The Corruption of Words: Gays and Food

[La Lioness Priyanka]

I recently read the book, In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto, by Michael Pollan. In this book he describes a law in 1938 imposed by the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. This law required when we buy traditional foods that most of us recognize, such as bread, butter, milk and cheese we should get exactly that. " if a food resembles a standardized food, but does not comply with the standard, that food must be labeled an imitation". However in 1977 the food industry managed to get this law overturned, and fake foods were allowed to pass as the real thing. So bread, that completely isn't what bread used to be, is now considered well.. bread. This new bread has the nutrients leached out of it, and while it pleases the palate and is whiter than before, is nutritionally useless.

Anyhow as I was reading this I was thinking of the corruption of day to day words as it applies to us gay folk. Words that are comforting and provide structure to people like family, values, tradition and morality have been so corrupted, that like fake foods, the shell of the word exist but its meaning is skewed. We have families and values and tradition and morals, but the right has succeeded to a great degree to deprive these words of their true meaning while still keeping them 'familiar'

Corrupted familiar words don't repulse society quite the same way, had Focus on the Family been labeled Focus on Destroying Fags and Dyke's, I am sure society would be far more repulsed. Quite the same way that they would if wonderbread was labeled fake.

I know this is a long winded thought, but it has mulling in my head so I decided to write it down

[DesertFlower]

1. i'm glad you wrote it down.

my husband was a long time moderate republican, but in the last year he changed and became a democrat. last week he said to me "i've changed my mind about gay marriage. i think people who are in love should have the right to marry". i smiled and said "you've become a liberal".

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. A very interesting way of looking at things

I will have to give your observations some thought. :hi:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. thanks techbear.

[Riverman]

3. Very Well Stated and Needs to Repeated Over and Over Again!

Not long-winded at all. Thanks for taking the time. I don't always write as well as I think, but I do believe that words have meanings and consequences. People should be held accountable and responsible for their words, and how they are used.

[cate94]

4. nicely put

Not at all long winded and very astute! Good job and thanks for posting this.

[xchrom]

5. indeed -- it's a deep topic.

i think much of what you're talking about -- i think about this a lot -- really has to with the introduction of mass communication
on the electronic scale.

reactionaries have learned -- right along with madison avenue or from madison avenue -- how to manipulate the meaning of words to scare people.

marshal mccluen{sp?} was musing on similar topics in the sixties.

[Creideiki]

6. Although really it should be

Focus on Destroying Fags and Dykes While Beating Your Disobedient Children--then you'd come closer.

Then again, the Defense of Marriage Act would actually defend marriage against, I don't know...divorce?

[davidinalameda]

7. wasn't there something about kicking dogs as well

[newmajority]

13. Or as Mike Malloy has called them

"Focus on the Phallus" - because Dobson seems obsessed with his own, and others. Like when he says you should take your son in the shower with you and show him how big your cock is, to make sure he doesn't "turn gay". :rofl:

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. The fake foods analogy is an interesting way of looking at it.

>>>Anyhow as I was reading this I was thinking of the corruption of day to day words as it applies to us gay folk. Words that are comforting and provide structure to people like family, values, tradition and morality have been so corrupted, that like fake foods, the shell of the word exist but its meaning is skewed. We have families and values and tradition and morals, but the right has succeeded to a great degree to deprive these words of their true meaning while still keeping them 'familiar'>>>

You could hold this up to the light and keep seeing layers upon layers. I'm in generous mood today. Maybe this rhetoric works for them 'cause it plays on anxiety produced when "simple" is challenged by " complicated".

It must be a comfort to think that there is only one kind of family ( and it looks like one's own). That "values" and "morals" are easily discerned ( a lot more fun than struggling with figuring all that stuff out!) and seem to fit one comfortably. That one's own lifestyle is aligned with "tradition" ( by which is invariably meant, 'what *most* people seemed to have done most of the time in the past.)

People on the fringes don't have family, morality, morals, tradition. They have something else, something alien, that is not identical to one's own experience with these things.

[Morning Dew]

12. exactly . . .

"People on the fringes don't have family, morality, morals, tradition. They have something else, something alien, that is not identical to one's own experience with these things."

Out here on the fringes we have a "___________ lifestyle" instead of a life.

Oh boy do I hate that "gay lifestyle" expression.

[sui generis]

10. thanks for the PM tip sis!

You are right - you have been mulling this for a while! :P

Yes and you nailed it with: Focus on Destroying Fags and Dyke's.

I would add "Boy Scouts of America Unless You're an AntiAmerican Fag" and "Don't Ask Don't Tell If You are a Bad For Morale Homo Or Friend With or Without Benefits of Same" to that list. 'kay that last one was a little long.

Maybe we should call Truth in Advertising "Trash In Advertising".

[SacredCow]

11. Interesting and thought provoking...

thanks for sharing...

:hi: