Censored on /s/Lesbians: An Appeal

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[–]SavvyDiogenes 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

There are so many words that are "appropriated" from Greece. Hell, the prefixes meta and trans etc. ARE from the greek language, so why would it be a problem that a word describing female homosexuality is from a greek island? How can language be "appropriation" when language WORKS on appropriation! English is basically german and french appropriated and mixed.

Appropriation in language isn't a thing. Languages evolve by borrowing words from other cultures and languages and making them their own. Language without appropriation would mean that we'd still be speaking whatever indo-european language existed before Latin.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Hey, thanks for the reply!

That's true that languages often borrow words for ideas and concepts from each other, but "Lesbian" isn't a word that means "female homosexual" in Greek. It means of or relating to a specific place. "Lesbian wine exportation". Like Hawaiian. Or American. Or New Yorker. It seems wrong to me to take the word that means something else, and belongs to someone else, and use it as the name for your own group. If you look up "Lesbian" online, what do you think you're going to find? That doesn't seem right to me.

And further, as referenced above I know that Lesbians don't want this to be happening. It seems at least like common courtesy to honor that request.

And further, GC is an entire movement based on how it's wrong for men to take women's identities and spaces, including women's words. Or else why fight against "trans women are women" and the definition of "woman"? Why complain that there are no "actual lesbians" in "/r/actuallesbians"? It seems like GC has already articulated quite well why appropriating words and identities in this way can lead to problems for the people whose words and identities have been appropriated.

That's my opinion right now, and it feels well-founded to me.

[–]Fuckyoucensorship 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thats all good and well but being lesbian doesn't automatically make someone gc and vice versa. There are plenty of lesbians who don't like gc (or terf) ideology so this point would only appeal to that of gc lesbians as far as appropriation goes.

The niche mentality of gc is the equivalent of claiming west boro baptist is an accurate representation of all christianity when it isn't.

If we follow your logic to its natural conclusion then america needs to rename football since we've appropriated the name that was already associated with a different sport. A sport that america didn't come up with.

In fact, the greeks stole language from the Phoenicians. So from your logic we're third hand appropriating a language that was appropriated from a different culture entirely. Language and the creation of language was founded on appropriation, especially when it comes to written language. If we are to assume appropriation is wrong, every language currently would need to be stripped and we need to start over with pictograms and slowly create entirely different verbal, and written language so as to avoid any sort of appropriation.

Appropriation happens, especially when it comes to art and language and seeing as language was founded on art we can rightfully assume that language and its evolution is "appropriation".

Especially seeing as lesbians haven't stolen lesbos culture per say they're only following the language rules everyone else follows. So if lesbians are wrong, then everyone is inherently wrong. In fact everyone throughout history except for maybe cave people and sumerians in Mesopotamia are the only "clean" ones in this. And in fact, everyone since has appropriated their use of written communication.

Your logic doesn't lend itself to the evolution of language and thankfully no one has considered this to be true.

However, with your logic, any lesbian that can trace their lineage back to Greece could still technically use the label of "lesbian" and could thus have more say in the matter then you do because of their connection to said culture. From that point they could completely over ride your conjecture simply by saying "my ancestors would want this."

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reason for bringing up r/GC and r/ActualLesbians was to point out that many women like to complain about people who they think aren't Lesbians using the word Lesbian. Clearly they understand the problem. If that doesn't apply to a particular woman because she hasn't said those things, then yes of course that point would not apply to her specifically, but it does still seem to be a popular sentiment. Women bringing up problems with people who are not female appropriating the word "woman" would be a still larger group, though of course yes it does not include all women.

I feel like I already addressed the points you're making about language. As I tried to explain, I don't think taking someone's name to mean something else is not the same thing as borrowing concepts and words for them and having general linguistic exchange. And I think most people and most women would agree with me here, that they would want people not to do that for their own names for themselves or their ethnicity or similar things.

And I wasn't saying a woman could use the word "Lesbian" if she experienced exclusively homosexual feeling and somehow could trace her linage to a particular Greek island even if quite distant. I think that only actual Lesbian women -- women who's family has been living on Lesbos for a long time, women who's family comes from Lesbos, perhaps women who've immigrated to Lesbos and become part of the community there.

It sounds like you're saying nobody would be right to complain if everyone suddenly decided that "Hawaiian" really meant "fan of Kūkahi," to the point that actual Hawaiians could no longer effectively use the word to talk about themselves, and nobody else could effectively use the word to talk about actual Hawaiians?