Archive for the ‘Social life’ Category

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Now We Are Nine, a Journey to the East

June 6, 2018

(Underwear and race / ethnicity / nationality / religion among gay men.)

News from Daily Jocks: a birthday for the Australian premium men’s underwear firms 2eros and Supawear (brothers in sexwear):


(#1) 2eros


(#2) Supawear

Notably, Asian models for the birthday celebration. Most sexunderwear firms are very light on black models, Latino models, Asian models (of all ethnicities and nationalities), and, for that matter, identifiably Jewish models. Andrew Christian is, on the whole, a stunning exception: his advertising reflects the use of “exotic” models in the fashion industry rather than the custom in the premium men’s underwear industry of relying on models whose looks are pumped-up mirrors of their customers’. The customers are mostly SAE-D — standard average European-descended — men (“standard average European” here is a little linguist’s joke, making reference to Standard Average European (SAE) languages, in Benjamin Lee Whorf’s terminology); the products either flatter their self-images or feed their fantasies of exotic men (for certain values of exotic).

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Posted in Ambiguity, Books, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity, Social interactions, Social life, Spelling, Truncation, Underwear | 1 Comment »

bunny ears

May 21, 2018

It started with a candid photo of people at a social gathering, with one person making a V hand gesture behind the head of the person next to them, much as in this photo of pro tennis players:

(#1) Swiss jock jokery:  Stan Wawrinka doing the ‘bunny ears’ gesture behind Roger Federer

Bunny-earing someone is a prank (NOAD on the noun prank: ‘a practical joke or mischievous act’), pranks being a very culture-specific form of play + humor that deserve analytic attention that I’m not able to provide, but will just take as a cultural given here.

To come: a bit of the history of bunny-earing; senses of the expression bunny ears (illustrating (mostly metaphorical) sense developments in many directions); and uses of the V hand gesture (illustrating symbolic functions of many different kinds; the gesture itself is “just stuff”, without intrinsic meaning, which can be exploited for many different symbolic purposes). The act, the meanings of the linguistic expression for the act, the cultural significances (or “social meanings”) of the act.

(more…)

Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Gesture, Language and ethnicity, Language and plants, Language and religion, Metaphor, Music, Play, Pranks, Signs and symbols, Social life, Words and things | Leave a Comment »

Glycoscience in the Royal Society of London

May 18, 2018

… and, oh yes, women.

In the Stanford Report (the daily faculty-staff news release) yesterday, a bulletin (by Kate Lewis) from the School of Humanities and Sciences, “Carolyn Bertozzi elected to Royal Society: Carolyn Bertozzi, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, has been elected as one of this year’s ten new Foreign Members to the Royal Society for her pioneering work in the field of bioorthogonal chemistry”:

(Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service)

Bertozzi’s current research focus is in the field of glycoscience, the study of sugars on cell surfaces. As a self-described “glycoscience-lifer,” Bertozzi said she hopes that the “integration of all my contributions somehow elevates the visibility of the glycoscience field, which can have real benefits to human health,” including understanding the role sugars play in the development of cancer and inflammation.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Science news, Social life, Stanford | Leave a Comment »

trigger finger

May 16, 2018

I had this affliction, for about three months. It involved myalgia — that’s the name of the symptom, muscle pain — that limited my movements, produced frequent nasty cramps in several parts of my body, made me miserable and depressed. Among the affected muscles were those in my fingers, which cramped up painfully without warning. Especially my ring finger (third finger, left hand).

Eventually, it was seen to be a side effect of the very powerful statin drug I was taking (for blood pressure and cholesterol control), generic atorvastatin, trade name Lipitor, a very powerful statin prescribed at maximum dose. Which was breaking down muscle fibers. Essentially, I was being poisoned by one of my medicines.

That’s now over — I went off the Lipitor three months ago and recently started small doses of the steroid prednisone for symptomatic relief —  and I feel very much better, but an odd effect remains. My ring finger occasionally gets stuck in a bent position. No pain, no swelling or anything, just stuck, as here:

(#1) Stuck bent finger (workdesk spathiphyllum plant as background)

I can push it back with my other hand, and it makes a little pop! as it resumes its normal working position.

It’s called trigger finger, fancy name tenosynovitis. And it has nothing to do with the Lipitor poisoning.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of medicine, Metaphor, My life, Social life, Technical and ordinary language | 3 Comments »

Call me by my full name

May 13, 2018

The 4/16 One Big Happy takes on the world of nicknames:

Cylene says: when you refer to my father, don’t say Billy (the nickname), say William (the full name).

Ruthie hears: don’t say /bɪli/, say /wɪljǝm/.

So Ruthie overgeneralizes.

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Nicknames, Social life | Leave a Comment »

Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar

May 12, 2018

(On the social and sexual lives of gay men, with photos, so not to everyone’s taste. Almost surely not to Facebook’s taste.)

Recent Facebook conversation, initiated by poster J1:

First time being called “Daddy” while playing with a guy at a bar. Bittersweet!

With a response from J2:

Yeah, I can see the bittersweet part, for sure. Heh. I remember you as a total twink.

And from me:

Ah, those days. For me, it was papacito from a cute server at a Mexican restaurant. I was charmed.

daddy here is the name of a social identity, a gay “type” (like twink, bear, muscle-hunk, or leatherman); and by extension, of a subculture of men of this type; and by a different extension, of a role or relationship between men, between an older and a younger man. Such identities, subcultures, and roles can intersect and combine, as here:

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Posted in Gender, Gender and sexuality, Grammatical categories, Homosexuality, Metaphor, Music, My life, Social life, Spanish | Leave a Comment »

Dad’s tall tales

April 28, 2018

Two Calvin and Hobbes cartoons that came past me recently, showing Calvin’s dad spouting misinformation about birth and infant development:

(#1)

(#2)

A form of parental kidding, almost always performed by a father rather than a mother, and most commonly directed at a boy — here a deliberate scheme of messing with the kid’s mind.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Social life | 3 Comments »

Perfectionist in pink sequin

March 20, 2018

(Underwear guys, gay male culture, lots of pink, but nothing pointedly carnal. Use your judgment.)

The spur is yesterday’s Daily Jocks ad, for a Marco Marco pink sequin jock-thong, here in two views, with my caption poem:

(#1) Perfectionist in pink sequin
(#2) Patrick’s pouch

Patrick dreamed he
Pranced at the Pansy Party in
Nothing but his
Pink sequin ballcap, his
Pink leather harness, and his
Pink sequin jock-thong

Still shopping for the
Perfect
Pink sequin pumps

(more…)

Posted in Captions, Clothing, Color, Fashion, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and gesture, Language in advertising, Language play, Movies and tv, Music, Social life, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

The Jargon Matrix

April 12, 2017

Yesterday’s Dilbert takes us into a dark world of language, the Jargon Matrix:

(#1)

The Matrix, but with jargon from the world of technology businesses.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Jargon, Movies and tv, Pidgins and creoles, Slang, Social life, Technical and ordinary language, Usage, Usage advice | 1 Comment »

Lauren la flâneuse

March 15, 2017

In the NYT Book Review on 3/5/1 7, under the heading “Walk on By” — subtitle (in print) “A tribute to the pleasures of aimless urban exploration, female style”, (on-line) “A Celebration of Women’s Pleasure in Wandering a City” — a review by Diane Johnson of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016).

(#1)

The cover art captures well Elkin’s reconfiguring the identity of the flâneur, for nearly 200 years the exclusive property of men, as a female identity, the flâneuse. Still urban and modern and primarily European in outlook, but now available to women (of independent spirit).

(more…)

Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Language and the sexes, Social life | Leave a Comment »

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