Monday, May 5, 2014

A traveling band of people by any other name...

To start with, I mean no offense. None. I guess I'm just trying to understand.

Where to begin? I guess to sum it up, I am musing on the word "gypsy."

I almost feel bad for typing that. The thing is, I don't find that word offensive, don't consider it offensive, or mean it offensively.

Growing up, gypsy to me meant band of travelers with a distinct style (I probably got that part from Hollywood) that may be related to things like fortune telling. And they had to have little cart-houses. I thought the carts were cool. I never really associated it with a modern people and while I understood that in some places, some of these bands were considered thieves, I didn't usually connect that in my head.

In fact, I have a stronger connection with that for the "Tinkers" in the fantasy series "Wheel of Time," a group of traveling pacifists who mended pots and pans and would rather sing and dance than ever fight, even to defend themselves. They supposedly would steal everything in sight, including children, but that turned out to be a rude lie. But those are Tinkers. Probably modeled off of the historical idea of gypsies, but obviously not the same thing.

So basically, my point is I don't consider gypsy offensive and when I say it, I don't mean it offensively at all.

So what really baffles me is that some people out there are making that term offensive. I don't know who exactly, but the Wikipedia article reads like this:

However, many Romani people and academics who study them believe the word has been tainted by its use as a pejorative connoting illegality and irregularity, and some modern dictionaries recommend avoiding use of the word gypsy either entirely, or as a negative modifier.

First off, not everyone uses that word to imply such. I don't and it wouldn't enter my mind. When I think of gypsies, I think of like Esmeralda from Hunchback of Notre Dame. Sure, she wasn't on the right side of the law in that case, but the laws were stupid and the authority evil and corrupt and in the end, nobody was on the right side of the law and the gypsies were mostly good misunderstood people.

Maybe back in the day it meant that, but words change over time.

I think many Americans really have no idea that it is even supposed to be offensive. I mean, if you search Wikipedia for the word Gypsy, you'll find that it's a name, a play, a movie, a DC Comic character, several different bands, song names, names of towns, the names of some actual Romanian traveling groups, a word-processing program, name of a ship, etc.

I think we've romanticized it far enough that none of us (I guess Americans, anyway) mean it poorly. We like the thought of traveling bands of people, free to roam wherever they wish, mysterious.

But I've heard of someone I know who had a "gypsy" pony, a paint with feathered legs that the breed is actually called gypsy and a group found and blew up her picture feed and she was totally caught off guard. She had no idea it was offensive, and it's not like she made up the name for the breed of horse. She couldn't understand why people were saying such rude things to her.

Also, the author of a webcomic series has a set of comics going on right now which has readers vote on the story. One of the votes was on the name of the spaceship and one of the options was "The Gypsy Sol." My favorite option, the one I voted for without thinking. He was also informed that "gypsy" could be considered offensive and he had no idea.

Basically, what I'm saying, is that do we really have to go and make sure everyone knows that a certain word is offensive when a lot of people have no idea it's offensive and certainly never use it offensively? Can we accept that language changes and perceptions change? Wouldn't it be better to either lose the negative connotation, or simply rename/redefine the group in question than to rename and make all previous names somehow rude and bad? Do we need more offensive/off-limits words to tip-toe around?

Mostly, I just don't want to get in trouble if I sing any one of the 19 songs titled "Gypsy" or "The Gypsy" on Wikipedia.