Irrationality makes me moist
Posted by Shannon
A student in my Shakespeare class announced that the word “moist” (which I had uttered to describe Egypt in Antony & Cleopatra) is offensive to women. Some of the other women in the class concurred (not hostilely–just as a matter of information for a clueless male professor). I was somewhat flabbergasted, and nobody would articulate a reason for the offensiveness–except for one male student’s eventual suggestion that the word reminds women of sexual arousal. That association is not at all beside-the-point of my description of Egypt in the play–but why would such a connotation make the word offensive per se? As far as I could ascertain, “damp” and “wet” don’t carry whatever stigma attaches to “moist.” What am I missing here?!
I don’t know what to be more disturbed by: a completely legitimate word being thrown into the “offensive” ghetto, or women being offended by female arousal. Read on.
Tags: gender, language, Politics, sexuality
November 17th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I’ve really had enough of folks in general appropriating perfectly good words and labeling them “offensive,” taking up an imaginary standard for an entire race (”niggardly”), and now, whew, an entire sex. It’s nonsense and anyone in their right mind will go right on using functional words as wordsmiths ought, thanks ever so much anyway.