Language is a wonderful thing

What people occasionally do to it isn’t.

Exhibit A: “good parental correction”, as in “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?” Because, you know, that’s a totally objective standard, contains no inherent assumptions, and will totally yield an accurate account of to what extent New Zealanders support beating kids.

Oh wait, no, see, what I did there was probably “twist other people’s words” or “condemn all smacking as violence”, which … well, no apologies, ’cause it fucking is.**

Unless you’re Exhibit B: “I smacked my children, but I’ve never hit them.” Which is fine if a) you’re a former rugby player and thus get an automatic hall pass on anything you do, and b) if you honestly think the only definition of “hit” is “hit really hard and not in a manner I thought was justified at the time”.

Sorry, who’s messing around with language now?

Oh, right, it’s our naughty, naughty Government, which, in Exhibit C, is refusing “to acknowledge any sex.” Because an evil lesbian conspiracy* has decided to change official court language: “Foreperson” instead of “Foreman” of a jury. Now, sure, there’s a bit of life in the idea that we could just use Foreman or Forewoman as appropriate (I really don’t want to be the one to try to tell Bob Jones about the fluidity of gender), but even putting aside identity issues, I can’t wait to see Rodney Hide get bitchy about the amount of money it’d cost to print two versions of every single pertinent document.

…

Going off the topic, and others have already said it, but this really does appear to need repeating:

TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS CANNOT CONSENT TO SEX YOU FUCKING ASSHAT.

*I so wish I was making that up.

**But that’s a post for another day, or several posts, since we apparently have to have a fucking referendum on this now.