Another Gapers Block Callout

Yawn. Evidently they've never heard of the Royal Opera in London, where Deborah Voight was one fat lady too many for the sexist pillock in charge of casting.

"It is possible to be fat and fit; not everyone is meant to, or can, be thin. The scourge of modern society is not obesity, but body fascism" - Amy Lamé

Yeah, I think the "fat lady singing" joke is beyond lame. Although, being a fat (classically trained) musician, I like to add my own positive spin to it sometimes.

I grew up in an opera house. The "fat lady singing" joke has been old and tired since i was in 5th grade. Or actually, probably before i was even born.

I almost want to compliment the Sun-Times (Gapers Block links to their story) on not taking that tired route. They DO make puns, but not about fat or fat ladies:

Lyric Opera of Chicago has been offering a steady musical diet at the Civic Opera House for more than half a century. But except for boxed, cold meals at multi-hour Wagner evenings, the culinary pickings there have been slim.

See, would that have been so hard, GB?

Fair enough, Paul. Agreed that Calder's fat lady joke wasn't worth the transition it was intended for.

But on that note, can *you* please stop using the word "lame" to imply futility or undesirability? Surely you understand . . .

Evonne

I thought "It isn't over til the fat lady sings" wasn't really a joke per se. I've heard it all my life, but it was something that was largely true - the joke wasn't on the fat lady, because you pretty much knew that the best and most powerful opera singers were fat - but on the fact that opera is so long and boring. And you wonder when it's over, or you think it's over when this song is, but you'll know for sure when the best female singer (the fat lady) sings the finale. Honest, that's the way I had always heard it as a kid, and the way I believe it was usually understood.

By the way are there any words we're allowed to use anymore? Again, I ask this as someone who thought "cripple-fight" was basically hilarious even though I was in a wheelchair and often bedbound - but you know, I pretty much NEVER hear or even heard anyone calling someone who is actually disabled "lame" in that sense of the word. I'm only 41, so maybe it's something that still carries pain for someone who is of an older generation than me. But I'm wondering whence the hand-wringing from people who have grown up in a time when "lame" was not used in that sense - now cripple, I've heard that one used in all sincerity (without malicious intent) to describe people, in the early 70s and such. But I really thought lame was more of the Dickensian era.

Meh, whatever. I'm not going to keep arguing a point like this, but sometimes it would be nice just to be able to talk without somebody getting on your ass about how insensitive it was to use a word that as far as one knows hasn't been in such usage for who the heck knows how long. I also wonder about words like idiot and moron, which were medical terms but now used exclusively as insults, and dropped out of medicinal use. Who gets custody of those?

Zero isn't a size, it's a warning sign. - Carson Kressley
The Kevin Pease Beer Fund Foundation - Won't Someone PLEASE think of the psychology students?

Both "dull" and "dumb" were used to describe medical conditions back in the day--do we have to stop using those, too? And I'm with AnnieMcphee on the fat lady. Doesn't that refer to the Valkyrie and the singer in braids and a breastplate? Seems simply descriptive to me--or at least it would if they still allowed fat singers on stage...

I often use the fat lady sings comment when watching sports events at friends' houses.

Even if the home team is down--or even if they are ahead--I say, "It's not over until I sing.."

I usually get disclaimers: Oh you're not fat!

But I say i am the fattest woman here, so I am the fat lady!

Just an example of I don't know what, but it must mean something......

I doubt anyone putting a dictionary today -- unless it was some right-wing group -- would dare allow that kind of "tertiary" use for the word "gay." It would get them instantly (and deservedly) boycotted. (Ditto "retarded.")

I don't remember "lame" ever being used as any kind of weapon word against people with disabilities, and I'm older than Annie is. (I have heard it used to describe horses or dogs or birds, but never people.) I also do not recall it ever being any kind of official term for a person with a disability, nor adopted by people with disabilties themselves as a term to describe themselves. I'm not going to say that disabled people don't have the right to object to it, or that I won't avoid it if it really bothers people I care about, but I would like to hear it from a person with disabilities why this word is harmful to them. So far every objection I have heard has been from the able-bodied.

Hey yo, hatch xandu and dreama, just chiming in to say that I totally agree with your point re: the usage of lame--it's something that I'm trying to work on wrt my own vocabulary. With limited success, I have to admit. I also have to say that it's pretty crappy when people who spend a whole bunch of effort trying to get others to change their language get so damn defensive when asked to give a bit of thought to their own.

When I grew up, "gay" most often meant lame. Oops lame. But yeah. It did. So did fag. It was a schoolyard taunt not related to sexual orientation.
And do you not see how that automatically sets up being gay as something negative, something that can only be used as a slur and not something to be accepted? Really, can you not see that?

Meowser: I would like to hear it from a person with disabilities why this word is harmful to them
Here you go:
http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-making-argument-disability-and.html

Here's one from sweetmachine, who says: This post is for Blog Against Disablism Day; it’s about my experience as an able-bodied person who has a sibling with disabilities. I also have a cousin with disabilities and a parent with serious progressive cognitive impairment. (You can take it up with her about whether or not her opinion on this matter is worth anything, since she's able-bodied.)
http://kateharding.net/2008/05/01/why-i-dont-use-the-word-retarded/

Here, the feature article approx 2/3 down the page:
http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/email/2005-08.htm

And here's one referencing the post above where the connections between ableist and fatphobic language is drawn:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2008/04/28/on-making-argument-disability-and-language-by-wheelchair-dancer/

Just use "shampoo" as the replacement for all words offensive. It's a clean word.

Thank you, Imagynne and Dreama. (And Paul, sort of.) I kept trying to post yesterday, but kept receiving a message saying I wasn't authorized to post comments, though I logged in repeatedly. So I'm trying again.

Anyway: http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/blogs/edgecentric/metaphors_for_bad/

That's from a fellow disabled woman. One of our heavyweight champions. Interesting discussions there, from many perspectives, for anyone who cares. We have more in common than y'all may think. And that site, years ago, is where I found BFB, though there was also some dispute about whether it belonged there.

My original reply was going to be something along the lines of "Both 'gay' and 'retarded' are in the dictionary with alternate definitions. I don't use those as insults either. It's really not hard to find other words."

And it's not.

As I understand it, the point of this post was to point out that the "fat lady" joke was not only labored with an undertone of hate and stereotypes (implying that fat ladies are a product of too many restaurants), it was also unnecessary and really not all that clever. Therefore, it wasn't worth making.

I'm sure lots of folks could attack Paul for being overly sensitive by even bothering to point the joke out. But using "lame", I think, is of the same caliber. I concede that it really isn't *that* big of a deal. But . . . if somebody indicates it's offensive, and specifically asks that you stop using it, why continue using it just for the principle of the thing? I'd like to see somebody try to pull that with the N-word and defend it with the argument that "negro" means "black", and then say that since it's an *old* usage, nobody should get upset.

Anyway, what I was trying to say was, while we're getting our feathers ruffled about some semantics issue that's really not that big of a deal, let's try to not be hypocritical about it. It really, really isn't that hard to come up with a better word. "Stale!" was all the rage back in the 80s, if I recall. I like "stale". I'm bringing it back.

I thought Cripple Fight was hilarious myself.

I'd like to see somebody try to pull that with the N-word and defend it with the argument that "negro" means "black", and then say that since it's an *old* usage, nobody should get upset.

"Negro" is not the "N-word." The real N-word (which I'll not type here) was never anything more than a slur against black people and continues to be one to this day. "Negro" itself was actually preferred by black people for use by non-black people over the word "black" at one time. Starting around the 1970s, that came to be less so.

Look, I personally don't give a damn about using the word "lame." It's not that important to me. And people certainly have the right to find certain words or word usage annoying. (I certainly have my own set of pet peeves.)

But if you want me to challenge every single use of it by someone else, I need more evidence that it's actually used as a weapon word against people with disabilities solely because of their disabilities. "Retarded" certainly is, as Sweet Machine's post eloquently points out, and "gay" we all know about, and I'll yank the needle off the record player and stop the party if anyone uses those words that way in my presence. But I'm having trouble accepting "lame" in the same category even as I agree personally not to use it, because I don't think most people would even associate that word with a person with a disability unless you pointed out the archaic use of the term.

(Incidentally, I just found out that the word "absurd" has its roots in a Latin term for "deaf." See here.)

I think you could make the case that the more "lame" is used to describe an action that's fallen short of the mark, the less likely it is that anyone will associate it with its less-common alternate usages. Anyway, I don't think I've ever read or heard of it being used to insult someone with mobility problems. Admittedly, though I spent a year recently lamed by a bum knee, I know I don't speak for people with serious disabilities/challenges.

Well, unfortunately (as I think the original topic was pretty interesting and so is Meowser's reasoning) this thread is *hella* lame now, so, top floor. The language police busted up the party

Zero isn't a size, it's a warning sign. - Carson Kressley
The Kevin Pease Beer Fund Foundation - Won't Someone PLEASE think of the psychology students?

Just put me down for "lost all interest" and wanted to do a flounce-n-go. Which is lame in and of itself, and even dumber to come back and explain, but I'm stupid that way.

Zero isn't a size, it's a warning sign. - Carson Kressley
The Kevin Pease Beer Fund Foundation - Won't Someone PLEASE think of the psychology students?

By the way, I think long, drawn-out, boring-as-hell "in-depth" analyses like the one imagynne linked to are themselves childish and churlish; living my life in a state of perpetual offense is NOT my idea of living. And I'm not enamored of those who do live that way.

Zero isn't a size, it's a warning sign. - Carson Kressley
The Kevin Pease Beer Fund Foundation - Won't Someone PLEASE think of the psychology students?