“Girardo Cagapisto [a twelfth-century Milanese civic official] is significant for another reason, too: his name. It has not been stressed by most historians that so many of the Milanese political leadership had surnames beginning Caga- or Caca-, that is to say ‘shit.’ The niceties of earlier generations of scholarship led them to neglect this, and older historians at most refer to it glancingly and uneasily […] but it was certainly important for Milanese identity and self-representation. Cagapisto probably means 'shit-pesto’ – as, for example, in the pasta sauce. In the case of the two brothers Gregorio and Guilielmo Cacainarca, again both iudices and active consuls between 1143 and 1187, their surname means 'shit-in-a-box’. That of Arderico Cagainosa, consul in 1140 and 1144, means 'shit-in-your-pants.’ Other prominent families included the Cagalenti, 'shit-slowly,’ the Cacainbasilica, 'shit-in-the-church,’ the Cacarana, 'shit-a-frog,’ the Cagatosici, 'toxic-shit,’ and there were many more…. It is important to recognise that shit-words were not taboo in Europe in this period; medieval Europe did not ever match the squeamishness of polite society in the years 1750-1950 in this respect. The Investiture Dispute, for example, has clear examples of Hildebrand being called Merdiprand and similar by ecclesiastical polemicists on the opposing side. But this in itself shows that shit-names were at least insulting, in many contexts, in our period. Not always in Milan, though, evidently. The earthy sensibility shown by local naming, I would go so far as to say, is one of the major Milanese contributions to the 'civic’ culture of the twelfth century; and it was both new and, as they must have soon realised, aggressive to outsiders.”
- Christopher Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World (2015), p.51-2
Your dying spouse dying on their deathbed, their last words making you promise that you’ll write that novel you’ve always been talking about. You never tell a soul about this private moment, which is why everyone later feels free to tell you your book sucks shit
Okay, some of the mental stuff is back, maybe that’s it.
Hell, maybe it never left and the hard-driving new personality was just holding it together by force of will while I got all the things done I needed to these last few weeks.
Some freezing rain expected soon, so guess it’s a good thing I trimmed all those trees down below design weight with a minimum of branches to get iced (and that the neighbors’ tree already fell into my yard two years ago)
Is this the latest “we don’t make fun of autistic people, just every single visibly autistic trait?”
It’s not, because it’s not talking about men just naturally speaking in this manner, but men who don’t speak like this regularly switching to this type of language specifically to talk down to women they disagree with. To seem more intellectual then those women.
The context here matters and is different from just someone having this manner of speaking naturally because they’re neurodivergent/autistic. Here it’s someone using this manner of speaking to talk down to others.
Here’s the thing: I don’t talk that way by default either. But if I’m feeling threatened, I switch up to a highly formal register automatically. It’s a trauma response; I’m trying to be unambiguous because I’m scared that any ambiguity will be used to hurt me. Exactly the way this post dismisses.
I’m not alone in this - it’s something I’ve seen in a lot of autistic folks, because a lot of us get punished for misunderstanding or communication issues.
Does that mean it’s not used by sexist sealions in the way described here? No, of course not. But… If you think this isn’t hitting autistic people you’re kidding yourself.
It’s because getting really angry isn’t going to work any better and it’s a good way to rile people up.
When I was in school I realized I could wield this against teachers trying to dress me down by leaning it into talking in school administratorspeak, which was an important step to my later realization of the general point that you establish command over humans just like you do animals, by mirroring them back at themselves with absolute confidence
I was in fact the son of the school district solicitor, and in my hyperlexia read all his little green “Developments in Pennsylvania School Law” subscription pamphlets and most of the notes he brought home, that surely gave me an edge
Thinking about how the main qualification for Melissa auf der Maur joining Smashing Pumpkins was clearly “she can handle herself on tour with a space-claiming lead she won’t try to upstage”
You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen a depiction of someone living on the first floor of one of those Japanese 2-story cheap apartment buildings, you know, perpendicular to the street with an exterior walkway for a hall?
The place I lived in Echo Park, 1026 N. Bonnie Brae St., was kinda like this, but it was 2brs ziggurating down the hillside with a dingbat parking area at the bottom
The house next door that’s an empty lot now was abandoned and used as a gang house when I moved in for…not Echo Parque, not Big Top Locos, what was the third one?
Anyway the clique leader, a guy called “Pounder”, stopped me on the street once and was like “hey, we know things are changing…” and wanted me to know it was cool and make me sympathetic.
A) I was into Veronica Mars at the time with “Thumper” and found it was hilarious that was a real typea SoCal Latino gang name
B) I did appreciate that! And it did give me confidence, one time I parked close to another guy on the street and his Mexican ass came out to threaten but I just laughed at him, until he trimmed his ask to “give me some more room so I can get away from my girl’s place in the morning before my old lady sees”
Anyway, one day Pounder was shot to death in his car on the other side of the lake and the guys assembled in this building on the other side of mine and some old heads showed up to overhearing I could tell talk them through it without anything rash, and then I posted about it on Livejournal and someone apparently found it and posted an R.I.P. Pounder comment (with context) that night
You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen a depiction of someone living on the first floor of one of those Japanese 2-story cheap apartment buildings, you know, perpendicular to the street with an exterior walkway for a hall?
The place I lived in Echo Park, 1026 N. Bonnie Brae St., was kinda like this, but it was 2brs ziggurating down the hillside with a dingbat parking area at the bottom
