Tag Archives: feminism

Give It Some Pivot

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Linguistics, Mixed Metaphors and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hydrology, geology, acoustics and more combine in one magnificently muddled mixed metaphor:

When [Emily] Pankhurst ordered her followers to stop bombing the British state and start helping to arm it for the war effort [after 1914], it left some of the most radicalized to fall into “a feminist-fascist estuary formed in the crater generated by Mrs Pankhurst’s pivot from law-breaking insurgency to conformist cheerleading”. — ‘It’s a scary time’: Sophie Lewis on the ‘enemy feminisms’ that enable the far right, The Guardian, 21ii25

Among the baffling questions raised by the metaphor is this: Why “estuary”? It would make sense to say “[fall into] a stagnant and stinking feminist-fascist pool formed in the crater…” But estuaries aren’t stagnant and craters don’t create estuaries anyway. Rivers do when they flow into a sea or lake. What would the river and sea represent?

I’ve no idea. And I would find it very difficult to match that mixed metaphor without making it seemed contrived or confected. Mixed metaphors are a zen thing: for best effect, they’ve got to flow from the fingertips or float off the tongue without effort, welling up from a bottomless crater of bollocks like a meth-smoking bull in a china-shop riding a feral tsunami of unhinged imagery and clashing comparativization.

Kim Pickings

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

As a keyly committed core component of the anti-racist community, I’ve always been a passionate admirer of Kimberlé Crenshaw, the Black legal genius who conceived the corely committed key concept of intersectionality, the pro-feminist, anti-racist ideo-matrix whereby multiply impactive factors of oppression around race, gender and class are recognized to overlap in terms of toxic impact on corely vulnerable communities of color, gender, and class…

So, imagine my excitement when I saw that the Guardian was engaging core issues around Ms Crenshaw in a keynote article itself passionately penned by a Journalist of Color:

Kimberlé Crenshaw: the woman who revolutionised feminism – and landed at the heart of the culture wars, by Aamna Mohdin

From police brutality to sexual harassment, the lawyer fights to ensure black women’s experiences are not ignored. So why are her ideas being denounced? — The Guardian, 12xi20

“Why indeed?” I interrogated to myself as I began to read. But imagine my horror when I came across this passage in terms of the core article:

Crenshaw’s early academic work, meanwhile, was also an important building block in the development of critical race theory, which revolutionised the understanding of race in the US’s legal system and is taught in law schools across the country. — Kimberlé Crenshaw…

What is it coming to when the Guardian uses everyday English to engage issues around the keyly vital work of a Black legal genius? Huh? The Guardian should of course have put it like this:

Crenshaw’s early academic work, meanwhile, was also a core building block in terms of the development of critical race theory, which revolutionised the understanding of race in the US’s legal system and is taught in law schools across the country.

And “core foundational keystone in terms of the gestational development…” would have been even better…

Elsewhere other-engageable:

• Ex-term-in-nate! — incendiarily interrogating issues around “in terms of” dot dot dot