An exchange in the Angel topic, started by a gossip-column item explaining how Asia Argento is pregnant by JT Leroy:
Burrell:
Okay, this may be a dumb question, but how does one get pregnant with a trannie's child? Because I'm thinking that, post- surgery, it's a little hard to find the wee buggers. In other words, isn't pregnancy a very deliberate thing, involving doctor visits, cryobanks, etc?
p.m. marcontell:
Transvestite, I'm assuming. Not transsexual.
Burrell:
Ah. I had always used it to mean transsexual.
Jon B:
Trannie can also mean transgender which includes a range of possibilities.
Theodosia :
I know a pre-operative male-to-female transexual who self- identifies as a lesbian and has no intention of ever being post- operative. (Serious fears of major surgery, as well as reluctance to give up working equipment in favor of surgically-altered genitals that look correct but don’t work nearly as well. I don’t blame her.) But then she gets mad at the regular lesbians who, unsurprisingly, have a small problem accepting her as a bona fide member of their community....
connie neil :
I love the Buffista worlds I get to visit by proxy.
Daniel C. Jensen:
The Buffistas "...walk in worlds the others can't begin to imagine."
DavidS:
JT Leroy was a transvestite prostitute at truckstops in the south. Raised there by his hoor of a mother. I love his writing.
Daniel C. Jensen :
Can my point have been better made than by that last post? Hee.
Damn. DX beat me.
Also, I've always absolutely read "trannie" as transsexual or transgendered.
Angus:
Unamerican here who embraces the serial comma.
Correction:
drunk
Unermciarna who ermbraees the serioal com mma.
Unamerican here who embraces the serial comma.
Ah! So the serial comma is an American institution? Is it? Or not? Because I've embraced it since I entered fanfic, but I had it drummed into me in school that one absolutely shouldn't follow a comma with an 'and'. And indeed that one shouldn't start sentences with an and; and indeed that one
should
follow semicolons with one.
In retrospect, however, that teacher was a silly cow, so why on earth I've always believed her on the handful of grammar points she bothered with escapes me.
t /natter
Oh, what the hell, there should be
more
natter in COMM.
FayJay, the Chicago Style Manual has a big ejaculation type yay!!! thing over serial commas, so I interpret it as an American thing.
Which means I do it, because I'm an academic (can't you tell?) so naturally I write for American publications because there aren't any others! (Generally speaking)
Someone -- and right now I can't remember who -- is immortalized in the BRQG as saying the reason the serial comma will never die is the following sentence: "I'd like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand."
She
is
a silly cow. On all those points.
Forget the anti-serial-comma! Joinnn us!
/badbadnatteriness
The god and Ayn Rand thing is sort of the classic serial comma defense. Effective, too.
