Thanks - I’ve worked hard at becoming more assertive.
My husband has a book that was supposedly written in the “female voice” rather than the masculine - as a man, he couldn’t wade through it, and as a woman, I couldn’t either. I’m not sure exactly what it proved. The book is called “The Female Man” by Joanna Russ.
Just for fun (and to enrich Zoe and Rubystreak’s discussion), I ran Rubystreak’s few most recent posts through an online app called the Gender Genie– which apparently analyzes keywords that carry either a weighted masculine or feminine value (no syntactic analysis)-- and it decided that she does, in fact, write like a female-- whatever that means. (at least lexically). On the other hand, it guessed that Zoe, based on her last few posts, is male. 
It also correctly determined me to be male.
I had the pleasure of being raised by liberated, opinionated women and so the concept of being passive isn’t one that comes naturally to me. I’ve always considered it a southern thing that it is more acceptable for us to be on the mouthy side. The whole steel magnolias mythos. For whatever reason I got it, I’ve always been thankful for it, even though when dealing with people with more…backwards ideas of a womans place, it doesn’t always serve me well.
I’ve always thought that women get dramatically more interesting the farther past 40 they get. We stop caring quite so much what people think and feel freer to be who we want to be. As such, I’ve always lied UP about my age. 
Microsoft Word had this big kick for passive sentences. Even though I am a pretty direct (if meandering at times) person, I had a hell of a time with that feature. It seemed if I tempered something to be more polite, it considered it to passive. It would be an interesting test to see how it parses womens writing versus mens. I do recall reading somewhere that women are far more likely to say “I’m sorry.” whether or not something was their fault and that the general idea was that a woman was not accepting blame, but offering condolences, but it was perceived as accepting blame.
Wow, I’ve gone off on a tangent, sorry. I majored in cultural anthropology, struggled mightily with a linguistics course and am endlessly fascinated by perceptions of culture. Which ultimately, this entire thread is. There is an accepted culture here, even accepted deviations (Hi Auto!) and attempts to understand where the lines are drawn and even if lines should be drawn. People bonding together under a common cause is very human. Expecting people that enter that culture to follow certain norms is also very, very human.
Doesn’t everyone? I know I fall into that now and then. In fact I came to and was almost ready to post “Stop, this isn’t about me.” in the Wally Shirra MPSIMS thread. Fortunately saner heads got it back on Wally before I had to do that.
Rubystreak, I can’t remember exactly what you said about us old gals and language, but I forgot to finish what I was saying. Now when you think about it, you have to know that the hippies invented shit and fuck. (Well, I may be a few hundred years off.) Some of those old gals are not the sticks in the mud that you think they are. But I never know for sure either. We are probably more cautious in dropping the F Bomb the first time around each other.
Language doesn’t bother me usually. But I don’t like it when words that are references to females are used to put anyone down. (Why should being female be an insult?) I asked only one person not to use it and he has kindly obliged. And I do use names and words to tease friends. Since most of them have buried their mothers in recent years, the one you suggested is off limits.
Also off limits to me is “cs.” It is usually used as an insult and my gay friends take offense. I don’t mind curtailing my use of the word. I heard a rumor that sometimes straight people do this sort of thing too, but I’m way too old to know anything about that.
I will say one thing that is a compliment. Your posts are never dull!
It was nice talking with you. What ever became of that woman we were pitting?
Sorry, had to post it. My post prior to the one just above rated strongly as a male…go figure.
Auntbeast, now that’s a good post! It helps to explain why we keep coming back to this thread. I was wondering…
or a ladle in the jackals.
But, of course, our little friend will never quit.
I had a color blind friend in high school who used to argue what colors things things were. “It’s over by the green car.” "The “red car?” “No, the green car.” Strange that I would just remember that.
True enough. The question then becomes, why would anyone want to be pitted? If one finds the experience unpleasant, why would one then pointedly drag the discussion back on point after it had started to lose steam and drift, unless one were enjoying the attention? Why indeed?
This is, for the dialectically challenged, a rhetorical inquiry.
She’s a star.
Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.
In case anybody is still following this thread, I shall now attempt to eliminate one area of debate by genuinely treating Quiddity Glomfuster differently based only upon her gender. Please observe.
<ahem>
Hey, Quiddity Glomfuster! Show us yer tits! Hey, Frank! Don’t show us yer tits!
Does that help?
I’m a male. WooT!
I’m no expert on this subject and I’m hesitant to bring it up here. But I really don’t think this is the definition. It’s certainly not my understanding of the definition of passive-aggressive. It’s not my understanding because I think that the definition above could still be a reasonable response in a way. It could be that something wasn’t bothering the person for a long time but when it finally got to them, they blew up. That may not be an appropriate response, but that’s just an isolated aggressive response. Not a good thing, but not passive-aggressive, I think.
Passive-aggressive in my book has the snark built into the passive part. And it also has behaviors that are in tandem with the smiles and niceness that belie the passive part. In other words, there’s nothing nice going on even when the person is passive. And they could be using the aggressive part intermittently along with the passive part to throw people off.
I think a lot of QG’s behavior here is passive-aggressive. She uses the snark part even when she is being “nice” and when she blows up, she gets really nasty but still keeps it within bounds by not swearing. That’s classic passive-aggressiveness. And it’s this passive-aggressiveness that people are responding to. If she were just nice for a long time and then blew up once in a while, I think people would be more forgiving. It’s the constancy of passive-aggressiveness that makes it so unbearable.
Heffalump, your points are well-taken. I had forgotten that aspect of passive-aggressive behavior. You are right.
That’s not how I’ve always heard the term applied. Instead it’s usually somebody who gets their way using various indirect methods rather than confronting a situation. Passive-aggressive behavior - Wikipedia
What you describe sounds more like a bipolar personality.
Passive-aggressive is the child who is told he’ll be grounded if he doesn’t clean his room. Then he doesn’t clean his room and you ground him and he’s not bothered in the slightest.
There’s this guy who writes a newspaper column where people write in with questions and he answers them. One day, I got into an argument with a co-worker about what, precisely, “passive-aggressive” means, so I looked it up on the web. That’s how I found out about this guy’s column on the definition of passive-aggressive, and even found that there was a message board of really smart people (plus a few dipsticks) who were fans of his work! Check it out: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030530.html
One often resorts to aggression when being reasonable fails to work, and when you feel like you have nothing to lose anymore. Arguing with someone like QG often leads to aggression because using cites, asking questions, and being as concrete and direct as possible leads only to trollish needling and lying. The result is known as “losing your temper.” I know that the wiser and more level-headed among us never do that. Apparently I’m not one of them. Characterizing this as “bullying” is inaccurate and I object to it.
I think it’s been adequately shown that this is an incorrect definition of passive-aggressive.
I suppose they also get the corner piece of the cake with the big rose on it, too? It’s so not fair!
stomps off
Auntbeast I popped back in just to offer you a different biscuit recipie. It’s fairly foolproof. I can post it in CS if you like.