I feel you self-flagellate, Mike. The sex/gender aspect of the exchange is much
less important than the Irish aspect: by their surnames, Hennigan and Lynch are
both of Irish descent, will have learnt to swear before they could utter
gibberish, and will have a long-running set of inter-family feuds to draw on.
The effect of their dialogue is little affected if we alter the genders but
much altered if we change the wording - "You are a bit of a c yourself"
contrasts with the feeble "No I'm not, you are", and is of course straight from
the Gaelic which crucially skips any denial that the initial abuse is true
(some scholars suggest that it accepts it true by implicature). This form arose
classically when one Irish person accused another of being drunk and where it
would usually be implausible to say "No, I'm not, you are" and so the retort is
"You're a bit drunk yourself" - this then being extended across the range of
excoriation. By skipping any denial, the retort's real implicature is that it
couldn't give a fig for the accusation. The judge's second retort "You too" is
the Irish form for batting back any insult, having such a place in the national
psyche 'twas adopted as their moniker by Ireland's most famous rock band (aside
The Beatles: Lennon, McCartney, Starkey and Harrison being of course in the
same lineage as Hennigan and Lynch - though the orthodoxy that The Beatles are
in effect an Irish band took a recent battering when Lewisohn showed that to a
shocking extent they were Prods. This kind of digression also being Irish
stock-in-trade).
DL
From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, 11 August 2016, 20:27
Subject: [lit-ideas] -- the he be she judge --
I am scolded. It seems that in my ignorance I have demeaned the personhood of
the Chelmsford crown court judge Patricia Lynch QC by referring to her as
"him". In my own defense I assert that pronouns aren't nouns, they're like
substitute teachers -- no one respects and few obey them. They're like working
class people, handy to have around but lacking all panache. At times they're
allowed to be the Subject of a sentence or the Object of a sentence or clause,
or the Object of a Preposition, but everyone knows they're just stand-ins.
Pronouns are Second Class Citizens when it comes to Parts of Speech and to
refer to someone by the wrong gender pronoun is not only a grammatical sin, it
demeans them and sexuality itself through erroneous referencing. It denigrates
sexuality itself. What could be more embarrassing than being misidentified
genderwise by second-class part of speech (a mere pronoun). Why do we have
different gender forms at all except to draw attention to one's gender because
sex is the most important thing to us and about us. . Everything comes down to
sex, Everything. Sex, sex, sex. It's all about sex -- make that SEX. Get it
right or get the hell out of Dodge. I am contrite.
