Speaking a Language Well Means Being Able to Freestyle

This brings us to the response I wanted to make to your comment (in another forum) about the colloquial use of “pimp,” “pimpin” and so on.  The linguistic customs official is indeed the condom of linguistic intercourse.  But while lack of fluency can put this meddling middleman into action, I would say that too much political correctness can, as well.

Nick Kristof recently questioned this word on his Facebook page, too.  I can imagine and understand that for people who are seeing and fighting sex trafficking, this word comes across as heavy and offensive.  And I would never argue that all uses of this word are helpful or interesting.

But language moves.  A word like “pimp” has wrapped itself in associations that we can find some shared enjoyment in: swagger, shine, skills, a winking bravado.  If we can enjoy the play of its associations and new meanings, does a word always have to call us back to its old ones?  If so, then how long, historically, does this chain extend? 

I think you’re zeroing in on the crux of the issue when you bring up history.  My sense is that the reason using ‘pimp’ isn’t cool is that the negative meanings aren’t ‘old,’ as you suggest.  They’re still in active use.  Granted, there are other, more positive connotations. (‘Shine,’ in particular, captures something.)  But the thing is, they all rely on and interact with the negatives connotations – they have the allure and glamour and sexiness and edge they do because they call upon the danger and mischief and power that we associate with actual pimps.  And that ain’t cool.

But meanings change over time, with a massive gray area; if we’re going to embrace multivalency here at all, then this is the only mechanism for it. 

I hear what you’re saying about the associations, and the kinds of unspoken assumptions that it supports.  I know that my position is problematic for that reason.  But I stand by it, because I think that language can be risky and problematic and still shine–still be redemptive or subversive or agile and enjoyable.  And for language to shine, my guess is that it has to be true to something in us or in our worlds.  The things that discomfort you about “pimping” are very much part of us (as selfish, insecure beings) and our world (which is capitalist). 

There’s just something about the swagger that I like.  It’s defiant.  It says “I can play the game of this rough world, and I can win in this game.”  I know this word, and this attitude, can be used in ways that also make others lose in the game–but my wager is that this is doesn’t always have to be the case.

(There are other words, like the use of “gay” to describe something as “lame,” that I would not argue for, that I do not thing are creative or interesting or shining at all.  But even this example raises the same question again: would someone who is literally is lame be excluded by this word?)

what Jesse said.

1) I was referring to Lian’s broadening it out in the last paragraph of her previous comment. The decision on whether it’s OK to use a particular word is wrapped up in a general approach to suppression and freedom of expression.

2) Yeah, I do think it’s that hard — even in the dastardly “n-word” case. Here, for instance, I want to agree with both Pryor and Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZCS5I80X-8

What I really hate is the culture of fear, and thus of inauthenticity, associated with the level of self-censorship in which we tend to traffic today.

Thanks Katie!  It’s pretty fantastic, no?

This is a good story, Matt.  I had a very similar experience. I was in grade 11, in my French teacher’s classroom at lunchtime–he supervised the yearbook club–and I described a page layout as “gay.”  This teacher, who I respected immensely, was gay.  I still remember the look on his face when he looked up from his desk.  To his credit, he just told me in a straight-forward way that this is not an appropriate word to use in this way–and I don’t think I ever did again.  

If I felt (if you convince me) that using the word “pimp” in certain contexts would cause someone to feel the way my teacher did, then I wouldn’t use it.  But at first blush, this word just doesn’t seem to me to carry this kind of weight.  I wonder if part of the difference is cultural, since in Canada prostitution is legal, and a pimp or madam is not necessarily someone who oppresses their sex workers.  To me this is an entirely different ballgame from kidnapping, human trafficking, and sexual slavery.  (And there we go again!  Don’t we use the word “slave” in all kinds of ways?)

But the point that I wanted to argue for is actually this: there are things about human nature that are cruel, indifferent, selfish, competitive, and so on.  I don’t think that pretending that these things don’t exist will make this go away.  Nor do I think that this would be a particularly interesting, true, or productive way to go about things.  Rather, as Jesse is suggesting, I think it would be inauthentic, and there’s something ugly and sanctimonious and judgmental that happens when we try to police things too tightly.

This wouldn’t stand in a scientific way, but anecdotally: we know serotonin as related to happiness and feelings of well-being, but it’s also involved in gauging one’s place in competitive social hierarchies.  So swagger has to do with feeling good, but maybe at times it is also feeling good at the expense of someone else.  I don’t think that a moderate acknowledgment of this feeling should be our enemy.

(and no worries about seeing the whole comment chain–I didn’t see Jesse’s at first, myself…there’s something weird about the way Disqus handles comments.)

Also note Sullivan’s approach to the whole subject. In response to Kobe Bryant getting censured for saying “faggot” on the court, Sully says this: “I… worry that policing the language to this degree (while there
are contexts in which the word ‘faggot’ is obviously ugly, and meant to
gay-bait and deserves censure) gets tiresome very quickly. I just don’t
think Kobe Bryant meant to call a referee a homosexual. That does not
make me a homophobe.

“We’re primates with way too much intelligence for our own good. We
are never going to lose words that in-groups use to describe out-groups.
Let’s resolve actual formal legal inequalities and then democratize our
hate-words so that everyone gets to use some. And they hurt all of us less.

“By the way, if you want to see a positive affirmation of gays in
sports, Ben Cohen’s example seems to me to be the right one to follow.
Instead of policing language for offense, promote openness as a virtue.
Watching a straight, professional, jock campaign for getting past stupid homophobia is a thing of beauty. As Ben Cohen is, as well, I might add.”

Thanks L.  I’m not trying to argue against swagger or bad-assedness in general.  And I don’t think I’m asking that we pretend that cruelty or indifference don’t exist.  I think all I’m trying to say is that using a word like ‘pimp’ – which relies on cruelty and exploitation in every almost every context with which I’m familiar – seems to me like an unnecessary endorsement for things that we shouldn’t endorse.  If you want to communicate swagger, why not find a word that captures the meanings that you want and avoids providing cover for truly nasty behavior? 

(Questions: why are pimps necessary in a place where prostitution is legal?)I’m not sure I could convince you that the effect of using ‘pimp’ would be as direct and hurtful as using the word ‘gay’ was. (Sidenote: have you read ‘The Iceman Cometh’?  There’s a character who hates being called a pimp, even though he is one.  And the prostitutes in his ‘stable’ hate being called ‘whores’. (They prefer ‘tarts’.))  But if you were in a room with a prostitute and referred to yourself as a pimp, I can imagine that person being hurt at what he/she might feel is a trivializing way of talking about a very hurtful experience.Bringing up ‘slave’ is interesting.  I remember using that word one time to describe my workload to a black friend in college. “How’s it going?” she said.  ”Oh, slavin’ away,” I said.  Again, didn’t seem like such a cool thing to do.  There, though, the pain – at least the direct, first-person pain – is long in the past, so I think it’s somewhat of a different thing.  

In Montreal, sex workers who are not independent (and some are) have a manager or an agency…presumably for reasons of advertising, client and business management, safety, etc.–but I have no idea whether they call their managers pimps or madams.  So I’m going to refrain from saying anything else from this angle.

There are reasons for this kind of language.  Colloquial (and risky) language can single among interlocutors that you’re friends, that you share a sense of solidarity.  I’ve worked in places when we had quite a range of sexual and non-sexual colloquial language to describe our servitude to our supervisor.  It was in good fun, and there wasn’t anyone who was exposed to this language who didn’t gleefully take part.  And in architecture school we talk about “pimping out” a model, in the sense of adding decoration or other things that would look cool, but that are not conceptually clear or rigorous.  I suppose this is my baseline for some of these words.

Maybe the reason why I see these words–not just “pimp” but being able to describe myself as someone’s “bitch” or to say that I’m considering of “tricking out” my crutches with purple glitter–differently than words like “nigger” or “faggot” (because I definitely think that it was the right thing to do to censure Kobe, regardless of his intentions) is that I have never heard someone say that they felt these words were slurs against them.  Sex workers who ply their trade by choice, in the little that I’ve been exposed to interviews and writing by them, seem to have–well, some swagger–in how they describe themselves.  Sex workers who have been coerced (or worse) probably have had much worse things happen to them and I’ve never heard their complaints to focus on people using this language in other contexts.  This could just be my ignorance, of course.

So I’d be much more sensitive if someone told me, or if I read, someone who said they personally felt hurt, excluded, or maligned by a certain kind of language–rather than a more generalized sentiment that something must be offensive to someone.  Because this strikes me as political correctness for political correctness’ sake.

That’s a really interesting standard, L.  To wait for the people that such language might conceivably hurt to indicate how they feel about it, rather than to assume on their behalf.  Into the hopper that one goes.