Wait, how do you say it? Ah yes, fuck you. Is there a fuck you emoticon?”

I was only talking about the language, and I made that amply clear. Not the societal position, or anything other than the language. I honestly have no idea why you would be so enraged at the fact that ACQUIRING A SECOND LANGUAGE to a native or near-native level is easier while living in the country. I’m not saying that LIVING in the country is easier, just acquiring the language.

Anyway, just wanted to tell you I really did not mean any offense in any way.

Besides, as has oft been said, you get what you pay for here at I Blame The Patriarchy. Jill maintains this blog out of the goodness of her own heart. How much time do you all really think she has or wants to spend sitting around and banning people, anyway?

Wait, how do you say it? Ah yes, fuck you. Is there a fuck you emoticon?

I have to admit that I have not read the commenting guidelines (probably because 1) my commenting here predates said guidelines, and 2) I comment rarely, as there are already so many eloquent commenters here).

The blog-owner asks people not to use a intentionally misspelled, pointlessly cutesy phrase of non-words.

This inspires calls of elitism, classism, ageism (?) and a string of other “isms”.

A thought: If one posts the equivalent length of “War and Peace” on the topic of what internet shorthand is appreciated on someone else’s blog they might want to look to their own issues.

Perhaps there are OTHER THINGS in life that are really bothering you, Lucija, that are being projected onto Jill, Kelly and other posters here?

You might reconsider if, in a discussion of internet lingo, you expressed an anger at complete strangers that most would reserve for someone who had just run over their dog.

If I can be of help on Lucija’s possible publishing project: Really, there’s quite ample material in this thread alone for a sizable handbook. All that’s left is some quick translations to the other languages. Done.

” “Make no mistake, without the money and free time that I had at my disposal, I never would have been able to acquire such a high level of English.”

Well, make no mistake if Guadalupe Hidalgo hadn’t turned my ancestral home from Mexico one day to America the next I wouldn’t be forced to learn English and my kids wouldn’t be treated like second class citizens in their own home. We have neither money nor time but we still somehow manage to be competent in two languages ”

From what I understand you live in (what is now) the USA. I’m sorry for the treatment you’ve received and the hardship you’ve been through. But being bilingual while living in the country of your non-native language is not the same, or as difficult, as trying to be proficient in the language while living in a foreign country, with little to no opportunity to speak it. I’m just talking about language here – I’m not saying your position hasn’t been worse than mine, just that when it comes to language, living in the country is a huge advantage to becoming bilingual in one.

Some of you are complaining about accusing Jill of discriminating against non-native speakers. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d like to make it clear that that’s not what I am doing at all. Twisty has a disclaimer above the comment box exempting non-native speakers from some of the rigorous rules of commenting here. I wrote about non-native speakers in response to Kelly’s first comment saying that it would be rude NOT to hold non-native speakers to the same high standards as native ones, which I disagreed with. Not as a reaction to anything Jill has said.

And a lot of you are making the occasional usage of “teh menz” sound like rabid lolspeak. It’s NOT the same. I’ve never encountered fully-fledged lolspeak on this blog, and I honestly doubt that’s because of Jill moderating hundreds and hundreds of lolspeak-infested comments. My point is that I really don’t think the average reader of this blog would actually try to use lolspeak when commenting. Hating on the expression “teh menz” so much is just such an overreaction.

And the “classist” and “ageist” comments are not about lolspeak, but rather about some of Jill’s myriad other rules.

Kelsey B., I think you’re misunderstanding what people have been saying about “classism”. It’s not that we should expect those from a certain background to be worse at grammar/style. Both my parents came from relatively poor, uneducated families and they both successfully finished university.
It’s that everyone should be understanding IF they ARE. Acquiring, for example, proper grammar is not the same for a middle-class kid than, say, for someone whose parents more often than not cannot afford to pay the electricity bill. I don’t have any personal experience and can only talk about what I’ve seen in some of my poorer relatives and some of the people from elementary school who were in that situation. But it’s a fact that it’s more difficult that way. Plenty of middle class people at my elementary school struggled with schoolwork, and plenty of poor people exceled at it. But the percentages were definitely not proportional. And I mention my elementary school, because we have many different types of high school here, the main division being between schools for those intending to go to university and vocational schools for those intending to work straight after high school. And in my entire high school class, only two girls came from a poor background. Everyone else was middle class, with fewer, but still very much present, upper class people. It’s sad, but it’s a fact.

One girl from my elementary from a poor family, who always struggled with work (in part also because she and her sisters had to basically raise their younger siblings) had her first kid at 15. Now she has 3 and we’re not even in our mid-20s. I think she has more pressing issues than grammar. Let’s say she somehow (despite the odds) gets interested in feminism (or, well, anything else) and has computer access (which, unfortunately, I doubt…I mean, there are free public internet-connected computers in our town, but I doubt she has the time for that, not to mention that she’s probably never worked on a computer before.) It would be very, very sad if she had to endure mocking and exclusion based on her poor grammar and lacking writing style (and, again, by that I don’t mean “lolspeak”, but some of Jill’s other rules). I’m not saying that everybody (or even most people) coming from a poorer background are in a situation resembling hers. But many are. The playing ground is just not level. People have to be understanding when it comes to that.

Jezebella: “Oh, for heavens’ sakes, Lucija, no one has the “right” to comment on anybody’s personal internet weblog.”

Um, I guess it escaped my attention that all the commenters here are personal friends of Jill’s. I guess I really am an intruder.

C’mon, I think it’s pretty obvious that someone who’s not prepared or is expressly against receiving comments should just disable comments or write their thoughts in a notebook. The comment box is for commenting. And since most of the people commenting here are strangers to Jill, I think I’m qualified to leave a comment, even if I do have a negative opinion on something she’s written.

Cathy, Jill indeed has the right to comment on people’s comments here. I’ve never said otherwise. I’m talking about kindness and understanding here, which I think Jill often lacks. And before someone gets on my case for “expecting women to be kind and understanding”, my opinion on something like this would be exactly the same if I were complaining about a man enforcing such standards.

procrastinatrix, could you please explain this a bit more:

“Setting up straw-women to knock them down is not an effective way to recruit people to your cause either. Unless you only want the ditto-head types, who seem to eat that stuff up with a spoon.”

Please, don’t take my question the wrong way. I’m not trying to be flippant or anything, I’m just really not sure what you’re referring to here. And I’m really not trying to force any sort of role on Jill, it’s just my personal opinion that for a feminist blog like this, alienating people for reasons as trivial (in the larger scheme of things) as ellipsis usage should be a no-no. Again, that’s just my personal opinion.

I feel like I should clarify my position on high standards a bit.
I should probably mention that I love grammar. I do struggle with English grammar sometimes, but, in my mother tongue, grammar and orthography come to me naturally. I have a talent for it. I have a feeling that, in my language (and numerous others, but I only know the situation in my own to talk about it here), the divide between the talented and untalented for language is, in most cases, much bigger and much more obvious than in English, because the grammar itself is more complicated and there is a lot of stuff that almost everyone has to learn by heart to use the language properly, and only those with a natural ear for language are able to acquire it naturally through childhood. I’m probably not making much sense, it’s hard to explain this. The thing is, one of my best friends, a really intelligent novice scientist, is completely devoid of talent when it comes to language. She will NEVER be able to use proper grammar or orthography in our language, although she has tried hard to learn how to, and even though she’s a privileged middle-class girl who went to the same university-preparatory school I attended, although she’s university-educated now. Despite all these things, she struggles with grammar and orthography terribly, out of sheer lack of natural ability for it. Of course,she doesn’t expect her scientific writing to be allowed to reflected – that gets lectored and corrected. But who should lector her internet comments? Should she be ridiculed for her natural inability, or excluded from online discourse for it? I, myself, will never be able to master the orthoepy of my mother tongue. We have a hellishly difficult accent system with a thousand regional variations. It’s basically impossible for people from some regions to master the standard. Of course, anchorpeople, TV/radio presenters and the like are trained extremely rigorously so they could achieve it and they dedicate years of their life to doing so. But should people who cannot master it be forbidden to appear as guests in serious TV/radio programmes, or comment as specialists on a given topic on the TV/radio news?

Also, I’d like to agree with what Feral said about stylistic enforcement and everybody having a different way of thinking. I’m no lolspeak enthusiast, but bits and pieces of some memes have stuck with me because I found them catchy or amusing or for whatever other reason. I use slang words occasionally. I also start sentences with words not to recommended for that purpose, and I definitely don’t obsess over using “on point” vs. “pertinent”, even when I know that the form I’m using is not the correct/recommended one (which in English, in cases like these, I most often don’t). I’m quite young and my way of thinking and expression are not identical to those of my mom’s, and I’m aware of the fact that some things in the way I speak probebly irritate them a bit. But the same is true for her and her mother, and probably was similar for my grandma and her mother too. I use those expressions because that is the way I think, the way they are naturally formed in my brain, the way they naturally come to me. I certainly don’t use them to be “cool” or “fit in with the other kids” or whatever other reason proposed when people generalise about my generation. That’s not to say I’ll use the same style and expressions in my comments here that I would use in my facebook conversations or text messages with my friends. But I will also not use the same expressions/style here that I would use in an academic essay. That would be incredibly stilted and artificial.

Also, I like emoticons and use them regularly in my private online correspondence. I think they (like real-life facial expressions, gestures and body language) can help clarify the meaning and tone of what is being said, which is incredibly useful on the internet, where it’s difficult to convey tone and intention (it would have made things infinitely easier so many times when commenting on this blog). I’ve always respected Jill’s decision not to allow them on her site, but I don’t think the fact that I, and probably quite a few others, use them in other areas of our life makes us quite the plebeians that Jill believes it does.
Oh, and I adore using ellipses. Granted, I definitely overuse them, and I get where Jill is coming from when it comes to people abusing them way too often. But not using them ever seems a bit too much. They are a valid form of punctuation and/or stylistic expression, and often add to the meaning and/or mood of what is being said.

I’m also extremely long-winded, which I recognise as a flaw, and am working on improving. Apologies to everyone for my mammoth comments.