Person-first attitude?

In the past, I have written so many things about so-called “person first” language that it is starting to make me angry that I have to keep doing it. But once in a while, an article comes along that is so fundamentally stupid that you just have to congratulate the author on how little they “get it”.

You should not be allowed to name your child anything you want.

Recently, I saw a news article on Fudgebook stating that a judge had ordered a mother to think of a different name for her son than “Messiah”. I say that it is about time. Did I mention that this judge and mother were Americans?

I smell really bad

Alright. This is the third time I have attempted to write this little document. I seem to be getting no further than declaring that the medicine I have been prescribed in an effort to prevent me from “losing my shit” so often, to use one euphemism is, honestly, not working.

Semantics matter. Semantics can be exceptionally important.

It seems no matter how much I try to leave this subject alone, the issue of word choice and how it can impact in ways that the politically correct clearly never gave a stuff about keeps coming back to haunt me. Being so linguistically inclined that one can read at what you jokers call an adult level at age three has that sad effect, I suppose. But lately, the proclamations by defenders of so-called person-first language that it is merely a matter of semantics have me shaking my head.

Offensive language. Real offensive language, I mean.

In the constant back and forth about the use of so-called “person first” language (that is, “person with autism” or the like), a dangerous gambit or concession emerges. The “person first” camp, with all of their smugness and self-entitled ignorance of the implications, like to tell us that it is up to what the individual prefers. This seems perfectly reasonable at first, in spite of how some of them attempt to use this as a platform from which to bully us into adopting it. But just like “person with blackness” or “person with Hebrew” or “person with Chineseness”, to cite just a few potential examples, are unacceptable and not a matter of preference, neither is “person with autism”. I do not care what you have to say for yourselves, “person first”ers. I could be the only autistic individual in the world who feels this way about your separationistic language. That would only mean I am right, and everyone else is wrong.

Orwell would be proud. A bit about language and choice of words.

Of all the things ailing our present oh-so-wonderful mass-communication society, none anger me quite like political correctness. In fact, if you were to ask me on a particularly bad day, I would tell you that I believe conservatives invented political correctness as something to tar and feather liberals with. This essay by Steve Kangas tells a lot about why I find this a credible belief.

I finished reading a book, so I will report on it and its “mate” (The Short Timers and The Phantom Blooper)

As I stated a couple of months ago, I went out and bought an e-reader because I was starting to feel more than a bit perturbed by minuscule text sizes in books. A good example of that would be the battered copy of the George R. R. Martin novel A Game Of Thrones that is somewhere around my house. To say that this novel is difficult to read is an understatement. The printed paperback’s text size would give compound eyes a bad case of strain.