Tiny mini-rant

[taimatsu]

A swift rant about something driving me nuts on and off at the moment.

Kittens. People. Two different things.

You are not a kitten. Your friends and social group are not kittens. Bisexuals are not kittens. Only kittens, young instances of the animal commonly called a cat, are, in fact, kittens. Please remember this. Thank you.

Comments

[taimatsu]

Oh, of course. I'm certainly not denying that a shared use of language holds groups together - what I'm suggesting here is that this particular use of language is an annoying and distasteful one. You could perfectly well have the same feeling of us-ness using a different and less cutesy form of words - it just so happens that you haven't developed it that way.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

This particular use of language is annoying and distasteful *to you*. Obviously, since I use it all the time, I don't find it so. Calling my friends, family, workmates - most people I know - kittens is something I've been doing for ten years. It's a fairly integral part of how I present myself to the world. If everyone I called 'kitten' objected, I'd stop in a moment, but they don't.

I don't believe that calling my friends kittens is in any way demeaning to them. It's not actually a metaphor, rather an affectionate nickname, not that unlike 'duck', 'petal', or any other term of endearment.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Good point kitten. All of us kittens agree with you. Meow.

*licks paw*
*washes behind ear*

[taimatsu]

Grow up, John. ;)

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I grew up, it was rubbish, I had to run my own life and THINK about stuff and DEAL with issues and WORK to earn money. I'm being little again in my happy kittenland. It's much better.

[taimatsu]

You may be being less than entirely sincere, but you are still just proving my point.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

And you mine. Being happy but faintly ridiculous versus having an 'I'm so grown up, this is beneath me' tantrum. I've made my choice...

[taimatsu]

I'm happy to be silly with the best of them, but this seems more to me like a consistent policy of dumbing-down, and it grates.

[taimatsu]

Mmm. I find 'duck', 'petal', etc. *also* problematic, in that I find them over-familiar, and a little childish.

I suppose I just don't understand. For me, pet names and familiarities are there for particularly special people to use. My family, my partner and my very close friends may call me pet names. I don't use those in public of myself, or refer to them outside their private context.

I find it very odd that one would refer to *everyone* (or near as dammit) by a pet name or diminutive. It strikes me as over-familiar and almost rude. That doesn't hold for yur use of it for friends, of course, but I have discussed earlier why this particular term gives me the willies (particularly in social groups where many people are either currently romantically/sexually connected or have been so in the past).

It simply seems to me to be a term which ignores attributes of a person as a responsible adult, reducing people to a sort of childish, flopsy-bunny inoffensiveness. How you refer to people does affect how you see them, and I think that's heightened in social contexts where a lot of interaction happens online. Sometimes I feel that announcing oneself to the world as $cute-baby-animal is almost declaring 'I cannot be held responsible; I have no identity as a sexual being; I am sweet and safe and you are always going to be wrong if you are unpleasant to me.'

Besides, doesn't what you've just said contradict what Ali said earlier about 'kittens' being a marker for one particular social group? If you use it for every Tom, Dick and Harry-kitten, doesn't that dilute its effectiveness and make it less significant for the group?

(Of course the point is that blah kitten blah use of language blah is distasteful *to me* - this is my journal, and I was ranting about something which annoyed *me*, not making statements for anyone else. It could be read as 'you must do this my way or annoy me a little' but I thought it was obvious that this whole thing is IMNSHO, which is why I didn't tack on a little disclaimer to every sentence.)

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

'please remember this' sounded like an imperative to me... The point is, 'marna's friends' pretty much *is* the social group...

[j4.livejournal.com]

I find 'duck', 'petal', etc. *also* problematic, in that I find them over-familiar, and a little childish.

That's a large portion of the Midlands & North of England that you're dismissing as "over-familiar" and "a little childish", you know. Mind you, some people would probably think your perfectly-enunciated RP was "stuck-up" or "affected"... or is that okay too?

(You have your own lingustic quirks, you know, and some of them probably grate on other people too.)