Southern Accents

Note: This was supposed to a post about how in love I am with Karl Urban’s portrayal of Bones in the new Star Trek movies, but then I went off on a tangent about Southern accents and Southern culture. Maybe y’all will find that interesting.

Despite being a native Metro Atlantan, my ear isn’t fine tuned enough to tell you how genuine-sounding Karl Urban’s affected Southern accent is when he plays Bones. However, I do appreciate how muted it is and that it only truly comes out on the vowels. That’s a marker of an “educated” Southern accent.

Atlanta and the greater metro area are filled with so many transplants that there is no one distinguishable “Atlanta” accent. You’re more likely to hear New York, Pittsburgh, and Detroit accents here among the English-speaking population. On top of that there is the fact that well-educated Southerners are both explicitly and implicitly taught from an early age to excise as much of our accent as possible, because a pronounced Southern accent is regarded as ignorant-sounding, even among Southerners.

I generally speak with a neutral accent, unless I’m exhausted or drunk or around my family. Even within my family the Southern accents vary. My grandmother is from the “hills” and speaks with in a mountain dialect. My father is from Texas and despite living in Georgia for 30+ years, still has a pronounced Texas accent on certain words. My mother’s accent is generally neutral like mine because hers was the first generation to be explicitly taught to not speak “that way”. She had her Southern accent literally beaten out of her by teachers. I’m thankful all I got was yelled at for saying “y’all” in elementary school.

I often joke that if an actor wants to affect a genuine Atlanta accent they should study a Michigan accent. It’s not that far from the truth. And an interesting thing I discovered recently is that an inner city Atlanta accent and an inner city Detroit accent are identical because of a long history of worker migration between the two places.

My own accent is so muted that I’m usually mistaken for being from out of town. It wasn’t until I started traveling regularly and had people comment, that I realized I even had a Southern accent beyond my obstinate use of the word “y’all.” I’m perpetually bemused when people in other cities comment that my Southern accent is “pleasing” and “charming”. My knee-jerk response is still to apologize for sounding ignorant, and it’s a habit I’m working to break.

The perception of Southern accents as ignorant is tied to the most painful and infuriating parts of Southern culture. Because there is so much ignorance entrenched in the dominant culture here, everything all the way down to how we talk is perceived as ignorant. I can’t exactly say that’s an unjust accusation.

Oppression, racism, and sexism are intrinsic to the dominant Southern culture. However, like all things, the South is not a monolith and there are so many of us on the fringes of that dominate culture who are digging our heels in and fighting. There are so many voices here screaming and shouting until we are accepted into the narrative of what it means to be Southern.

Snapshot: A Friend’s Kitty

Lilith, a friend’s cat, lounging under the coffee table.

 

Snapshot: A few of my favorite spy novels

Pictured here:

• The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy (the novel that started my deep abiding love for espionage fiction)
• The Russian House by John le Carré
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
• I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter (adorable YA spy novel about teenage girls training to be CIA agents)
• From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
• Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories by Ian Fleming
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré
• Berlin Game by Len Deighton
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

A (short) rant about things you may have read in the news today

I wish the privileged old white dudes in Washington would get one thing through their thick skulls: minority groups don’t want to steal privilege, they don’t want superiority, they don’t want to usurp the old white dudes.

No.

What minority groups want is a fucking seat at the table. Not the old white dudes’ seats, just A SEAT. They want privileged people to scoot over and make room for them at the table. THAT’S ALL. And it’s fucking demeaning as hell to have to ask and beg for the civil rights one should have had all along. Minority groups can fight and scream, but at the end of it all, the privileged groups have to be willing to make room.

It sucks to be at the mercy of other people in that way. It sucks to have to go up to the people who have privilege and say “please, sir, I want some more.” The fact that there are still groups of legal citizens in the United States being denied civil rights is only outdone by the sheer awfulness of those in power who willfully ignore how those rights are being denied.

I don’t give a shit about marriage as a religious institution. That will continue on as it has, regardless of whether gay marriage is legalized. No, what I do give a shit about is equal civil rights for all citizens of this country. Marriage is as much a legal institution as a religious one, and oh please don’t give me that “separation of church and state” bullshit then use religion as grounds to deny citizens the right to participate in a beneficial civil institution. Legalizing gay marriage is not going to take marriage rights away from heterosexuals; instead, it is going to extend those same rights to fellow citizens who should have had them in the first place.

The Further Adventures of Being Female in Public

A female friend brought up a rather saddening point last night: being sexually harassed by strangers in public is such a common occurrence it has become mundane and easily forgettable. Pick up a coffee at Starbucks, do some shopping, get rude things yelled at you by a boy, go home. And when we do think to relate these stories to people, it is second nature for us to preface with a description of what we were wearing lest the person we’re talking to blame us for the unwanted attention.

Like most women, I have many stories about unfortunate encounters with rude boys in public. There was the guy who followed me through a public transit station because I didn’t respond to his “compliment” about my ass. The three boys who cornered me on a train and pulled my hair and lifted my dress up as other passengers looked on and did nothing. The boy who walked all the way across the university library to say “You’d look pretty if you wore a little make-up.” The man who sat next to me on the train and asked if I wanted to see his cock as he unzipped his pants. The list goes one…

I stopped alerting the police around the time the only response I received was, “well look at what you’re wearing.” That time I was wearing a nice dress, strapless but not revealing (see what I’m doing here?) because I was going to an evening performance at a rather upscale theatre and I still believe that people should dress up for evening performances at upscale theatres. But I had make-up on and my shoulders were showing and I was, you know, in public so clearly I deserved being pinned against the side of a train and groped by a total stranger who was angry that I ignored his “compliments.”

I realized how warped my perception has become from these events when, this past weekend, I was on the train and a boy touched my thigh to get my attention, and all I thought was, “well at least that’s all he did.” I was actually relieved that he didn’t push the issue when I refused to engage in conversation. There are countless times when I’ve been called a bitch or threatened with physical violence for simply not wanting to talk to total strangers.

I’ve started logging my experiences on twitter, sometimes as complaints and sometimes as sarcastic critiques (“hey girl” is so cliche, y’all). It’s my way of alerting people that yes this does happen and no I’m not going to be quiet about it anymore. I want other ladies to do the same. I want us to talk loudly about how common this type of thing is, and I want us to push back against people who blame us for the way we are treated by strangers.

The bottom line is: I have as much right to be in public as a man, and I have as much right to move in public spaces without being molested. The only thing more frustrating than the assholes who think it’s already to treat another human being this way are the people I call friends and family who immediately grill me when I tell them what happened.

Well what were you wearing? Did you do anything to provoke him? What did you expect when you were so rude? Why didn’t you just talk to him? He was just trying to compliment you. And on and on and on.

It is never rude to not want to engage a total stranger in conversation. It is never rude to want to have personal boundaries respected. As a woman moving in public spaces, I cannot — for the sake of my personal safety — afford to give my time equally to every stranger who feels entitled to it. Nor should I. What is rude, however, is assuming that a woman alone in public wants to or should engage a man in conversation just because he’s talking to her.

See, there’s this terrifying moment for a woman when a strange man approaches her in public, a moment when she has to assess whether or not that man is going to harm her. Should I indulge him in conversation to keep this from escalating? Should I ignore him and risk him getting angry? We ask ourselves these questions because experience has taught us that these situations can escalate in scary ways (see the aforementioned incident where I was followed through a train station for ignoring a man).

I don’t know what kind of thought process leads a man to think he is entitled to a total stranger or what snaps when that stranger ignores him, causing him to react with anger and insults. At this point in my life I don’t really care to understand that bizarre kind of behavior. All I know is that it scares me because I find myself frequently a target of it. Compounding the problem are the many people in my life who still believe I, as a woman, must have done something to provoke these strange men. It’s difficult enough to expect harassment every single time I go out in public, but then to come home to people who blame me for that…well, it hurts. Because honestly? I’m guilty of nothing more than being female in public.

Snapshot: Gwinnett Gladiators hockey

 

I went to a Gwinnett Gladiators game last week with a friend. We sat directly behind the home bench, and even though my eyes were watering by the 3rd period from the hockey funk, it was worth it for the opportunity to take pictures like the one above. The coach and players were watching intently as their goaltender blocked shot after shot to maintain a hard-fought one goal lead.

Repost: Gwinnett Gladiators’ President Steve Chapman Talks Atlanta Hockey

I thought it would be fun to repost some of my old hockey articles. (remember when I used to do that?) The article below is an interview with Gwinnett Gladiators president and general manager Steve Chapman, originally posted to my hockey blog on September 13, 2011. Mr. Chapman is a wonderful person to talk to, and is 100% committed to community outreach and building strong roots for hockey in Atlanta.

Drive a short distance north of Atlanta and you’ll find a hockey community thriving around the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL. At the forefront is team president and general manager Steve Chapman who wants people to know hockey hasn’t left the metro area.

The issue of the Atlanta Thrashers moving was unavoidable as we talked about where this leaves the Gladiators. The team recently signed a three-year lease renewal with the Arena at Gwinnett Center and is definitely not in danger of moving. Chapman was quick to dispel any rumors to the contrary, and went into some detail about the nature of the Gladiators’ previous affiliation with the Thrashers, which expired at the end of last season.

Basically, the team has operated independently of the Atlanta Spirit Group and had a working agreement with the Thrashers. On August 17, 2011 the Gladiators announced a new affiliation agreement with the Phoenix Coyotes.

Like many in the area, Chapman is not happy to see the Thrashers gone. “Atlanta lost its NHL team, which I don’t think is great for the city,” he said. “I don’t think it’s great for hockey, because the perception’s going to be is that hockey won’t work in the South and I disagree with that completely. And then lastly, people that we know have lost their jobs. I don’t think any of us takes any joy out of any of that.”

By that same token, though, the Gladiators are now the only professional hockey team in Atlanta, and have an opportunity to reach out to people who still want the sport in their lives. Chapman acknowledged that some people may not be so easily won over by the minor league product, but the Gladiators are still encouraging everyone in the community this season to come check out what they have to offer. “We’re going to try and convince people that it is a good brand of hockey,” he said.

Our conversation shifted to the state of hockey in the South, a region that many say can’t sustain the sport for reasons of climate and lack of interest. This was another thing Chapman was quick to debunk, encouraging people to stop looking at the NHL as the be all end all of hockey in the region.

He cited the ice rinks around Atlanta, which are packed with recreational and youth league teams. Public skate sessions are already filled with kids and adults alike in hockey gear fighting for extra ice time. ”It’s a challenge because there aren’t enough ice rinks in Atlanta, ” he said. “You can’t get ice time and I think a lot of people don’t realize that. You could put three or four or five more ice rinks in North Metro Atlanta and they would all be phenomenally successful.”

Chapman, a Massachusetts native who has lived in the South since he was a teenager,  understands that the key to developing hockey here isn’t dropping a major league team in the area, but instilling a love for the sport early on and building it up at all levels.

One of the ways the Gladiators build up public awareness is getting involved with the local community. This is done through local elementary school fundraisers, such as Hat Trick for Reading, which rewards kids who completed reading assignments with a free ticket to a Gladiators game. The team also works with local charities, the biggest being their annual Pink in the Rink breast cancer fundraiser.

“To be honest with you, that’s probably the crux of our marketing,” Chapman said. “What we hope happens from that is that [the fans] go ‘hey, these guys are really good to work with, I want to support them. They support our community and I want to go out and support them.’”

As for continuing to grow the sport in Atlanta, Chapman remains optimistic. “I have seen the sport grow so much since I moved here,” he said. “I think the sport…could have a great future in Atlanta. I think it already has a great base, but we’ve all got to work together to make sure that it continues in that direction.”