So I was just reading something where someone made the claim "... but I'm not stupid. That's just the way my brain works."
I'm not going to make any claim on whether or not this person is stupid because I've never met them before, but isn't being stupid all about how your brain works? Or doesn't work, in this case?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I guess being stupid or not is more about the degree to which your brain works and the person you're quoting was talking about the manner in which her or his brain works. Her or his brain works just as well as everyone else's, but in a different way.
On a side note, how do we feel about "they" as a gender-neutral singular pro-noun? I'd be in favor of it, but I'm nervous to use it that way unless someone actually passes a law saying it's okay.
I actually considered changing it to a "his or her" before I posted it, but I just don't like how wordy it sounds. It also sounds like whoever is writing is trying to hard to be PC. I think that they/them is a great way to be subtly politically correct, even if it is not grammatically correct.
I think I'm willing to take that qualification of degree vs. manner as a measure of stupidity. So is a person stupid if they are not above a certain threshold of aptitude in a certain number of areas? :)
Once someone said to me, "I'm not saying you ARE stupid, you just say really stupid things." Assuming that I was saying what I was actually thinking, how does this play out?
And I think that using they as a non-gendered pronoun is A-OK. My grammar teacher in college used it this way.
Post a Comment