In defense of "utilize" and "normative"
Jul. 20th, 2009 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThe other day I was driven to shrill madness by a job posting that asked if I could "utilize the word press technology" (to which I responded, "Yes, I can use and develop for Wordpress, but probably not for you").
Just a few minutes ago, I posted an entry wondering about whether or not pornography cheapened some relationships because it depicted sodomy as "expected and normative," and wondered if I hadn't just bitten myself with hypocrisy. (One of the things I will always thank Usenet for: it taught me how to spell "hypocrisy" correctly.) Perhaps I should have said that pornography depicts sodomy as "expected and normal."
There is a difference, however: "Normal" is what people do. "Normative" is what people expect. A normative declaration is a prescriptive one: it says what people ought to do. Pornography might, in fact, depict anal sex as normal: certainly it is in the pornoverse. But it's pornography's depiction of anal sex as normative that is problematic: "All chicks dig getting fucked in the ass" is a normative depiction, and we should challenge that depiction if we can and try to substitute for "all" the much more sensible "some."
Likewise, I think there are places where one "utilizes" Wordpress. If you push it hard enough, plug in enough stuff, and write your own code, Wordpress can be used as a CMS like Joomla or Drupal or even Django, as a base of code that one can utilize: "take full advantage of; to make do with something not originally used for a purpose." For Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union, for example, I "utilized" the Wordpress treewalking engine to create a previously non-existent relationship between post categories and pages. But I doubt the job poster people were seeking that kind of Wordpress development.
Still, if they are, I'm their man.
Just a few minutes ago, I posted an entry wondering about whether or not pornography cheapened some relationships because it depicted sodomy as "expected and normative," and wondered if I hadn't just bitten myself with hypocrisy. (One of the things I will always thank Usenet for: it taught me how to spell "hypocrisy" correctly.) Perhaps I should have said that pornography depicts sodomy as "expected and normal."
There is a difference, however: "Normal" is what people do. "Normative" is what people expect. A normative declaration is a prescriptive one: it says what people ought to do. Pornography might, in fact, depict anal sex as normal: certainly it is in the pornoverse. But it's pornography's depiction of anal sex as normative that is problematic: "All chicks dig getting fucked in the ass" is a normative depiction, and we should challenge that depiction if we can and try to substitute for "all" the much more sensible "some."
Likewise, I think there are places where one "utilizes" Wordpress. If you push it hard enough, plug in enough stuff, and write your own code, Wordpress can be used as a CMS like Joomla or Drupal or even Django, as a base of code that one can utilize: "take full advantage of; to make do with something not originally used for a purpose." For Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union, for example, I "utilized" the Wordpress treewalking engine to create a previously non-existent relationship between post categories and pages. But I doubt the job poster people were seeking that kind of Wordpress development.
Still, if they are, I'm their man.
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Re: Normative sodomy
Date: 2009-07-21 07:05 am (UTC)Now, while complete sexual inexperience might lead a young boy to the conclusion that the omnipresence of sodomy in porn means that everyone likes it, that notion is dispelled pretty damn quick. The worst case scenario being a blunder into "surprise" buttfucking that lasts all of three seconds and turns his girlfriend off of the idea for several years (if not forever). The best case however, is a quick Google or Wikipedia search for "anal sex", which quickly reveals that it's not for everyone, without the embarrassment and hurt asses. Funny how all that access to information works.
Of course, the other side of that coin is that not only are young *boys* going to get turned on by that normative anal sex from pornography, so are young *girls* (or certain other boys...). Usually through slash fiction. Or *ahem!* the Journal Entries. As such, porn brings to the people the things they wouldn't necessarily think to try on their own. Or it just provides a smörgåsbord from which to develop our own tastes.