(no subject)

[jack]

Simon and I were discussing, amongst other things, a term for non-mutants in X-Men.

(If you don't know, in X-Men, there's an X-gene which gives people various invariable useful if often inconvenient special powers. These people are called Mutants, and everyone else is referred to as Human by exclusion, although human would by any sane definition include both as well.)

Peter won, in my opinion, with a suggestion in the pub last night, "Wild type" which in biology means "members of a species not having interesting mutations" (very roughly, someone give a more precise definition below).

But it got me thinking. What do the following terms all have in common:

Human (as in non-mutant)
Carnivore/Omnivore (as in non-vegetarian)
Neurotypical (as in non-autistic)
Heteronormative
Cis (as opposed to trans- or trans-gender)
Atheist

They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group. And hence don't really have any cohesion within themselves. And so the terms can be used literally, but most are generally used with either a grin or a sneer, admitting non-X doesn't just mean non-X, but "what I find annoying about non-X people, particularly their opinions of X people" and "lets see how they like being labelled". To magneto, human is an insult.

I don't know if it's relevant, but I think no-one ever means vegans when they say "non-vegetarians" :) (So a term meaning sometimes-meat-eating is actually more accurate.)

"Wild type", apart from sounding a hell of a lot cooler than "human" and lacking existing prejudice, seems to do a nice job of describing a default state, without implying anything about it as a whole. Of course, it's probably too obscure a term to catch on, but I like it.

I know sometimes it can be difficult to decide which is a group and which isn't. For instance, traditionally religion-X might consider people not of religion X to have more in common than not (and to some extent be right, if religion X is true). But I was enchanted by the analogy between atheist and neurotypical, etc. I'm sure it says something (though I'm not yet sure what).

Comments

[cornute.livejournal.com]

I think, interestingly, that a term for "Members of large group A who are NOT members of subgroup X" is a big step in acceptance for subgroup X.

Why? Because the first step in getting non-X to deal with you is getting them to admit you exist.

A comparison that may show a bit more of what I'm thinking:

--If you were to ask a lot of hetero people what sexual orientation they were, almost all of them would say "heterosexual." Very few people see the labels "heterosexual" and "homosexual" (and "bisexual") as being forced in some way. Now, I'm not saying that all those hetero people think it's okay NOT to be hetero. They may think that non-straightness is morally wrong, icky or gross, or just plain unfair (because the lesbians never come over to THEIR house to fix the computer and get naked). However, they admit it exists and they are all right with calling themselves something that clearly labels them as another kind of person than that.

--However, if you were to ask a bunch of cisgendered people what their combination of sex and gender was called, assuming you stopped to explain it to the ones who weren't familiar with the idea, a good many of them would balk at labeling themselves "cisgendered." Not, mind you, because they think of themselves as trans, or some kind of gender rebel who transcends the oppressive gender hierarchy or whatever, but because they don't think of being transgendered as REAL, and thus they don't need a word for not-transgendered. For people who think that, it's like having to state your species on the driver's license; of course I'm H. sap. sap. you buffoon! What am I going to be, a Vulcan? a dolphin?

I think the problem that people have when they make a not-X term is that people aren't equidistant. "Neurotypical" is a very nice term, except that it doesn't apply to someone who's had a stroke or taken a railroad spike through the head, even if they aren't autistic. "Heterosexual privilege" doesn't apply so much if you're a black man dating a white woman at certain times and places. People don't really allow for that, and that's where the problem with these sorts of terms comes in.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, totally. Someone else was musing on an incident similar to that once, but you described it better than I could have.

*thinks* I think one difference I was thinking of with atheist is that it started as a minority, like many of the others, but I listed it the other way round, because it thinks of itself as a default state, the way you describe cisgendered people. That it has achieved terminological recognition, but wants to go even further -- to *reject* the terminology "atheist" and gain the "what, why are you grouping these people together" sense of "everyone other than trans".

[simont]

Isn't "heteronormative" the odd one out of that list? It doesn't describe a group of people; it describes a dismissive attitude towards anyone outside a group of people.

I think I would generally consider the literal meaning of "vegetarian" to simply mean "unwilling to eat meat". Thus, literally speaking, "vegan" is a subclass: all vegans are vegetarians, it's just that that's not all they are. That's why "non-vegetarian" unambiguously describes people who do eat meat. The only reason I would assume that someone described solely as "vegetarian" doesn't go as far as being vegan is by deduction from things not said: if the person being described were vegan, the person doing the describing would (in most contexts) have said so! The same kind of non-literal usage which is played upon by the joke "how many months have 28 days?". (This is such a common concept, actually, that there must surely be a well-known term for it in linguistics.)

For nonmutants in the X-Men universe, I still like "original". It permits both sides to consider themselves superior if they want to: an original can mentally append "and best" to the word, whereas a mutant can savour the thought of being new and improved. The trouble with "wild type", for me, is that it's too obscure: it lacks existing prejudice, but (to someone, like me, outside the field in which it's specialist jargon) it also lacks any existing meaning whatsoever. You might as well decide that nonmutants would be referred to as "flibblywibblies".

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

> heteronormative

Oh, whoops, apparently so! I picked it up from context, thinking it meant "people non-lesbigaytrans, typically WASP" and didn't check.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I agree, I think that "original" has all the right connotations, just to me it doesn't sound right as a name somehow. "Wild type" isn't really a serious suggestion, I think it's cool, but as you say is too obscure to really be used.

[simont]

"Mundane" wouldn't have sounded right as a noun to me until I heard Bester using it all the time. I think people would get used to "original" pretty quickly.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hm, I guess so.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Hah. Whereas, even after all these years, to me it still sounds fine as a noun, thanks to Piers Anthony's Xanth series, where everyone in Xanth has a unique magical talent, and people from outside Xanth are called Mundanes :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) Science fiction and fantasy are often useful in spotting names and concepts and even moral dilemmas of things in advance, even if they don't hurry actually inventing them.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

"Classic"? :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:)

I like it. I think it may suffer from the same "not taken seriously" objection as "wild type" :)

[zebbiejohnson.livejournal.com]

I use 'default'.
Also, you forgot what I would think would be two really obvious examples on your initial post (though I realise it wasn't meant to be exclusive): muggle and gentile. :-D

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) It would have been good to have some more longstanding examples. Muggle is a good example actually, it in theory means "all non-wizards" but even Harry and Hermione (not sure about Dumbledore) also use it to mean "stereotypically non-wizard, ie. unnaccepting of fun/wizardythings."

And probably the same for "gentile", though I'm not sure how usable it is nowadays.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The same kind of non-literal usage which is played upon by the joke "how many months have 28 days?

Or that "rectangular" can mean "right-angled quadrilateral" or "right-angled quadrilateral that isn't square" depending on context. I'm sure it's normal language, but haven't analysed it... That's probably a good description of the vegetarian case, that vegans are vegetarian by the dictionary definition, but the terms can also be used distinctly (and normally are) because the implicit exclusion is so implicit it's just what words mean.

[simont]

Thinking further: I think the reason it matters that "wild type" doesn't have existing meaning is because that means I can't imagine it catching on. You describe someone as "wild type" to someone else who hasn't heard the term used before, they're going to stop and say "wait, what did you just say? What on earth does that mean?". Even if you thought the context ought to have made it perfectly clear, e.g. "mutants do this, and wild-types do that"; the listener might well think "wild type" describes a particularly uncontrollable subset of mutants, or some totally different minority group, or several other things. But you say "mutants do this, and originals do that", and they're going to be able to make a much better guess at what you meant, and because they didn't have difficulty understanding you they'll feel free to use the same word in conversation with their friends, and so on.

(I saw this problem recently with "cis" as shorthand for "cisgendered", in fact. Someone looked up "cis" in a dictionary, and got its literal meaning as a prefix, but still had to have it explained what it meant in context. I was OK with it the first time I heard it, because my chemistry A-level was the main place I'd previously heard "cis" so I was already used to it being used as the antonym of "trans", and context filled in the rest; but that doesn't seem to happen naturally to people without an education in organic chemistry :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

so I was already used to it being used as the antonym of "trans"

Likewise. In fact, I only first heard it yesterday, but whilst my first thought was "cyclists" my second thought was "opposite of trans". I had to think to remember what it literally meant, but I'd heard enough bad puns about benzene that the pair were firmly ensconced in my antonym drawer, even if I didn't remember more about chemistry.

I think it's also why I like "wild type". That on the news it would less than helpful, but I'm *actually* only going to be using it talking to people *I* know, who think a sentence is *better* if it needs a footnote that takes up a paragraph explaining something interesting about biology or chemistry :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Of course, there's two ways to catch on. Within the minority who's interested (generally jokingly derogatory) first, and then fighting for acceptance as the only already-used term. Or in the general population.

The first is probably more likely for most groups, as only people involved will use them. Mutants is different because it's the originals who are making a fuss about people being mutants, so they might need a term for originals more than the mutants do, before the mutants start banding together with Magneto in response.

That might be one reason why you get skewed terms sometimes. You might never think "gay" would catch on, but it did, as gay people claimed it for themselves first, and then everyone else started using it as the only acceptable casual word. That doesn't mean there's any hope for "wild type" though, as mutants (or X-men fans) aren't necessarily biologically trained, and many aren't often aren't interested in being overly fair in their terminology.

[ravingglory.livejournal.com]

Well I like wild type. But I've used it to talk about flies for a while. (But I find the idea of single gene being responsible for such vartiy of traits unlikely. I mean even if its just developmental on switch for other genes, where did the other genes come form?)

On the other hand I really don't think Atheist belongs on the list. However I might use the word differently than you. I use it to mean, someone who actively disbelieves in the supernatural, which isn't default state, because you have to know about the supernatural to disbelieve in it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

People instantly knowing what a term means is so elegant I like terms like that, even if they actually only make any sense to a minority of people.

The implausibility of the premise of X-men is so blatant I've stopped even bothering to mention it in posts about the subject. I can't remember if the idea of a single X-gene (which is presumably a switch) is how they describe it, I think so. I think it's less stupid than *not* being a single gene given that everyone either is or isn't X. But it's still stupid, for instance, why are the effects so precise? Where are the half-developed or unusable effects? (Of course, it's fiction, if you stuck to consistent physics and evolution you wouldn't have a story. But they still ride rougher-shod than they need to.)

On the other hand I really don't think Atheist belongs on the list.

I know what you mean. However, to use your terminology, I would say that atheist mean "not believing in any gods", not necessarily actively. However, due to the fact that most atheists *are* active (because until recently most communities were religious, and hence only active people became atheists) and because most atheists are atheist because they're rationalist, we use the term atheist to band together anyone rationalistic and anti-religious.

Of course, I may be wrong -- the word may have shifted to mean only those more active people. Some people claim so. But so far as I'm aware it still potentially includes Buddhists-who-don't-call-anything-god and spiritualists and flying-saucer-freaks.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

They all define everyone apart from members of a specific group.

For the purposes of this, can I just invent a couple of terms?

Inclusive semantics: when a word describes the group X belongs to.
Exclusive semantics: when a word describes the group X is ezxcluded from (thereby categorising X specifically as 'not a member of the group').

There's surely a difference between words whose semantics was obviously originally intended to be exclusive (e.g. 'atheist' with its alpha privative construction), and ones that acquired exclusive semantics at a later stage (AFAIK 'carnivore' meaning specifically 'not vegetarian' is a very recent development).

But I do think the trend is interesting. I think it's more marked when the alternatives for X are *not* binary (and mutually exclusive) though. Because if they are binary (I was going to say male vs. female would be a good example, but I spent some of this morning reading an article about a book about a hermaphrodite, thus making me more aware than usual of the not necessarily binaryness of gender), then expressing one is necessarily also necessarily expressing exclusion of the other.

Something like 'neurotyprical' would be a good example of the not binary set, I guess - becase you could be non-neurotypical in several different ways.

But the way such a word is constructed is often quite predictable. E.g. if you add the increasingly productive suffix -typical to a word (or stem) then you're saying that the thing described by the word does not possess any of e.g. a known set of defects. Or, more commonly, the not possessing of something might be expressed by prefixes such as a- or un- or in- or non-. It's almost more interesting when the word isn't contructed like this but just happens to be a completely independent invention that the speakers of the language deemed necessary because the sentiment is not one you could live without possessing :)

This reminds me of QI last night (an old one) - there's a sort of second generation rhyming slang word 'listerine' that means 'someone who hates Americans' - because the rhyming slang for American is 'septic' (septic tank = yank), so if you hate Amnericans you're anti-septic... :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

so if you hate Amnericans you're anti-septic... :)

ROFL. I think rhyming slang often goes through several iterations, but I like that one :) Confusing though, when all of a sudden in a politic debate you call someone listerine, and then suddenly have to go off and have a footnote :)

There's surely a difference between words whose semantics...

Thank you, that sounds like a good description. Though I'm not sure if we've thought of my conclusion yet :)