Moments of Permanence - Sometimes uppity IS the word you're looking for

From: rainbow Date: September 23rd, 2009 02:34 am (UTC) (Link)

Google started getting weirdly annoying for me about 3 years ago. Do Not Want. And yet I use it.

I love the word uppity -- but suspect we have different definitions as mine would definitely not include annoying programming; my mother always emphasised that "uppity" was a very positive word about empowerment and refusing to shut up and "be nice" when niceness was only called for by people who wanted to control you. One of the first buttons I made when I got a button maker in the 70s was one she wanted, but I can't remember the slogan. It was something about being uppity, though, and she often wore it to work (she was an emergency room nurse who didn't take any crap from the male doctors -- and the only nurse they didn't try to give any attitude to...unless they wanted to get publicly and loudly called on it. *g* 19 years last month, and I still miss her horribly [especially since she didn't know *me*, since I slept thru most of the body's life until 1995].

(Reply) (Thread)

From: sami Date: September 23rd, 2009 03:21 am (UTC) (Link)

Yeah, for me, uppity has thoroughly negative connotations - uppity is about not knowing your place. If I use it about people, there's a strong likelihood of irony being involved somewhere.

Being nice is not something I'd see as an opposite quality to being uppity. You can be nice while rejecting control by others - my own approach is a mixture of polite insistence and judicious failure to recognise possibilities.

As in, with a lot of the subtle ways people try to control others, I just ignore completely. I find you can go a long way past that stuff if you just refuse to recognise it. It all depends heavily on implying things and passive-aggressive behaviours, and I just don't play that game.

If something is "well, of course, that's an option, but..." with the implication being that it's not for women, that kind of thing, I just ignore that implication and return a cheerful: "Good. Let's do that, then."

If someone says that something's okay, but there's an implication that it's really not but I, as a woman, should sacrifice myself and whatever? I ignore it.

The thing is, when you get to them being pissed off later, there's very little recourse. "You did X!" "Yeah, you said I could. And it's in the rules, look." "But you weren't supposed to do X!" "It's IN the RULES, and also, I ASKED you and you said YES." "I know, but you should have known I really wanted you to do Y!" "Then you should have said that, shouldn't you?"

Passive-aggressive behaviour generally requires a fair amount of complicity from the victim, and that's not how I roll.

Being empowered and refusing to shut up is not being uppity for me. Uppity is computer programs deciding that they know what I wanted to search for better than I do - that's not their call to make.

Uppity is also tourists in Africa deciding they know how to Save Africa. Uppity is the American ambassador to the United Nations saying the German chancellor should be impeached for not following American foreign policy. Uppity, to me, is assuming power and authority where it is not merited; uppity is about arrogance.

It's why I recognise strongly the meanings intended when people point out attitudes about "uppity Negroes"; the reason some people are so offended by, say, the presidency of Barack Obama is that, to them, black people expecting equality, and in particular a black man thinking he's fit for the presidency of the United States of America, is unjustified. It's people not thinking black people have or deserve the right to represent themselves or other people in that way.

Because uppity means you don't know your place. They call black people uppity if they think that the proper place for black people is subservient and lesser; I can't see uppity as a positive because to me uppity DOES mean you don't know your proper place.

Where I differ is in my allocation of place status. Black people expecting equality is their proper place. Barack Obama's place IS President of the United States of America - he merits that position.

However, the American Ambassador to the United Nations trying to decide what the foreign policy of Germany should be, or who the German head of state should be? Not so much.

At the diplomatic level it gets rather interesting, in some ways. For example, former Australian Prime Minister shocked and horrified many when he put his arm around the waist of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. That was a gross violation of protocol, and it was him being more than a little uppity.

It was a formal event. Her Majesty was there in her role as Head of State - both of the United Kingdom *and* Australia. Keating, as Prime Minister of Australia, was nevere head of state and was, in those circumstances, in the role of her subordinate. He had no right to take any liberties whatsoever.

Whereas a more recent person to touch the Queen is First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama. And that was not, in fact, anywhere near as bad. Because:

1) Michelle Obama was there as the spouse of a Head of State. While this means that Obama's status relative to the queen's is lesser, it's not actually subordinate. Touching the queen was a breach of protocol but not an actual insult; the nature of the difference in status is precedence more than hierarchy.

2) Michelle Obama is a woman, and the touch was at the shoulders. Obama's gesture was one of friendliness; to the extent it showed ignorance, it was the kind of ignorance that can be expected of foreigner from a republic. Unfamiliarity with protocol regarding royal personages is only to be expected.

Keating, meanwhile, should have known better in terms of protocol, being head of government for a country that still acknowledges her as our monarch. And Keating is male and touched her waist, which is just flat-out inappropriate. It would have been offensive for him to touch ANY woman he'd only just met like that.

Keating didn't know his place; Michelle Obama didn't know protocol. Important difference.

I just realised how long this comment has got - I haven't had my medication. >.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From: rainbow Date: September 23rd, 2009 03:54 am (UTC) (Link)

I love reading your long comments, just sos you know. And this is fascinating because we have such different meanings for the same word!

I agree with "uppity is about not knowing your place" -- except the meaning I learnt from my mother was that "your place" was the place _others felt entitled to define as your place_. IIRC, it was hsitorically used by whites to try to put blacks "in their place" and then later other pocs, women, and other non-white males.

So to me "uppity" is always a slur intended to put the target down and emphasise one's own superiority; arrogance on the part of the person believing they're superior. And it's a reclaimed positive to me because it's about rejecting those who would say "you're lesser, so you should shut up and stay in your place".

Keating's behaviour I'd class as highly inappropriate and horribly rude -- and intended to give the message that he's got the right to touch a woman he doesn't know without her consent. I'd never call that uppity; I'd be more inclined to assume he thought she was uppity and needed to be put in her place!

OTOH, the meaning I learnt may be a specific to the US meaning and not common in the rest of the English speaking world; I don't know how far back the word goes.

(by "be nice" I mean the messages like "be quiet", "don't be assertive", "don't argue", "don't make a fuss", "never beat a boy at anything", etc; those were common for girls to be taught in the 60s. Mama A and L made sure we knew they were not healthy messages we should interalise. I put it in quotes because I don't agree that those have anything to do with being amiable or kind or pleasant.)

(Reply) (Parent)