language « Raising My Boychick

A study in endurance and ableism

November 24

I am sitting in a chair, a sturdy folding table before me. My hands are clenched; my eyes are fixed on them but do not really see. I feel every systole and diastole of my heart, and it feels like it is trying to move five gallons of blood this hour, not just five [...]

“I am a feedback… investment banker?” On language, kyriarchy, and problematic metaphors

I was replying to a question from the inimitable Kelly Diels on “Why do you blog?“, and wrote the following (feel free to read the whole thing — it amuses me — but the part relevant to the rest of this post is at the end, highlighted in bold):

I started blogging because I kept thinking [...]

(trigger warning)

I was just beating my head against a wall.

Odds are, what just flashed through your head when you read that was not an actual cranium impacting on a physical wall, because “beating one’s head against a wall” is a metaphor used so often it’s become cliche. It means to try to do the impossible, usually [...]

Another month, another menstrual cycle

Yes, it’s that time again, when my uterus sloughs its lining, declaring another month passed, preparing for another month to come.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about why I titled the category under which Menstruation falls Body rather than “Health”: it’s because what I want to talk about here, what I do talk [...]

“How else would you have us say it?”

Reader Gayle left a fabulously intelligent question on the post The personal and the political:

I have seen debates on the subjects you mention where one side mentions that what the other side has said hurts them/shames them/makes them feel inadequate. To which the other side replies, “How else would you have us say it?” What [...]

Sula and sleep: on raising a white child and reading “the n word”

The Man and I have a years-long tradition of reading to each other in bed to help us sleep. Although the arrival of the Boychick changed the purpose of this nightly ritual from decompression- and snuggle-time to help-Arwyn-survive-breastfeeding-baby-to-sleep time, it didn’t really change the books we chose. We’ve always read books with “adult content”, and [...]

More on intersectionality

You know how I said we can’t always get it right? Well, I was right, because I got some stuff wrong in that last post. I have a tendency to let language run away with me, and go with what sounds good rather than what’s right. So in the last post, I conceptually missed [...]

On intersectionality

Four months ago, when I was starting this blog, I had never even heard of the word “intersectionality” (wikipedia article, blog post [amazing pictures, but probably NSFW], another blog post, link post). I was aware, in a general way, of race issues, certainly of queer issues, to a lesser extent of trans issues, among [...]

When the words just won’t come

I actually have three drafts sitting in my queue, ideas absolutely worthy of discussion, but almost incoherent in their construction. Seriously, even short posts on discussion forums I try to write leave me scratching my head going “what the heck does that mean?”; I shudder to think what it looks like to others.

I’m not [...]

Origins of words, and conversations in anatomy class

One of the fun things for me about studying midwifery was learning the origins of many words: midwife, vagina, and cunt, among others. One of the fun things about studying anatomy at massage school is having these come back up.

The cunt came up in a particularly interesting conversation about the bones of the foot. [...]

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