory that before television and certainly before the internet gave us our own soap box and silo to preach in, people had to get along a bit better because they had to deal with each other more…Of course you and I remember the horrific racism of those days but I see a kernel of truth there….when you had a bowling league or built ships together or served in the military you mixed it up …at least a little bit. Now people sit in the homes alone and work themselves into a tizzy and type stuff they would never say in the company of others…two steps forward, one step back…
Take care!
I have never once posted a comment on your blog or any other blog for that matter one but this criticism was so upsetting, I and I am sure many others read your story of the groomer for what it was a happy, upbeat piece that was nothing but complimentary to the woman and her new business. Trust me when I say being called a farm girl at any age (I know you were referring to when she a young girl) is nothing but a compliment being from rural farmland country in Iowa I should know. We consider being called a farm girl nothing but a positive compliment in this part of the country! Keep up the great work and stories, don’t let these negative people ever get you down or stop you from writing exactly what you want. Jennifer G – 52 year old farm girl from Iowa
Amen, Jennifer! Someone with common sense who understands context! YES! I’m with you!
Susan M
Oh my God! I would have referred to the groomer’s past as being raised as a farm girl. She wasn’t a woman when she came out of her mother’s womb. This will get me in trouble, but the far left is as nuts as the far right. I’m an old bag and yes when my neighbor’s husband gave me a wolf whistle when I was a young woman – I didn’t appreciate it. But I never thought a man was sexually out of line if he put a hand on my back in friendship or gave me a compliment or even a hug when I needed a hug. And, Jon, I don’t think you have to explain to anyone that grooming your dog is hard for you. I bet Zinnia was in seventh heaven while she enjoyed a spa day. And I don’t think any writer needs to worry about every
word they type.
good grief! Can one not avoid perturbing *anyone* nowadays? Semantics, *context*…….come on, people! Get a grip on reality. and what really matters. Keep doing and saying what you think, Jon. I will listen and I will probably never be offended……and if I ever were, I would certainly be civil in any kind of discourse with you. Give me a break already
Susan M
It’s kind of amazing that we are becoming a nation of cannibals with little more to do than eat one another and call it justice..
I am sorry you chose to change your piece to accommodate a few wackos. It is your blog, you put it out freely, it is not mandatory reading. Cheeeez… there are numerous other options out on the ‘inter web’. Lots of wasted ‘energy’ that could be put to good use elsewhere, eh? Thanks and keep up the good work!
Yes, some people exist to search the internet for any remark that might be the offensive to someone. When you reach an age that might be considered old, you have to aware some people some people devalue anything you say.
I will be 86 Monday.
I don’t accept that as an inevitable overreaching of aging, Don…young people are treated as badly or worse…
The term “farm girl” is what is known as a microaggression–Jon, you can Google the term if it’s unfamiliar to you. Whatever you meant by it, however clear it was to you, it’s an assault on women to refer to them as girls. (I don’t buy your clearly after-the-fact back pedal that you were talking about her life as a child growing up. Kiley lives on a farm now; in context, “farm girls” is a descriptor of Kiley. African American men were once boys, too; is it ok to call them boys now? If you had wanted to refer to Kiley’s childhood, you could have written something like “Children who grow up on farms really learn to understand animals.” Without the context that you’re discussing something that happened in the past and noting its effect on the present, your meaning is hazy. It’s perfectly understandable why people found the language offensive, since I did myself.
Gabriella, this is a ludicrous overreach and underthinking and true aggression. it is no way an assault of women who were once girls to be called girls when they were young..I’m sure my meaning was hazy obviously, but that doesn’t make it a war crime..get some perspective. You say it is perfectly understandable that everyone finds my writing offensive since you did, I would suggest you read some of the comments. I don’t understand and neither do most other people. Get out of your own head for a few minutes and sniff reality.
“I might be white, but I have never been privileged.” Hah, hah, hah!!! Do you think everyone can afford summers in Wellfleet and running off to a mountain without having to worry about how to pay for it? Do you think working for manor news outlets isn’t privilege? Do you think sending your daughter to an Ivy League school isn’t privilege? What exactly do you think “privilege” is? SMH
Of course it’s privilege, dummy, read the piece…
You need some perspective.
I think what some of the people making the comments aren’t allowing for is Jon’s age. He’s in his 70s. Obviously, he shouldn’t be writing things like “farm girls.” But that sort of language was acceptable when he came of age, and it’s hard to get rid of assumptions like that. At one point in time it was ok to write “Negroes,” and now it isn’t at all ok. Cut him some slack. I know that he doesn’t mean to demean women or think that he is doing it. Hopefully he’ll gradually learn how women feel about things like this.
Joan, and then there’s the feminist who assumes “my wife and I” must have the same opinions and that she can’t have a mind of her own…Seems a bit more sexist to than calling a young farm girl a girl.
How patronizing!
Joan, I refuse to see that as an aging issue, although it’s an interesting point. If you go on Twitter or TIk Tik you will see the most vicious posts imaginable aimed at the young.
I read your blog and did not find it offensive, get a life! I knew exactly what you were expressing as I am a 67 year old farm wife and proud of it. And it is no one’s business how you take care of your pet. I think it was high praise to write about her work. Hang in there Jon, we all misspell a word now and then, they need to chill.
I read your piece and thought it just fine. I’m nearly 70 and have been a feminist (I know, a label!) all my life. I commented on it as well. Keep up the good work in highlighting interesting people you meet. Yes, I also take my dog to the groomer–they do a much better job than I do (express anal glands? no thanks) and it helps a small business in my town.
Jon, I call bullshit: you were clearly referring to Kiley now with your “farm girls,” not Kiley in her childhood. Why would you suddenly bring up her childhood? You’re just trying to make what you wrote sound better than it was. Be like Lizzo: try to learn why some words are considered hateful to subgroups of people. Don’t just defend using them in such a comical manner.
Jon calls his wife a girl on the regular.
Yes, I call Maria “My Girl” all the time, as a romantic expression of love. I do not call her a “girl artist” or “my girl adult.” I will call her whatever I wish and whatever she likes. You are grasping at straws. This is a kind of fascism, not an issue of women’s rights. If Maria doesn’t like what I am calling her, she will tell me and I will stop. She is not offended in any way and what I choose to call her in this context is absolutely not your business. You don’t get to tell me how to express my love for “My Girl.” Ever. P.S don’t you think it’s about time to get an e-mail in your own name and not a man’s? People have the right to know who you really are, especially as a proud and uncompromising feminist.
P.S. I should add this message, Susan (it’s your fifth or sixth I think, I’ve deleted the others, too repetitive and somewhat over the top.)
Please Go Fuck Yourself. I consider people who write messages like this to be the lowest form of human life. Go away or I will have the pleasure of banning you. Maria read your post and suggested “Fuck Off” instead of “Go Fuck Yourself.” I think she’s right. “Fuck Off.”
Oh please. Stop already.
OMG ? I’m sorry that your sweet essay on a new business owner wasn’t received by others as it was by me. I envy the “girls” that are driven and focused by their goals. It takes bravery and smarts to make it in the ? world, but being your own boss is illusive to millions of folks. And frequently resented. Jealousy is a cruel trait.
Although I’m in my sixties, I’m a farm girl You can’t take my childhood experience and lessons from me.
A family friend knows I have horses, she’s an animal lover. She has never mentioned them to me; she’s told others that what I do with my horses is cruel.
Let Emily go, she might have lessons to teach but she’s no teacher.
Maybe the answer is write what you want to write and just don’t respond at all to these Internet trolls. Life is too short and you have so much to offer to your blog readers. An attorney once told me the best defense against people who are harassing you is to ignore them. Though it was hard. It worked.
It’s a good thought, Jean, but I think I need to stand up to these people once in a while, otherwise they will keep on chipping away at free and unfiltered thought. I don’t do it often, this one needed a response.
Have disagreed with, but have never been offended by your blog . If one seeks to be offended then that’s what one will find.
I agree that “farm girl” is a microaggression against women. I am a manager, and one of my jobs is to make sure all people reporting to me coexist in a safe psychological space. I teach my people to recognize microaggressions and guard against them. Hopefully you can use this exchange as a learning experience and do better next time.
Craig, good for you. I have nothing more to say about this experience other than that what I have learned is to write and think freely, and not be dictated to by people like you, however well-meaning.
I am not eager to be one of your students. This isn’t micro-aggression, this is the real thing, and it is wrong and cruel, and at times, just plain stupid.
I’m very sorry that as a teacher you can’t see that. others have. But you have the right to think what you want and so do I. I’m not buying it, and neither are you.
I’m moving on now spent enough time on this and we are all just turning around in circles, getting nowhere, as is the American sickness. I’m done with this discussion, I’m proud of what I wrote, and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change a single word. Best luck to you in your teaching career. I hope you are not above learning yourself. If you are teaching your students that this is the right way to communicate and advance a cause, I pity them, and us. And us, Jon
Craig never said he was a teacher; he said he was a manager. If that’s an example of your reading skills, it’s no wonder that you can’t grasp why women find being called “girl” demeaning.
Can Craig speak for himself Haley?, I don’t care what he calls himself, my response is exactly the same. YOu are demeaning young women who grew up on farms when you call the term “farm girl” sexist. Your empathy skills need some work. Say hi to Craig and tell him my message stands since he seems unwilling to respond himself. If this is all you have to say about this issue, it’s rather a waste of time.
Jon, I’m not sure why you think I’m unwilling to speak for myself. I don’t read your blog every second of my life. I’m responding as soon as I saw your comment. I am a manager, not a teacher. Had you understood that, your response could not have been “exactly the same.” You wrote sentences opining about my students, and I have no students. Please post this to make it clear that I responded, since you accused me of not doing that. Thank you, and I truly hope you are able to work on your anger and tendency to belittle those who see the world differently from yoy.
Thanks, Craig, sorry I mislabeled you (yesterday was kind of crazy), I appreciate your response and your civility. I am not the least bit angry with you, I don’t know you well enough, we just disagree. I’m sorry you are not able to see it that way. Disagreement is healthy, the kind of irrational cruelty on display yesterday was not. You might be a saint, but I don’t think you would have liked it either.
Whenever I respond to very personal attacks, people tell me I’m being angry and cruel. Such bullshit.
I’m very disappointed that you read my blog so continuously and think I need to be lectured on what words to use in my writing. That is your right, but disheartening to me, I failed somewhere along the line.
I didn’t take well to those attacks yesterday, I think they were both unfair and ignorant, I’m glad I confronted it. I think the microaggression idea is awful, yesterday we saw aggression in its full form.
This is an important and valuable conversation to have, and I’m proud of it. Take care, and thanks again for responding. jon
For Pete’s sake. People have lost their G.D. minds focusing on such nonsense. It appears that people are constantly looking to find something to be offended by. I hope that this women doesn’t give all Susan’s a bad name.
Oh for God’s sake. Can you critical people just get over your self righteous trying to find fault selves and perhaps put that energy toward a cause that might actually be a positive force? The fact that this discussion is even happening is beyond ludicrous.
My goodness, so much angst over “farm girl” and calling Maria your girl? People need to get a life. No one forces anyone to read your blog, so if a person finds a piece irritating as they read it then they can stop reading it. Plain and simple, life’s too short to get their undies in a bundle over the piece about your new dog groomer. Hooray for Kiley for starting her own business. I’ve been called a farm girl, a hay shaker, and a crop jockey which I’m sure some of the people that replied would be up in arms about, however since these never bothered me it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I’m in my 60’s and my handsome man of 40+ years refers to me as his “girl” and I LOVE IT! Keep writing Jon, your blog is uplifting and honest!
Boy, oh boy! Woops! Must be careful what word I write. I meant Wow, oh wow, not ‘boy’. Yet, I don’t mean to offend the ‘wowers’.
Every night around 9pm(live in the northwest), I read your blog. It makes me laugh, think, understand and care for others. I usually agree with your viewpoint, but not always. Nevertheless, I ALWAYS learn something, even when I consider myself already an expert.
Now, folks if you really want to feel offended, wait until you are 87 yrs old. And . . .you’re at the senior center. You pause at the automated door exit and a 68 yr. old member says to you, “Honey, see the button. Just press it. The door will open and you can go
out.” I would have slugged her, but my hands were clenched on my walker.
Unbelievable! Offended by the word ‘girl’.
There are so many truly offensive words spoken causally today, even by the well meaning (even the word, ‘Honey’).
Jon,
I’m of an age where I love to be called “girl”, it’s a compliment to me! Lol
I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day
When it’s cold outside
I’ve got the month of May
I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way
My girl, my girl, my girl
Talkin’ ’bout my girl
My girl
I’ve got so much honey
The bees envy me
I’ve got a sweeter song
Than the birds in the trees
Well, I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way
My girl, my girl, my girl
Talkin’ ’bout my girl
My girl
Ohh ohh
Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey
Oh yeah
I don’t need no money, fortune, or fame
I’ve got all the riches baby one man can claim
Well I guess you’d say
What can make me feel this way
My girl, my girl, my girl
Talkin’ ’bout my girl, my girl, talkin’ ’bout my girl
I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day with my girl
I’ve even got the month of May with my girl
Talkin’ ’bout, talkin’ ’bout, talkin’ ’bout
Ronald White / William Robinson Jr.
This has probably gone on long enough but I just want to mention that my mother-in-law, who died a year ago in June, aged 98, had 2 good school friends who had kept close since their primary school days . They are all dead now but they called themselves “The girls” and it was completely charming.it reminded them of many happy times which they re-lived to the full. It made them young again so which of these Witches who crawl out of the woodwork to read your blog wold care to object to this I wonder? (A rhetorical question).
Don’t let those kind of people get to you. I love your blog and look forward to reading it. I am new to your blog and Love it! God Bless you for spending the time to let us all know about things on the farm and your beautiful “farm girl”.
Friends, it’s time to move on. I’ve got other things to do, as I’m sure most of you have. I think everyone has had their say, and I have other things to think about and wrote about and do, as I hope you all do. I thank you for your comments, especially those free of name-calling, grievance, and whining. Sometimes it feels like middle school, which I did not like. But there is much food for thought, and thanks for reading the blog and caring about it.
Jon I laughed at all this! So silly! I’m a 76 yr old woman and refer to myself as a girl! I’m not a boy but a girl. All the Emily’s etc al that disagrees with me come on I can take you on. Ha!
Gabriella’s comment was very similar to an email I received in early 2016 from another volunteer organizer for the post-Trump Women’s March in DC. The writer took offense to some question I had asked. It was something she considered unforgivably stupid, and therefore evidence of my whiteness and privilege.
Both happen to be true. But her response, which WAS an attack, was so angry and vituperative (and copied to everyone else in the distribution list) that I was stopped in my tracks. I had become an oppressor by virtue of my race. Therefore any contribution I could offer was unwelcome–except for my money. Any defensive reaction from me further proved my “white fragility.”
Not one person on the distribution list reacted, except to agree with the commenter. That hurt, and gave me much to think about.
My takeaway was that no matter how innocent, or how sincerely meant, some words will offend somebody. It’s made me careful of what I say, sure. I realized that there are some from any oppressed group who will automatically condemn “the oppressor,” whether they are white, straight, gay, male, POC, feminist, whatever. For the first time in my life I realized that I was considered by some as the enemy. I’m afraid I still haven’t completely come to grips with that. But it has made my skin thicker–and me more careful of how much credence I give to people who weaponize language.
Jon, don’t let this get to you, please, and don’t let it turn you from your path.
It is amazing how hard people look for things to get PO’ed about. I’m 60 and I still say Girl and could care less if someone calls me a girl, lady, woman, or worse. If that is the worst thing upsetting someone out there they are fotunate indeed. I am also getting tired of people thinking they are the word police!
Jon, please, please, you should have more confidence in yourself at this point in you life and in your professional career. Stop wasting your time trying to defending yourself, explaining or justifying your words. Give it up! It is just not worth your energy or ours. Keep moving forward and let the critics do their thing.
Oh, please, that is just totally ridiculous and absurd !!! Anyone who reads your blog regularly knows you have the utmost respect for women. There was nothing the least bit offensive in what you said about the groomer.