A Rose by Any Name

So, I started out the day reading Dear Abby. I really started out the day by getting some coffee, but after that …

A while ago someone asked about marrying someone with Multiple Personality Disorder. Today there were a plethora of responses from people who have lived with that issue.

When a small child is severely abused, the sanest thing to do is hide away inside his or her own mind. That is where there is safety. Other personalities take the heat of the abuse. That second personality may also wish to escape, leaving a third to suffer the consequences.

The issue isn't just the multiple personalities, but the underlying abuse as well. Years ago this was simply called Multiple Personality Disorder, a brilliantly descriptive name. Today, it is called Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID. Unless you are some nutcase and then you call it Multiple Personality Gift or MPG – because the child escaped the devastating abuse by a perfectly wonderful method – a gift.

What?

Shakespeare said, through Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

What in God's name are we doing to the English language. There are more than a half million words in it, more than five times the number Shakespeare himself had to work with. We should be able to make things abundantly clear. Instead, we try to obfuscate at every turn.

Garbage men are now Sanitation Workers. I was a secretary with the lofty name of Administrative Assistant, but the wages of a secretary. In order to not have 'men' in any title, we have the perfectly lovely term Chairperson. We were playing a game that asked for actors and had to argue over whether or not girl people could be included. While the Oscars have both Best Actor and Best Actress, when listed as occupation 'actor' covers everyone regardless of gender.

I can deal with Fire Fighters and Police Officers as a way to make women feel better about getting less pay for the same job. We have the language with us so why worry about that esoteric thing – wages. Instead of getting equality in the job market, we have silly job titles without any substance. Men are afflicted with this same puffed up verbiage but they have the paycheck, so why worry.

Everybody knew what Lou Gehrig's Disease was. I could look up to see what the letters ALS stand for, but it really stands for Lou Gehrig's Disease. We do this frequently. It's like everyone is afraid of what they are saying. It might be offensive. The PC crowd might get all in a snit. So let's say the same thing in a new way.

A Sanitation Worker is still picking up my garbage and putting it into a truck and has the highest percentage of on-the-job injuries. But at least the title is better. It's still outside work in the freezing cold or sweltering heat. And in that heat the garbage still stinks to high heaven. None of the unappealing aspects of the job were erased with the name change. But is sounds nice.

No wonder we have so many words in the English language today. We need them to hide behind lest we actually put forth a thought or idea which might offend someone somewhere. Of course, any thought or idea will offend someone somewhere which is probably why there are so many horrible thoughts running around in their fine language lurking about, trying not to get PC corrected.