Microaggression

Microaggression (pronounced mahy-kroh-uh-gresh-uhn)

(1) A casual comment or action directed at a marginalized, minority or other non-dominant group that (often) unintentionally but unconsciously reinforces a stereotype and can be construed as offensive.

(2) The act of discriminating against a non-dominant group by means of such comments or actions.

1970: The construct was micro- + aggression.  The word was coined by African-American Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016), a former Professor of Education and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  Micro (small, microscopic; magnifying; one millionth) was a word-forming element from the New Latin micro- (small), from the Ancient Greek μικρός (mikrós) (small).  The origin is disputed between etymologists, the traditional view being it was from the primitive Indo-European (s)meyg- & (s)mēyg- (small, thin, delicate) and was cognate with the Old English smicor (beauteous, beautiful, elegant, fair, fine, tasteful), source also of the Modern English smicker and related to the German mickrig.   However, there’s a highly technical discussion within the profession, hinged around the unexplained “k” in the Greek and there’s the suggestion of pre-Greek origin on the basis of variation between initial /m/ and /sm/, as well as the variant forms μικός (mikós) and μικκός (mikkós).  Aggression, dating from 1605–1615, was from the French aggression, from the Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio (a going to, an attack)), a noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi (to approach; attack) the construct being ad (to) + gradi (past participle gressus (to step)) from gradus (a step).  The Classical Latin aggressiōn (stem of aggressiō), was equivalent to aggress(us) + iōn derived from aggrēdi (to attack).  The psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" had its origin in early psychiatry, first noted in English in 1912 in a translation of work by the Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).  While not exactly synonymous, microassault and microinequity are similar concepts, the most closely related verb being microinvalidate (to engage in microinvalidation, to make a relatively small statement or action (microaggression) that negates another person's experience, thoughts or feelings).  Microaggression, microaggressiveness, microaggressor & microaggressee are nouns, microaggress, microaggressed & microaggressing are verbs, microaggressive is an adjective and microaggressively is an adverb; the noun plural is microaggressions. 

Dr Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016).

Microaggression is an adaptable and possibly infinitely variable concept that probably most belongs in sociology; typically, it's defined as any of the small-scale verbal or physical interactions between those of different races, cultures, beliefs, or genders that are (perhaps sometimes generously) assumed to carry no malicious intent but which can be interpreted as revealing an underlying (and often unconscious) bias.  The criteria can be both objective and subjective and it’s noted compliments or comments intended to be positive can be defined as microaggressions if interpreted as patronizing or perpetuating stereotypes (racial, gender, sexual orientation, class, occupational, geographical etc).  Probably, the only "safe" identity-based categorizations are now those purely statistical: average heights by nationality and such although such is the sensitivity, the recommendation of many is now wholly to avoid anything that possibly could be construed as a microaggression, the only exceptions being those directed at groups defined as "privileged" (white people, Christians, cisgender, heterosexual males etc).  Very much a "spectrum" word, microaggression began life as a defensive shield but has in recent years attracted criticism (from both left and right) because it was able to be weaponized in "cancellation culture".  The standard psychology texts suggest the behavior manifests in three forms:

Microassault: An explicit racial derogation which can be verbal or nonverbal which can include labelling, avoidant behavior and purposeful discriminatory actions.

Microinsult: Communications that convey rudeness or insensitivity and demean a person's racial heritage or identity; subtle snubs which may be unknown to the perpetrator; hidden insulting messages to the recipient of color.

Microinvalidation: Communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person belonging to a particular group.

The concept emerged to address the underlying racism that endured even after overt, deliberate expressions of racism (at least against defined minorities) had become unacceptable in polite society.  It held that microaggressions generally happened below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture and were different from acts of intentional bigotry (such as the use of racist epithets) because the those committing microaggressions often intend no offense and are unaware they are causing harm.  That wasn't exactly a Golgothaesque "forgive them for they know not what they do" but in the abstract did position the dominant (and not of necessity majority) culture as normal with minorities treated as aberrant or pathological.

Although the word’s origin lay in the politics of race and ethnicity, it proved readily adaptable to other areas such as gender, sexual orientation, mental illness, disability and age.  Within academic sociology, there’s a (typically) highly technical debate about the nature of microaggression and intersectionality at the cross-cutting cleavages of non-dominant groups.  As regards the media, the discipline had a well-refined model to describe how microaggressions were either reinforced or encouraged by a news and entertainment industry that both reflected and was controlled by the hegemony of the dominant culture.  The sudden shock of the emergence of social media has changed things (diversity of source and content) but the main effect has been to balkanize: While there are places where microaggressions will not be tolerated, there are others where such things are routine and some where microaggressions are about the mildest forms of racism and such.  To date, much work in exploring this area has been impressionistic and it’s not clear if the analytical metrics, where they exist, are sufficiently robust for theories to be coherent beyond the sense of constant "mission creep".  In a sense, social media and the development of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) are synergistic with the maintenance and critique of microaggressions one of many elements in the culture wars.

As an indication of the how things have changed, in 1939 the terms “paleface” and “redskin” were in 1939 appropriated for use in literary criticism by Russian-born (in modern-day Ukraine) Jewish-American literary critic and essayist Philip Rahv (1908–1973).  What in retrospect makes that most interesting was Rahv was not a kind of “proto-MAGA” (Make America Great Again) figure from the Republican Party’s far-right (a faction that definitely existed in 1939 although different labels were applied) but was of the “left”, emphasizing the virtues of cosmopolitanism and Marxist analysis, one irony in his casual use of “paleface” and “redskin” being his advocacy of “breaking down” ethnic and racial barriers.  He was in the early 1930s a member of the ACP (American Communist Party) but, trans-nationally, long-suppressed fissiparous forces had been unleashed by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and Rahv in 1937 was expelled from the ACP by the dominant Stalinist Popular Front faction, condemned as a “Trotskyite” (a follower the exiled Russian comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder in 1938 of the Fourth International).  His political activities in the US for a while continued but by the 1950s he’d become one of “The God that Failed” ex-communists and, after a brief flirtation with the “New Left” (or rather what he thought the New Left should have been), he retreated to literature to wage a low-intensity campaign against structuralism.

Allen's "Red Skins" and "Chicos": On supermarket shelves in Australia until 2020.

It is of course now unthinkable a figure of the left (liberals, progressives etc), Trotskyites or otherwise, would be so casually microaggressive as to take terms so vested with racism as “paleface” and “redskin” so they could, with no acknowledgment of the history, be re-purposed as devices in literary criticism.  In the US in 1939, to do such a thing was unremarkable, an indication of the cultural currents underpinning society with the use of language both a product and part of the construct.  Paleface (the construct being pale +‎ face) came from US English and appeared in the anthropological record as early as 1797 (the origin uncertain) but seems not to have entered general use until the early 1920s.  The origin is uncertain but it was supposedly a calque from a Native American language; the form presumably coined when those of the first nations encountered Europeans.  The earliest verified use of the word redskin (the construct being red + skin) dates from 1769 although despite documents from the 1580s referring to the skin-tone of indigenous Americans as “red”, that use by European explorers and settlers was not consistent and in some instances may have been a reference to the use of red “paint” used to adorn the face and upper-body.  “Paleface” has been used as an intended slur against white people (with little apparent effect) but “redskin” definitely is an ethnic slur offensive to Native Americans although the record suggest than until around the mid-nineteenth century it was neutral and merely descriptive before ascending the “linguistic treadmill”.  Use puts it now well beyond being a microaggression.

Allen's "Red Skins" and "Chicos" were in 2020 re-named "Red Rippers" and "Cheekies" respectively.  The recipes were said to be unchanged and thus far the "Gaytime" ice cream has survived.

In 1939, Rahv used “paleface” and “redskin” to distinguish between what he called “two poles”; his sense was of the diametrically opposed “north & south” but his model was stylistic and thematic rather than geographic (and really not quite an antinomy as some have suggested).  The polarization as defined by Rahv had him group writers according to their attitude, style, subject matter and such, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), Herman Melville (1819–1891) and Henry James (1843-1916) classified as “palefaces” while Walt Whitman (1819–1892), and Mark Twain (1835-1910) were “redskins”.  In Rahv’s literary world view, palefaces had cultured and patrician attitudes, wrote in a mannered style using symbolism and explored “lofty” themes with great complexity.  The redskins wrote works of the rugged men of frontier life or the working class, criminals and “low lifes” in the unpleasant parts of towns and cities.  He didn’t seem to suggest writing in a colloquial and naturalistic way couldn’t be interpolated into thematically complex literary texts, just that it was inevitable a “down market” cast of characters and places they frequented would shape the work.  So Rahv saw palefaces as “civilized” and redskins as “barbarians”; presumably he’d have thought “savages” to be “non-literary” and thus “beyond the pale” as it were.  Of those Americans who came later, categorization must be speculative but can be fun.

Use of "Eskimo" definitely can be deemed microaggressive. While ice-cream lovers can still buy "Gaytimes", they had to adjust to the "Eskimo Pie" being renamed (variously "Edy's Pie" or "Polar Pie").  It remains to be seen if the use of polar bears in some of the new packaging triggers controversy.  The creatures do appear in aspects of Inuit culture and religion and it's not clear if permission for use has been sought.

William Faulkner (1897–1962) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) both seem redskins and Norman Mailer (1923–2007) clearly was no paleface though he might have thought being filed with the barbarians an effete slight on his savagery.  Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was a redskin who really wanted to be a paleface (and never stopped trying) while Philip Roth (1933–2018) was such a paleface he never quite mastered the “redskin mode” despite the occasional heroic attempt.  John Updike (1932–2009) was a paleface but the problem inherent in assigning writers with a hefty oeuvre to polarized categories is that at the margins their writing can “straddle” and sometimes those margins are wide.  That’s why plausible cases can be made arguing both Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) and Saul Bellow (1915–2005) at times at least “tended” to either pole.  What Rahv would have made of Faulkner in 1949 and Bellow in 1976 being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature while Updike and Roth were ignored (despite the latter engaging in self-promotion not far short of Donald Trump’s (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) auto-advocacy to be the Peace Prize laureate) would be interesting to know but safely can it be imagined he’d have thought the entire Nobel Committee redskins after in 2016 they conferred the honor in literature on musician Bob Dylan (b 1941).  Maybe it was women of the Swedish Academy (the body that chooses the Literature laureates) who vetoed Roth; in all he wrote of women (and it was a lot), Roth revealed much about himself but little about them, despite the usually elegant internal logic.  Rahv was anyway appalled literature appeared to exist in such a dichotomy and, being an old Trotskyite who never quite stopped taking seriously Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) politics, longed for a world where folk wrote like Marcel Proust (1871-1922) or Thomas Mann (1875–1955), the latter at least acknowledged in 1929 by the Nobel Committee.

1958 Studebaker Scotsman advertisement.

There was in 1957 nothing unusual or offensive in Studebaker naming a car “Scotsman” and it would have been well-understood as a reference to the car’s low purchase price and (alleged) TCO (total cost of ownership).  Scotsman buyers could even save a little more were they prepared to forgo the extravagance of chrome bumpers and choose the "delete option" of painted units; Mercedes-Benz also once offered that on taxi versions of a number of utilitarian sedans, the most produced the W115s (1968-1976). Other manufacturers used the same concept as Studebaker: Citroën ID vs DS, Cadillac Calais vs de Ville etc, some including fewer features and simpler trim, some also changing the mechanical specification but the principle was always: same size, less stuff, lower price.  The name "Scotsman" was picking up on the reputation of the Scots for frugality and it would have been thought something neutral at worst and more likely positive, thriftiness in the early post-war US still generally thought a virtue despite the best attempts of capitalism to encourage consumer gluttony; as fat overtook the land, things would change.  Technically, such use would now fulfil the criteria of a “microaggression” even if deployed in a way making clear it’s being intended as a compliment.  Scots can of course use the trope of themselves and even if used by others, as race-based microaggressions go, it’s probably at the "lower range" of offensiveness, those applied to “white people”, rarely noticed and certainly not grounds for cancellation.  Still, by the 2020s, it’s highly unlikely a car company would now name a car a “Scotsman” and certainly not if it was a “stripper” (ie a low-cost model with minimal standard equipment).

The “Scotsman’s supercar”: 1968 Plymouth Road Runner, Car Life magazine, May 1968.

Quite when the term "stripper" (in that context) vanished from commercial use can’t be certain but it would have occurred later in the twentieth century and certainly after 1968 when Car Life magazine, reviewing the new Plymouth Road Runner, called the stripped-down, low-priced muscle car: “a sort of Scotsman’s supercar”.  As well as a relic of linguistic use, Car Life’s test was interesting because unlike many of its contemporaries that often conducted tests using vehicles tweaked by manufacturers or dealers for optimal performance, they used the genuine, stock-standard articles, bought from the showroom floor, that being a more realistic path to discovering if thing did "what it said on the tin".  What Car Life revealed was the Road Runner (when equipped with the standard 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8)) was quicker than a typical 383 powered car using the same body (as would be expected given the lower weight and modifications to the 383 used in the model) but was unable to match the sub-15 second ¼-mile (402 metre) runs reported by many.  The basic Road Runner was actually representative of the performance of most of the era’s “muscle car ecosystem” while the storied cars that “out of the box” were able consistently to log ¼-mile ETs (elapsed time) in the 13 or 14 second bracket were relatively rare and a tiny sliver of what came to be classified as "muscle cars", some of which just "looked the part" although that did prove a lucrative market.  Of course, to solve any perception of inadequacy, a buyer could tick the box for the optional 426 (7.0) Street Hemi V8 and while that was expensive, as well a fixing any performance deficit, putting one in a Road Runner was the cheapest path to Hemi ownership, a compelling case at a time when a thousand dollars was a lot of money.

Channeling her inner Scotsperson: Lindsay Lohan in Royal Stewart tartan, Freaky Friday (2003), costume test photo (Walt Disney Pictures).

Despite the perception of many (encouraged bydepictions in popular culture), tartan in the sense of specific color & pattern combinations attached to specific clans is something of recent origin.  Tartan (breacan (pɾʲɛxkən) in Scots Gaelic) is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours.  The word plaid is now often used interchangeably with tartan (particularly in North America and when not associated with anything Scottish (especially kilts)), but technically (and always in Scotland), a plaid is a large piece of tartan cloth, worn as a type of kilt or large shawl although it’s used also to describe a blanket.  During the disputes between England and Scotland, the wearing of tartan became a political expression and the Dress Act (1746) was part of the campaign to suppress the warrior clans north of the border; it banned tartan and other aspects of Gaelic culture. The law was repealed in 1782 and tartan was soon adopted as both the symbolic national dress of Scotland and in imagery more generally.

The Royal Stewart was the personal tartan of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) and although historically associated with the royal house of Stewart (or Stuart), it has become one of the most widely used in commercial fashion and in that sense appears in parallel with the clan affiliation.  Commonly worn to formal events such as weddings, ceilidhs (social gatherings, the nature of which casts a wide net) or Burns Night (celebrating the life of Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796 and still in popular imagination Scotland's "national poet")), the modern trend is to pair a kilt with a Prince Charlie or Argyll jacket, traditionalists adding a Sporran (pouch), Hose (kilt socks) & flashes, Ghillie brogues (traditional shoes) and even a Sgian dubh (a small dagger tucked in the sock) although carrying the last item may be unlawful in some jurisdictions.  Lindsay Lohan in her screen test wore the dress in something of the way in the 1970s it became part of the punk sub-culture but for more conventional types there are also scarves, ties, sashes and such.  Remarkably, in the age of identity politics and sensitivity to cultural appropriation, the etiquette guides note there is no objection to non-Scots folk wearing their tartan of choice except when an event is clan-specific in which case only those in the lineage should don the fabric.  That said, even then, the consequence of a tartan faux pas will likely be less severe than wearing a Rangers shirt in a Glasgow pub filled with Celtic’s hoops.  Still, deployed with sufficient cultural insensitivity, improper use of tartan could be a microaggression.

Microaggression in Progress: A Mean Girls (2004) "mall scene".

Mean Girls was replete with instances of microaggressiveness.  We’re still (mostly) allowed (quietly) to be amused by some of these, but, a quarter-century on, there’s now a more hostile critique of subtle verbal or behavioural slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to marginalized groups, even if genuinely often unintentional; what seems subtle to some may to others be blatant insensitivity.  In satire, there's still some tolerance for such depictions although audiences are now expected to be as appalled as they are amused and, of course, as a satire of the gut-wrenching ecosystem that is high school social dynamics, subtle forms of relational aggression and passive-aggressive exclusion were not hard to find and can be categorized:

(1) Racial and Geographic Microaggressions: The line: “If you're from Africa, why are you white?” was an invalidation of an individual’s cultural identity on the basis of not according with another’s geographic & racial assumptions & expectations.  The school map of “the cafeteria cliques” includes “Cool Asians”, the labelling reducing individuals to their ethnicity and when paired with what is nominally a most positive teen modifier (cool), that operates as a racial micro-insult implying (1) most individuals of that ethnicity are “not cool” and (2) non-white students are in a sense monolithic and acknowledged as “acceptable sub-groups” only if they in some way adhere to “white people constructs” of “white normative standards”.  “Black hotties” operates at the same level, although “hot” (a type of “coolness”!) usually is positive, the implication here is that “hotness” inherently is a quality of certain white girls and a black girl can be deemed “hot” only compared to other black girls; she cannot, in the absolute sense, merely be a “hottie”, that descriptor operating only on white girls.  The surprised response “Oh you speak English?” when someone is introduced to a black student thought to be from Africa reveals the cultural assumption such an individual would likely lack proficiency in the language; it’s a classic micro-invalidation.

Microaggression weaponized ironically.

(2) Gender and Academic Microaggressions: When Cady expresses interest in joining the school math team, she’s told it’s “social suicide”, a pushback reinforcing gendered and social stereotypes that young women cannot be simultaneously be popular, attractive and intellectually gifted, thus the trope of intentionally failing math to gain a boy's attention.  The “I’m too pretty to do math” T-shirt plays with this and works well if worn by a pretty math nerd although, it'd be really subversive on a "not-pretty" girl.

(3) Backhanded compliments disguised as “niceness”: Such things can be the least objectionable of all microaggressions especially if there’s some equivalency in the power-relationship and the quip is witty, subtle and (ideally retrospectively) understood.  It can also be done “by proxy” such as when saying to one student “I love your skirt, where did you get it?”, only to wait until she’s out of earshot before turning to another and saying “That is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen.”  What this does is make an individual realize they may not be able to find sincere or truthful anything they’re told.

Aggression rather then microaggression: “Fetch” anyway likely never would have “happened”.  Although a convenient clipping of “fetching” (often in the form “quite fetching” or “most fetching” and meaning “charming; captivating; compelling” etc), by the early twenty-first century “fetching” in those senses had long since descended into the category of “dated”; it was an “old people” word, use thus “social suicide”.

(4) Image and fat-shaming: Because the social identity of the “Plastics” was so tied to rigid “beauty standards” (some group-imposed, some the prevailing norms), by use of the “Kalteen Bars manipulation” it was possible to induce weight-gain in Regina, an act of sabotage opening the possibility of subjecting her to micro-insults and non-verbal cues (staring at her body or pointing out strict dress-code rules that really can’t be adhered to by someone gaining weight) to signal there’s been a violation of group standards, requiring exclusion.  In that, the techniques are different from something like: “Gretchen, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen.”; that is pure aggression: A group’s hegemon maintaining control by suppressing another member’s attempt to assert their personal identity through something as seemingly innocuous as the introduction of a new slang term.  It was a type of linguistic imperialism, similar to the attitude of Spanish nationalist troops who occupied Catalonia and the Basque country after their victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).  Harshly they would tell those they heard talking in regional dialects: “Speak the language of the Empire, don’t bark like dogs!”  

TERF & Terf

TERF & Terf (pronounced turf)

(1) The acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist (trans-exclusionary radical feminism), a fork of radical feminism which maintains a trans woman’s gender identity is not legitimate and rejects the inclusion of trans people and the gender-diverse in the feminist movement.

(2) In genetics as (1) TERF 1 (Telomeric repeat-binding factor 1), a protein which in  humans is encoded by the TERF1 gene & (2) TERF 2 (Telomeric repeat-binding factor 2), a protein present at telomeres throughout the cell cycle. 

2008: Coined by Australian feminist writer Viv Smythe (@vivsmythe (fka @tigtog, @hoydenabouttown & @GFIComedy) although Ms Smythe suggests the acronym may previously have been in use but her blog entry is the oldest instance extant, hence the credit.  By virtue of use, TERF has become a word and thus the noun terf (and its variants is correct.  The use in genetics dates from the 1990s , the definitions written as part of the project which decoded the human genome (the complete results of which weren't released until March 2022).   

TERF was said first to have been coined as a “deliberately neutral” descriptor of a certain intellectual position among certain feminists, CISgender women who self-identify as feminist but who oppose including transgender women in spaces (physical, virtual & philosophical) which their construct of feminism reserves for those assigned female at birth.  Implicit in this is the denial that trans women (or anyone anywhere on the trans gender spectrum) are women; they regard them as men and because, by definition, men cannot coexist with their feminist construct, they must be excluded.  However, though TERF was of the feminists, by a feminist, for the feminists, once in the wild it is public property and TERF didn’t long stay neutral, soon used as a slur, applied as a term of disparagement by those sympathetic to trans rights and just as quickly embraced by some TERFs in an act of reclamation (a la slut, the notorious n-word etc).  In use online since at least 2008, TERF has different connotations (depending on who is using it and for what purpose) but even when applied as something purely descriptive, feminists who have been labeled TERF have called the term a slur because it has come to be associated with violence and hatred.  It is a loaded term.

Sainte Jeanne d'Arc (Saint Joan of Arc) (1903) by Albert Lynch (1860–1950).  Joan of Arc with proto TERF bangs: latter day TERFs arouse such hatred there may have been whisperings what was required was a few burnings at the stake.

The coining of TERF inspired some neologisms.  TERF bangs (existing only in the plural and noted since 2013 although use didn't trend until 2014) is a sardonic reference to a woman's hairstyle with short, straight, blunt-edged bangs (historically called baby bangs and a variation of what's known by some hairdressers as the "Joan of Arc" fringe), especially when paired with a bob and claimed to be associated with TERFs, the link impressionistic and possibly an example of a gaboso (generalized association based on single-observation).  The link is thought to be part of the opposition to transphobia, the TERF bangs noted for their relationship to the Karen (speak to the manager) bob and all Karens are assumed to be transphobic.  TERFdom is either (1) the holding (and expression) of trans-exclusionary feminist views or (2) being in some way present in the on-line TERF ecosystem.  TERFism is the abstract noun denoting variously the action, practice, state, condition, principle, doctrine, usage, characteristic, devotion or adherence to TERFDom.  TERfturf is an expression variously of the physical, virtual or philosophical space occupied by TERFdom.  TERFy, TERFish & TERFic are adjectives (usually applied disparagingly) which suggest someone or something may be tending towards, characteristic of, or related to trans-exclusionary feminism or those who hold such views.  Strangely, TERFesque seems not to have been used and it's tempting to ponder TERFery, TERFed & TERFistic and the use to which they might be put but there's scant evidence of use.  TERF also provided the model for the backronym SWERF (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist), describing the position of those radical feminists opposed to the sex industry (including pornography), regarding all aspects of the business as exploitative and that women who participate are victims of coercion, any assertion of agency or willing participation a form of false consciousness.

TERF, TWERF and others

Whatever the life TERF subsequently took, Ms Smythe’s original piece was a critique of the undercurrent of transphobia in the UK British media, something hardly difficult to detect nor restricted to the most squalid of the tabloids.  However, as she noted, regardless of her purpose or the context of the text, TERF has became a weaponized device of the culture wars which, in the way of the battle, assumed its identities at the extremes of the trans-inclusion & trans-exclusion positions and it could hardly have followed a different course, the notion, however applied, hardly one amenable to subtle nuances (although some have tried).  That it had the effect of being an inherently schismatic force in radical feminism seemed especially to disturb Ms Smythe and later she would suggest a more accurate (or certainly less divisive) acronym would have been “…TES, with the “S” standing for separatists”, adding that many “…of the positions that are presented seem far too essentialist to be adequately described as feminist, let alone radical feminist.”  Of course, that view was in itself exclusivist and a kind of assertion of ownership of both “radical” and “feminist” but that’s entirely in the tradition of political philosophy including the strains which long pre-date modern feminism, gatekeepers rarely hesitant in lowering the intellectual portcullis, intruders rarely welcome.

Still, it wasn’t as if feminism had been immune from the fissiparousness which so often afflicted movements (secular and otherwise), the devolution into into competing doctrinal orthodoxies of course creating heretics and heroes and to think of the accepted structure of the history (first wave, second wave etc) as lineal is misleading.  Nor was the process organic and it has been claimed there are TERFs (notably some of the self-described) for whom the identification with feminism became attractive only when it seemed to offer a intellectual cloak under which push transphobia, an accusation leveled at members of the US organization GIW (Gender Identity Watch).   Described variously as a “hate group” and the “Republican party in sensible shoes”, GIW’s best known activities include lobbying and monitoring legislatures and courts to try to ensure those who are transgender are not granted either the status of women or whatever rights may accrue from that.  Their basis was simply definitional, those DMaB (designated male at birth) can never be anything beyond MiD (men in disguise) and thus have no place in women’s spaces.

T-shirts are available.  In the modern age, if there's not a T-shirt, it's probably not a cause. 

There seems little to suggest bangs are a reliable marker of TERFdom and those wishing to assert where they stand on TERFness should probably don an appropriate T-shirt.  Not only do designer colors seem rare in TERF clothing but the combos mostly are black and white which may be subliminal messaging, this being a polarized debate in which there are few gray areas.  Predictably, trans-friendly T-shirts are more colorful.

Other theorists developed their own form of exclusivism.  The idea behind the back-formation TWERF (Trans Women Exclusionary Radical Feminist) was that it was "pure womanism", the needs of trans women being not only different from “real” women but irrelevant too, again by definition because trans women are still men and even if in some way defined as not, were still not “real” women.  The distinctions drawn by the TWERFs was certainly a particular strain of radical feminism because they raised no objection to the presence of trans men, the agender and even some other non-binary people into at least some of their women-only spaces although the rationale offered to support this position did seem sometimes contradictory.  Some however seemed well to understand the meaning and they were the transsexual separatists, apparently a cause without rebels, support for the view apparently close to zero.  The transsexual separatists argue that they need to be treated, for the purposes of defined rights, as a separate category, a concept which received little attention until the Fina(Fédération internationale de notation, the International Swimming Federation) in June 2022 announced a ban on the participation of transgender women from elite female competition if they have experienced “…any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later."  As something a workaround designed somehow to combine inclusion and exclusion in the one policy, Fina undertook to create a working group to design an “open” category for trans women in “some events” as part of its new policy; when in doubt, form a committee.  The transsexual separatists may not have expected Fina to be the first mainstream organization to offer a supporting gesture but what the federation has done may stimulate discussion, even if the work-around proves unworkable.

Discursiveness is however in the nature of feminist thought, the essence of the phases of renewal which characterized progress, formalized (if sometimes misleadingly) as waves and it’s unrealistic to imagine trans-related issues will be resolved until generational change allows a new orthodoxy to coalesce.  It really wasn’t until the high-water mark of second wave of feminism in the early 1980s that some of the early radical feminists began to attempt to distance the movement from the issues pertaining to trans people, reflecting the view the implications of what was characterized as the transgender agenda would only reinforce sexual stereotyping and the gender binary.  Even then, the position taken by radical feminists was not monolithic but it was the exclusionists who attracted most interest, inevitable perhaps given they offered the media a conflictual lens through which to view the then somewhat novel matter of trans rights, until then rarely discussed.  Third wave feminism was a product of the environment in which it emerged and thus reflected the wider acceptance of transgender rights and few would argue this has not continued during the fourth wave, the attention given to TERF (and its forks and variations) an indication of the interest in the culture wars and the lure of conflict in media content (whether tabloid or twitter) rather than any indication a generalized hardening of opposition among feminists.

TERF must not be confused with the homophone “turf”

Lindsay Lohan winning on the JCB's turf: On 1 October, 2023, four-year old mare Lindsay Lohan (by Emcee out of Requebra) won the Grande Prêmio Costa Ferraz over 1,000 metres, her fourth win in ten starts; Jockey Club Brasileiro, Praça Santos Dumont, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The word turf pre-dates 900 and was from the Middle English terf & torf (turves sometimes was used as plural but wholly un-related to the phrase “topsy-turvy”), from the Old English turf & tyrf (turf, sod, slab of soil, roots cut from the earth, piece of grass-covered earth, greensward), from the Proto-West Germanic turb (turf, peat), from the Proto-Germanic turbz (turf, lawn), linked possibly to the primitive Indo-European derbh- (to wind, to compress).  It was cognate with the Dutch turf, the Old Norse torf, the Middle Low German torf (peat, turf), (from which German & German Low German gained Torf) the Danish tørv, the Swedish torv, the Norwegian torv, the Icelandic torf, the Russian трава (trava) (grass), the Old Frisian turf, and the Old High German zurba; it was akin to the Sanskrit दर्भ (darbhá) (a kind of grass) & दूर्वा (dū́rvā) (bent grass).  Turf in its original sense developed as a part of the agrarian economy, describing the top layer of soil in which seeds were planted and roots (hopefully) took hold.  Use (apparently rapidly) expanded to encompass concepts in some way related to the upper layer of the ground or what sprouted from it including sods, slabs of soil with the root systems preserved (ie a piece of grass covered earth) and expanses of grassed surfaces.  To this day, the general literal understanding of “turf” is the grassed, top layer of soil.  The use as a synecdoche for (especially thoroughbred) horse racing (as “the turf”) dates from 1755, that use emerging from the original technical use by those maintaining the grassed surface over which the horses galloped.  From this evolved the modern occupational euphemisms: (1) turf accountant (a bookmaker (bookie) with whom one places bets) and (2) turf advisor (one who for a fee provides “tips” suggesting the horse(s) on which bets should be placed).

Lindsay Lohan enjoying the turf: Lindsay Lohan in The Birdcage (right), Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, Victoria (Spring Carnival Derby Day), 2 November, 2019. The outfit paired a Leo & Lin Venus Asymmetric Scarf Skirt with a Morgan & Taylor Leya Boater Hat.  This is a figurative use of “turf”, used as a reference to “horse racing”.

The word Astroturf dates from 1966 when it was released as a commercial product, a synthetic grass for use in sports arenas.  The use of “astroturf” as a slang term meaning “to fake the appearance of popular support for something, such as a cause or product” emerged in the last days of the 1990s although the origin of the use of the word in this context has been traced to 1985 when then Senator (Democratic, Texas) Lloyd Bentsen (1921–2006; US Secretary of the Treasury 1993-1994) used the word to distinguish between “real mail from real people” and the “mountain of cards and letters” sent to his office in a campaign organized by the insurance industry: “…a fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf... this is generated mail.”  Lloyd Bentsen is remembered also for the most memorable retort (which probably was rehearsed) from the 1988 presidential election in which he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for VPOTUS.  In a debate with the Republican’s Dan Quayle (b 1947; VPOTUS 1989-1993), he responded to Mr Quayle comparing himself to John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; POTUS 1961-1963) by saying: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.  I knew Jack Kennedy.  Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.  Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”  The other coincidental link between the two candidates was that in the 1970 mid-term congressional elections, Bentsen defeated George H.W. Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; VPOTUS 1981-1989 & POTUS 1989-1993) for a Texas senate seat and it was Dan Quayle Bush choose as a running mate in his successful 1988 presidential campaign.  Mr Qualye's other contribution to US political history was being filmed visiting a school in New Jersey school where he “corrected” a student’s spelling of “potato” by adding a final “e”.  That a man aspiring to be elected to an office “a heartbeat away from the presidency” and thus the authority to launch nuclear missiles didn’t know how to spell “potato” was disturbing enough but what made it really funny (at least in one sense) was he read the incorrect spelling from flashcards prepared in advance, confirming the public’s perception politicians obediently parrot whatever is fed to them by the party machine.

Lindsay Lohan on some turf: Lindsay Lohan standing on one of the Flemington Racecourse lawns.  This is a literal use of “turf”, used as a reference to “grass” but, had she been standing on the race track proper, the word would have been used in both senses.

As a general term for the “street or sidewalk (footpath)” in cityscapes, turf had entered slang use by at least the 1880s.  The phrase “comes with the turf” means one must “take the rough with the smooth” and accept less pleasant aspects of a chosen profession, location etc.  In figurative use the “turf war” was a demarcation dispute between parties over territory which can be literal physical space or something more abstract.  The idea of “our turf” in the sense of “streets or parts of a suburb in which a gang had an exclusive right to conduct criminal activities” must be old but the use of “turf” to describe the concept seems not to have been recorded prior to 1953.  On a gang’s turf, “civilians” might well stroll un-molested but it’d be dangerous for members of other gangs to trespass.  The term “turf war” is said to have come into use only in 1962 but the notion of “one’s turf” to which one had an exclusivity of possession or right was documented from at least the mid nineteenth century when it was almost formalized as a set of boundaries in the streets on which prostitutes plied their trade, the unmarked borders administered both by the sex workers and police officers who (usually with the extraction of some sort of fee in cash or kind) “enforced the rules”.

Veavage

Veavage (pronounced vee-vig)

(1) The expanse of bare skin a woman displays when wearing a dress (or top) with a neckline cut in a deep (often called plunging) “V”, the vertex (the bottom junction where the two diagonal strokes meet) typically reaching the midriff but the lines can intersect as low as the waist or even the hipline.  As a design, it’s the familiar “V-neckline” taken to its logical conclusion although much the same can be achieved with what technically are “scalloped necklines” or “U-plunges”.

(2) As “veavage dress”, “veavage top” etc, a garment so designed.

2026 (2010 for an earlier, now extinct purpose): A portmanteau word, the construct being ve(e) + (cle)avage.  In English, vee had a long history as an illustration of the pronunciation for the letter “V” but it was in US English in the mid-1860s it began widely to be used in building, architecture and engineering to describe various structures, components or configurations.  Because of the attractive properties of triangles, the “V-shape” would for millennia have been part of the man-made environment (indeed, it exists in botany, animals and geology) but the form “vee” appears in this context to have been well documented only from the mid-nineteenth century and use as a direct substitute for the Latin script letter “V/v” is documented from 1869.  In internal combustion engines, “vee” seems first used of piston engines in this configuration by 1915 although the first known V-twin was built in 1889 and the first V8 in 1903.  Although common as a descriptor of shapes or physical objects, the more abstract re-purposings included (1) a polyamorous relationship between three people, in which one person has two partners who are not themselves romantically or sexually involved and (2) in the (male) gay community, “a Vee” is a verbal shorthand for “a versatile” (one who is not exclusively “a top” (or “pitcher”) or “a “bottom” (or “catcher”) but indulges in both practices.  The coining is too recent for derived forms to have emerged but the possibilities include veavaged, veavaging and veavesque.  Veavage is a noun (and potentially a verb & adjective); the noun plural is veavages.

Of Vee

Cricket's “vee”, recommended for “high-percentage” shots.

Teevee was a respelling of the abbreviation TV (for television) so the two are synonymous but the former (with its four superfluous vowels) survived only as a “niche word”.  In the era between the early post-war years and services like YouTube and its many imitators becoming mainstream, a “teeveen” was a young person who “watched too much TV”.  In SF (sci-fi, science fiction) a three-vee was a screen able to display in three-dimensions; authors used also “3v”, “tri-v” “tri-vid”, “tri-d”, “trideo” & “tridim” and although they didn’t show quite the disdain for capitalization as later would emerge in the business of computer hardware & software, the literary preference seems to have tended to the lower case.  The humorists of the 1980s used a mix of upper and lower when creating shorthand critiques of the US cable television channel (1981) MTV (pronounced emm-tee-vee and an initialism of “Music Television”).  Claiming the channel’s programming was banal, they conjured up “eMpTyV”, “empty-vee”, “Empty-V”, “Emptyv”, “emptyV” & “eMpTy V”, all to be pronounced emp-tee-vee.  That was a variant of the technique used to produce rebus abbreviations (in structural linguistics technically a “gramogram”) such as “NRG” for “energy” or “XLR8” for “accelerate”.  All worked best when written because although non none possessed classic phonetic assimilation, sloppiness in real world use, sloppiness in pronunciation probably often rendered the sound of emm-tee-vee vs emp-tee-vee indistinguishable.  In cricket, the “vee” describes the arc of the field, forward of the batter, from cover to midwicket, in which drives classically are played (a shape better visualized as an “L” because, like many “vee” engines, the vertex is a 90^o angle) and coaches still instruct batters to “play in the vee” because that’s most productive for “high percentage” (ie more runs, fewer dismissals) shots but in the newer, shorter forms of the game, that’s now less relevant.  Whether “veagage” catches as jargon for coaches advocating “playing in the vee” remains to be seen.

Playing in the vee.  Australian cricketer Ellyse Perry (b 1990) with the trophies of the two Cricket Australia (the new name for the old Board of Control) Cricketer of the Year awards she won in 2023 (in the T20 and ODI (One Day International) categories). Note the splendid shoulder & upper-arm muscle definition.

In typography & computing, typography, a “vee” was a unit of vertical spacing, typically corresponding to the height of an ordinary line of text.  In machinery, a vee-belt (often as v-belt) was a drive-belt of reinforced rubber or other compounds which was mounted on drive wheels or pullies, the name gained from the V-shaped cross-section (some with notches which were called “toothed belts”).   “Vee Dub” was a slang term for a vehicle produced by Volkswagen (VW) and a “Vee Dubber” was a VW fan boy (some of whom were girls).  A “veejay” was the host of a television programme who presented videos, based on the earlier “DJ” (disc jockey, a radio presenter who introduced music broadcast by playing tracks from discs, a use which has survived many DJs now operating without discs).  A VJ was also a “vertical joist” which was a length of timber used as a vertical upright for structural support.  In vulgar slang, “VJ” also was a term for the vulva or vagina and the user-generated Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2010 listing “veavage” with the construct v(aginal) + (cl)eavage (ie the infamous “camel toe”) but that attracted negligible support.  A veep is “a vice-president”, a form popular use has made associated mostly with the VPOTUS (vice-president of the US).  

Of Veagage

Actor Keira Knightley (b 1985) in a classic black veavage dress, illustrating how the emphasis has shifted to skin rather than cleavage, the latter the traditional focus of the deeper “V-necklines”, things now done with “a hint”: less is more.

With due acknowledgment of the use in 2010 (documented by Urban Dictionary) which never gained traction, “veavage” is a new word but what it describes is not new though the emphasis genuinely is a variation of an old theme.  Veagage is a deeply plunging V-shaped cut in a garment which displays some of the chest & midriff down sometimes as far as the hipline although most stop at the waist.  Obviously something best worn on red carpets or for photo-shoots in controlled environments (light, surface irregularities, wind-speed & direction, crowds etc), it differs from the traditional approach to the female chest in that emphasis is on the skin rather than the breasts, the veagage look de-emphasising those glands so the cut is ideal for those able to summon much of a cleavage only with structural engineering such as a bra or Hollywood Tape (better known by the more evocative “tit-tape”).  So it can be a good, eye-catching choice for those without the anatomical advantage demanded by outfits optimized for “peak cleavage” but it has been criticized as a form of “privilege-dressing”, said to carry the whiff of “white feminism”.

Controversial and not accepted by all as something “real”, “white feminism” is said to be a fork of feminism concerned almost exclusively with concerns of white, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual women, the problems of women not ticking those boxes ignored.  It’s thus an individualistic strain of feminism which aims to maximize one’s advantage within existing systems rather than seeking systemic reform for the collective benefit.  From there it may seem a bit of a leap to veagage as marker of political exclusion but it’s true a link can be constructed if one wishes to find such a connection (the notion of v=(c+p) (cleavage + privilege = veavage)) in that while it accommodates at least some on the spectrum of breast size, slenderness is essential and for those not genetically lucky or disciplined, there are the GLP-1 (Glucagon-like peptide-1) drugs and overwhelmingly, they remain a tool for those who are (in global terms) “rich”.  Like everything else, the frock is political.

Lindsay Lohan, Olympus Fashion Week, Bryant Park, Manhattan, February 2006.  Although Ms Lohan is more associated with the traditional use of the V-neckline, this is archetypical veavage.

Unlike some “straight-line letters” such as “W” or “X”, the letter “V” is almost always rendered with straight lines but fashion editors are more forgiving than geometers (since the time of the third century BC mathematician of Ancient Greece Euclid, the historic term for those whose primary research field was geometry) who would insist the plunging neckline of Ms Lohan’s red dress is not a “V” but a “curvilinear angle” (an angle with sides of curves rather than straight line segments).  In elementary geometry, the classic angle consists of two straight rays meeting at a vertex, whereas in a curvilinear angle the sides are arcs or other curves intersecting at a point.  In fashion, up to a certain stage, a “curvilinear angle” is still a “V-neckline” because the visual effect is so close but, as the curves become more curved, at some point the cut becomes closed to a “scallop” or “scoop” and is so described.

Model & writer Hari Nef (b 1992) in Schiaparelli.  Like the trade-off in warship design between armor & speed, less gland means more veavage so those not best suited to cleavage in a V-neckline have an alternative.

So with V-shaped necklines descending to the navel (or a little beyond) hardly a novelty given their not infrequent appearances over the last two-decades-odd, why did the word “veavage” suddenly make an appearance in 2026?  The obvious answer is of course “click-bait” but that’s not of necessity a bad thing because, in a sense, that trick is supply anticipating demand and there are aspects of the internet (which at least for now seem to have become structural) that should arouse more concern.  It’s a good word and a welcome addition to the fashion business; presumably an industry commentator noted a spike in the “deep vee” showing up on the catwalks or red carpets and, things “on trend” needing a tag, conjured up (or re-purposed) “veagage”.  The speculative link to the look becoming more prevalent because GLP-1s have rendered more women with physiques suitable for such things is intriguing but wholly impressionistic and trends anyway tend to wax and wane although, in its niche, veagage seems here to stay.

Of Cleavage

Actor Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) with a more traditional implementation of the V-neckline.  Empirically, this look is likely to remain the dominant approach although, as it has for years, the veavege will run in parallel. 

The noun cleavage seems first to have appeared in the 1805, the construct being cleave + -age.  It was used first in geology and mineralogy to describe “the tendency (of rocks or gems) to break cleanly along natural fissures” with the generalized meaning “action or state of cleaving or being cleft” emerging in the mid 1860s.  Although the artistic record confirms the popularity of the look had over the centuries come and gone in the cyclical way fashion behaves, use of “cleavage” in the sense of the “the hollow between a woman's breasts (usually when artificially supported), especially as exposed by a low-cut garment” appears not to have been seen in print prior to the use in an article in Time magazine discussing the (nominally) self-censorship codes of practice adopted (not entirely willingly) by the Hollywood film studios.  In finding a single word, Time’s editors proved good practitioners of journalistic succinctness because what they were reducing to a word had been described in the industry’s bureaucratese as “the shadowed depression dividing an actress' bosom into two distinct sections.”  Cleavage caught on although to this day the more up-market fashion glossies still hanker after the French décolletage.

Variations on a theme of Vee: Lindsay Lohan (during blonde phase) in V-neckline, V Magazine's Black and White Ball, Standard Hotel, New York City, September 2011.

Cleave was in use prior to 950 and was from the Middle English cleven, from the Old English strong verb clēofan (to split, to separate), from the Proto-West Germanic kleuban, from the Proto-Germanic kleubaną, from the primitive Indo-European glewb- (to cut, to slice).  It was a doublet of clive and cognate with the Dutch klieven, the dialectal German klieben, the Swedish klyva, the Norwegian Nynorsk kløyva; it was akin to the Ancient Greek γλύφω (glúphō) (carve) and the Classical Latin glūbere (to peel).  Given the time and place of cleave’s emergence, etymologists suspect the original sense was likely related to the handling of timber (ie to split or divide by or as if by a cutting blow, especially along a natural line of division, as the grain of wood).  The suffix -age was from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.  The French suffix -age was from the Middle & Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum, (greatly) extended from words like rivage and voyage.  It was used usually to form nouns with the sense of (1) "action or result of Xing" or (more rarely), "action related to X" or (2) "state of being (a or an) X".  A less common use was the formation of collective nouns.  Historically, there were many applications (family relationships, locations et al) but use has long tended to be restricted to the sense of "action of Xing".  Many older terms now have little to no connection with their most common modern uses, something particularly notable of those descended from actual Latin words (fromage, voyage et al).

Bella Hadid (b 1996, right), Cannes Film Festival, 2021.

A veavage can of course be an eye-catching billboard and the obvious stuff to advertise is jewellery (left).  Model Bella Hadid showed how it could be done with scalloped neckline, wearing a black Schiaparelli gown (cut for the purpose with an untypically wide aperture) used to frame a sculptural piece, fashioned in gilded brass to resemble an anatomical cast of the lungs’ bronchi (the paired series of cartilaginous, tube-like airways branching from the trachea into each lung, acting as the primary passage for air distribution).  However, in while in commerce a handy advertising space, those adopting a veavage seem most inclined to restrict adornments to earrings or other accessories which don't interrupt the line of skin between neck and waist, the trick being to achieve a “lengthening effect”  

Golfer and multi-media personality Paige Spiranac (b 1993).

Despite the etymological implication, a veagage is about the display of skin and is not dependent on being framed in a “V” but the point about it is the de-emphasis of the breasts (and thus the cleavage).  What Paige Spiranac wore to Sports Illustrated 60^th anniversary event could (with some strategically placed double-sided tape) be used for the purpose but technically the ensemble was a variant of the “curtain reveal” motif (in “open” mode).  Whether it would produce a veagage or a cleavage would depend on the wearer.

In the 1980s, US political scientists used the term “cross-cutting cleavages” to describe what had been revealed as a phenomenon both increasing frequency and spreading demographically and geographically.  The term referred to a social structure in which different lines of division in society intersect rather than coincide (ie groups created by one social division are mixed across the groups created by another division, instead of aligning with them).  In the West, as an identifiable trend, this likely was something that had ebbed and flowed since the decline of feudalism but in the post-war years it became of interest to political scientists because it was clearly something influencing social conflict and voting behaviour, the issue-by-issue alignment within and between sectional classifications no longer as predictable.  What had become obvious was the membership of groups in one dimension was overlapping with multiple groups in another.

Influencer Sophadophaa (she stresses : “It’s Sophia not Sophie”) in red gown with plunging vee.

Because the veagage effect is most effective when at its most 2D (two dimentional), when that’s what’s wanted, the usual approach is to have the fabric cling to the skin (with double-sided tape as required) but V-necklines can be executed differently for other outcomes; the double-sided tape is still applied but in different places.

Overlap was not new in that “coalitions of interest or concern” had long been known to be subject to these “crossovers” (especially at the margins) but in the days before big machine databases transformed this into something political parties could not merely manage but exploit, it was a genuine problem.  The more optimistic academics suggested cross-cutting cleavages operated to stabilize democracy because, with individuals simultaneously belonging to many groups (class, religion, occupation, region), the overlap prevented politics from collapsing into a series of polarized conflicts, what some called “the Balkanization of society”.  The argument was the behaviour compelled political parties to build broad coalitions across multiple groups, moderating the inherent tendency to conflict and reducing the likelihood of groups becoming the captives of extremist positions.  There may have been something in this because in the US, between the 1930s & 1980s it was those broad (notably geographical) coalitions which characterized US politics; political conflict didn’t go away but it was diffuse rather than binary.  In operation, that mid-century model was very different from Europe.  There, “cleavage theory” was a descriptive model of the way several centuries of major (and often bloody) social conflicts (cleavages) worked finally as the catalyst for state formation and industrialization.

Wonderbra New Deep Plunge Bra.

The manufacturers have for decades noted the appeal of the V-neckline and have created a vibrant market in accessories and devices.  Up to a point, the conventional cantilever method works but there are practical limits.  However, while physics can’t be fooled, optics can and what Wonderbra did for the New Deep Plunge Bra was replace the conventional fabric-covered gore with one of translucent plastic, thus creating a “one skin tone fits all” fitting.  Except on close inspection, it was close to invisible.

The West (and especially the US) is of course now in the age of “mega identity politics” and the parameters of those identities are in the effective control of a relative handful of extremists (“absolutists” or “purists” the more polite forms) who have the historically unique (in reach, immediacy and scope) platform of social media set agendas and cancel transgressors; even in groups originally created because of oppression, now routinely oppress heretics who depart from the orthodoxy.  This does not imply political parties have become “single issue” operations but substantially they are tending towards the ideologically monolithic as aggregations of what scholars have labelled “stacked identities” and the process of “purification” is not organic: within the party machines, those seeking absolute control undertaking purges, witness the gradual preponderance within the Republican Party of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) over those condemned as “pseudo conservatives”, the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).  In the Democratic Party, identities have come to trump (the verb) all else and few now dare to raise the matter of trans-females competing in sporting competitions for women because the “trans rights” have become a litmus-paper test of adherence to orthodoxy.  So, the machinery which decades ago assembled coalitions of interest now creates tribes with much of what that word implies, political scientists sanitizing things a bit with the tag “affective polarization”.  While the cause-and-effect processes in all this were not wholly binary, it has rendered conflict now identity-based in that conflicts are between world views and way of life rather than the minutiae of policies.

Ultradeep U-Plunge.  Where the vee didn't plunge so deep, a more conventional construction could be used although many did include "clear" shoulder straps, made of the same kind of material as sometimes used for the gore.

So, whereas the national and state legislatures once thrashed things out and often managed to achieve compromises, that’s now less common because a “compromise” is seen as a “surrender” or “betrayal” and the consequences for that included being “cancelled” or “primaried”, two weaponized devices able successfully to be deployed by a remarkably small number of committed extremists.  None of this is any secret but there’s no obvious solution because the simple fix (mass active participation of the electorate (the so-called “sensible centre”) in party politics) has little appeal for either the voters or those running the party machines, both groups for their own reasons appalled by the notion.  The days are gone when the Republicans had their “moderate” faction (the so-called Rockefeller Republicans (named after Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977 and who earned immortality by having “died on the job”) and the Democrats their “Southern Conservatives” (the so-called “Dixiecrats” in the not always attractive tradition of figures like old Strom Thurmond (1902-2003; senator for South Carolina 1954-2003)).  By the 2020s, that overlap has almost completely disappeared with politics now more polarized than at any time in living memory and political scientists lament the shift but they should recall a remark in the paper Toward a More Responsible Two‑Party System (1950), published by the APSA (American Political Science Association): “The two parties do not differ enough.”  Expanding on that, the authors added: “Alternatives between the parties are defined so badly that it is often difficult to determine what the election has decided even in broadest terms.”  As a critique this came to be called the “Tweedledum & Tweedledee problem” (two characters in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) who had different names but look the same and behave in identical ways.

Das U-boob Theorie.

Orla U-Plunge Backless Adhesive Bra in Black (left) and Salma Hayek (b 1966, right) demonstrates the uvage, Evening Standard Theatre Awards, London, November 2015.  Orla's “adhesive” is a reference to the side panels which adhere directly to the skin (using the same technology as surgical tape), allowing the bra to a achieve a “backless” effect.  Because the cut of some gowns obviously is a “U” rather than a “V”, the fashionistas might feel compelled to add “uvage” (pronounced yoo-vig, the construct being u + (clea)vage)) to the lexicon because, if the two styles appear together on the catwalk, single-word differentiation might be helpful.

Heart & wedge: Luciana Heart Cut Out Long Sleeve Mini Dress in black (left) and French content creator & author Léna Situations (Léna Mahfouf, b 1997), in Georges Hobeika (b 1962) black gown with inverted V-neckline (technically a wedge), Academy Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, March 2026.  Ms Mahfouf uses “Léna Situations” as an online pseudonym because that was the name of the fashion & lifestyle-focused blog she, as a teen-ager, created in 2012; it gained her a “brand identity” and was thus for some purposes retained in adulthood.  The blog would have seemed familiar to the members of the long defunct Situationist International because her concept was sharing fragments of her life in different “situations” which might be defined by the place, the outfit worn or what was being experienced so was thus a series of spectacles, able to be understood as individual relics of time & place or a series of narratives.  Using that model, platforms like Instagram have allowed just about everybody to become a situationist and while the original situationists would have recognized “social lives mediated by images, media & commodities”, they'd not have approved.

However, although tempting, being too specific about geometry might lead to a proliferation of terms because designers have proved inventive when shaping “cut-outs” in gowns.  A heart shape could perhaps attract “cardivage” (pronounced kar-dee-vig, the construct being cardi(ac) + (clea)vage) and an inverted vee could be called a “wedgeage” (pronounced wed-jige, the construct being wedge + (cleav)age).  In formal logic, the wedge symbol (∧) represents “AND” (the logical conjunction); in its opposite orientation (V) the symbol is called a “vee” and represents logical “OR”.  So, imposing precision may be a needless solution to a non-existent problem and the industry seems likely to continue to tolerate what Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) in 1906 called “terminological inexactitude” (used as a euphemism for the un-parliamentary “lie” and coined because in the House of Commons, Mr Speaker had long since proscribed use of  “mendacious”).  Beyond the "V", "U", "heart" and "wedge", there are more shapes so veavage seems likely to serve as a generic for all.

Charli XCX (stage-name of English singer-songwriter Charlotte Emma Aitchison (b 1992)) in a Christopher John Rogers (b 1993) white fit & flare dress with ruffled peplum, featuring a more conventional implementation of the V-neckline.

Ms Mahfouf's retention of a youthful online pseudonym is not unique, Charli XCX another example.  The star herself revealed the stage name is pronounced chahr-lee ex-cee-ex; it has no connection with Roman numerals and XCX is anyway not a standard Roman number.  XC is “90” (C minus X (100-10)) and CX is “110” (C plus X (100 +10)) but, should the need arise, XCX could be used as a code for “100”, on the model of something like the “May 35th” reference Chinese internet users, when speaking of the “Tiananmen Square Incident” of 4 June 1989, adopted in an attempt to circumvent the CCP's (Chinese Communist Party) “Great Firewall of China” censorship apparatus.  In 2015, Ms XCX revealed the text string was an element in her MSN screen name (CharliXCX92) when young (it stood for “kiss Charli kiss”) and, after appearing in the early publicity for her music, it gained critical mass so Charli XCX we still have.

In 1950, the political scientists had concluded there was “too great a degree of internal heterogeneity” in that, housing both liberal and conservative wings, the forces tended to “cancel each other out” with the consequence being party programmes which were vague and often similar, meaning voters found it hard to identify clear policy alternatives.  In a sense, that took the “science” out of “political science” and the academics didn’t like it, preferring clear battle-lines (Roundheads vs Cavaliers; democracy vs fascism and such) for without clear differences, there really was no politics; all that remained was the dreary business of management.  In retrospect, the APSA likely agrees people should be careful what they wish for and and many contemporary political scientists now argue the system has moved too far in the opposite direction, producing intense polarization and reinforcing cleavages.  Still, we may as well get used to the system because, with cleavages widening and edges hardening, most conclude it’ll likely get worse before it gets better.

Of Vee Engines

Ford FE V8 (left) and Y-Block (right). The frontal view of the FE engine illustrates both why the configuration is called a “vee” and why it would have been understandable had the 90^o engines been dubbed “L8s”.  Ford’s first OHV (overhead valve) V8 (for pick-up trucks & passenger vehicles) picked up the nickname “Y-Block” because the skirt extended to an unusually low point, the additional cast iron thus recalling the tail of the letter “Y”.

The “V” in certain engines (V4, V8, V16 etc) is a reference to the angle of the banks of the block’s cylinder banks when viewed along the line of the crankshaft and the configuration in ICE (internal combustion engines) was used within half-a-decade of the “first” automobile appearing on the roads in 1886, Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) and Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) in 1889 installing a 565 cm³ (34 cubic inch) V-twin (ie two cylinder) unit in the Daimler Stahlradwagen (steel-wheeled car).  The Stahlradwagen’s V-twin used what was, by the standards of which would follow, a very narrow angle for the vee (quoted usually a 17^o but listed also “in the 20^o class”) and over the years, “vee” engines have appeared with angles ranging between 12.5 and 180^o (while the latter may seem a contradiction in terms, the 180^o vee (e a straight line) is accepted engineering jargon).  The first V8 (1903) & V12 (1904) appeared in what was for each the “ideal vee angle” (90 & 60^o respectively), the number dictated by desire for the even firing intervals to ensure the smoothest power delivery and those pioneers set the template which has tended since to be followed although there have been many exceptions.  Of course, a V8 in a 90^o configuration really should be a “L8” but because the Maybach & Daimler V-twin had established the terminological model, regardless of the angle, such things have always been “V-something”.  

Ferrparts schematic of crankcase parts for the 365 GT4 BB's 4.4 litre (270 cubic inch) flat-12.  According to engineers, this is a "flattened vee".

That’s fine because, conceptually, there’s always a vertex but according to Ferrari, the “Flat 12” engine fitted the various iterations of the Berlinetta Boxer (1973-1974) was also a type of “vee”, despite the two banks of six being horizontally opposed (ie at 180^o); they called it a “flattened vee” which, as Euclid would have told them, there being no vertex, that means they’re describing a “straight-line segment”.  The engineers would have acknowledged the wisdom of the geometers but argued the use was an established convention in engineering to distinguish the two types of “flat” engines (those with pistons which move in and out simultaneously (on the model of a boxer’s gloves) being “boxers” and those in which the pistons move in unison being “flattened vees” or “180^o vees”.  The Ferrari website explains all this while variously and cheerfully calling the engine a “flat 12”, “boxer-type” or “180^o V12”; so, take your pick.  It’s on that site the factory acknowledged the true story about how the original 365 GT4 BB (1973) picked up the “BB” designation and why “Berlinetta Boxer” was concocted as a cover story.

1930 Cadillac V16 452.

At one end of the spectrum, Lancia produced a range of what they described as “narrow-angle” small-displacement V4s and that was apt because the vee was set at 12.5^o, the compactness of the jewel-like power-plant permitting outstanding packaging efficiency.  Less obviously efficient was Cadillac which, for a brief, shining moment, made a 452 cubic inch (7.4 litre) V16 with the two banks eight arrayed in a 45^o vee; that made it a photogenic piece of machinery but it had the misfortune of being introduced in 1930, right at the onset of the Great Depression and although an encouraging 2,500 left the line in the first year of production, demand collapsed and it was only for reasons of prestige GM (General Motors) kept it in the catalogue.  By the time it was withdrawn from sale in 1938, not even a further 1400 had been ordered.  It was in that year replaced by a technically less intriguing 431 cubic inch (7.1 litre) V16 which, built with a 135^o vee, was even less successful, a reported 516 engines leaving the plant although it’s believed only 499 were installed in rolling chassis.  Also with a  vee was the most charismatic V16 of all, the BRM V16 (1947-1955) which was one of those “glorious failures” at which the British are so adept but no grand prix car since has sounded so good.

Factory cutaway diagram of Daimler-Benz DB 605 Inverted V12 as fitted to Messerschmitt Bf-109.

The DB 60X series was literally “an upside-down V12” but it was regarded thus only because the convention had been to mount them in the still familiar aspect.  Equipped with a dry-sump and direct fuel-injection, the angle assumed in flight made little difference to the engine, unlike the early Allied aero-engines which were carburetor-fed.  In combat, that was a great advantage for the German pilots who were fortunate the British didn't accept a spy's offer to supply them with a stolen example of the vital DB fuel pump.  As it was, the RAF (Royal Air Force) had to wait until Bendex developed a "pressurized carburetor" (a type of throttle-body fuel-injection) although the stop-gap "fix" which proved a remarkably effective partial amelioration was "Miss Shilling's orifice".   

In the first half of the twentieth century, the V12 engine held great appeal for the designers of military aircraft because the layout solved several critical aerodynamic and mechanical problems which would have remained insurmountable (and probably exacerbated) had the traditional in-line engines been further extended or enlargedused.  More cylinders meant more power and this the V12s achieved without the excessive length (and thus the dreaded “crankshaft flex”) which would have been suffered by an in-line 12.  The virtues the designers sought were (1) robustness, (2) lightness, (3) power and (4) compactness, the quest always for a better power-to-weight ratio and for this the V12 proved the “sweet-spot”.  The British industry in the inter-war years developed many V12 aero-engines (notably the Rolls-Royce Merlin which became famous by powering all the early Supermarine Spitfires) but because the Germans didn’t return to military aviation until the mid-1930s, they had the advantage of working on a “clean sheet of paper”, one of their many innovations being the “inverted V12”, the most numerous the Daimler-Benz DB 600 series.  In these, the crankshaft was above the cylinders so the cylinder banks pointed downward and this offered several advantages including (1) improved pilot visibility, (2) greater propeller ground clearance (meaning also the larger propellers became possible without needing longer landing gear), (3) easier access to accessories (fuel pumps, magnetos and such at atop, meaning mechanics could fix or replace components more quickly), (4) the fitting of a Motorkanone (a cannon firing through the propeller hub) became viable (5) shorter exhaust stacks and (5) the plumbing for the advanced MFI (mechanical fuel injection) system was both simplified and made more accessible.

Exhaust stubs of left-hand bank of a BRM V16.

Like the DB inverted V12s, some of the BRM V16 had low-mounted exhaust stubs but whether the flow of the gasses had any effect on aerodynamics was never studied although, the breathing must have been efficient because the 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) V16 could at 12,000 rpm generate up to 600 HP.  At full cry it produced the most glorious sound ever heard in Formula One but unfortunately it was at the threshold of pain for those standing close so the system was revised to use a pair of long "dump pipes".

Almost as a footnote, the German designers noted they were able also to exploit the location of the stubs to gain unanticipated benefits from the path of the inverted V12’s exhaust thrust and cowling flow.  It’s overstating things to call it a “jet thrust” effect but that’s how it can be visualized, high-velocity exhaust gases exiting the stacks producing a small rearward thrust component and the engineers experimented to find the optimum length and angle, calculating the “effective thrust” at between 50–150 lb (220–670 N) depending on the power setting and throttle used.  In real-world conditions, this translated into perhaps an additional 25-odd horsepower which may not sound significant in engines generating over a thousand but in combat, it could be the difference between life and death.  Additionally, the aeronautical engineers used an aspect of fluid dynamics to improve the “boundary-layer management” along the cowling (ie using the hot, high-energy exhaust stream flowing along the sides of the cowling to “energize” the boundary layer of air "attached" to the fuselage surface).  What this did was slightly delay any flow separation, reducing “draw” and providing a better flow over the wing’s critical root area.  The differences were slight and subtle but again, in combat happening at altitude, at hundred of mph, inches and seconds matter so it could be the difference between life and death.