I rarely iron. Creases drop out when worn :p Maybe once or twice a month I might need to iron something.

Yebbut, you have a definite personal style.
You never look like you bought things from eBay just because they were in your size and budget.

ETA, sorry - that sounds really waa-waa-waaa. It was supposed to be a compliment!

*grins*

I'll take it is the compliment it was meant to be honey :)

That's ironic

We objectify people every time we describe them to someone. I know that when I'm described/pointed out to someone, it's not "that guy", it's "that fat guy", or "that guy with the pony tail", or "that guy with the joint in his mouth", just like "that girl with the big tits", or "that girl with the moles".

I think when you add a descriptor to a person, that person is automatically objectified.

And I think it's impossible to not do that.

This is where this thread crosses over into the political correctness thread. Gravdigr's post uses a number of words to describe people which in a PC environment would be rephrased (i.e. big tits-well endowed, fat-well built etc...).

This made me think of an afternoon years ago when I'd swapped classrooms with another staff member in the uni who I didn't know and was unlikely to set eyes on again (and haven't). As said staff member's students went up the stairs, I said to them (being quite sure that the students who were late would either not bother to read the note I had left on the board or not compute if they did) if you see any Asian students looking lost, send them down here. The Caucasian students going up the stairs responded "that's racist". To me it was a statement of fact, was the easiest way of identifying the students in question and had no ill connotations attached so their response struck me as highlighting an intention that wasn't there so after writing out this spiel, my question would be: 1). at what point does the objectification start and 2) at what stage does it become a problem?

Meh, ran into the same thing at work a couple of years ago.

Gave directions to someone looking for S. I gave general directions, but the whole office was a maze. S was the only black woman in the building, so I mentioned it.

What? Was I supposed to say something else? If she'd been a white with bright red hair or unusual glasses I'd have pointed it out.

The stupid thing was that the woman I "shocked" was seriously bigoted. She used unpleasant words and had rather unpleasant opinions (imho). So she crowed about my "slip-up". Yeah, fuck you bitch. I'll wake up tomorrow morning and still be under forty.*

* I never said this to her because it's not big or clever or even relevant. But she hated ageing. And so saying it now is a sly dig; but maybe it's so far behind her back it will circumnavigate the globe and touch both her faces.

Slap! Slap!
Years ago but you deserve it.
Slap! Slap!

Know what you mean.

Now that I'm somewhere where I stand out (sure, there's loads of foreigners from everywhere around the world, but we still stand out), I think that really there's no getting around it. I'm Caucasian-I look different to everyone else (except for the other people of the same extraction) and no amount of words are going to disguise it.

I will not believe that all mention of race is automatically racist

We, as human beings, have a natural tendency to categorise other human beings. We use visual shorthand to navigate our world.

If someone is the only black person, or the only chinese person in an office then that is likely to be the defining feature you remember, and how you identify them if trying to describe them. If they're the only redhead, or the only one in a wheelchair, likewise. Perfectly natural.

@ Casi: there's no difference between what you were saying, and one of the organisers of the International Students Open Day saying to the helpers, if you see a foreign student direct them our way.



People get very het up about this sort of stuff, but couldn't give a flying fuck that young black lads are more likely to be unemployed or in prison than white lads, or that certain professional fields have an invisible wall barring entry to anyone with a brown face.

FTFY

agreed.

It seems to me that there is a distinct difference between the shorthand we use to manage our worlds and objectification. Describing someone by their most identifiable feature can be very useful, as in the instances given by Sundae and Casi. It is when that feature is used to apply a set of other characteristics which are unrelated (frequently to do with intelligence, behaviour, or other non-physical characteristics) that it becomes "objectification".

Objects.