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

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Oooh...me-ow...

[chrisvenus]

hey, its not as bad as 'ittens at least. :)

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

well.. not ACTUALLY true...

baby rats and other animals (Rabbits IIRC?) are also kittens...

but yes, I have had the furries/ otherkin/ whatever rant before!

[diffrentcolours]

Wear the fork with pride!

[stronae.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sorry to hear it, really. My girlfriend and I have been trying to come up with pet names for each other that are slightly unusual (so, 'sweetie' and 'honey' and such are right out), and she seems to like being called a kitten. :)

[wednesday]

CONCUR.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

I am a cat, look. A kitten is not a small feline animal, it's a generic term for anything which manifests good qualities in a similar way to an infant cat. Compare and contrast whether livejournal quizzes are smalll rodents indulging in periodic mass migration.

[uon.livejournal.com]

You are not a kitten..

No. I am my fucking khakis.

I still can't work out whether or not someone is yelling "I'M A KITTEN" in the Slimelight simulator (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/10/) that daneel_olivaw posted a while ago.

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

I am perfectly aware that I am not a juvenile feline. I don't think anyone in our group actually thinks they are juvenile felines (and so what if they do? See elsewhere for rant).

However, I still will use "kitten" to describe people who are in a certain subsection of my social group.

Why? Because our language is one of the ways that people define groups. We use terms like "herding" and "kitten army", and each of us knows at some level (even though they may roll their eyes at it) that when these terms are being used, we're doing a kind of status check of our group cohesiveness.

Now before you argue that a group that is only held together by the use of the word "kitten" is a very sad group indeed, I'm not saying that it's the only thing that holds the group together. I'm just saying that it's one of the things that gives us a feeling of us-ness.

[karen2205]

I can understand why it annoys you - various things I read all over the place annoy me (poor grammar for one), but if it's really that grating then why do you read it?