*snorfle*

[asimplechord]

I got this from J, in an email in which she complained about a poorly edited book:

Unless you are writing about a reproductive or urological problem, you probably shouldn’t use the phrase “penile system”. And when you are writing about the criminal justice system, the word should be penal.

Now. I ask you.

Doesn't that just SCREAM for prison AU crack fic?

Comments

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha. yes.


(also, messaging you now through the LJ thing)

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

NRGH. DON'T GET ME STARTED. I don't want to argue with someone who might've just made an off-the-cuff remark and not realize how offensive it is to be told that one should be PROUD to give up one's identity and assume another simply because it was traditional, because historically a daughter getting married meant she was becoming her husband's property rather than her father's.

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Julie and I were just chatting about it and she was like, I wonder if Iris wants to weigh in. *sigh* Basically, yeah, forever and ever *headdesking*.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I can and will, I just want to not type something thoughtless and offensive in the flush of anger that sort of thing always provokes.

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

*nods*

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I was about to post this when I refreshed and saw her reply.

In a time when women did not work outside the home and had little or no financial security, that tradition continued to make sense. When women had no identity except as someone's daughter, wife, or mother, when they moved from a parent's home to a spouse's home with no independent identity, it made sense.

It is not necessary now. Women have an identity outside of their families, we have social and financial responsibilities and rewards that are untethered to parents or spouse. We don't depend on another person for our own personhood. Why should we depend on them for a name?

Rather than marrying as a teenager, I married at 28. I published papers using my name, I had (and still have) financial interests in my name, my degree was granted to me as Dr. Iris, not Dr. Mrs. Somebody Else (this is important when it comes to things like medical degrees and licenses, actually), all before marriage.

And honestly, it might be easy for someone famous to change or hyphenate their name and not have a recognition problem. Especially someone in a media-related field. But in some fields (like mine), when you change or hyphenate your name, it changes the outcome when you do a literature search.

This sounds trivial, but it can have a huge impact. Scientific success = reputation = number of publications and citations, and changing your name affects that. Scientific search engines won't automatically include Wentz and Simpson if you search Simpson-Wentz.

These are things to be discussed with a potential spouse. And if you have strong feelings about name-taking, they should be shared. Beyond the logical reasons, I like my name. It is mine. I had it for two-and-a-half decades before I agreed to hitch myself to my husband, and I didn't want to change it. It had nothing to do with him. It has nothing to do with not being proud of him or us as a couple.

But you know, I also don't need a band of gold and a hunk of over-valued carbon that DeBeers tells me "is forever" to remind myself that I made a promise.

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

That is extremely eloquent.

It was partially my fault for reading too much into things, but I think comments like this one of yours still need to be said. Anyway.

[f13tch3r.livejournal.com]

Good God.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I asked her if she was taking the book back to the bookstore and asking for a refund. Seriously. Are there NO EDITORS LEFT? Are publishers using spellcheck?

[f13tch3r.livejournal.com]

Are publishers using spellcheck?
They must be. Spell check with the auto-repair feature that replaces the misspelled word with whatever word it thinks you mean. Did you hear about that publisher that printed up the school yearbooks that changed the names of a bunch of students because of spell check? Talk about exasperating!

[fleurdeliser.livejournal.com]

Prison AU crack fic forever, please. *DIES LAUGHING*

In all seriousness... HOW DOES THAT EVER GET PUBLISHED?!?!? I'm feeling pretty horrified right now.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

The Penile System is the system of "corrective" camps established by the neoconservative post-apocalyptic government that disapproves of anything outside the heteronormative; all the people who object to traditional values or refuse to follow the born-again rules get sent there. There's a special branch for those who exhibit signs of believing that love knows no color, shape, or gender.

Seriously. Spell check and budget cuts are responsible for some bad bad things.

ETA: Alternatively, I'm imagining prison guards like the main characters of Will and Grace, with thought-they-were-straight-before inmates who are bewildered by the incestous world into which they've been thrust. *dies a little bit*