Chris Jones posted:
> On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 10:49 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote:
>> this distasteful or dull as "wimps"
> which Alison was quoting as a closure to free speech (so not Alison)
>
> Perhaps one of the more obvious homophobic discursive formations, with
> thanks to Foucault.
Interesting, Chris -- Do you have a reference to Foucault? _History of
Sexuality_? Should have most of Foucault on my shelves, or be able to find
it on the Web. Or is in in Deuluze's biography?
My first reaction was to think, "No!" followed pretty quickly by "Yes?"
I'd guess it enters (relatively late? -- "wimp" is first recorded from the
USA in the 1920s) as a term into homophobic discourse via an association of
the stereotype "gay = ineffectual", and thus "wimp = gay".
But it could as readily, perhaps even more so, be seen as a sexist reflex --
"women = ineffectual" and thus "wimp = unmanly, womanish".
(There actually seems to be a rare occurence of [slang] "wimp -- a woman" <=
WOMAN, though more prominently we have [slang] "wimp = A feeble or
ineffectual person; one who is spineless or ‘wet’" <= WHIMPER.)
It also occurred to me that if you ran a discourse analysis of some of the
posts that have been generated in this thread, there's an interesting
dimension of (specifically UK) English class connotation about much of the
language, and the way it is deployed, in certain of the posts.
But my making that observation in this context is rather like drawing
attention to the interesting patterns of shadows to be seen on the walls as
Rome burns. <g>
Best,
Robin
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