Althouse: You, like me, may think the "Genderbread Person" is a ludicrous, bad-science graphic...

October 11, 2014

You, like me, may think the "Genderbread Person" is a ludicrous, bad-science graphic...

... here's yesterday's post about the Genderbread Person...

... but there seems to be a raging fight about who created it and whether somebody is getting credit for thinking up something that had already appeared in a similar form elsewhere. I wouldn't think people would be clamoring to take responsibility for something like that.

Anyway, when accused of plagiarism, you can always try the old Wisconsin saying: "I’m going to take the best ideas wherever I can find them." Go ahead. Take that. It might be the best idea, and you will have found it in Wisconsin.

ADDED: "While we upped the ante on accuracy and inclusivity, we did our best not to compromise what was arguably the most effective aspect of the old Genderbread Person: ‘e is freaking adorable!"

20 comments:

chickelit said...: Another time-honored Wisconsin tradition is to separate the cheat from the whaff.

Shifting and whinnying; 10/11/14, 11:08 AM
Anonymous said...: All right, it was me.

I was running with a pack of activist educrats for a time, and we needed some effective pedagogical tools.

It was either this or a beige, pants-less alphabet-singing Olympic-style bureau-mascot.

We sold copyright to the U.N.; 10/11/14, 11:17 AM
Bob Boyd said...: "Eat me!" - the Genderbread Person; 10/11/14, 11:33 AM
buwaya said...: I don't understand these complaints about originality. This is a new thing and not only foolish but ahistorical. Copying ideas is where we get better ideas.
Mozart/da Ponte got Don Giovanni from Moliere who got it from Tirso de Molina who probably got it from some other guy. Or they could have copied any number of less eminent fellows too. All of them made something interesting from it so why not.
Of course idiots can also copy from idiots as in this case, but that's life.; 10/11/14, 11:34 AM
Bob Boyd said...: The word "person" is not inclusive because it has the word "son" in it which has, in the past, been strongly associated with male offspring.
We should use the words person and perdaughter. No, wait. That would defeat the purpose.
Ok, how about per....um....per...how about just pers? It kind of has a slangy, abbreviated kind of cool ring, I think. Like Genderbread pers or "Hey, Don't treat me that way. I'm a pers."
But on the other hand it sounds like "purse" which in the past was something carried by oppressed women who were forced by a cruel patriarchy to seek their self worth through shopping and capitalist materialism.
Well, heck. I don't know what to do. To be honest, I'm stumped. I've stumped myself. This Gender Studies stuff is harder than looks.; 10/11/14, 11:49 AM
buwaya said...: When the US is taken over by Spanish speakers English speakers will no longer be oppressed by a gendered language. Not speaking Spanish will be sufficiently rebellious.; 10/11/14, 11:58 AM
MadisonMan said...: Reading the linked-to article, I was too distracted by my eyes rolling every time I saw the prefix 'cis' that I lost track of what they were saying.; 10/11/14, 11:58 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: It was the best of plagiarism, it was the worst of plagiarism.

I made that up.; 10/11/14, 12:01 PM
ELC said...: Ebola, enteroviruses, and ISIS headchoppers don't care about any of this. Which is why we are in big trouble.; 10/11/14, 12:10 PM
Anonymous said...: 'Transgender' is one sex plagiarizing the other.; 10/11/14, 12:34 PM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: I did that! It was back in '51, in Second Grade. Teacher saw it, tore it up, and shamed me.; 10/11/14, 1:46 PM
damikesc said...: Ebola, enteroviruses, and ISIS headchoppers don't care about any of this. Which is why we are in big trouble.

In our defense, 99.9% of Americans don't care.

It's just that 0.1% who does it vocal as all hell and we aren't willing to mock people for being morons.; 10/11/14, 2:27 PM
furious_a said...: It's plagiarists all the way down.; 10/11/14, 2:40 PM
Jaq said...: Bad artists copy, great artist steal.

I am not sure that Shakespeare wrote very many plays from scratch. He was, however, the master of the remake.; 10/11/14, 4:51 PM
MayBee said...: Let’s take “Gender Identity” for our example. I identify as a man, but I identify with a lot of what it means to be a woman. I’m sensitive, kind, familial, and I really like dark chocolate (kidding — stuff’s disgusting). Possessing this “woman-ness” doesn’t make me any less of a man. But it’s a large part of my gender identity, and those traits affect my life and influence my decisions as much and more than many of my “man-ness” does.

The idea that being kind and familial helps identify gender seems completely backwards to what I thought we were fighting for all these years.; 10/11/14, 5:36 PM
Johanna Lapp said...: Aren't pronouns such I, me, my imposing a single-identity normativity on personses living with multiple personalities? And can we stop saying they're "suffering" from a "disorder," while we're at it?

But the newly created pronouns should not be permitted to be used by people pretending to be multiple for venal reasons such as dubious defense in criminal matters.

And when we say "we" here, I mean to include both the single-bodied we and the multiple-bodied we. There may be a need to create a new set of pronouns for that second group.; 10/11/14, 5:41 PM
Sydney said...: I prefer Ninjabread People.; 10/11/14, 9:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Also insensitive to those who may not have all four limbs. Safer to have the GenderSoapBubble, a round shape devoid of any identity on which can be projected anything you like.

GenderSoap Bubble floats above your bigoted shapes. Haters.; 10/12/14, 2:18 AM
chickelit said...: GenderSoap Bubble floats above your bigoted shapes. Haters.

We all need to work together to banish the notion that convex = male and concave = female. While we're at it, we should work on electrician's sexist language.; 10/12/14, 8:42 AM
Fernandinande said...: a raging fight about who created it

Everyone blaming everyone else?; 10/12/14, 1:17 PM