Earlier today my friend Paul and I were arguing about which of us had to do this thing that both of us were afraid to do. After a prolonged discussion, Paul said, "Look, one of us has to gender up and do this."
Such a cool expression! That he just made up on the spot to replace "man up"! (Or its copycat wanna-be counterpart "woman up.") Which brings me to why gender up is so brilliant. Those female-specific takeoffs on sexist slang (example: it takes ovaries) are like the 4th sequel to a B movie.
The absolute worst in the history of pseudo-feminist revisionist English? Ms. Pac-man. Parallelism dictates Pac-woman. But how cool if they were Pac-people? Then they might've even earned interesting first names, like Percy and Penelope. Mr. and Ms. Pac-person. Or even just Pacs! Penelope Pac. (Okay, now I'm insanely curious about the etymology of the word Pac.)
Ah! Just looked it up on Wikipedia. It's from a Japanese word that means the sound you make when you open and close your mouth. I had no idea Pac-man was Japanese, but that's because they changed the giveaway Manga-style graphics (you know, big eyes without epicanthal folds) before localizing to North America.
Moving on.
Even if it isn't sexist or pseudo-feminist, I'm annoyed by body part neo-slang. Like how an incredibly vivid description such as "pain in the neck" became "pain in the ass" in some insecurity-laden attempt at emphasis. Who ever actually feels ass pains? (That's not a real question, though. I don't want to know the answer.)
If we had all gendered up earlier, we would never have had to listen to Demi Moore tell the army to suck her dick. Which! By the way! Should never be used as an expression to demean or humiliate -- not if guys want women to want to do it.
Anyway, gender up has the wonderful connotation of maturity (whatever gender you are, it only fully blossoms when you're grown up) without regard to gender identity. No need to be specific about which chromosomes are involved, just that they're powerful and not afraid of anything.
On a terribly insignificant sidenote, Paul gendered up way before I did.
3 comments:
I like this blog post. It was educational, funny, made me think, and has a nice consistency and texture. Wait...that's requirements of the Food Channel bake offs. This is what happens when you're on modified bed rest. Fun!
O. M. G. gender up. brilliant!!
points up the absurdity of the whole "man up" thing, too.
So you can add "guy-liner" to your list.
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