(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

[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.