There are some words and phrases used within the English language
- some old, some new -
that really bother me.
Here's a list of the ones that I've thought of so far,
along with my reasons for hating
them.
I'll undoubtedly be continually adding to it as more come to mind.
When you prefix a statement with to be honest
,
does it mean that everything else you tell me is a lie?
If so, then maybe this self-serving interjection is also a lie.
Someone has just bared his/her soul to you by finally summoning up the courage to tell you something that he/she is sure that even you would find hard to believe, and all you can do is respond with the cruel accusation that he/she must be joking? No! Why won't you respond with an attentive ear and a caring heart?
Why don't you refer to him/her as a child
?
The term kid
carries the rude sense that
it
is an annoying inconvenience whom you, as an adult
,
would like to distance yourself from.
The term child
,,on the other hand, carries the nurturing sense that
he/she is a young person who needs lots of love, care, and guidance
as he/she grows up to eventually join you as a fellow adult
.
How can you be so cruel as to refer to your own, or even to someone else's,
child as an accident
?
Any child who hears him/herself being referred to as an accident
interprets this as proof that you don't really care for him/her.
Is any child ever an accident
just because some contraceptive measure failed?
Of course not!
You know full well that no contraceptive measure is 100% reliable.
You know full well that each and every sexual encounter,
regardless of whatever contraceptive measure is being used,
absolutely can result in the creation of a brand new human being.
No child is ever an accident
!
You only have your own selfish, foolish behaviour to blame.
Is your wife just an impersonal object
that
happens to occupy space within your house?
Are you so ashamed of her that you feel the need to distance yourself from her?
Do you regret that you're married to her and/or that she's married to you?
Why won't you openly claim her as your very own intimate possession? Why won't you boldly acknowledge her to be the one very special lady whom you've committed to lovingly care for for the rest of your life? Since you've committed to being 100% sexually faithful to just her, you ought to be welcoming (and even creating) opportunities to subtly, but unashamedly, let others know that you've found your mate.
Call her my wife
!
She didn't marry you so that
she could perform the duties of a wife for any man -
she wants to do those things for only you.
Let everyone know how much you cherish
the lady who unconditionally entrusted herself to your care
by never hesitating to let others know
that she alone is your most precious possession.
Free Counselling:
If you don't cherish her then work on it!
Since you want her to be 100% sexually faithful to just you, make it easy for her by only ever treating her in ways that make her want to be having sex with you.
At least you're acknowledging that she's yours, but I can't help but wonder if the public humility might be insincere. Do you welcome her company? Do you care what she thinks? Do you seriously consider her advice? Do you treat her at least as well as you treat yourself? Do you forgive her faults or do you accuse her of them? When you're having sex with her, are you selfishly using her as you hastily attempt t satiate your own needs or are you selflessly applying yourself to lovingly fulfilling her needs? Do you even know what her sexual needs are?
Is your wife really half of you?
No!
She's just as much a whole person as you are.
What she is half of, and what you're also half of, is your marriage
so, assuming that the humility is sincere,
calling her our better half
would be much more appropriate.
Even then, though, half
isn't the right term
because being wedded to one another makes you, as a married couple,
a far greater single being than the sum of the two of you as individuals.
Why do you use a term in public that belittles your husband
?
What would you think of him if you ever heard him, in public,
referring to you as his wify
?
Of course you can (in my opinion, should),
within the privacy of your domestic life,
be submissive babies
for each other
as both of you create opportunities
that seductively invite and warmly welcome
each other's gentle, tender, loving care.
When out in public, however, you should be giving your husband
the respect that he deserves and is due.
Isn't this exactly what you expect from him whenever he mentions you in public?
To be clear, I'm referring to the word partner
when it's used in the sense of domestic partner
.
Is that all your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, or whatever is to you?
Just someone who
lives with you,
has sex with you,
often eats meals with you,
might have some children with you,
etc?
I'm not doubting that that's what he/she is to you,
but am asking if that's all he/she is to you.
Is your domestic life merely a convenient business arrangement?
Is it subject to
mergers (polygamy),
divestitures (divorce, separation, break-up, etc),
escape clauses (prenuptial agreements),
etc?
My assessment, after having observed many of these relationships,
is that there are at least two reasons for using
the incredibly unaffectionate term partner
.
One is that you're wanting to use a gender neutral, non-intimate term
to identify the person with whom you indeed are having sex.
The other is that you're deliberately avoiding any term
that forces you to see your relationship as being permanent.
If that's all you want then that's almost okay
because it's almost no one else's business.
Who else's business, besides you and your partner
, might it be?
Your children - some of whom may not even exist yet - that's who!
Since no contraceptive method is 100% reliable, you absolutely know that you're risking having children whenever you're having sex with each other. Since children deserve a stable home, why are you risking having children before you're sure you can provide a stable home for them? If you're sure that you can provide a stable home for them then why are you scared to make it so by marrying one another?
Shouldn't your primary concern be what's best for your children
as opposed to what you selfishly want for yourselves?
If both of you really are sure that you'll be together for life
then you'd have no problem with being married to one another,
and, yes, with then using those intimate terms
husband
and wife
.
As long as either of you isn't sure,
you should stop risking having children
which, of course, means that you should stop having sex.
Have you noticed that I've made a 100% solid case for no sex before marriage without appealing to moral living? It's just the responsible way to live!
What does significant
mean?
If you have a job then your boss is significant
.
If you're a student then your teacher is significant
.
If you're a member of a congregation then your pastor is significant
.
Is the person with whom you're romantically involved
no more important to you than any of these?
I guess significant
is being abused to mean most important
,
but, even then, it certainly isn't implying a very strong attachment.
What does other
mean?
I think it's supposed to mean other person in your life
,
and strongly suspect that it's being used in order to
conceal the gender of that other
person.
So, assuming I have this right, your significant other
is the most important person in your life who isn't yourself,
and that, for whatever reason(s) you may have,
you don't want anyone else to know his/her gender.
What an odd way to refer to the one whom you're claiming to love:
You're more important to yourself than he/she is.
You're embarrassed to reveal his/her gender.
You don't feel a very strong attachment to him/her.
I'd say, given all these danger signals, that it's definitely time to move on.
The term lover
of course means one who loves
.
It used to mean one who deliberately chose to unconditionally care for another without even requiring sex.
Now it essentially means one who is having sex without necessarily caring.
This transition paralleled the degradation of sex from selfless to selfish,
and roughly progressed as follows:
Now that we're married to one another, we can finally start to more deeply express our love for each other by fulfilling each other's sexual needs.
Now that we're engaged and will be marrying each other, surely we can start to deal with the sexual desire that we feel for each other.
We really love each other so it's okay if we start having sex.
We've had a lot of good dates, and we get along really well, so it's about time that we find out if we're also sexually compatible.
We've had a few dates, and we both want to have sex, so let's do it.
Our first date went well so let's top it off by having sex.
Let's have sex to see if we really want to start dating.
We have no desire to be together but let's call on each other each time either of us wants to have sex.
Having sex, in and of itself, isn't love! Is rape love? Is a booty call love? Is using sex to ensnare a boy/girlfriend love? Is having sex because you yourself feel that you need it so badly love? Is having sex with a stranger in order to initiate a surrogate pregnancy love?
Having sex for any reason whatsoever, when it isn't within a marriage,
can't possibly have anything to do with true love
simply because true love can't possibly exist outside of a marriage.
True love is unconditional -
a wedding, however, can be cancelled right up until the moment that it takes place.
If you're having sex with someone to whom you aren't married
then you're not loving or expressing love to him/her -
you're abusing the most intimate personal interaction possible
- the irreversible entanglement of two people in sexual union -
so that you can use him/her for your own selfish pleasure
.
The word gay
used to mean a kind of lively, frivolous happiness.
Sadly, the homosexual community has ruined this wonderfully descriptive term
by appropriating it as the noun/adjective that describes
their own extremely sinful life style
.
Gay
used to be a very pretty girl's name.
I rather suspect that those who still bear it
probably now wish that they'd been given a different name.
The lyrics of some songs can no longer be listened to without cringing. For example:
don we now our gay apparel.
I'm in no way afraid of homosexuality or of those who practice it. In fact, I have sincere respect for those who practice this behaviour, as much as I despise it, because they're fellow human beings. The fact that I openly and boldly speak against the practice itself doesn't change this.
It's intellectually dishonest and deliberately manipulative to describe someone who has an extreme distaste for and/or an unwaverable belief against some particular conduct as having a fear of it. The mere fact that you're convinced that some act or concept should be considered acceptable doesn't make you right - it also doesn't make me wrong simply because I disagree. In fact, I rather suspect that your incessant need to continually try to shame others into seeing it your way ultimately reveals that, somewhere deep within your own heart, even you yourself strongly suspect that you're wrong.
Yes, there surely are men who've abandoned their children,
and who don't even bother paying any kind of child support.
Is it fair, though, to refer to them as being dead beat dads
?
I ask because it seems that women who've similarly abandoned their children
are never referred to as being dead beat moms
.
In fact, when a mother abandons her child in the most conclusive way -
having a doctor deliberately murder her non-yet-born, entirely defenseless baby
right out of her own womb -
she's thought of as having made an entirely reasonable choice.
I'll consider removing the phrase dead beat dads
from this list
when we start referring to a mother who abandons or aborts her child
as being a dead beat mom
.
It seems that feminists don't really want equality.
What a succinct way to summarize what appears, on the surface, to be a truly equality-based philosophy. Surely nothing could possibly be wrong with allowing women to make their own choices? The problem with this phrase is that it actually has nothing at all to do with allowing women to make any and all choices. It's an incomplete statement that has a very specific hidden meaning.
The full statement is
a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body
.
Even this completed statement sounds deceptively good,
but that's only because it, too, has an even more specific hidden meaning.
It's sole use is to justify a mother's choice
to abort her own, not-yet-born baby.
So let's test the honesty of this statement. Is a mother who aborts her baby really a woman doing what she wants to do with her own body? No way! A mother who aborts her baby is, in reality, doing what she wants to do with her baby's body. Let's have a brief look at the relevant biology.
Conception occurs when a freely moving sperm fertilizes a freely moving egg within one of a woman's two fallopian tubes. The (now) baby then continues to freely move into the (now) mother's womb where he/she begins to grow, entirely on his/her own, for several weeks. The umbilical cord and placenta, which eventually do connect the baby to his/her mother, don't form until about the sixth week of pregnancy. Even then, they belong to the baby - not to the mother.
It isn't the mother's womb that forms the placenta and umbilical cord - both grow out from the baby. It's the baby-owned/controlled placenta that eventually breaks into and connects to the mother's circulatory system. The baby then takes control of his/her mother, absorbing nourishment from her, eliminating waste into her, and flooding her with hormones that instruct her body to do all the right things.
All of this is under the baby's - not the mother's - control. The baby's body isn't part of his/her mother's body at all. It's the baby who's fully independent and imposing significant control over his/her mother.
So now we know for sure that a woman's right to choose
is, in reality, an extremely cleverly worded lie that's used to promote
a mother's right to unceremoniously discard her very own (not yet born) baby
just because she doesn't want and/or refuses to love him/her.
To put it bluntly, this deceptive phrase is used by feminists
to justify a most serious form of child abuse!
Does this phrase refer to the right of anyone to procreate? No, it doesn't. It's used by feminists for a very specific purpose - to shame people into outwardly agreeing that a mother should have the right to abort her not-yet-born baby.
Of course every woman - just like every man - should have the right to choose whether or not she'd like to have a baby. But just when is it that she has the right to make that choice? It's the very same moment when a man makes that very same choice - when she chooses to have sex! Since women clearly do know - because they hold men responsible for knowing - that choosing to have sex means risking a pregnancy, she should be making her choice very wisely. Why should she then be granted the additional choice to commit a serious crime - premeditatedly murdering a human being, and an innocent and helpless one at that - just because she made a foolish choice that resulted in an undesired consequence?
Is a man granted this additional choice? No! Do feminists really want equality? Apparently not! While they expect fathers to fully live up to their responsibilities, they demand that mothers be allowed to fully shirk their responsibilities. This doesn't seem like anywhere near equality to me.
Feminists tell us how much they hate mansplaining
because it's when a man wants to show off to a woman
by boastfully explaining something to her that she already knows.
Maybe it's time that women stopped trying to womansplain
men!
Since no woman would want any man to claim that he knows more about women than she does,
I'm hoping, in their mantra of equality, that women will be willing to accept
that I, a man, just might know a bit more about men than they do.
I'm now going to mansplain
something about men to women
that they clearly don't, for the most part, already understand.
Let's start by asking a very logical question. How can any man know that some woman already knows something if she doesn't tell him? The obvious answer is that he can't because no one - man or woman - can read minds. This already does away with the manipulative claim that men are intentionally wanting to explain things to women that they already know.
So what is it that men are actually doing when they take the time to explain things that they know to women whom they encounter? Men have been told, time and time again, that women lack or are denied all kinds of opportunities to advance, to be fully educated, etc. Well, guess what? They've been listening and are believing these things.
What they're doing is taking the time and putting in the effort to try to personally contribute to women being given a fair break. They believe in equality, and are doing their level best to try to help women achieve it. How are they rewarded for their time and effort? Rather than being thanked and appreciated, they're publicly shamed and humiliated by feminists who ought to know better.
My favourite example of this occurred at a conference on some subject (I forget what it was). Two of its attendees were a female author who wrote a truly excellent book on that subject and an esteemed male professor who researched and taught that subject. He noticed that she seemed to be particularly interested in the subject, so, being a professor, he started discussing it with her. Not recognizing who she was, he then proceeded to innocently commit a fatal feminist crime - he pulled out a copy of her book and began to explain it to her.
Her reaction was to become majorly offended that he would dare to explain her own book to her. Was she being even remotely reasonable? Shouldn't she have rather been extremely honoured that this esteemed professor considered her book to be the best one on the subject?
Why not? Is it always true, when a crime is committed, that the perpetrator bears 100% of the blame and that the victim bears no blame at all? I don't think so.
I believe that an open-minded investigation into all such incidents would reveal that, in most cases, the victim was a significant contributor to what happened. I think that we must fully investigate all crimes, and whenever we find that a victim has contributed to aggravating the perpetrator's eventual action(s), that we absolutely must call him/her on it.
Do we really want people to get away with tormenting others,
usually in private where no one else ever becomes aware of it,
until a tormentee finally cracks and commits a crime?
Why shouldn't a victim bear a reasonable proportion of the blame
for behaving in such an evil and (what ought to be a) socially unacceptable way?
Our current refusal to victim blame
is not only unfair to the perpetrators
but also destructive to our society!
There are many occasions on which it's entirely appropriate to congratulate
someone.
There are others, however, on which, at least to me, it makes no sense at all.
One, that I find particularly puzzling, is when a baby is born.
When each of our 13 children was born,
there were always a number of people who would congratulate
me.
Why?
What did I do that was so amazing?
Was it that, each time one of them was born,
they were seeing irrefutable proof that
I was still managing to successfully have sex with my wife?
I just don't know.
So why did I leave this word for last? You guessed it - so that I could conclude with another trite use of this abused extolment. Here goes!
Congratulations! You've reached the end of my list of annoying words and phrases!
| Dave Mielke | |
| EMail: | Dave@Mielke.cc |
| Twitter: | @Dave_Mielke |