See, what you need to understand is that “Not all guys are like that” is never going to work. Because you’re answering an entirely different conversation than what women are actually saying.
You think women are saying “Every man is a predator and a danger to me.” And you’re replying, “But I’m not like that.”
But women aren’t saying that. They’re saying “There are too many situations where women have to worry about their safety,” and you’re saying “That’s not important.” They’re saying “Women are constantly told it’s their fault if something bad happens,” and you’re saying “Don’t worry about it.” They’re saying “Too often, women find their trust violated by men,” and you’re saying “But you should trust me!”
They’re saying “So many men have decided that what they want is more important than anything about a woman.” And you’re replying “I’m exactly like that.”
I read something the other day that really hit this home. When you say “some guys are predatory and hurt women” it gives a loophole for dudes who ARE predatory to wiggle out and it makes it seem like men who do these harmful things to women are few and far between. The men who point out that not all men are like that are looking for their loophole because they ARE like that.
But the reality is that most men are predatory or treat women like shit. We should be saying “some” when we talk about the men who DON’T hurt or disrespect women because those men? THEY are the ones that are few and far between and THEY don’t need a linguistic loophole to absolve their responsibility to treat women like people.
The truth is, there is a lot of abuse that doesn’t even ping most men as abuse. I am sure there are men who have raped or sexually abused unconscious/drunk women and/or guilt-tripped their girlfriends into sexual situations they didn’t want to be in and/or catcalled and scared a woman in the street at night with his buddies and they would still call themselves ‘nice guys’. Because rape culture normalizes this behavior, and they really have no self-awareness of their abusiveness and misogyny.
It reminds me of okcniceguys, which catologues all the self-proclaimed ‘nice guys’ on okcupid who have the most misogynistic shit in their profiles, some of which is blatantly fucking NOT NICE like answering ‘YES’ to the question Do you feel there are circumstances in which a person is obligated to have sex with you?
Hint: If you answered yes to this, you are not a nice person.
The German language is famous for some really long nouns (Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän comes to mind). This is because German nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives are like lego bricks; you can stick them together in almost any way to create new words that encapsulate new concepts. This gives the language a special ability to name just about anything. You could call it the German language’s lego brick-like quality, or Legosteineigenschaft (see what I just did there?).
But why does German rely on such an elaborate process to name things as simple as squirrels? When broken down into their separate components, the names of familiar animals mutate into bizarre new creatures.
The Uncanny X-Tiere
Comics are full of heroes with names like super, wonder, iron, ultra, bat or cat followed by -man, -woman, -girl or -boy. A lot of German animal names work the same way, where Tier – the word for animal – is preceded by a word describing that animal’s “super power”.
Stinktier – stink animal (skunk)
Faultier – lazy animal (sloth)
Gürteltier – belt animal (armadillo)
Murmeltier – mumbling animal (groundhog)
Schnabeltier – beak animal (platypus)
Maultier – mouth animal (mule)
Trampeltier – trampling animal (bactrian camel). The verb trampeln means to trample or tread upon, whereas the noun Trampel is a clumsy oaf.
Sometimes suffixes get more specific than -tier, but still tend to describe the wrong animal:
Schildkröte – shield toad (tortoise)
Waschbär – wash bear (raccoon)
Nacktschnecke – naked snail (slug)
Fledermaus – flutter mouse (bat)
Seehund – sea dog (seal)
Tintenfisch – ink fish (squid)
Truthahn – threatening chicken (turkey). Trutis onomatopoeic for the trut-trut-trut cluck of a turkey, but it’s also been hypothesized that the name comes from the Middle German droten which means “to threaten”.
No, I’m Pretty Sure That’s A Pig
Swine seem to be a popular yardstick in German animal taxonomy.
Schweinswal – pig whale (porpoise)
Seeschwein – sea pig (dugong). Not to be confused with the Seekuh, or sea cow, known in English as a manatee.
Stachelschwein – spike pig (porcupine). The English word is actually just as literal; porcupine sounds a lot like “pork spine”.
Wasserschwein – water pig (capybara)
Meerschweinchen – ocean piglet (guinea pig). The ending -chen denotes something small. Add it to the end of Schwein and you get a little pig, or piglet. Since the stems Meer and Wasser are often interchangeable, it’s most likely that Meerschweinchen actually means little capybara.
Just Plain Weird
I’d like to end this list by giving one animal a category all to itself: the humble squirrel.
Eichhörnchen:
little oak horn: Eiche (oak tree) + Horn (horn) + -chen (little)
oak croissant: Eiche (oak tree) + Hörnchen (croissant)
alternate names:
Eichkätzchen (regional name) and Eichkatzerl (Austria) – oak kitten
Calling a squirrel a “tree kitten” is reasonably literal, but where does “little oak horn” come from? It seems that the answer comes down to a misplaced h: Eichhörnchen comes from the Old and Middle German eichorn, which has nothing to do with oak trees or horns. In this case, the eich comes from the ancient Indo-Germanic word aig, which means agitated movement, combined with the now obsolete suffix -orn. Somewhere in history a superfluous h was added (along with the diminutive -chen ending) but the original meaning remained. Today, Hörnchen is a category of rodents that includes all squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, prairie dogs and flying squirrels.
Keep an eye on this spot for an upcoming post where we’ll delve deeper into the animal kingdom: branching out to birds, insects, reptiles, fishes and any other mammals we find crawling around.
German language is absolutely adorable (and occasionally predictable).
why did we have to make spiders georg a meme why couldn’t we just let the best tumblr post of all time rest in peace. why must we as humans destroy any good we encounter
Finally, I can present you my little comic ‘Hearts for Sale’. These are the first 10 pages. I’m very nervous about this since it’s my first self-published book. I hope you like the story. Read Part 2/ Part 3
