Gunk

Gunk (pronounced guhngk) 

(1) Any sticky or greasy residue or accumulation.

(2) A sub-culture of twenty-first century US males, combining elements of the modern gothic culture with punk rock.

(3) In mereology, any whole, the parts of which have further proper parts.

1949:  An Americanism, used to describe (usually dirty or unwanted) viscous substances, derived from Gunk, the trademark for a degreasing solvent, a thick liquid soap patented in 1932 by the AF Curran Company of Malden, Massachusetts.  Origin of the name is wholly speculative, the most likely offerings being (grime + funk) or (grime + junk).  Disgusting gunk has many synonyms:  quagmire, goo, silt, slime, muck, sludge, gunk, waste, debris, trash, powder, mud, mucus, grease, sediment, residue, grit, smoke, ash, dirt, oily, filth.

Gunk in Mereology

Gunk Engine Degreasant.

In mathematical logic and philosophy, mereology is the study of parts and the wholes they form.  Unlike set theory, the basis of which is the relation between a set and its elements, mereology is about the meronomic (part-whole relationships).  In mereology, gunk is any whole, the parts of which have parts and because parts are intrinsically transitive, any part of gunk must also be gunk, the implication of which is that gunk cannot contain any (indivisible) single-point parts.  So, for it to operate as it does, the known universe depends on gunky stuff like time.  Immediately controversial because of its challenges to nihilism, the term was first applied by Princeton philosopher David Lewis (1941-2001) in his 1991 publication, Parts of Classes.  Lewis claimed traces of the ideas could be found in writings from antiquity, through René Descartes (1596–1650) to Bertrand Russell (1872-1970); others found this lineage “arguable”.  Lewis’ mind worked in abstract space.  His construct of realism was (1) possible worlds exist, (2) every possible world does exist, (3) any possible world is wholly separate from any other and (4), our world is one of the possible worlds.

Herbie gunking Lindsay Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005).

Butterfly

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Defame

Defame (pronounced dih-feym)

(1) To attack the good name or reputation of, as by uttering or publishing maliciously or falsely anything injurious; still in some jurisdictions classified as slander (in speech or by gesture) or libel (something permanent in some sense including writing, images & broadcasting); calumniate.

(2) To disgrace; to bring dishonor upon (dating from the fifteenth century and now archaic).

(3) To indict or accuse (dating from the fourteenth century and long obsolete).

1275–1325: From the Middle English defamen, from the Old French & Anglo-French defamer (verb) & defame (noun) or directly from the Medieval Latin dēfāmāre, a variant of the Medieval & Classical Latin diffāmāre (related to the Classical Latin dēfāmātus (infamous)) (to spread the news of; to spread by unfavorable report; to slander), the construct being dif- (an alternative form of dis- (the prefix form dif- appearing only when the prefix dis- was added to a word beginning with f, as in difficilis (difficult) from facilis (easy), or diffiteor (deny) from fateor (acknowledge)) + -fāmāre (verbal derivative of fāma (news, rumor, slander)),  It replaced the Middle English diffamen, from the Anglo-French & Old French diffamer or directly from Medieval Latin, source the Latin diffāmō, from fāma (fame; rumor; reputation).  The verb defame (speak evil of, maliciously speak or write what injures the reputation of) dates from circa 1300, from the Old French defamer (which in the thirteenth century became the Modern French diffamer).

The construct in English is de- + fame.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  Fame was from the Middle English fame, from the Old French fame (celebrity, renown), from the Latin fāma (talk, rumor, report, reputation), from the primitive Indo-European beh-meh from beh (to speak, say, tell).  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek φήμη (phḗmē) (talk) and related to the Old English bōian (to boast), bēn (prayer, request) & bannan (to summon, command, proclaim).  It displaced the Old English hlīsa.  Defame and its derivatives are defined in law but in general use the vaguely synonymous terms include backbite, besmirch, denigrate, derogate, discredit, disgrace, disparage, malign, revile, scandalize, smear, vilify, asperse, belie, blacken, blister, calumniate, detract, dishonor, knock, pan, roast & scorch.  Defame is a noun and verb, defaming is a verbs, defamer & defamation are nouns, defamingly is an adverb, defamed is a verb & adjective and defamatory is an adjective.

Google LLC v Defteros, Case # M86/2021 on appeal from Supreme Court of Victoria (Court of Appeal) (17 June 2021, VSCA 167).

The High Court of Australia (HCA) recently ruled that in certain circumstances, Google (and presumably every other search engine) is not a publisher, the critical point in this case being that a hyperlink generated in an organic search is “merely a tool which enables a person to navigate to another webpage”.  The case before the country’s highest court was an appeal from Victoria’s court of appeal which in 2021 declined to overturn a defamation finding in favor of a lawyer known for representing underworld figures and others associated with organized crime.  The state courts had found Google was the publisher of a defamatory 2004 newspaper article on the basis its search results were instrumental in communicating the content to readers.  Google had argued providing a hyperlink to content did not constitute publication and therefore it could not be liable for any defamatory material in the piece.  Apart from a discussion of the legal principles, counsel for Google also informed the HCA that were the decision of the lower court to be confirmed, it would have a “devastating” impact on the way the internet operates because it would compel search engines individually to see legal opinion on the billions of results to which hyperlinks are daily generated.  Google maintained it acted on the internet only as a navigator responding to users’ requests for directions and it was (and given the volumes had to be) wholly disinterested in the content of that to which its hyperlinks referenced, the operator of the hyperlinked link being the one which communicates (and thus publishes) the content to the user.

The facts of the case were also interesting in that they played out on a time-scale very different to that of most defamation matters.  Google was notified of the article in February 2016, some eleven years after it was published in the newspaper but it was not until December that year that the link was removed from search.  Interestingly, the “removal request form” submitted in 2016 had alleged the original article was defamatory and that proceedings brought against the newspaper in 2007 had resulted in a settlement at mediation which included the deletion of the article.  There was however no such settlement and proceedings against the newspaper had never commenced.  In 2020, the Supreme Count on Victoria (VSC) ruled the article implied the lawyer’s relationship with certain figures in organized crime had gone beyond a professional relationship to the point of being a confidant and friend and he had thus been defamed.  He was awarded damages of Aus$40,000.

In a 5-2 judgment, the HCA ruled in Google’s favor, finding that search engine’s results “merely facilitated access” to the material and that did not reach the threshold required to amount to publication in a legal sense, the point being that Google “…had not participated in the writing or disseminating of the defamatory matter”.  The other side of the HCA’s judgment was that it rejected the claim that search results “enticed” the person searching to open the provided hyperlink and thus proceed to the material on the basis that the person would already be looking for particular information before the result was received.  That was interesting but a wrinkle was added by one judge who differentiated between an organic hyperlink and a sponsored link in which each click generated advertising revenue which accrued to Google.  That matter however did not come before the lower courts and is thus not considered part of the substantive judgment (the ratio decidendi (reason (or rationale) for the decision) but is a piece of obiter dictum (by the way) which, left hanging in the legal air, might in the future be re-visited and, because it involves the core component of the search engines’ business model, interest will be greater still.  There certainly may be more to explore because the court, having found there was no basis for finding publication because Google had not participated in the writing or disseminating of the defamatory matter, noted that "…there being no publication”, the majority found it unnecessary to consider the defenses raised by the appellant.  That was a shame because it might have been an interesting discussion given Google filed, inter alia, defenses of innocent dissemination and qualified privilege.

There were however dissenting opinions, the most interesting of which at length discussed the actual mechanics of Google’s search engine, the succession of algorithms which interact with its indexes to generate the results seen by users.  In the view of one judge, what these components did constituted an “active and voluntary participation in the process that is in fact directed to making matter available for comprehension by a third party” and was thus an act of publication and that moreover neither the defense of innocent dissemination and qualified privilege, nor the defense of statutory qualified privilege available under Victoria’s Defamation Act 2005 were sustained.  The judge also hinted that a distinction between the results generated by organic search and those of sponsored content was not of necessity clear because of the commercial benefits which Google anyway gained through the operation of the search engine.  The other dissenting judge substantially agreed, adding that the matter of publication before the court would have been impossible without the operation of Google’s algorithms which “intentionally assisted in the process of conveying the words bearing defamatory meaning to a third party” and that publication would not have occurred but for Google’s facilitation.

So, the HCA has issued what is (for now) a definitive ruling on a search engine’s liability for third-party publications to which it has directed users, finding there is none, rejecting even the analogy cited by the lower court of a librarian handing someone a book with a certain page marked, preferring the example of someone in the street being asked for direction to a bookshop which turned out to have on its shelves a book containing a defamatory passage.  It seems inevitable that at least some of the matters raised in Google LLC v Defteros will again be litigated and analogies similes and metaphors will return to the battle.  Whether long-established legal principles can be reconciled with a public policy which would seem to suggest the algorithms of the search engines are acknowledged now to be an essential part of modern life, remains to be seen.

Meet our spokesperson.  With experience in civil litigation and other legal matters, Lindsay Lohan was a good choice to be lawyer.com's spokesperson.

Noted litigant Lindsay Lohan hasn’t enjoyed great success in her defamation suits, even when pursued on the basis of commercial rights.  In 2015, a defamation case against Fox News was dismissed, the judge ruling (perhaps unfairly given the nature of the evidence), "truth is a defense" (and in the US it is an absolute defense).  The case concerned Ms Lohan and her mother and according to their filing, Fox News “falsely, inappropriately, and shockingly” stated, unequivocally and as a “matter of fact” stated “Lindsay Lohan’s mother is doing cocaine with her”.  The judge noted Ms Lohan’s mother is a public figure and that the statements made on Fox News were not made maliciously (in US law two vital points used to determine whether or not something is at law, considered defamatory).  Interestingly Fox News had formally apologized for what they called an “oversight” in airing the piece, noting the evidence later introduced couldn’t verify the claim and that the material had been removed from their archives.

Just a little removed from defamation law was a writ she filed in 2010 against E-Trade in 2010 for using her name in one of their television advertisements without her permission. The commercial, which was played during the Super Bowl, featured a "milkaholic" baby named Lindsay and the basis for the suit was the claim E-Trade as mocking her drug and alcohol-related problems.  In response to the US$100 million claim, E-Trade responded with little more than an explanation that there are in the world, many Lindsays.  After some six months, the lawsuit was withdrawn, the terms of the settlement subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Lindsay Lohan returned to court in 2011, suing hip hop artist Pitbull over the lyrics in his song Give Me Everything, which included the line: So, I’m toptoein’, to keep flowin’, I got it locked up, like Lindsay Lohan.  Ms Lohan cited the lyric as a violation of her publicity and publicity rights which caused her emotional distress, claiming the lyrics “includes an unwarranted, unauthorized, and unfavorable mention of [her] name and personality, and allusions to her physical and mental character.”  The judge dismissed on technical grounds the claim made under New York Civil Rights law, adding that the First Amendment anyway affords full protection.  What was more interesting was the discussion of the argument the song was commercial rather than expressive in nature, the judge ruling that even if the work was created for the purpose of “making a profit”, that does not mean her name was “used for advertising or purposes of trade within the meaning of the New York law“ and that, on the facts of this case, even if that were proved, the “isolated nature of the use of her name” (just one line in the song) would “prove fatal” to the claims.  Putbull’s counsel indicated they wished to have the court sanction Ms Lohan for filing a frivolous lawsuit (an abuse of process) but the judge, noting the paucity of case law in this field, said the lack of precedent meant there was no clear indication the case would be doomed and the claim was therefore not so frivolous as to warrant the imposition of a sanction.  Lindsay Lohan thus remained free to litigate, which she did.

Sabot & Clog

Sabot (pronounced sab-oh or sa-boh (French)

(1) A shoe made of a single block of wood hollowed out, worn especially by farmers and workers in the Netherlands, France, Belgium etc.

(2) A shoe with a thick wooden sole and sides and a top of coarse leather.

(3) In military ordinance, a wooden or metal disk formerly attached to a projectile in a muzzle-loading cannon.

(4) In firearm design, a lightweight sleeve in which a sub-caliber round is enclosed in order to make it fit the rifling of a firearm; after firing the sabot drops away.

(5) In nautical use, a small sailing boat with a shortened bow (Australia).

1600–1610: From the French sabot, from the Old French çabot, a blend of savate (old shoe), of uncertain origin and influenced by bot (boot).  The mysterious French savate (old shoe), despite much research by etymologists, remains of unknown origin.  It may be from the Tatar чабата (çabata) (overshoes), ultimately either from the Ottoman Turkish چاپوت‎ (çaput or çapıt) (patchwork, tatters), or from the Ottoman Turkish چاپمق‎ (çapmak) (to slap on), or of Iranian origin, cognate with the modern Persian چپت‎ (čapat) (a kind of traditional leather shoe).  It was akin to the Old Provençal sabata, the Italian ciabatta (old shoe), the Spanish zapato, the Norman chavette and the Portuguese sapato.  The plural is sabots.

Young women in clogs, smoking cigarettes.

Sabot is the ultimate source of sabotage & saboteur.  English picked up sabotage from the French saboter (deliberately to damage, wreck or botch), used originally to refer to the tactic used in industrial disputes by workers wearing the wooden shoes called sabots who disrupted production in various ways.  The persistent myth is that the origin of the term lies in the practice of workers throwing the wooden sabots into factory machinery to interrupt production but the tale appears apocryphal, one account even suggesting sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term sabotage with inefficiency.

Vintage Dutch sabots.

The words saboter and saboteur appear first to have appeared in French dictionaries in 1808 (Dictionnaire du Bas-Langage ou manières de parler usitées parmi le peuple of d'Hautel) suggesting there must have been some use of the words in printed materials some time prior to then.  The literal definition provided was “to make noise with sabots” and “bungle, jostle, hustle, haste” but with no suggestion of the shoes being used in the “spanner in the works” sense suggested by the myth.  Sabotage would not appear in dictionaries for some decades, noted first in the Dictionnaire de la langue française of Émile Littré (1801-1881) published between 1873-1874 and curiously, it’s defined as referencing that specialty of cobbling “the making of sabots; sabot maker”.  It wouldn’t be until 1897 that the use to describe malicious damage in pursuit of industrial or political aims was recorded, anarcho-syndicalist Émile Pouget (1860-1931) publishing Action de saboter un travail (Sabotaging or bungling at work) in Le Père Peinard, which he helpfully expanded in 1911 in the user manual Le Sabotage.  In neither work however was there mention of using sabots as a means of damaging or halting machinery, the sense was always of things done by those wearing sabots, the word a synecdoche for the industrial proletariat.  Contemporary English-language sources confirm this.  In its January 1907 edition, The Liberty Review noted sabotage was a means of “scamping work… a device… adopted by certain French workpeople as a substitute for striking.  The workman, in other words, purposes to remain on and to do his work badly, so as to annoy his employer's customers and cause loss to his employer”.

Clog promotion, H&M catalog 2011.

Clog (pronounced klog or klawg)

(1) To hinder or obstruct with thick or sticky matter; choke up.

(2) To crowd excessively, especially so that movement is impeded; overfill.

(3) To encumber; hamper; hinder.

(4) To become clogged, encumbered, or choked up.

(5) A shoe or sandal with a thick sole of wood, cork, rubber, or the like; a similar but lighter shoe worn in the clog dance.

(6) A heavy block, as of wood, fastened to a person or beast to impede movement.

(7) As clog dance, a type of dance which specifically demands the wearing of clogs.

(8) In British dialectal use, a thick piece of wood (now rare).

(9) In the slang of association football (soccer), to foul an opponent (now rare).

(10) A heavy block, especially of wood, fastened to the leg of a person or animal to impede motion.

(11) To use a mobile phone to take a photograph of (someone) and upload it without their knowledge or consent, the construct being c(amera) + log, a briefly used term from the early days of camera-equipped phones on the which never caught on.

1300s: Of unknown origin, most likely from the Middle English clogge (weight attached to the leg of an animal to impede movement) or from a North Germanic form such as klugu & klogo (knotty tree log) from the Old Norse, the Dutch klomp or the Norwegian klugu (knotty log of wood).  The word was also used in Middle English to describe big pieces of jewelry and large testicles.  The meaning "anything that impedes action" is from the 1520s, via the notion of "block or mass constituting an encumbrance” although it became nuanced, by 1755 builders were distinguishing between things clogged with whatever naturally belonged then and becoming “choked up with extraneous matter”, a distinction doubtlessly of great significance to plumbers.  The sense of the "wooden-soled shoe" is attested from the late fourteenth century, used as overshoes until the introduction of rubber soles circa 1840.  Related forms include the adjective cloggy, the noun clogginess, the verbs clogged & clog·ging and the adverb cloggily.  A frequently used adjectival derivative is anticlogging, often as a modifier of agent and, unsurprisingly, the verb unclog, first noted circa 1600, is also common.

Lindsay Lohan in Gucci Black Patent Leather Hysteria Platform Clogs with wooden soles, Los Angeles, 2009.  The car is a 2009 (fifth generation) Maserati Quattroporte leased by her father.

Clogs were originally made entirely of wood (hence the name), the more familiar modern form with leather uppers covering the front being noted first in the late sixteenth century but may have been worn earlier.  Long popular with men working in kitchens (always with a rubber covering on the sole), the first revival as a fashion item occurred circa 1970, primarily for women and clog-dancing, a form "which required the wearing of clogs" is attested from 1863.  There are now a variety of variations on the clog sole including the Tengu geta, having a single tooth in the centre and the Albarcas which features extensions something like a three-legged stool.  None look very comfortable but their users appear content.

Lindsay Lohan's promotion for the collaboration between German fashion house MCM & Crocs, introducing the "pragmatic" Mega Crush Clog.  Not that there was ever much doubt but now we know clogs can be "pragmatic".

Verse

Verse (pronouced vurs)

(1) In non-technical use, a stanza.

(2) A succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem.

(3) A particular type of metrical line.

(4) A poem or a coherent fragment of a poem (as distinct from prose).

(5) A metrical composition; especially poetically, as involving metrical form.

(6) Metrical writing, distinguished from poetry because it’s defined as inferior.

(7) The collective poetry of an author, period, nation, group etc.

(8) One of the short conventional divisions of a chapter of the Bible.

(9) In music, that part of a song following the introduction and preceding the chorus (may be repeated or there may be several verses); sometimes defined also as those parts of a song designed to be sung by a solo voice.

(1) A line of prose (especially a sentence, or part of a sentence), written as a single line (now rare and used mostly in technical criticism).

(11) Of, relating to, or written in verse.

(12) A subdivision in any literary work (archaic).

(13) A synonym for versify (archaic).

(14) To compose verses, to tell in verse, or poetry (archaic).

(15) In the category system of the Grindr contact app, as a clipping of versatile, a man who enjoys assuming both roles in anal sex.  

Pre 900: From the Late Old English & Middle English verse, vers & fers (section of a psalm or canticle (and by the fourteenth century also poetry)), from the Old French & Old English fers (an early West Germanic borrowing directly from Latin), from the Latin versus (a row, a line in writing, and in poetry a verse (literally “a turning (of the plough)”), the construct being vert(ere) (to turn (past participle of versus)) + -tus (the suffix of verbal action (with dt becoming s)) and related to the Latin vertō (to turn around).  The ultimate root of the Latin forms was the primitive Indo-European wer (to turn; to bend) and the link with poetry is the metaphor of plowing, turning from one line to another as the ploughman turned from one furrow to the next.  Verse was technically being a back-formation from versus and was thus misconstrued as a third-person singular verb verses.

The late fourteenth century verb versify (compose verse, write poetry, make verses) was from the thirteenth century Old French versifier (turn into verse), from the Latin versificare (compose verse; put into verse), from versus, as a combining form of facere (to make), from the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set, put).   The transitive sense (put into verse) dates from 1735 and is probably obsolete except in historic use or as a literary device; the related forms are versified; versifying & versifier (existing since the mid-fourteenth century).  Verse is a noun, verb and adjective, versed & versing are verbs.

The English New Testament was in the 1550s first was divided fully into verses in the Geneva version.  The colloquial use in video gaming (typically as “verse him” meaning “to oppose, to compete against” remains non-standard.  The meaning "metrical composition" was first noted in circa 1300.  The use to describe the (usually) non-repeating part of modern songs (between repetitions of the chorus) was unknown until 1918 when the US social anthropologist (who would now be styled an ethno-musicologist) Natalie Curtis Burlin (1875-1921) published Negro Folk-Songs.  That work included a structural analysis of what were then called negro spirituals (now known as gospel music) which noted the distinction between chorus and verse, the former a melodic refrain sung by all which opens the song; the latter performed as a solo in free recitative.  The chorus is repeated, followed by another verse, then the chorus and so on until the final rendition of the chorus ends the song.

In poetry, the blank verse (unrhymed pentameter) was a structure frequently used in English dramatic and epic poetry, the descriptor dating from the 1580s although the form was attested in English poetry from the mid-sixteenth century and was of classical origin.  Definitely not of classical origin was the free verse (an 1869 Englishing of vers libre).  Free verse was controversial then and has remained so since among the tiny sliver of the population which takes any notice of the art.  The modernists generally were welcoming of the relaxation of the devotion to rhyme which the English lyric poets had elevated from art to obsession although they were as apt to condemn works as the literary establishment.  Free verse did not demand any adherence to meter and rhyme but sometimes lines or even whole stanzas so structured would appear in free verse, something which might be thought proto-postmodernism.

Verse, stanza, strophe & stave are all terms for a metrical grouping in poetic composition. Verse is often used interchangeably with stanza, but is properly only a single metrical line although in general use, verse is understood also to mean (1) a type of language rendered intentionally different from ordinary speech or prose and (2) a broader category of work than poetry, the latter historically thought serious, structured and genuinely art.  A stanza is a succession of lines (verses) commonly bound together by a rhyme scheme, and usually forming one of a series of similar groups that constitute a poem (the four-line stanza once the most frequently used in English).  The strophe (originally the section of a Greek choral ode sung while the chorus was moving from right to left) is in English poetry essentially “a section” which may be unrhymed or without strict form and may also be a stanza.  A strophe is a divisions of odes.  Stave is a now rare word meaning a stanza set to music or intended to be sung.  Many of those who read poetry for pleasure rather than analysis are probably unaware of this definitional swamp and it’s doubtful their experiences would be any more enjoyable were they to know.

Grindr and the prescriptive binary

Grindr is an app to help the gay community meet one another.  It has attracted criticism because it historically offered users the choice of defining themselves only as (1) a top (a man penetrating or with a preference for penetrating during homosexual anal intercourse (in gay slang also known as the “pitcher”), a bottom (a man who prefers, begs or demands the receptive role in anal sex with men (in gay slang also known as the “catcher”)) or a verse (a clipping of versatile, the sense being a man who enjoys assuming both roles in anal sex (ie is both pitcher & catcher)).

Top in this context was from, the Middle English top & toppe, from the Old English top (highest part; summit; crest; tassel, tuft; a tuft or ball at the highest point of anything), from the Proto-West Germanic topp, from the Proto-Germanic tuppaz (braid, pigtail, end) of unknown origin.  It was cognate with the Scots tap (top), the North Frisian top, tap & tup (top), the Saterland Frisian Top (top), the West Frisian top (top), the Dutch top (top, summit, peak), the Low German Topp (top), the German Zopf (braid, pigtail, plait, top), the Swedish topp (peak, summit, tip) and the Icelandic toppur (top).  Bottom in this context was from the Middle English botme & botom, from the Old English botm & bodan (bottom, foundation; ground, abyss), from the Proto-Germanic butmaz & budmaz, from the primitive Indo-European bhudhmḗn (bottom).  It was cognate with the Dutch bodem, the German Boden, the Icelandic botn, the Danish bund, the Irish bonn (sole (of foot)), the Ancient Greek πυθμήν (puthmḗn) (bottom of a cup or jar), the Sanskrit बुध्न (budhna) (bottom), the Persian بن‎ (bon) (bottom), the Latin fundus (bottom) (from which, via French, English gained fund). The familiar (and to Grindr essential) sense “posterior of a person” dates from 1794.  Versatile was from the Latin versātilis (turning, revolving, moving, capable of turning with ease to varied subjects or tasks), from versātus, past participle stem of versare (keep turning, be engaged in something, turn over in the mind), past participle of versō (I turn, change), frequentative of vertō (I turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (to turn, to bend).  Grindr’s choice of a clipping of versatile may have been influenced by the meaning noted in English since 1762: “Able to do many things well”.

In May 2022 however Grindr added “side”, a category not unknown in the gay community but distinct from either the A (asexual) or P (pansexual) entries in the LGBTQQIAAOP string.  Deviating from the binary which (long pre-dating Grindr) has tended to define gay culture, sides are said to be those men who derive satisfaction from a range of sexual acts not including anal penetration, preferring instead oral, manual and frictional body techniques which deliver emotional, physical and psychological pleasure.  The general term for these activities is “outercourse”.

Grindr in 2022: Age of the Side.

The term “side” in this context was in 2013 defined by US psychotherapist Dr Joe Kort (b 1963) but it attracted little attention outside the mental health community until he used social media to generate interest and provide both a clearing house for information and facilitate contact between sides not catered for by Grinda and others which traditionally imposed the top/bottom categories as absolute.  The reaction was interesting and sides reported being ostracized or otherwise marginalized by the wider gay community which tended even to refuse to accept men could identify as gay if anal penetration wasn’t part of their expectation, either as top or bottom.  Interestingly, reflecting their different tradition, lesbians seem more accepting of variation in expectations, not putting the same premium on vaginal penetration.  Of course the exclusionary exactitude exists also in the heterosexual world, drawn probably from the long insistence by legal systems that it was the act of penetration (by human organs or other devices) which is the crucial threshold in so many of the gradients of sexual assault in criminal law and Bill Clinton (b 1946, president of the US 1993-2001) was famously assertive in saying he “…did not have sex with that woman” (Monica Lewinsky (b 1973)) on the basis there was no vaginal penetration. 

Dr Kort took the view that defining penetration as the sole criterion for “real” sex was just another heteronormative construct and that in accepting it gay men were allowing themselves again to be victims of a patriarchal hegemony and others pointed out that many who defined as asexual were actually those who indulged in sexual activities other than the penetrative.  Perhaps neutral on the sexual politics, Grindr certainly responded to the metrics.  If thousands were interacting with Dr Kort’s social media presence then there was gap in the market and Grindr was there to fill the gap, “side” in May 2022 added as the third way to be gay, hinting perhaps there was something in the old phrase “bit of a homosexual”.  It’ll be interesting to see if the marginalization earlier noted manifests on Grindr because there’s no evidence to suggest the sides have been welcomed to display themselves as an identifiable group in gay pride events and mental health clinicians have noted a definite gay hierarchy with the tops atop.  The other interesting issue is whether a second P needs to be appended to the LGBTQQIAAOP string to accommodate the platonic because the asexuals are clearly having sex, just not as Bill Clinton defines it.  It’s sex Bill but not as you know it.

Verse by Lindsay Lohan

Not previously much noted for publishing criticism of poetry, modernist or otherwise (although their reporters have been known to gush about the "poetic skills" of footballers), Rupert Murdoch's The Sun on 3 January 2017 did take note of some verse Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram:

sometimes i hear the voice of the one i loved the most

but in this world we live in of terror

who i am to be the girl who is scared and hurt

when most things that happen i cannot explain

i try to understand

when i'm sitting in bed alone at 3am

so i can't sleep, i roll over

i can't think and my body becomes cold

i immediately feel older.....

 

than i realise, at least i am in a bed,

i am still alive,

so what can really be said?

just go to bed and close the blinds,

still and so on, i cannot help but want to fix all of these idle isis

minds

because,

there has to be something i can figure out

rather than living in a world of fear and doubt

they now shoot, we used to shout.

 

if only i can keep trying to fix it all

i would keep the world living loving and small

i would share my smiles

and give too Many kisses