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Lazy Lingo
It may be unavoidable, but I have never gone for cute verbal shorthand. My time is precious, but not so precious that I can't pronounce the words "Mission Impossible" without resorting to the annoying abbreviation "MI" and words like "Bridezilla" or, as I ranted a while ago "Momblocker" are just ridiculous because they either insult in a kind of undefined way or encourage the bad behavior they claim to resent by making it sound adorable.
So it was with some curiosity that I looked at the new site Babble and saw a recent column about various words that the anti-kid/anti-parent fragment of the childfree population uses to describe how repulsive they find mothers, children, infants, fathers, families, the whole wash.
I actually find the proliferation of this anti-parent/kid lingo kind of fascinating. I was of course familiar with the term "breeder" but had never heard words like "fleshloaf" (used to refer to infants) or "crotchfruit" (same) before.
Why does this happen, exactly? All lingo turns me off. Parent lingo is just as cloying to me, though I suppose less insulting. I hate words like "playdate" (I also don't care for it when people who aren't my kid call me "mommy"). I'm so disinclined to embrace jargon generally that I don't quite get why anyone finds it appealing, unless it really is to secure one's place in the club of the childfree.
But why should it be so important to draw a distinction that is first of all, not very interesting, and second of all pretty obvious? People who don't have children have very legitimate complaints in terms of workplace benefits and various considerations that people with children are accorded, but resorting to name calling just distracts from the actual issues. And don't think that people who have children aren't completely annoyed when little tiny screamers show up in movie theatres. I have a kid and I'm not charmed.
The Babble piece points out that there is something rather childish, middle school-ish at least, about feeling the need to invent a whole set of words to describe how icky you find certain people. This tends to reflect strangely on the people who hate the child-ed and children for being, well, concerned with things immature.
Still, if it makes everyone feel better, and pleased with themselves to invent new ways of being nasty about large chunks of he population, I suppose it can't hurt really. Hate language is very popular right now, in spite of efforts to make it illegal, so why not wave the free speech flag while you can?
posted by Elise at 11:21 AM
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It's not lingo. It's name-calling, and really really mean-sprited as well. I think that the vocal anti-baby/child folks feel rather defensive about their decision not to have children and have to lash out at what they perceive as people judging them negatively. Sad to see people resorting to rather vicious name-calling.
3/20/2007 7:38 AM
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