This week in awkward, preachy anonymous comments.

In response to this post:

Anonymous said...

Why do you refer to these human beings as "the temps" (here and in earlier posts)? It's dehumanizing. You seem to struggle (however humourously) with the feeling that you yourself may not be sufficiently respected. It seems to me that, instead of being willing to address this issue as belonging to your own experience, you are projecting the status of "less than important" or "less than fully human" onto a group outside yourself. Even if some of "the temps" in question profess to be ok with your terminology, in publishing a blog you are addressing yourself to a larger audience for whom the dehumanizing term "the temps" simply means what it more broadly means when uttered in our culture: namely, "this class of people whom I don't want to acknowledge as fully human, but instead want to refer to in this dehumanizing manner." Given your considerable ability to reflect on your own experience and actions, it seems to me that you'd really benefit from taking a look at this issue. Good luck! Signed, YST (strikes again).

I'm sorry, Anonymous, but saying, "I spoke with the temps today" is a lot easier to write than "I spoke with Katy, John, Eli, Celith, Garin, and Adam today" for the following reasons: less typing, natch, and also because the people who read my blog don't know who all of the temps are. It's not like I saw a bunch of Hispanic people and referred to them as "Mexicans." They're temps. Should I not refer to my co-workers as "the co-workers" because they're actually much more than that?

Also, people who leave anonymous comments assuming that they can accurately analyze someone's character based on a few hundred words posted on a BLOG are kind of d-baggy.


UPDATE!

Anonymous said...

Sorry, it's YST again. I forgot to say that I can see from your blog that, until recently, you yourself were one of "the temps." I wanted to say that I wonder if that fact is connected with your eagerness to separate yourself from this category AQAP by objectifying and demeaning its members. Take care.

I don't know what "YST" means; I'm too busy suffering from my own self-hatred to decipher code.