Ah, that makes more sense. It didn't really sound Twisty-ish, but I'm not familiar enough to be sure.
Your use of "hoochie rear" was a literary device, chosen to emphasize certain aspects of the debate at hand. It's possible you weren't consciously "choosing a literary device", but it was much too appropriate in context to be mere carelessness. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there, some of them apparently intelligent otherwise, who can't recognize any literary device more subtle than simile.
IIRC, The Ethical Slut didn't "get away with it"; there was much indignation at the time. Thing is, the indignation didn't make a damn bit of difference. No matter what you do, there's gonna be someone who objects and tries to bullyrag you into backing down. (Part 2 - or maybe part 3, if it goes to a third part before I get to this bit - is going to touch on this, actually, via the whole, "The Patriarchy won't let you have agency" thing.)
You're right about identity (and, regrettably, some of it seems to be identity-for-identity's-sake). I think, though, that there's also a "separated by a common language" issue going on - they're too used to talking about their tenets with others who already know the context, and thus speak in a kind of shorthand; when they present their tenets to you using the same words, that context is absent. (Look how context made you realize "the personal is political" wasn't nonsense, it was being used in a distorted way.)
But, yeah, you're not going to change the minds of those who are wedded to the identity, or who have too much invested in the adversarial paradigms.
no subject
Your use of "hoochie rear" was a literary device, chosen to emphasize certain aspects of the debate at hand. It's possible you weren't consciously "choosing a literary device", but it was much too appropriate in context to be mere carelessness. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there, some of them apparently intelligent otherwise, who can't recognize any literary device more subtle than simile.
IIRC, The Ethical Slut didn't "get away with it"; there was much indignation at the time. Thing is, the indignation didn't make a damn bit of difference. No matter what you do, there's gonna be someone who objects and tries to bullyrag you into backing down. (Part 2 - or maybe part 3, if it goes to a third part before I get to this bit - is going to touch on this, actually, via the whole, "The Patriarchy won't let you have agency" thing.)
You're right about identity (and, regrettably, some of it seems to be identity-for-identity's-sake). I think, though, that there's also a "separated by a common language" issue going on - they're too used to talking about their tenets with others who already know the context, and thus speak in a kind of shorthand; when they present their tenets to you using the same words, that context is absent. (Look how context made you realize "the personal is political" wasn't nonsense, it was being used in a distorted way.)
But, yeah, you're not going to change the minds of those who are wedded to the identity, or who have too much invested in the adversarial paradigms.