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No, not horribly incompetent writing, but normalized perversion
(Note: see updated exchange with Bill Carpenter. Also, be sure to read the entire article about the insemination attack.)
Bill Carpenter writes:
From the Berkshire Eagle, a great example of obscure pronouns in the first sentence:
PITTSFIELD—A woman who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate her wife with her brother’s semen has been charged with domestic assault and battery.
LA replies:
Bill, I didn’t see an unclear pronoun here, but a total mix up of words such as I’ve never seen before. Looking at that bizarre sentence, I tried to figure out what the reporter had really meant to say. I thought maybe he intended to write:
A [woman] man who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate [her] his wife with [her] his brother’s semen has been charged with domestic assault and battery.
But how could anyone, in addition to mistakenly writing “woman” instead of “man,” twice mistakenly write “her” instead of his? It wasn’t possible. Then I read further, and slowly realized … that there was no mistake in the writing. The story is about a lesbian “married” couple. And the paper, treating the story, uh, straight, doesn’t bother informing readers of this fact, at least not at the opening of the article, and it does so only indirectly later in the article. It expects us to understand and accept from the get-go that a woman wanted to perform an artificial insemination on her wife.
Not only that, but this was a violent attack by the “wife,” who was “liquored up,” against the “wife,” a seriously attempted “rape” with a turkey baster.
Compared to our society, Sodom and Gomorrah were nineteenth century Methodist townships on the New Jersey Shore.
UPDATE:
Bill Carpenter writes:
Isn’t it unbelievably grotesque? Hell on earth. But whose brother’s semen was involved, looking at the first sentence alone?
LA replies:
Yes, I see, that is more of a conventional unspecified pronoun. In the phrase, “A woman who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate her wife with her brother’s semen,” does the second “her” refer to “A woman” or to “her wife”? Obviously we have to assume from the context, and from—what?—common sense, that both “her’s” refer to the wannabe inseminator. Otherwise it would be incest on top of everything else.
Bill Carpenter replies:
Exactly. I thought you might enjoy a little pronoun pedantry in the midst of a moral conflagration.
LA continues:
I wrote:
Obviously we have to assume from the context, and from—what?—common sense, that both “her’s” refer to the wannabe inseminator. Otherwise it would be incest on top of everything else.
But then what right does one have to assume common sense in a news article in which the reader is expected to understand instantly, without being told, that one woman is “married” to another woman? If that could be treated as the normal and the automatically-to-be-expected, why should we automatically assume that Woman A. did not attempt to inseminate Woman B. with the semen of Woman B.’s own brother?
Which raises the question: how should the sentence have been written? This revised version eliminates the semantic confusion, though not the sexual perversion:
A woman who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate her lesbian partner with the semen of the woman’s brother has been charged with domestic assault and battery.
Alternatively, instead of “her lesbian partner,” they could have used “her female partner” or “her lesbian wife.”
LA continues:
But there are two further problems with the sentence: the split infinitive, and the fact that there is no reference to the actual violence of the attack. Also, it is not correct to say that the woman “allegedly intended” to inseminate her partner. No, she allegedly attempted to inseminate her. No one is charged for a criminal intention by itself, but for the criminal act (or the attempt to do the act). So I would change it to:
A woman has been charged with domestic assault and battery for attempting to perform by force an artificial insemination on her lesbian partner with the semen of the woman’s brother.
This covers, without any ambiguity or confusion, all the essential elements of the story. The reader can grasp from a single reading of the sentence what happened. Though why it happened, and what kind of society we’re living in where such things happen, will not be so easy to grasp.
So far we’ve been talking about linguistic issues, not about the unbelievable story itself. Here is the article:
Insemination fight ends in wife’s arrest
By Conor Berry, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Thursday, March 12
PITTSFIELD—A woman who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate her wife with her brother’s semen has been charged with domestic assault and battery.
Pittsfield police responded to a call shortly before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in the city’s Morningside neighborhood, where the assault allegedly occurred.
Stephanie K. Lighten, 26, was released on personal recognizance after denying the allegations in Central Berkshire District Court Wednesday morning.
[LA: Here’s where the mystery is explained:]
Jennifer A. Lighten, 33, told police that Stephanie Lighten, her wife, was “all liquored up” when she returned to their Lincoln Street apartment, where the defendant then allegedly tried to use a syringe to inseminate her, according to a police report.
Jennifer told investigating officers that Stephanie “has been talking about trying to impregnate (her) for some time,” police said.
According to a report by Pittsfield Police Officer Kipp D. Steinman: “Jennifer said that Stephanie had a ‘turkey baster and her brother’s semen in a sealed container.’ Jennifer said she told Stephanie that she didn’t want to get pregnant.” The device was actually a large syringe with a catheter tip, police said, and it was still in its original package when officers confiscated the item.
That’s allegedly when Stephanie threw Jennifer on the couch, grabbed at her clothes and threatened to impregnate her, police said.
Jennifer broke free, ran into the bathroom and locked the door. Stephanie “then broke the bathroom door down,” police said, hurting her wrist in the process.
When Stephanie went to retrieve an ice pack from the freezer, Jennifer bolted from the apartment and attempted to get away in the couple’s sport utility vehicle, police said.
As Jennifer pulled away from the scene, Stephanie “jumped on the side of their vehicle, swung the door open and made (Jennifer) stop,” Steinman said.
According to Officer John Bassi, a witness at the scene claimed Stephanie “was hanging on the SUV door handle, trying to get into the car.” Amber Hunt told Bassi that Stephanie nearly caused an accident when the vehicle narrowly missed hitting a tree in the front yard of Hunt’s Spring Street home.
Police arrested Stephanie Lighten near the intersection of Spring and Curtis streets in Morningside.
Police also confiscated the container of semen and some aluminum foil, which was originally used to hold the semen. Nicholas Lighten, Stephanie Lighten’s brother, was the donor, according to police.
Detective Thomas H. Harrington said Jennifer Lighten declined “to go forward with charges of assault with intent to rape” because she did not believe “Stephanie was going to sexually assault her with the syringe.” However, Harrington informed the alleged victim that attempted rape charges could be filed if she changes her mind.
Stephanie Lighten was represented by attorney Thomas J. Donahue Jr. at Wednesday’s arraignment.
Judge Rita S. Koenigs ordered Lighten to “refrain from abuse” and to return to court for an April 29 pretrial hearing.
- end of initial entry -
James M2 writes:
I just noticed the title of the article: “Insemination fight ends in wife’s arrest.” How meaningful is it to say “ends in wife’s arrest” when they are both “wives”?
LA replies:
Yes, that’s another problem. And the problem is not just incidental but integral to homosexual “marriage” in particular and to liberalism in general. Liberalism wants to eliminate differences, such as the differences between a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple. Therefore language must be used that eliminates any gender distinction between the partners. Instead of “husband” and “wife,” we have “partner” and “partner,” or, in this case, “wife” and “wife.” But the problem is, once a couple consists of a partner and a partner, or, even more difficult, a wife and a wife, where both parties are “she,” how do you distinguish between the two partners, or the two wives?
The liberal campaign to eliminate discrimination doesn’t just pervert and degrade human society; it destroys the very ability of language to convey reality.
LA continues:
We see further liberalism at work in the word “fight”: “Insemination fight ends in wife’s arrest.” This was not a “fight,” which implies mutuality. This was a violent attack in which one woman was attempting to penetrate by force the vagina of another woman with a turkey baster in order to inseminate her, while the second woman resisted the attack. Being liberals, the reporter and editors automatically “relativized” the situation by calling it a “fight.” In the same way, journalists portray an attack by black on whites, or by Muslims on Israelis, as a “fight” between the two groups. Again, liberalism with its demand for equality of treatment destroys the very ability of language to convey reality.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 14, 2009 12:19 AM | Send
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