You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

I have a problem with how words are used in the generic but intended to mean a specific subset of it.

This was the main point behind women's dislike of phrases like, "All men are created equal...." Because demonstrably and historically the men writing it didn't mean it that way. They didn't even mean all men since all you had to be was non-white and you don't qualify.

But I'm also really extremely tired of bookstores using "religion" to mean their Christianity section and "faith" to mean church-going Christian. And generally the only people who talk about their "faith" are the ones who want to hurt non-men by clubbing them with said "faith".

It was so extremely shocking this morning when I saw someone (pj) posting about voting on the best faith blogs by moms and linked to a Pagan one. (It's an unlocked post, if you're interested, help yourself, but I'm not attempting a signal boost, my post is about me.) (Hers? Dunno. I kind of hope not since the blogger talks about disabling copy/paste which is not disabled at all if you use a real browser which is the kind of thing I really disrespect. Not that you'd be surprised I wasn't too keen on mothers in the first place.) I actually went and read the FAQ for the poll to see if it was going to be allowed. I assumed it wouldn't be because otherwise why would they use "faith"? Everyone knows "faith" is meant to be exclusionary.

Then my brain's clutch popped and I realized I'd gotten so inured to the hogging of generic words by groups intending it to mean just themselves that I hadn't noticed. When I read "faith" I assume it means that nasty kind of Christianity where they think Jesus wants them to lord it over anyone else. (It's really hard to understand why they named it after Christ given their behavior being so far from the exemplar.) My brain considers the generic word "faith" to be so synonymous with assholianism that I had mentally translated and only noticed because something "didn't qualify".

It happens a lot with Chinese people too. I've personally experienced it where several people have come right out and said people from India aren't "really Asian". The really racist of them will actually say that neighboring countries' people aren't Asian either. Because by "Asian" they mean "Chinese" but they don't want anyone daring to call them Chinese because that's "racist" for people to assume. Or something. I can't understand the motivation and I stopped listening after their argument violates facts. "Where exactly do you think India is?" That's not exactly going to help much since it directly associates their prejudice with ignorance.

Anyway. It's kind of like after reading a bunch of fanfic and someone uses "lose" correctly and I stop and stare because it looks wrong after all the erroneous uses I see more commonly. Or someone uses "toe the line" and not the incorrect "tow the line". Or "took a different tack." That one astonishes me when I see it, because more and more published (and supposedly professionally edited) books screw up tact, intact, and tack--- so someone who didn't have professional editing and who uses this esoteric reference correctly really grabs my attention.

It grabbed my attention today. Faith used as a word mean to include all religions. Almost like it's still a generic word with that meaning despite the best efforts of the majority to exclude anyone else.

three topics I've thought upon today

I am slowly moving my mail to gmail. I remembered gmail having an import feature, but it's been disabled and is listed under "known issues". If you don't pay yahoo, you cannot forward mail or POP it. I might go look to see if there's another mail archive service. In the meantime I think I've grabbed everything that's pending from seryn's Yahoo Mail.

On the whole, despite being a gmail user for ages, I didn't think I was going to like using gmail for DW notifications because the subject lines don't keep things threaded like regular gmail conversations. However, the filters gmail has have already helped enormously. I don't have to manually archive my own comments. I can label them and mark them as read and have them archived automatically. Which might help me appear less narcissistic because I won't be tempted to reply to myself.

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I hate putting laundry away. It makes ellipticals at the gym seem fun in comparison.

Of course Simon now wants me to vacuum. Bleah.

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I skipped tai chi today. It's a really gruesome chi gong this month. The instructor only seems to know 4 chi gongs and the favorite one is the current one. It's got gobs of bending over, more reaching behind you than trying on 3 dozen bras during a lingerie sale, and you spend a lot of time reaching on the balls of your feet. It's too emeffing athletic. If I wanted athletic, I'd go to the Cardio-Super-Whup-Ass class (no idea what it's really called, but most of the people coming out look like they've been harmed by the experience) or I'd spend more time on the ellipticals. It's enough to make me want to find another gym. I pretty much hate the chi gong segment entirely even when it's a fun one--- the whole thing is supposed to be about energy channelling and frankly this isn't compatible with my energy work partially because the instructor doesn't actually believe in it and partially because they don't teach any grounding or framework but a lot of it is that it's just not how my energy goes. Every once in a while there will be something that meshes, but most of it is just like aerobics in the sense that it's useless handwaving.--- but the truly athletic chi gong makes skiving seem optimal. I wouldn't mind a class that just did 5 minutes of warm up and 15 minutes of tai chi. Actually if they could have that running continuously all day on a DVD or something in the stretching room, that would be awesomely useful.

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I spun more yarn today. I took myself out for lunch... and I think I'm going to stop going to that place, the fries have really gone downhill. I wasn't too useful today though. No idea what we're going to eat for dinner. Breakfast was box-o-soup, squash flavor.