House of Eratosthenes

According to a piece in the Huffington Post, the word “too” is sexist and hurts women by constantly making them feel like they’re not good enough.

In a piece titled “The 3-Letter Word That Cuts Women Down,” University of Vermont freshman Cameron Schaeffer explains that she had an “epiphany” about the word after talking with a friend about how she should cut her hair.

“Our conversation ended with, ‘Well you don’t want it to be too short or too long,'” Schaeffer writes.

“There is no proper way for a woman to cut her hair, let alone do anything right in this world…Everything is too this or too that,” she continues.

Now, when she says “everything,” of course what she really means is “everything as it applies to women.” After all, the very real damage inflicted by this word is yet another tragedy that only affects us: “In my experience, I rarely hear too thrown around about men,” she explains. “You hear someone say, ‘He’s short,’ but you seldom hear ‘too short.'”
:
“I never realized how deeply a three-letter adverb could cut,” she writes.

Alright, we’ll have to stop using that adverb then…along with maybe all adverbs? Soon as we get it figured out what we’re not supposed to use — don’t want to cut anyone, after all — we’ll just tack it on to the list.

Which arouses a rather fascinating question: What list?

For the natural disasters we’re supposed to be blaming on climate change, I see we do have a list, although I notice it doesn’t look like any one of the thousands of climate change advocates, paid or unpaid, could be bothered to compile it; seems to be the work of someone who’s sympathies are not with the movement. I know of no counterpart registry of items found to be offensive lately. No, not just lately. We wouldn’t want to forget about all the things we’ve already been taught are offensive, right? We should stop using all of them. Well, in order to stop using all of them, you have to know what “all of them” are.

Here and there, you find someone has taken the time and trouble to accumulate a lot of them…

Am I taking the complaint too seriously? Not at all, judging by what I’m reading here, and I can only judge by that. Schaeffer herself writes,

So what can we do? Well, there are an avalanche of issues women face — from rape to pay inequality to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. I would love to wake up tomorrow morning and see a completely egalitarian world outside, but I am not naive. Women are still objects to a disturbingly large number of people. If society continues on in this way, women will always be unfairly judged. But there are small and achievable steps we can take. We should call on both genders to cut the word too from their vocabulary when discussing women. If we ever want an end to the way females are put in boxes, this is the beginning of an important and tumultuous journey ahead.

Seems to me, it’s only reasonable to ask, at “the beginning of an important and tumultuous journey ahead,” where the journey ends. Banishing the adverbs should involve plenty enough tumult, but that’s only one complaint out of maybe thousands. Soon as the adverbs have gone the way of the Dodo bird, we’re going to have to remember what Item #2 on the list was…and so on, and so on, until we reach the end and women are no longer put in boxes.

And then there’s racism! “Hard Worker,” along with zillions of other things, is racist. Again the question arises: What are the zillions of other things, exactly? If we’re supposed to labor tirelessly to get rid of all of something, then what is it? Where’s the high-level map? How do we add things to the list, or check things off the list?

Is it web-enabled, where we can all get to it? Hosted in the cloud somewhere? Or would that be “ist” too? Er, I mean, also?

Related: If James Madison had been a liberal, Crowder supposes he might have seen the necessity in jotting out the entire list right there at the very beginning…and taken a pass on it, since a quill pen on a parchment can only do so much, right?

I ‘too’ had profound insights during my college career, but I was smart enough to revisit them when I was no longer stoned. Ms. Schaeffer is ‘too’ stupid to live.
- Highlander | 11/27/2015 @ 07:37
Seems to be no end of ways to increase the victim base. Tapping into the empowerment of Victimhood has inspired creativity that rightly placed may have saved our civilization. But alas, the Victimhood Market is booming.
- Whitehawk | 11/27/2015 @ 09:54
Thanks for the link to my web page listing the various things that are supposedly caused by global warming. As you say, it ‘seems to be the work of someone [whose] sympathies are not with the movement.’ Indeed. It’s a hobby, much like clipping newspaper articles on specific topics and putting them into file folders for future reference — and the folders are available to everybody. Have a great week!

A K Dart
- akdart | 12/01/2015 @ 07:21
Glad you found the link. I’ve been admiring your page, only very occasionally, but for quite awhile. That’s a decent level of dedication you’ve shown, to say the least.
- mkfreeberg | 12/01/2015 @ 07:47
“In my experience, I rarely hear too thrown around about men,” she explains. “You hear someone say, ‘He’s short,’ but you seldom hear ‘too short.’” I call bullcrap right there. I went on a match.com date and was told TO MY FACE I was “too fat.” This was after she said, “I didn’t expect you to be so fat” and asked “when did you take your picture?” (The answer…two weeks before the date.)

Of course, it turned out that she and her husband, who she was CURRENTLY MARRIED to, had moved from China, to Germany, to Canada, and rushed across the border the day her baby was to be born. They struck the lottery in their own way, as the child was severely disabled and the US government was spending 75k a year for the rest of the individual’s life to care for it. She and her hubby were divorcing, so the pre-Obama gub’ment was kicking them out. She wanted to stay in the US. Not because of the child, but because the US was fun and had food. There wasn’t enough food in China. But there also weren’t any fat people. Like me. But I was the bad person.

Take your liberal feminist “too” whine to China. I’m sure they’d love to kotow to your every need.
- P_Ang | 12/01/2015 @ 15:54
You make me think about my own experience. I had to learn some mental discipline about rejection, once I realized the single most-frequently encountered reason I was being tossed into the waste-bucket was…nothing. “Too” — something. Or, not enough of something. Silly bints didn’t seem to know themselves what the reason was.

Eventually, I realized I was rubbing up against something that happens when women make choices about things. They don’t do this the same way men do it. Anyone who’s seen men and women together, or apart, in shopping malls understands this. It’s got something to do with mental images that form in their heads, and then they go looking for “merchandise” that matches the mental image. With: Curtains, placemats, clothes…men. Anyway, you raise a good point, men are here & there found to be “too” something, and in certain situations, you don’t have to wait long to see it happen, by any means.
- mkfreeberg | 12/02/2015 @ 07:13

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