h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems that feminism is reaction against women who look feminine, by women who look masculine. So I suppose it follows that a reaction against ugly people would be uglyism and is likely to be more commonly shown by people who didn't fall out of the ugly tree and collide with every branch on the way down.

They've done studies, and "more atractive" people are subconciously seen as more trustworthy, an honest than their less attractive counter parts.

And atractiveness also has a great deal to do with simmetry. (at least facial beauty does) I saw this one thing on TV where a LA plastic surgion devlopped a generig facial "Template" that was based on symitry and pentagrams (don't ask...) and when he dropped this template on photos of most movie stars (the leading men/women types, not the "character actors") the closer thier faces matched up woth the template, the more attractive they were considered by the movie-going public.

Mingist

Yes, but is the skirt length the same for a man as it is for a woman?

Ming? As in Hank and what's-her-name's neighbour?

Men don't wear skirts, they wear kilts. In case you were wondering, the correct length for a kilt is such that the bottom edge of the kilt just touches the floor when you're kneeling, i.e. roughly the distance to mid-knee. (At least, it was when my dad wore one when he was in the Black Watch.) So the correct length for a kilt varies from man to man, according to leg length.

No ming as in minging, a slang word for "She resembles a horses rear my good fellow". Saves a lot of time as you can imagine. "She's mingin' man" is also short enouhg to remember when you are drunk so you can steer a friend clear of any christmas turkeys that may be wondering around at the office party
Also used by "The Voice Of Youth" Ali G. If you don't know who he is then you either don't live in the UK or you haven't watched Channel 4 for the past six months. Find out more about him at my web site http://i.am/ali-g/
Respect!

No, no.. you misunderstood. I said precisely what I meant, and I was not referring to kilts. When they require a woman to wear a dress (whether of a certain length or not) then they had better require the same of men.

(Let -them- come into work freezing in a pair of nylons!)

Because I have longer than average (for my height) legs and narrower than average hips, I have to wear mens trousers (most of the time). I also have a number of men's shirts, i.e. they button the wrong way. I can put the two together and even wear them to work and nobody with any sense will bat an eyelid. However, if any man decided he wanted to wear a pretty blouse, skirt, nylons and high heels to work (or anywhere else), he'd be ostracised. So much for equality!

The company in question did not 'require' women to wear dresses/skirts, but did state in its dress code that, when worn, the skirts should be of a certain length. Companies in Britain cannot 'require' women to only wear skirts. A colleague once worked for a company that did. One very cold winter she wore trousers to work, to the amazement of her colleagues who told her about the dress code. Her attitude was 'O.K., let them have a go if they want and see what happens.' She was quite prepared to start litigation. Nothing happened and gradually other women started to wear trousers and the matter dropped.

Keepin' it real, ma main man, Bo!

What about 'appearanceism'?

Snafu (fat ugly b*****d)

In the latin, vulticulus is the proper word for appearance, so a new word such as "vulticulism" might work. Human nature being what it is we humans have a marked tendency to discriminate on surface details and consider it justified. This despite the fact that one of the supposed saving graces of our poor species is the ability to move beyond basic instincts. Perhaps the use of terminology to quantify and illustrate such "human" tendencies is required to make us take stock of our less than "civilized" traits. We certainly seem to hide behind them often enough. And without a handy term how do you know what to accuse someone of? Of course, wouldn't that require another new term...blamism...accusism, or culpaism...see what this has started? There's no end in sight.

Although I did help Quizari with his post, I would also like to add that the discussion above, although interesting, seem to have missed the point of what DISCRIMINATION means. Discrimination is about how you treat other people, not how attracted you are to them. There will always be less than beautiful people, but they should not be treated the worse for it. And it's not only media (for example) that discriminates ugly people. Studies have shown that beautiful people get jobs easier as well, and I'm sure there are planty of other occurances of this vulticulism or whatever we called it...

And like some of you have already pointed out; a persons personality or working skills have nothing to do with the way they look.
Merry Christmas.

perfectly normal and to be encouraged

My, you do enjoy taking a gamble, don't you?

'Nonnie
(discrimination in -any- form is a BadThing®)

Try looking up the word discrimination in a dictionary published before 1940. To discriminate, to be discriminating, is not bad per se. What is bad is to attribute all sorts of malign properties to someone or something on the basis of a single characteristic. In other words, to be indiscriminate.

Similar to the modern misuse of 'prejudice', I suppose. Everyone's prejudiced in the sense of 'making decisions on less than perfect data'. It's only when people aren't aware of their prejudices, or when they use them to someone else's detriment that it becomes a problem.
Though there are many reasons for the current misuse of the words, if forced to give a quick answer, I'd blame social scientists, journalists, and political correctness obsessives, but maybe that's an unjustified prejudice.

With respect to the misuse, or in some cases abuse, of words, what is a social scientist? Surely this is contradictory term.
I agree with your remarks about prejudice. I find that in daily life (is there another kind?) the only way that I can deal with our complex society and adopt appropriate 'dramaturgical' roles is to make huge assumptions based upon experience and culture - that is, to utilise prejudices. Equally, when I choose to engage in friendly conversation with a person I discriminate. I suspect that I am not alone in this.

It *is* a contradictory term, though it is a phrase some people (sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, etc) choose to use to describe themselves, presumably partly in an attempt to boost their credibility. (I dare say a significant fraction of the usage also stems from educational establishments trying to find impressive sounding terms to cover describe the departments that fall between arts and real science)

I *was* tempted to say social 'scientist', but didn't want to go out of my way to offend *all* of them in a casual remark - I'm sure there are many who *do* do a good job, and bring to light facts about modern society that people need to be aware of. (Just like some journalists.)

However, I believe that there are many people in the social science field who think they have been given a superior insight into people and society, when if anything, they've probably been overeducated to the point that they can only see reality filtered through a few subjective, scientifically unsupportable theories dreamt up and taught to them by people who couldn't hold down any job other than social science lecturer.

Personally, I think there are some subjects that are probably better for people not to study until they've fully grown up and
worked out something about how the world works for themselves. I reckon psychology and philosophy would definitely be on my list.

On the terminology side, some of these people believe they are real scientists, and others subscribe to the idiotic notion of scientific relativism ('science is a social construct', 'anyone's theory is as good as anyone else's'). Of course, the only person who could seriously beleive in scientific relativism is someone who has missed the entire point of science, and who isn't smart enough to realise how dumb they actually are.

On prejudice - effectively, it's the only way the brain decides *anything* that isn't entirely based on complete objective data, so apart from mathematics, logic, and some proper science, all else is prejudice. (It certainly made writing *this* piece much easier, but is *has* been a bad day)

Have you looked at the forum for the article 'Journalists'? You may be uplifted by seeing that a number of people seem to share your 'prejudice', and some journalists seem dedicated to re-enforcing the archetype. Many people, myself included, have views similar to those you express about quasi-sciences and philosophy. I must, however, spring to the defence of psychology; or at least of scientific psychology. Throw out the Freud(s), Jungs, Maslows and Winnicotts and look at Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky, Eysenk etc. and you have quite a respectable body of disprovable theories.
I am not certain that one has to have a bad day to enjoy poking fun at stereotypes. Perhaps we should have a forum to discuss 'professionism'? I append my list of the lowest forms of occupational life, in no particular order. I would delighted to amend it in the face of constructive, or destructive, criticism.

Media advisor
Politician
Psychoanalyst
Bean counter
Social scientist
Educationalist (as opposed to educator)
Aromatherapist
Cleric
Non-executive director
Terrorist