The "G" Word

I have been talking, in writing and not, online and off, about my ongoing "leg pimping project" for a couple of years.  Now, apparently, Garry Trudeau has plagiarized me!  I'm so flattered!  I can't think of anyone by whom I'd rather be plagiarized.

Just kidding.  Trudeau has not really plagiarized me (though I really would be flattered -- you know, right before I asked for money).  Trudeau's amputee character B.D., who, incidentally, just happened to lose his cartoon leg in cartoon Iraq right around the same time I was recuperating from giving up one of my real ones in a clean and spiffy real-life hospital, has recently gone in search of someone to "pimp [his] gimp." However, neither Trudeau nor I, middle-aged white folk both, invented the expression "pimp," and certainly not its current meaning synonymous with what our generation meant when we used to say "trick out." 

In fact, neither of us is the first person to apply it in this type of context.  It's been out there awhile.  Synchronicity.  Furthermore, when B.D. actually says, "Pimp my gimp," Trudeau specifically proves he is not plagiarizing me by using another word neither of us coined, which also just happens to be a word I would never, ever use, not even in jest, one I'm not even comfortable using in direct quotation, with quotation marks around it and everything.*

Yes, the "G" word, that's the one I mean.

In spite of the fact that I respect and even love a little (in a distinctly non-creepy, non-stalkerish way, of course)  many fine bloggers who use this word sort of blithely, sort of defiantly, always self-referentially, I cannot use it at all.  I can't call someone this affectionately or joshingly.  I can't even call someone this if it's part of his or her own self-chosen identity, online or off.  Because of how I was raised, in my head it's just like the "N" word, only for people with disabilities and pan-racial in coverage.  I was told never, never, never to use this word, just as I was told never, never, never to use that "N" word.  Never, never, never.  The "G" word is mean and cruel and evil-intentioned, I was told. 

This conditioning has proven unbreakable.

When you look in the dictionary, chances are you will be told that no one knows from where exactly the "G" word derives.  I no longer own a copy of the OED (bad story involving flooding and mold), and can't afford an online subscription, but a little web research points to the possibility of a low German origin in a similar word meaning "hooked."  This sort of supports what I was told by my parents..

My parents were both Jewish.  My father's mother was German and spoke several languages, including German.  My mother's father was Russian and spoke three or four languages, including Yiddish, which I understand to be an amalgamation of German, Hebrew, and other stuff.  So when my parents taught me that the "G" word was a vile Yiddish epithet, a slur used only by bigots, I believed them. 

Though both my parents were of a scholarly bent, and although both came from backgrounds which lead me to believe they might have known what they were talking about with respect to this word, it is true that neither was a linguistic expert.  However, Webster's and Dictionary.com place the word as showing up in America sometime around the 1920s.  This also tends, in my mind, to support the idea that it might have had a Yiddish source, because of the influx of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants (among them several of my own antecedents) in the early part of the 20th century, folks likely to have brought this word with them along with less offensive words such as "tchotchke" and "schmaltz," but also other words one should use with care such as "putz" or "schmuck."

So, I don't know for sure if my parents were correct.  And I'm not going to tell other people how to use this word.  If it's a power word for you, I'm not going to tell you not to throw it wherever it makes you feel strong.  Furthermore, I will refrain from pointing out how I wince when someone temporarily injured with a sprained ankle or whatnot uses this word self-referentially, unable to avoid feeling the same way in such an instance that I feel when a white person gets a deep suntan and then calls him/herself "black" or a "[N-word]."  I will just say that this is what I was taught, that the "G" word is a cruel slur and not a cute little nickname. 

I cannot refrain from pointing out, however, that when I have not heard this word used self-referentially, I have always heard it used disdainfully, as a way of belittling and devaluing the person to whom it was being applied.  Describing, yes, but diminishing at the same time  And that kind of experience also tends to support what I was taught.

So? 

So nothing, really.  I'm just getting this off my chest. 

Of course, "pimping" can mean some pretty unattractive things, too.  But that's different!  Right?  Right?

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(Hat-tip to Blue Lily for pointing out the Doonesbury series, which really was funny, especially the part about payment.  Hat-tip also to Lady Bracknell for linking to Clear Canes.  They really do have an intriguing line, not just including the sparkly and the shiny-shiny, but all kinds of other flashy options to make your stick-using experience more stylish without busting your budget.)
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*Ask that pope guy how good quotation marks are at neutralizing the offensive power of words. (back up)

Comments

[Ron Sullivan]

I'd wondered if you were seeing that Doonesbury set, but by the time I'd lurched from the breakfast table to the computer with my second cup of coffee, I invariably forgot it.

I'm that way about the N word.My parents raised me right, I guess. If we cussed (swore flippantly, took the name of the lordthygod in vain) we got pepper on our tongues. (This meant more to whitebread kids being raised in central Pennsylvania in the '50s than it would to, say, me now. It was an owie.) However, if we used the N word, there was that bar of Fels Naphtha soap on the windowsill over the sink by way of consequences. Getting your mouth washed out with soap is pretty much a universal Yeucch, much worse than pepper.

It was never explained to us in so many words, but the idea behind that was the "unto the least of these my children" thing: You're hurting Jesus AND your brothers and sisters simultaneously. I wouldn't have characterized my parents as liberal, particularly; it was just one of those principles.

[patry]

I was thinking about your "disabled" post and the power of words today when I read a piece in the New York Times about some health research on older adults. It said that they (or "we" because it's all a continuum) do better on memory and skill tests if they haven't recently heard any negative words or
statements directed at their age group. As such, all those "cute" birthday cards that make fun of senior moments, etc., and the pervasive attitudes they reflect are really an abomination.

Since most of us experience our own humanity as something unique and undefinable, why do we find it acceptable to label others in ways that diminish their confidence?

Thanks for continuing to hammer away at this, and for all the times you remind people that emotional blindness is not okay. It takes a very real toll.

[Sara]

Ron, I don't know if Jesus objects to the "G" word (we were never close; there's been some bad blood between our families, I'm afraid), but I'm glad the "N" word is thought -- by some at least -- to offend him.

I've had my mouth washed out with soap, too, but at our house it was Ivory. I can still taste it. Nevertheless, one of the first traits I acquired upon attaining putative adulthood was a vicious potty mouth. (I can swear in several languages, including, thanks to a good friend, Arabic.) Not wishing to live my entire life as someone with no class, I have striven to repair this folly of youth, but I must confess that even now I often find it a strain not to drop F-bombs in polite company.

And yet...I cannot use the "G" word. I guess the difference is that the F-bombs aren't mean-spirited.

And thank you, Patry. That is a very interesting piece of research indeed.

I like what you say about emotional blindness, even though I am certainly capable of plenty of it myself. Another blogger I've been reading while I've been thinking about all these things is Wheelchair Dancer . In taking the Times to task constantly for consistently sensationalistic and narrow reporting on issues relating to disability -- a particular flavor of bias the degree of which I was not even aware until I started reading her and also Blue Lily -- she challenges our institutionalized prejudices and cracks the whole discussion wide open. How should we speak of ourselves and each other? What is acceptable? What is unacceptable to say, even though it may accurately reflect many people's truths, and how do we say it instead?

When I say "us" and "we," I hope it is clear that I mean all of us, regardless of body type.

I have far from the last word to offer on any of this. But since thinking (and feeling, carefully) before we speak, even in writing, is a worthwhile practice, it's good to know people whose words I respect feel it's a conversation worth keeping alive.

[The Goldfish]

The "G" word was shocking to me when I first heard disabled folks refer to themselves in that way, because here in Britain, the use is purely a kinky S&M thing. I can't get rid of that association in my mind.

We tend to use "crip" which again, a lot of people are uncomfortable about. But I suppose I have never heard anyone use cripple in a really malicious way - in fact it's used all the time in other contexts like "Rising interest rates will cripple the housing market" and so on.

On a related note, I have put you in the disability section of my blogroll, but it's a roll of folks who write about this sort of subject matter.

[Sara]

Goldfish, I tried replying to this yesterday, but we had power issues at my house (electricity, not megalomania -- for once) and my computer kept crashing, which I found demoralizing. So sorry for the delay, and here I go again:

Thank you for educating me re that special British meaning for the "G" word. That is soooooo funny -- and yet another reason for me to keep it off my keyboard and out of my mouth. Ha!

As for "crip," it's as you say: I've never heard anyone hurl that word at another person or seen anyone wrinkle his or her nose distastefully while uttering it. Perhaps it happened more in Dickensian London, but, you know, we just aren't there, another mote of progress for which to be grateful. I haven't even heard people in the U.S. use the word "crippled" to apply to humans at all for years and years. A person who limps, walks with crutches/cane(s) or uses a wheelchair is more likely, at least as far as my experience goes, to be described as simply that: a person who limps, walks with crutches/cane(s) or uses a wheelchair. Maybe other people have other stories to tell.

Also, since you mentioned that special British meaning of the "G" word, I have to tell you that every time I hear "crip," because I was raised in a suburb of L.A. (but not a tough neighborhood, not by any stretch of the imagination; we had freely roaming peacocks for goodness' sake), the first thing I always think of is the gang, as in the "Crips" vs. the "Bloods." And that always makes people who call themselves "crips" seem rather tough to me, even after I blow by that meaning in my mind and on to what the people using it are talking about.

Heh -- funny old world. Thanks for stopping by for this moment of cultural exchange. :)