Linguistic rant is linguistic

[selenak]

Rant of the day: English is not my native language, but I think I speak it reasonably well. So watch me feeling entitled to be irritated-to-disgusted by the frequent use of expressions like "rapey", "rape time", "eye rape" etc. in a positive manner, because if "rape" means anything other than "sex forced on one non-consenting partner", my dictionary has not told me so. And using the term in a joking manner (especially when the writer/speaker actually means "checking someone out who is also attracted to you") belittles the horror of the real thing. Just as bad: "pedo" for someone other than "person who likes sex with children". Considering, say, a 17 or 18 years old teenager (especially if it's a fictional one) sexually attractive has nothing to do with pedophilia, people.

(...I wrote my rant about the use of "Nazi" in English in combination with Christmas, feminism, grammar etc. elsewhere already, I think.)

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I have ranted about this elsewhere, lo, this very day, so I'll just raise a tired fist of agreement.

Then again, under (ridiculous) Australian law, writing about finding a 17 or 18 year old teenager (fictional or not) attractive can be child pornography. Or not, if it's a nice commercial movie. Or maybe, if you draw Simpsons porn. Or maybe not, if it's an underage model on a billboard. Or... yeah. Just to make this extra fun, the age of consent is 16.

[selenak]

...And nobody thinks to clarify this law?

[andraste]

Australia's child pornography laws are maddeningly vague, and include both prose and drawings involving fictional characters. (And poetry, I suppose.) They consider 'artistic merit' a valid defence which is why no productions of Romeo and Juliet have so far fallen foul of the law.

Every time someone attempts to start a reasonable debate about whether Harry Potter fanfiction where two seventeen-year-olds get it on is really the kind of porn we need to worry about someone starts screaming 'WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?'

(Er, sorry to derail your excellent rant post with another rant, I just see red every time this silly law is brought up. Especially since as lilacsigil says the actual age of consent is sixteen.)

[selenak]

...I take it the RTD original version of Queer as Folk has not been broadcast in Down Under?

(It has a 15 years old character having lots of sex, and Rusty, much as I am fond of him, is decidedly not Will Shakespeare.)

[lilacsigil]

It has been broadcast, uncensored, and on a government-owned channel no less.

[monanotlisa]

I'm so with you (kids, lawn off! ;).

[scrollgirl]

What you said. I didn't understand, way back when I first got on the internet, what the big deal was when someone used the term feminazi. I get it now.