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Indecent Exposure

The future's Bright

The Language of Indoctrination

Shameful Language

The World English Foundation

Putting a label on the people like yourself is a fair and reasonable thing to do. Putting a label on all the people who are not like yourself is an aggressive act.

Calling yourself nudists or naturists is fine, its your group and you are free to choose your own label. But when you label the rest of the world that label, whatever it might be, as long as it is not simply the addition of a negating prefix, is going to be offensive.

If homosexual people don't like the term homosexual (which is simply an accurate description) then they are free to choose a term for themselves. Expecting everybody else to use that word and to use it with the same positive connotations they like to fill it with is a little naive, but it is their choice. Taking the adjective gay and turning it into a noun is one thing but inventing an opposite for it is something else again. Why should an in-group get to label the rest of the world? Surely it is up to the rest of the world to decide their own label, just as it was right for homosexuals to be able to identify themselves as gay it should be up to the 95% plus of the population to choose their own label not have it chosen for them by an uppity minority with a bee in its bonnet. Why should a noun need an opposite? What is the opposite of dog? What is the opposite of cloud? Most nouns don't have opposites because they don't need them. Nobody needs a term for people who are not members of the Barrow in Furness Golf Club, people who are not redheaded or for people who are not on their way to Mecca to idolize an old meteorite.

I call myself a Bright. It means a person without superstitious beliefs. It includes atheism but goes further than that to make it clear that I don't believe in ghosts and spirits and the whole realm of the supernatural. If you have similar beliefs you can choose to call yourself a Bright. It's your choice. It is not my right to look at your beliefs and “out” you as a Bright. That is rude. Bright is a label whose pin only faces inwards. Not only are Brights forbidden to label other people as Brights children are not allowed to join and anybody who is told that they must join is ineligible to join.

Bright is, like gay, a noun created from an adjective which has positive connotations. It immediately stirred up controversy because people wanted it to have an opposite because they wanted to be offended by what that opposite was. But it is a noun, why does it need an opposite? Don't you get it? But no, they wouldn't be told that we weren't calling them dim or dull. Eventually after a couple of years it was finally decided that, just to shut the critics up an opposite would be declared. That opposite is super. As in superstitious. The opposite of somebody who lacks superstitious beliefs is, obviously, one who has one or more superstitious belief, hence a super. Happy now? Probably not. I was much happier with non-Bright, even though the definition was a bit of a double negative. I don't see it is up to me or the members of any group to label those who are not in that group. The term super while it has the benefit of sounding equally as positive as Bright (equal but different) is misleading and a bit of a taunt. You don't have to have superstitious beliefs not to be a Bright, you just have to not identify yourself as a Bright. Perhaps it would be better to have a three way split, those who are Brights, those whose beliefs make them ineligible to be Brights, the supers, and those who are too young to be allowed to choose, don't know about the choice or choose not to wear the label that they are qualified to wear. The third category are the non-Brights.

Groups which label outsiders are arrogant. Are you happy to be called a gentile, an infidel, a kafir, a shiksa (gentile bitch), a textile or a breeder?

Isn't calling somebody a textile little different to calling somebody a nigger? Nigger is simply an amusing, informal and semi-affectionate term applied to a group by those outside that group, is it not? The niggers don't like being called niggers? Well, who cares what niggers think, eh? What is the difference? Textile is an amusing term applied to those not in the in-group, and when they are riled it is spat out with just the same venom as the Klan spits out the word nigger or some Islamofascists spit out the term kafir or bitchy homosexuals spit out the term breeder. Why arm yourself with potential hatespeak? Disavow those terms. Call people by the terms they are happy to call themselves, and no others.

© 1999 - 2010 by Martin Willett.

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