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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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 Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:49 pm Post subject: "Unmanning the front lines for 20 years" |
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I know, I have the sense of humor of a 13-year-old boy. I don't apologize for it, much as the creators of the newest PSA for the US Navy don't apologize for the double meaning of the slogan of their most recent recruitment effort.
First, we see a lot of weapons systems that used to require actual people to operate but that now do not. Technology as Hero. As a former US sailor, I do applaud this progress.
But then comes that tag line, "Unmanning the front lines for 20 years." And I think, surely I'm not the only native speaker on the planet familiar with the verb "to unman" as a way of conveying the utter symbolic eviseration of a man, to leave him as a whimpering pile of pu$$y by showing him something that, well, unmans him.
On the one hand we can just see it as the back-formation of a perfectly innocent term to mean machine-guided or remotely controlled equipment. On the other hand, there are at least 15 native speakers on the planet who remember that "unmanned" used to mean, primarily, a state of having been stripped, by circumstance, of manly courage and virtue. Quite the opposite of what the PSA intended to convey, I'm guessing.
My bitchy question would be, I suppose, have we also been unwomanning the front lines for 20 years? I certainly served with women, both at sea and ashore, during my navy career. The innocent version of "unmanned" could apply to both sexes, if we allow Man to stand as synonym for Humanity, but would the event/thing that umnans a man also unman a woman? Is it the same process, or does it take something different to unwoman a woman than it does to unman a man?
I know, I know, language changes, and that it does so is the only way humanity can continue to express itself precisely. But for those of us caught in the middle, the transitions can often be really quite a lot of fun. You know, if you've got the education of an old man but the sense of humor of a 13-year-old boy.
Unmanning the front lines for 20 years. Oh my god. Are we sure this is the best way to go about world domination? |
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tfunk
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 4:29 am Post subject: |
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A woman on the front-lines can never be womanly, so she cannot be unwomanized.
Manly
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/manly
Womanly
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/womanly
Given the historical context of the word 'man' as you have issue with.
"Unmanning the front lines for 20 years. Oh my god. Are we sure this is the best way to go about world domination?"
It seems like a good tactic. You terrorize your enemy so that your own army builds up a reputation as a ferocious force. Your enemy believes it and if your own men believe it then it inspires them. I'm not sure it would work nowadays, what with morals, media and youtube getting in the way of a good blood fest. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 4:38 am Post subject: |
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You pose an interesting question.
I'd suppose to unman a woman would be to break up her relationship with a man and leave her all alone. That at least is what it means to me.
Since women haven't been allowed on front lines until relatively recently, I'd say the military should advertise that they are 'womanning the front lines' now. I used to teach high school and quite frankly, if we sent Denise and Kim and a few other girls I taught to Iraq, it would put the fear of Allah in some of those suicide bombers. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:27 am Post subject: Re: "Unmanning the front lines for 20 years" |
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| daskalos wrote: |
On the other hand, there are at least 15 native speakers on the planet who remember that "unmanned" used to mean, primarily, a state of having been stripped, by circumstance, of manly courage and virtue. Quite the opposite of what the PSA intended to convey, I'm guessing.
My bitchy question would be, I suppose, have we also been unwomanning the front lines for 20 years? I certainly served with women, both at sea and ashore, during my navy career. The innocent version of "unmanned" could apply to both sexes, if we allow Man to stand as synonym for Humanity, but would the event/thing that umnans a man also unman a woman? Is it the same process, or does it take something different to unwoman a woman than it does to unman a man?
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I guess you can count me as one of those 15, as it had never occurred to me that "unman" might mean anything other than "a way of conveying the utter symbolic eviseration of a man, to leave him as a whimpering pile of pu$$y" as you put it, until reading this post.
I don't think there's an equivalent term for women, for two reasons which seem to oppose each other.
- Chicks don't have the same deep-seated fear of being desexed, the way that men seem to. There's no male equivalent insult to "castrating bitch" for example.
-The other side of it is that, when words that equate to female, like "girl" and "pu$$y" are synonymous with coward (whether that 's fair or not is besides the point), it seems that chicks just aren't expected to possess courage (whether manly or not) and virtue in the first place. Maybe we've just got nothing to lose.
I dunno what the answer is, or if there is one. I'm just playing along. |
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Khenan
Joined: 25 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| I say we just bring back waepman to refer to man, and let man once again refer to mankind (so what if it's been dead for 500 years?) |
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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:57 pm Post subject: Re: "Unmanning the front lines for 20 years" |
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| peppermint wrote: |
| daskalos wrote: |
On the other hand, there are at least 15 native speakers on the planet who remember that "unmanned" used to mean, primarily, a state of having been stripped, by circumstance, of manly courage and virtue. Quite the opposite of what the PSA intended to convey, I'm guessing.
My bitchy question would be, I suppose, have we also been unwomanning the front lines for 20 years? I certainly served with women, both at sea and ashore, during my navy career. The innocent version of "unmanned" could apply to both sexes, if we allow Man to stand as synonym for Humanity, but would the event/thing that umnans a man also unman a woman? Is it the same process, or does it take something different to unwoman a woman than it does to unman a man?
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I guess you can count me as one of those 15, as it had never occurred to me that "unman" might mean anything other than "a way of conveying the utter symbolic eviseration of a man, to leave him as a whimpering pile of pu$$y" as you put it, until reading this post.
I don't think there's an equivalent term for women, for two reasons which seem to oppose each other.
- Chicks don't have the same deep-seated fear of being desexed, the way that men seem to. There's no male equivalent insult to "castrating bitch" for example.
-The other side of it is that, when words that equate to female, like "girl" and "pu$$y" are synonymous with coward (whether that 's fair or not is besides the point), it seems that chicks just aren't expected to possess courage (whether manly or not) and virtue in the first place. Maybe we've just got nothing to lose.
I dunno what the answer is, or if there is one. I'm just playing along. |
And thank you for playing, which is all I intended to do here.
Really, the only thing that got me started was the idea that the people who thought up that spot probably didn't realize that 15 of us might pr!ck up our ears at the idea that the US Navy is trying to intentionally unman its own front line. (I know, we're so few we can be written off as relics.)
The only equivalent term I can think of as a way of insulting women plays right into what you were talking about (that "unmanned" as insult just plays into bullshit ideas of what men and women are supposed to be). That is, I think we used to say of a woman that she had unsexed herself when she'd dared step into some non-traditional role. Interesting in that I don't recall any sense that an outside agency could do that to her, it was something she did of her own volition.
But as you say, this wouldn't be so much an equivalent as an other side of the same coin. And in that sense of women being on and near the front lines these days, if we wanted to be old-school about it all, I suppose the spot could say, "Unsexing the front lines for 20 years."
I know, we could have two spots, one for boys (Unmanning), one for girls (Manning). Or, "Out the airplanes and into the computer rooms, Gentlemen!" and "Out of the kitchens and into the trenches, Ladies!"
Your point about there being no equivalent insult reminds me, though, of a debate I had some years ago with a woman who argued that the c-word should never, ever, ever be used, and part of her argument is that there is no equivalent insult applied to men. I begged to differ. The equivalent is cocksucker, a word applied in my experience almost exclusively to men to imply that they're such low, vile things that they'd lower themselves to performing an act that only a low and vile woman should do. It's generally said with the same hatred and revulsion and intention to belittle. And, upon examination, it really goes quite a way toward illustrating that misogyny and homophobia are different facets of the same dark gem presented as a gift to the world by misogynist and/or homophobic men.
More puzzling than all of this, though, is why I have to place an exclamation point in pr!ck to get it past the swear filter, but I can leave cocksucker as it is. |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:56 am Post subject: |
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The only context I can think of for a woman being unsexed would be Lady MacBeth's soliloqy,
"Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty"
She's not aiming towards a particularly flattering idea of manhood there, certainly, though the military might be fully in favor of it.
AS for the insults, it's always been a mystery why words for something that would bring pleasure to give and recieve are synonymous with being low and vile anyway. |
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