getting ready for his first recital

Quick question....

on lines

-  mama, why do you get those lines around your mouth when you smile?

-  well, as you get older, your skin is less flexible and  you start getting lines where the skin folds

-  you mean like on your forehead?

-  *sigh*

what's in a name... the rights based approach version

I take issue with people who take issue with words.

There is no such thing as a good or a bad word. Black is  a color; feminist is a rights movement, and gay just means you are happy, sometimes with someone of your own sex .

Rejecting the word is like somehow admitting that there was something shameful there to begin with, something that needed to be redefined, while really, all that needed to be redefined was people’s perception of it.

Changing words is what politicians do to try to sell you the same thing in a different box. Like when discrimination or abuse are called "tradition" and  mutilation is called "cutting".

***

Words have a lot of power. For example, if you add a “men” to:

“working to end violence against women”

so that it reads:

“working to end men’s violence against women”

It stops being about  the victim, about protecting her from some unknown evil, and it becomes about the perpetrator, who actually has the power and the responsibility.

***

Words have  roots and origins. Some even think they have a spirit.

That’s why I call myself a feminist. That is why I call it “female genital mutilation”, that’s why I like to call it like I see it.

or as Shakespeare so succinctly put it “What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”