Okay, it's been three weeks since New Year's and I've been getting along pretty well without the detested word "relationship." Pretty well. I've decided that most of the stuff one would use the word "relationship" to speak of probably shouldn't be talked about that much anyway. And just now I found this quote in an article someone sent me:
"The new joylessness: Talk with someone in their 20s about marriage and
they bring in the word "work" in the first three minutes. I didn't
think like that when I was with a man for seven years in my 20s, and I
don't recall that my friends did either. This "work" goes along with
the ubiquitous use of the word "relationship" in the romantic sphere, a
word first used for a sexual connection in 1944, according to the OED;
before that it was only used in a business context. And now that the
patriarchy's gone, everything isn't pleasure, as radical theorists
imagined, but business."
Another word of Covenant College campus that's been bothering me lately is "platonic" used in reference to friendships. It just seems to be an excuse, tip-toeing around the issue of sexual attraction which is either avoided altogether or degraded to something from a teen magazine. I don't know that I can suggest any kind of remedy for this, being Northern European and Presbyterian and all. Also, I'm tired of hearing girls saying that they think of guys as their brothers and not anything more. I mean, I was okay with the friend thing, but "brother"? Are they really sure they want to go that far? I spent two weeks over Christmas hanging out with my brothers and I would say that the percentage of girls who think of any guy not related to them as I think of my brothers is miniscule to none.
It just seems to me that so often words are used to defend ourselves from reality instead of to better communicate with each other. It's strange. I feel like I just read something about this in George Orwell's 1984, but I can't find the quote right now.
Posted by linnea at January 24, 2004 1:57 PM"The issue of sexual attraction, which is either avoided altogether or degraded to something from a teen magazine." How would you suggest we get out of these ways of thought?
Posted by: Evan Donovan at January 24, 2004 2:47 PMI'm just ranting, man, I don't really have any answers.
Posted by: linnea at January 24, 2004 3:19 PMI agree. How can we treat sexuality as something healthy that we all live with, whether we're married and are actually putting it to its full use or not? I mean, it's not dirty for the unmarried person to be a sexual creature, it's just really difficult at times to handle. We make it too dirty, or in trying to counteract that make it too meaningless.
Posted by: tuggy at January 24, 2004 4:42 PM"They told me they had a platonic relationship. A little more 'play' than 'tonic,' if you ask me. Heh heh."
-Reg McLelland
Posted by: mesh at January 25, 2004 3:15 AMWe should all be assigned mates at birth. Not really, but it would be simpler.
Posted by: Nats at January 25, 2004 4:05 PMYou know Natalie, that actually is a line of thought worth exploring. How has the expression of sexuality in our society been distorted by the ideas of autonomy and free choice that came in with the Enlightment and the abandonment of the concept of arranged marriages? After all, that is the Biblical model. *wink wink*
Posted by: Evan Donovan at January 25, 2004 11:43 PM"Romance will screw you academically."
- Reg McLelland
Posted by: JosiahQ at January 26, 2004 8:35 AMRomance, relationships, platonic - I don't think anyone I've heard use any of those words in conversation in the last 4 years has any idea what they mean.
Linnea, just for clarification, are you saying that you don't believe in the absense of sexual attraction between a male and a female who are friends? If you *were* to describe such a friendship, what term would you use for it? It seems to me that there's no way to prove to anyone around here that you're "just friends" with someone of the opposite gender because no one will believe you. All the proper expressions to convey this sort of friendship have lost their credibility because they've been overused by flibbertygibbets who use them with those detestable finger quotations. Ugh.
I love finger quotations. I use them liberally, as Dr. Wildeman uses hyphens.
Posted by: linnea at January 26, 2004 9:08 PMI des;ise finger quotes.
;.S. I used the r-word over 10 times today. Forgive me. In my defense, though, I was using it because that was the word chosen by the other ;ersons involved in the conversation. And Emily, don't worry about ";roving" anything. ;eople are stupid, no matter what.
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