Inclusivity and hair color

[ericalauren]

This reminds me of when I took an exam in high school and my teacher docked off some points for writing "blonde" instead of "blond". I had to whip out a dictionary to show her that both spellings are correct (or, at least, they were back when I was in high school).

 

[R. Richard]

We do sometimes teach French in the US, vous savez?

We do sometimes teach French in the US, vous savez?
Actually, in the USA they teach high school French or Spanish. There is no such real language as Spanish, there is a language called Españole.
I dated a French lady (Montreal). She could actually talk with the staff in a French restaurant, instead of trying to order the Manager, or some such.

 

[Edward Teach]

FFS. That is just dumb. The way that's going, I won't be able to say "I've got blue eyes," because that won't include all those green eyed and brown eyed folk out there. Then it'll be, "Sorry, no eyes, because you're not considering noses."

Some things are fucking stupid - that's one of them, right there!

Word.

 

[Trionyx]

This reminds me of when I took an exam in high school and my teacher docked off some points for writing "blonde" instead of "blond". I had to whip out a dictionary to show her that both spellings are correct (or, at least, they were back when I was in high school).

I was taught blonde and brunette were for females and blond was for males. Brunet is also reserved for males but appears to be used infrequently.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You know that a blonde has been using your computer when you see white out all over the monitor.

What do you call a brunette standing between two blondes? An interpreter.

Did you hear about the blonde terrorist who tried to blow up the bus? She burned her lips on the exhaust pipe.

Aboard Blonde Airlines flt 101, the pilot lands the plane and then applies the brakes hard when she sees the end of the runway fast approaching. The plane screeches to a stop just inches from the grass. "Whew!" she says and turns to her co-pilot. "I've never seen a runway so short before!" Then the copilot looks way out the right window and then way out the left. "Yeah!" she agrees, "and so wide!"

A brunette, a redhead and a blonde are all sitting in a doctor's office. All three are eight months pregnant. The brunette brags, "I know I'm having a boy because my husband did me on top!" Then the redhead, not to be outdone claims, "Well I know I'm having a girl 'cause I rode my boyfriend." Just then the blonde buries her face in her hands and bursts into tears. The two other women attempt to console her. "What's wrong, honey?" they ask. Then the blonde answers, "I just realized ... I'm having puppies!"

How do you spell blonde? B-L-N-O ... iunno!

 

[ElectricBlue]

I was taught blonde and brunette were for females and blond was for males. Brunet is also reserved for males but appears to be used infrequently.

Blonde and blond is a French and English (thus, Australian) thing - I've always made the differentiation, and still get confused with American stories that use blond for both genders (to be PC, all genders). I was blond, and Em, for example only, is blonde.

 

[ElectricBlue]

How do you spell blonde? B-L-N-O ... iunno!

You went there! Hurricane alert plus chutzpah. I'm impressed .

 

[AlinaX]

Recently I was talking through a long list of all these 'sensitive' words with a teenager who thought they were mostly ridiculous. Many of them do seem excessive, almost chosen to rile up the anti-wokery lot, but I do find it interesting and ultimately educative to think through why they are considered potentially sensitive.

Words like 'blonde' and 'brunette' seem harmless until someone starts telling blonde jokes. While these can be and often are funny, they're a bit like Irishmen [or whatever the local national equivalent is] jokes. Tell them often enough and it does start to influence culture beyond the conceit of the joke.

Words like 'Oriental', which should be harmless but has been abused. Words like 'crazy', so widely misused that to find an alternative is actually painful.

A lot of it seems utterly daft, and it is easy to dismiss a lot of it as people being 'woke' and oversensitive, but the truth is that language is laden with cultural assumptions and the weight of history. Especially a language like English that has been spoken widely across the world for centuries. Language is not merely a means of communication, it's often a weapon too, with words used to cause hurt. You just have to look at the storm-in-a-teacup that is the definition of the word 'woman', with people thinking that a dictionary can be used as political hammer.

I'm not saying you have to stop using these words, but I do think, as authors, it is good in general to be aware of the subtleties of the meanings of words and their abuses.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Recently I was talking through a long list of all these 'sensitive' words with a teenager who thought they were mostly ridiculous. Many of them do seem excessive, almost chosen to rile up the anti-wokery lot, but I do find it interesting and ultimately educative to think through why they are considered potentially sensitive.

Words like 'blonde' and 'brunette' seem harmless until someone starts telling blonde jokes. While these can be and often are funny, they're a bit like Irishmen [or whatever the local national equivalent is] jokes. Tell them often enough and it does start to influence culture beyond the conceit of the joke.

Words like 'Oriental', which should be harmless but has been abused. Words like 'crazy', so widely misused that to find an alternative is actually painful.

A lot of it seems utterly daft, and it is easy to dismiss a lot of it as people being 'woke' and oversensitive, but the truth is that language is laden with cultural assumptions and the weight of history. Especially a language like English that has been spoken widely across the world for centuries. Language is not merely a means of communication, it's often a weapon too, with words used to cause hurt. You just have to look at the storm-in-a-teacup that is the definition of the word 'woman', with people thinking that a dictionary can be used as political hammer.

I'm not saying you have to stop using these words, but I do think, as authors, it is good in general to be aware of the subtleties of the meanings of words and their abuses.

I agree with most of that. But the idea of avoiding offence is totally undermined and held up to ridicule by suggesting brunette is offensive. It just makes it easy for those who want to use offensive words to point and say - look how dumb this whole idea is.

Em

 

[Kumquatqueen]

They flagged “brunette” as not inclusive and suggested “brown haired”. Could I check with any - pause - brown haired folk out there whether or not they find “brunette” offensive?

Seeing as this thread's got going again...

There's a huge difference between 'not inclusive' and 'offensive'. Why are you conflating the two? Sometimes you intend a word to mean a specific group rather than everyone. That's fine.

But when you start calling people nouns based on an inherent feature of theirs, there's a lot of history you may want to avoid looking like you're copying.

There's a difference in tone between 'the black guy over there' and 'two blacks came in'. Or 'we have space for two wheelchair users' vs 'I see you booked for two people and a wheelchair', also known as 'three people'.

So it's one of those things worth thinking about, but in a Lit story, both distilling someone to their key visible features, and possibly treating them as an object, are often not undesirable at all. Sure, calling someone a blonde or brunette could be done offensively, but so could every other word in the dictionary (the spouse got in trouble at school for calling people cheese sandwiches as an insult, for example).

I rarely use brunette myself, but mainly because I associate it with the irredeemable wholesomeness of Nancy Drew stories. I do have a character referred to as 'a statuesque blonde', because the narrator is 'a heterosexual man, who isn't blind'.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm not saying you have to stop using these words, but I do think, as authors, it is good in general to be aware of the subtleties of the meanings of words and their abuses.

If you go too reductionist though, you end up with "The cat sat on the mat," and even that gets problematic, because what about dogs? Let alone the grievance of the floor.

 

[Booleanean]

I'm not sure how you go from "be aware what words mean to people when you use them" to "dogs are being excluded when we talk about cats". The old slippery slope argument rarely holds up.

We're arguing here about inclusivity in language, in cases where that can be important. No one is saying you can't talk about specific groups (cats), no one is even arguing that "brunette" excludes men (other than people calling that argument out as ridiculous). The argument against brunette is one of objectification, not of exclusion. Hell, I don't think anyone here is really arguing that brunette shouldn't be used, other than Microsoft Word.

Additionally, brunette is probably a fine word to use in Lit stories, for various reasons, regardless of whether the narrator is a bit of a traditional sexist or not. The flagging of the word as not fitting with inclusivity policies comes from a piece of software that is mostly used in corporate and educational spaces, where the use of "brunette" should potentially be reconsidered, not because it excludes anyone, but because it reduces a person to just their hair color, which is probably always irrelevant when writing a memo to a colleague. It's not arguing that you're leaving blondes out in the cold, or that men will jump down your throat because you're not talking about their brown-haired problems, it's simply flagging a word that could indicate you should potentially rephrase or even rethink your statement in the context of a business e-mail.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Seeing as this thread's got going again...

There's a huge difference between 'not inclusive' and 'offensive'. Why are you conflating the two? Sometimes you intend a word to mean a specific group rather than everyone. That's fine.

But when you start calling people nouns based on an inherent feature of theirs, there's a lot of history you may want to avoid looking like you're copying.

There's a difference in tone between 'the black guy over there' and 'two blacks came in'. Or 'we have space for two wheelchair users' vs 'I see you booked for two people and a wheelchair', also known as 'three people'.

So it's one of those things worth thinking about, but in a Lit story, both distilling someone to their key visible features, and possibly treating them as an object, are often not undesirable at all. Sure, calling someone a blonde or brunette could be done offensively, but so could every other word in the dictionary (the spouse got in trouble at school for calling people cheese sandwiches as an insult, for example).

I rarely use brunette myself, but mainly because I associate it with the irredeemable wholesomeness of Nancy Drew stories. I do have a character referred to as 'a statuesque blonde', because the narrator is 'a heterosexual man, who isn't blind'.

Speaking of conflating, I can’t understand why brunette is in the same category as black or wheelchair when acting as a metonym. I don’t feel excluded if referred to as a blonde.

This is the problem. Apply these “rules” to categories that make little sense and the whole project is down valued.

If I use brunette, it is NOT equivalent to being racist or ablist. That’s the problem. It makes people who might otherwise be allies throw their arms up and say this whole thing is ridiculous.

It’s overreach of a basically sound idea.

If an argument is pushing liberal-leaning, socially-aware people like me to oppose it, maybe there is a problem with the argument.

Em

 

[RetroFan]

Blonde/Brunette/Redhead is a well-established trope in fiction, such as the three women on 'Gilligan's Island' Mrs Howell (blonde), Mary-Ann (brunette) and Ginger (redhead), or the three girls from Hairspray of Amber (blonde), Tracy (brunette) and Penny (redhead).

I use this trope a lot in my stories, for example in 'Banging Cousin Becky In Blackpool' the narrator Ian's cousin Becky is blonde as is her younger brother; his twin sister Jenny is a brunette while Ian also has brown hair; and his other cousins Katie and Sam both have red hair.

 

[onehitwanda]

In Blackpool

Truly a fate worse than death.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Speaking of conflating, I can’t understand why brunette is in the same category as black or wheelchair when acting as a metonym. I don’t feel excluded if referred to as a blonde.

This is the problem. Apply these “rules” to categories that make little sense and the whole project is down valued.

If I use brunette, it is NOT equivalent to being racist or ablist. That’s the problem. It makes people who might otherwise be allies throw their arms up and say this whole thing is ridiculous.

It’s overreach of a basically sound idea.

If an argument is pushing liberal-leaning, socially-aware people like me to oppose it, maybe there is a problem with the argument.

Em

I can guarantee you will find plenty of women who do feel excluded, objectified or anything like that, by being called blonde. At its start, the whole PC culture was well meaning and reasonable, and has helped us find better ways to communicate and to avoid stigmatizing certain groups. After so many years, that same PC culture has failed to put any reasonable boundaries, so today it is enough for one to claim that something is offensive for her/him, or to present oneself as a victim, and that is considered as a valid argument in itself. What is even worse is that many people who do see that argument as faulty will likely stay silent or risk being called a chauvinist - which is a considerable stigma in today's society. The irony, of course, is that the culture that was created to remove the stigma and disrespect from communication, has created one of its own.

 

[alohadave]

The flagging of the word as not fitting with inclusivity policies comes from a piece of software that is mostly used in corporate and educational spaces, where the use of "brunette" should potentially be reconsidered, not because it excludes anyone, but because it reduces a person to just their hair color, which is probably always irrelevant when writing a memo to a colleague. It's not arguing that you're leaving blondes out in the cold, or that men will jump down your throat because you're not talking about their brown-haired problems, it's simply flagging a word that could indicate you should potentially rephrase or even rethink your statement in the context of a business e-mail.

This right here.

I find it interesting that in these types of discussions about language, it it generally the people who are used to using a term or phrase get more upset than the people who the term addresses.

This is understandable because someone (or some thing) is telling you that you are wrong or that you are doing something that others may find offensive or non-inclusive. No one likes to be told that they are wrong, or that the way you've always done it might diminish others.

Is calling someone blonde hurtful? Probably not. Is calling someone 'the blonde' objectifying? Maybe. But think about how your use of language has the potential to affect your readers. Do you have to follow it? No you don't. Should you think about it, to see if you are saying something that you don't intend to? Yes. Should you censor yourself or alter your phrasing? That's up to you to decide for yourself. For example, forty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to call a gay person a fag in public. What does it say about you when you say it now?

With blonde jokes, the punchline is that this blonde woman is so stupid that we laugh at her. IMO, the jokes are funny because they target stupidity, not blonde people. A Polish joke targets people who are inherently stupid, and applies that to an entire population as a group attribute. This joke is about Poles, and therefore all Poles are stupid like that.

 

[EmilyMiller]

This right here.

I find it interesting that in these types of discussions about language, it it generally the people who are used to using a term or phrase get more upset than the people who the term addresses.

This is understandable because someone (or some thing) is telling you that you are wrong or that you are doing something that others may find offensive or non-inclusive. No one likes to be told that they are wrong, or that the way you've always done it might diminish others.

Is calling someone blonde hurtful? Probably not. Is calling someone 'the blonde' objectifying? Maybe. But think about how your use of language has the potential to affect your readers. Do you have to follow it? No you don't. Should you think about it, to see if you are saying something that you don't intend to? Yes. Should you censor yourself or alter your phrasing? That's up to you to decide for yourself. For example, forty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to call a gay person a fag in public. What does it say about you when you say it now?

With blonde jokes, the punchline is that this blonde woman is so stupid that we laugh at her. IMO, the jokes are funny because they target stupidity, not blonde people. A Polish joke targets people who are inherently stupid, and applies that to an entire population as a group attribute. This joke is about Poles, and therefore all Poles are stupid like that.

So. I’m blonde. If being called dumb because of it was the worst thing that happened to me on-line, I would be a very, very happy girl.

Women need greater respect and sensitivity in many areas, on-line and IRL, the trauma of hair-related metonyms is not in the top 100. Maybe if we sort out the important shit, we can then worry about how truly awful brunette is and finally banish this abomination from our lexicon.

As of now, I don’t need anyone to protect me from references to my hair color.

I’m blonde and I don’t give a fuck if that makes some people think I’m stupid. It seems a growing majority of people hold all sorts of weird stuff to be true. There are bigger things to worry about.

Em

 

[stickygirl]

Really?

OK I’m coming over all anti-woke - I clearly need to lie down in a darkened room.

Em

Tsk tsk "Lie down in a room that is dark" You're objectifying the room.

Blondes have more fun.
Fair haired people of caucasian descent work in HR.

Brunettes and brown haired people never feature in my stories. Instead 'he couldn't decide if she was dark haired given that she'd clearly shaved her flange that morning and was as smooth as that part of the body an infant sits on, though, he noted to his relief, with less fecal matter'. If you ever need help to sex up a story, give me a call.

 

[onehitwanda]

he couldn't decide if she was dark haired given that she'd clearly shaved her flange that morning and was as smooth as that part of the body an infant sits on, though, he noted to his relief, with less fecal matter

Wow. I just... wow.

 

[alohadave]

As of now, I don’t need anyone to protect me from references to my hair color.

It's not about protecting anyone. I have no doubt that you can take care of yourself.

Maybe if we sort out the important shit, we can then worry about how truly awful brunette is and finally banish this abomination from our lexicon.

I'm not telling anyone not to use brunette. And hair color is not the worst thing to worry about. But things like this aren't worked on a priority scale. Nothing ever is.

 

[plesmoreagain]

The general definition we use is "a white woman or girl with dark hair." Perhaps you should consider inserting that to avoid the problem.
" Kindra, a slender white girl with dark hair slowly turned toward the mirror."

 

[EmilyMiller]

The general definition we use is "a white woman or girl with dark hair." Perhaps you should consider inserting that to avoid the problem.
" Kindra, a slender white girl with dark hair slowly turned toward the mirror."

I don’t think there is a problem. That’s the problem.

Em

 

[stickygirl]

Wow. I just... wow.

I borrowed flange, without knowing what it meant outside a workshop.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I borrowed flange, without knowing what it meant outside a workshop.

Weren’t they a Mid-east military / political grouping?

Em