I posted a little while back on the tricky issue of ableist language. Perhaps the clearest cases of ableist language are the ones where a term describing some disability is used as an insult. But, speaking for myself, I find it very hard to write about Bush administration policy without using words like ‘insane’. ‘Wrong’ and ‘mistaken’ just seem inadequate. So it’s great to have a list of alternative insulting language. But the list itself raises interesting issues– arguably (see JJ in comments) some of the terms on the list of suggested alternatives are also ableist. This shows just how hard it is to avoid ableist language, and how hard to even figure out what it is. Virtualjess at What Sorts of People wonders why there is a lot of resistance to reforming one’s language to avoid ableism, and I’d suggest this is one reason. It’s daunting to contemplate trying to drastically change one’s language when it’s not even clear exactly what changes to make. Avoiding ableism can seem impossible when those advocating it may not even be succeeding. And not wanting to do something impossible? That’s pretty understandable. In fact, I think it’s well worth making the effort even if perfection is not obtainable. But being a bit overwhelmed and confused by what’s called for is an understandable response, and one that I think we need to discuss and address.
Words and Able-ism August 5, 2008
A post on Feministe led me (via Takenji) to this very informative post arguing that certain terms commonly used in a negative way on political blogs are offensive:
You know, when you throw around words about mental illness, like crazy, psycho or psychotic, frootbat, and nutjob, you’re mocking disability. You’re spitting in the face of everyone who suffers from a mental illness. You’re equating horrible behavior with mental illness. Stop it.
(Another excellent post is here, from Wheelchair Dancer.) This reminded me of Shelley’s argument that terms like ‘double-blind’ are offensive (see the comments here). But it also reminded me of one of the things I promised to discuss eventually– a talk at the recent SWIP conference by Jackie Leach Scully. Part of Scully’s discussion was about the many metaphors based on bodily abilities. Her focus was on the different ways that these metaphors may be understood by people whose bodies work in different ways. Scully, for example, is profoundly deaf, and reported that she spent many years misunderstanding the phrase “I hear what you’re saying”. It’s meant to convey a fairly deep level of understanding, but for Scully, hearing is about piecing something together very uncertainly from fragmentary clues– leading to a very different understanding of the metaphor. She listed many other such metaphors: “stand on your own two feet”; “stable”, and so on, noting each time how the metaphor might be understood by people with various different sorts of bodies. I thought of both the very widespread feminist discussion of ’silencing’. Interestingly, Scully explicitly did not want to argue that all metaphors like these were offensive, despite the fact that they present being able to stand and being stable as positive, and being unable to speak audibly as negative (and equivalent to being unable to communicate). Instead, her take was that the experience of one’s own body is so fundamental that basing metaphors on it is inevitable; but that we should be aware of the potential for miscommunication when we do this. It’s perfectly compatible with this thought, of course, to find some particular such metaphors offensive, and I imagine that she does, though this wasn’t her focus. How to distinguish between the offensive and non-offensive metaphors would then become an important issue. (Some who I’ve discussed this with suggest that it’s easy: Just pay attention to what disabled people say on the topic. But since disabled people– like members of all other groups!– disagree with each other, there’s no such easy short-cut.)
You may well react to this– as I confess that I did, initially– by getting defensive insisting there’s no malicious intent behind use of these terms and that trying to expunge them is simply too much to ask. However, that’s how opponents of feminist linguistic reforms feel about, for example, the supposedly gender neutral ‘he’ or the insistence on classifying women as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’. So I think it’s very much worth taking these worries seriously.
What do you think? (A note: for some reason, discussions of this topic on other blogs have shown a particular tendency to get heated. So please make an extra effort to observe our standard BE NICE rule.)
Obama, McCain and Ageism July 29, 2008
Despite being an Obama supporter, I criticised him for the sexist dogwhistles he used against Clinton, as he talked about her “periodically… feeling down”. Now he’s talking about McCain being “confused” and “angry”, which arguably are ageist dogwhistles. What do you think about these? I find myself wanting to say that when McCain gets facts wrong there’s nothing problematic in calling him “confused”, or that when he acts angry it’s fine to call him “angry”. But I worry that partisan loyalties may be muddying my thinking on this.
Which is worse? July 24, 2008
Being addressed as ‘Dear Sir’ by someone who has sent a letter to my department which came to me due to my particular role in the department? Or being addressed as ‘Dear Miss Jender’ in an email from the university bookshop about what books I need ordered for the Autumn semester? Both in 48 hours. What next? I eagerly await. Do feel free to share similar linguistic annoyances here!
Where is Aristotle when you need him? July 19, 2008
It turns out that NASA has used cadavers in developing the new Orion landing system. Aristotle would point out that corpses are not human beings. NASA appears to disagree. It refers to them as “postmortum human subjects.”
That seems to make those of you reading this premortum human beings. Well, it could be worse!
Which Speech Acts? July 5, 2008
“Children who go out today will need to wear their raincoats.” This might look like a simple statement of fact, but most children so advised by a parent would surely know that they are being told to do something if they go outside. What looks like a simple statement of fact can in fact be an order or a request or something else again. (For some Jender posts on kinds of speech acts, see here.)
A film from the 1950’s meant to tell foreigners about the London Bus system raises all sorts of questions about what is going on with the uses of language. So what do you hear?
“Homosexual-led persecution of church” June 21, 2008
A joke, right? We all know the attitude of many Christian churches is too close to persecution of homosexuals; see here and here, for example. How could such malign actions possibly be going in the other direction?
And plenty of religious groups opposed even secular “gay acceptance” activities, thus trying to prevent efforts to diminish the cruel and sometimes lethal persecution gays do suffer.
But, no, some people apparently actually maintain that homosexuals are persecuting churches. And the nature of the persecution is quite ironic. Most persecution is at least ostensibly to get rid of something. But homosexuals are persecuting churches in order to join them and to get them to stop their discriminatory behavior. As NPR, quoted by the blog linked to immediately above, put it:
In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.
Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, “parachurch” organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing.
When suing for your civil rights is presented as persecuting, watch out! You may well be in the Orwellian land of the far right.
Mother’s Maiden Name? May 19, 2008
There’s recently been a discussion on the FEAST mailing list about the fact that the APA uses as its online security question, “what is your mother’s maiden name?” And you know, despite all my years of teaching feminist stuff about language usage, I’d never reflected much on the problems with that very standard security question. (And that shocks me, as I’ve thought a lot about marital name change issues, which are obviously closely related. Really a nice demonstration of how something can be taken for granted no matter how vigilant we try to be.) Some problems are obvious, like the fact that it’s based on the expectation that all women change their name upon marriage; and the assumption that all mothers are married. Feminists have spent a lot of time on the problems with this sort of thing, so I won’t rehearse that here. But allow me to mention the really BIG one, which should convince even those who don’t see a problem with expecting women to change their names.
This is meant to be a SECURITY question, which asks for some information that’s not readily and publicly available. More and more women are not changing their names upon marriage, and more and more women are having children without getting married. Mother’s name before marriage is very easily accessible in the first case– especially if it’s THE SAME AS THE CHILD’S– and nonsensical in the second. Times have changed, and the question needs to change too– it’s currently providing lousy security. (And bad politics.)
Update: You know, I even failed to realise what terrible security it is FOR ME: My mother’s maiden name is my middle name, and that often appears on credit cards, etc. (Whenever I’ve been asked, I’ve felt mildly annoyed, but usually set that aside because I was trying to get something done and didn’t want to get distracted from that. So I never thought it all through.)
Word of the Day: Kyriarchy May 1, 2008
As contrasted to ‘patriarchy’:
Kyriarchy - a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.
Patriarchy - Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms. The theoretical adequacy of patriarchy has been challenged because, for instance, black men do not have control over white wo/men and some women (slave/mistresses) have power over subaltern women and men (slaves).
- Glossary, Wisdom Ways, Orbis Books New York 2001
Put like that, it seems pretty clear which term is the most useful for making sense of reality. Many thanks to Sudy at A Woman’s Ecdysis for introducing her readers to the term!
Silencing and Forced Marriage March 28, 2008
A deeply depressing story. 12 year old Ruksana complained to UK police when her parents said they were going to force her into an unwanted marriage. They came to her house to discuss it with the whole family, and told her not to worry– thus alerting her parents that she had talked to the police, whereupon they moved her elsewhere. She complained again, with a similar response, and eventually was forced into a marriage, forced out of education, and raped. As she says:
“White kids can call Childline and they get listened to - but for Asian children it’s thought of as wrong to complain.”
Ruksana is, however, hopeful (let’s hope she’s right):
Because of the publicity about forced marriages I think they would take you a bit more seriously now.
For the nerds among you, there’s arguably both locutionary and perlocutionary silencing going on indicated in Ruksana’s first quote. Asians don’t think they should complain (locutionary), and they aren’t taken seriously when they do (perlocutionary). Depending your views on felicity conditions for complaining, there may also be illocutionary silencing going on. For a quick intro to these silencing issues, see here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
On “Language Rapists” (AKA feminists) March 14, 2008
Geoffrey Pullum of Language Log has written a beautiful response to a stunningly over-the-top rant about the feminists who have taken over the world. It’s wonderful. I have nothing to add, except to urge you to read it. (And, as a bonus, you’ll get lots of useful facts about the history of English.)
On letting implicatures do the dirty work March 12, 2008
Geraldine Ferraro has been widely and rightly criticised for saying the following:
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
But now let’s look closely. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position”. True. In the very, very basic sense that one’s racial identity has a huge effect on one’s life, no mater what sort of life that is. And in politics, where one’s personal narrative is part of what one is selling, that is especially obvious. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position.” Again, true, because one’s gender identity also has a huge effect, etc. “He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.” Sure, he’s lucky to be who he is– an immensely successful, immensely talented individual. “And the country is caught up in the concept.” Certainly true for a lot of the country.So nothing false was said.
But– what she conveyed (via implicatures, if one wants to get technical) was that Obama was undeserving of his successes. That his successes were solely a result of his race. And that being non-white is a huge and undeserved stroke of luck in America. All false. And all so offensive and obviously false that nobody would explicitly say them. But all very clearly what she wanted to convey, and what she does convey (to at least many people). And when she is called on her offensive utterance, she can insist that she said nothing false. She let her implicatures do that dirty work.
Misogyny Mishap: Update March 9, 2008
We remarked on Charlette Allen’s mysogynistic indulgence, and the remarkable fact that the WaPo printed it, here. Thanks to a comment on that post by Roger, we can call your attention to a reply, which the WaPo has printed here. And since it’s by Katha Pollitt, you know it is good! The article’s title and subtitle:
Dumb and Dumber: An Essay and Its Editors
The question is not why Charlotte Allen wrote her silly piece — it’s why The Post published it.
A sample just in case the author’s name isn’t enough to send you straight there:
The upshot: we ladies should focus on what we’re really good at — interior decoration and taking care of men and children.
Oh, gag me with a spoon. Sure, girly culture can be silly — but what does that prove? It’s not as though men spend their evenings leafing through the plays of Moliere. Susie whips up doggy treats, Mike surfs porn sites; she curls up with the Friday Night Knitting Club, he watches football. Or maybe the two of them watch “Grey’s Anatomy” together — surprise, surprise, about half the show’s audience is male. If you go by cultural preferences, actually, you could just as well claim that women are obviously smarter than men — look around you at the museum, the theater, the opera house, the ballet, the concert hall. Women read more than men, too, especially fiction, which men tend to avoid. (A story about things that didn’t happen? How does that work?) Women even read fiction by men and about men, further evidence of their imaginative powers — while men, if they do pick up a novel, make sure it’s estrogen-free. Who’s really the dim bulb, the woman who doesn’t see the beauty of “Grand Theft Auto,” or the man who thinks Tom Clancy is a great writer?
And now for an important qualification: In a passage copied below, Katha Pollitt endorses a view close to a problematic one of Gloria Steinem’s; namely, that sexism in the USA is worse than racism. We’ve discussed this claim before; it should be rejected. It does seem to me true that the WaPo would not write a comparably demeaning article about Blacks or Asians, but that does not show that, as KP puts it, sexism is the last acceptable prejudice. There are too many ways in which racism is also treated as acceptable, and arguably more than sexism is. So how do we capture what lies behind the fact that respectable newspapers and journalists are printing and uttering offensively mysogynistic pieces, while the awful racism directed toward Obama does not seem to make the op-ed pages yet? Women are the last joke?
Readers are invited to share their answers/observations.
From KP:
A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can’t imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. “Asians Really Do Just Copy.” “No Wonder Africa’s Such a Mess: It’s Full of Black People!” Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation’s clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media.
Beyond dogwhistles: Bill O’Reilly February 24, 2008
Bill O’Reilly’s latest fails to be a dogwhistle, it seems to me, because the racism is so blatant and undeniable:
And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.
And check out his fabulous attempt at an apology:
While talking to a radio caller, I said there should be no lynching in the case — that comment off Clarence Thomas saying he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. He said that on 60 Minutes, you may remember. I’m sorry if my statement offended anybody. That, of course, was not the intention. Context is everything.
On Dogwhistles February 20, 2008
Zuzu at Feministe has a fascinating discussion of Dogwhistles, a very important concept to those interested in the role and effects of biases. Her focus is on some really troubling remarks by Obama about Clinton. I think the Dogwhistle concept is ripe for some philosophical discussion.
The whole point of dogwhistles in politics is to send a message to a target audience that goes over the heads of most people, because those people might be offended or turned off if you came out and said it. One way the going-over-the-heads-of-most-people bit is accomplished is to speak in code, such as when George Bush suddenly blurted out something about the Dred Scott decision during a debate with John Kerry, in response to a question about abortion. A whole lot of people were scratching their heads about that one, but he had a target audience, and they understood *If elected to another term, I promise that I will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.*Bush couldn’t say that in plain language, because it would freak out every moderate swing voter in the country, but he can say it in code, to make sure that his base will turn out for him. Anti-choice advocates have been comparing Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott v. Sandford for some time now. There is a constant drumbeat on the religious right to compare the contemporary culture war over abortion with the 19th century fight over slavery, with the anti-choicers cast in the role of the abolitionists.Another way to send your message to your target audience while maintaining deniability is to go the wink-wink-nudge-nudge route, where you know that many people not in your target audience will pick up your meaning, but because you’ve crafted your statement to be facially innocuous, anyone who objects will be accused of being hysterical, hypersensitive, or overreacting. The second option is the one that Barack Obama went with when he said while campaigning in Wisconsin:
This is, I understand Senator Clinton periodically when she is feeling down launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.And that’s exactly what’s happened — all over the place, when anyone has objected to this statement as a sexist dogwhistle, they’ve been accused of overreacting. Of trivializing *real* sexism. Of seeing things that aren’t really there. Of stretching. Of ignoring context… Melissa McEwan has made the point many times that Obama has been praised for his rhetorical skills, for his ability to craft a message using just the right words. On the surface, this statement appears to be saying merely that Clinton goes negative when she’s behind. But then you look at the words he chose to make that statement: Periodically. Feeling down. And you have to ask yourself: Why did he choose those words to make this point? And the answer, unfortunately, is to send the message that Clinton is a big girly girl ruled by her hormones. This isn’t the first time he or one of his surrogates has used this kind of coded language to remind voters that Clinton is a woman. Among other things, he’s dismissed Clinton’s experience in the White House as having tea; he’s said that Clinton’s “claws come out”…
I think this whole Dogwhistle concept is very important, and that there might be several forms of it, which might well lead to different assessments of culpability in different cases. Here are some that occur to me, with respect to sexist Dogwhistles:
The Dogwhistle is a deliberately crafted effort to appeal to audience’s sexism. The Dogwhistle is an unconscious product of the the speaker’s sexism. The Dogwhistle is not a product of sexism (perhaps the speaker is from a subculture in which the phrase carries different connotations), but it nonetheless appeals to the audience’s sexism. Not sure about this one: The Dogwhistle is the product of the speaker’s cultural associations, but it is not a product of sexism. (This would depend heavily on formulating a definition of sexism that is restrictive enough to make this possible.)
What do you think?
Vibrators VS Guns February 19, 2008
In a follow-up to our previous post on Texas’s new acceptance of vibrators, check out this astounding photo and caption regarding the story, from the Washington Post (H/T Feministing).
Should buying sex toys be as easy as buying guns?
My questions range from the nerdily linguistic to the cultural (I’m sure you can tell which is which):
(1) I’m sure this is my new favourite example of *something*. It feels a lot like presupposition, given the way that a bare ‘yes’ and ‘no’ both seem like the wrong answer. This is just like the classic example, ”Have you stopped robbing banks?” (OK, that’s not precisely the classic example…) But note the way that it differs. One can perfectly well answer it by saying either “No, because it should be much easier to buy sex toys than guns;” or “Yes; and in fact it should be even easier to buy sex toys than guns.” But while “Have you stopped robbing banks?” can be answered with “No, because I never started”, it can’t be answered with “Yes; in fact I never started.” Is this difference a significant one? Another thought I’ve had is that *it should be easy to have guns* might be merely an implicature of the question. (Implicatures carried by questions is an under-explored topic, but David Braun has a nice recent paper about it.) This would explain the feeling I have that *it should be easy to buy guns* is more weakly suggested than *I have robbed banks*. I’m very rusty on presupposition, so thoughts from those more up on it are much appreciated!
(2) As readers may know, I’m a US expat living in the UK. I’ve gradually learned that newspapers here make jokes– that is, just slip them into regular stories. This is something that didn’t happen in US newspapers last time I checked. Has it started happening now? Or is the question being asked in earnest? I’d be grateful for guidance from My Fellow Americans. If it is being asked in earnest, ‘culture shock’ doesn’t begin to capture what I’m feeling.
Hillary and the Feminine Gaze February 8, 2008
Susan Faludi discusses women writing about Hillary:
THIRTY WAYS OF LOOKING AT HILLARY: REFLECTIONS BY WOMEN WRITERS
Edited by Susan Morrison
HarperCollins, 254 pages, $ 23.95Let’s imagine this book’s concept—30 well-known women writers talk about how they “feel” about Hillary Clinton—applied to 30 male writers and a male presidential candidate. Adjusting for gender, the essay titles would now read: “Barack’s Underpants,” “Elect Brother Frigidaire,” “Mephistopheles for President,” “The Road to Codpiece-Gate,” and so on. Inside, we would find ruminations on the male candidate’s doggy looks and flabby pectorals; musings on such “revealing” traits as the candidate’s lack of interest in backyard grilling, industrial arts and pets; and mocking remarks about his lack of popularity with the cool boys on the playground (i.e., the writers and their “friends”). We would hear a great deal of speculation about whether the candidate was really manly or just “faking it.” We would hear a great deal about how the candidate made them feel about themselves as men and whether they could see their manhood reflected in the politician’s testosterone displays. … And we would hear virtually nothing about the candidate’s stand on political issues.
Susan Morrison, the editor of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary (who’s also the articles editor of The New Yorker, and former editor in chief of this newspaper), defends the absence of political analysis in the book thusly: “There’s plenty of Hillary Studies literature out there that parses the candidate’s stands on policy issues, her Senate votes, and her track record as first lady. This book isn’t aiming at that kind of op-ed territory. Rather, it’s an attempt to look at the ways in which women think about Hillary (and why they think so much about Hillary), how they make their judgments about her, which buttons she pushes in them and why.”
Actually, the op-ed territory is awash with exactly the same sort of trivializing dissection. Hillary Studies pundits are obsessed with the candidate’s hairdos, outfits, cookie-baking comments, supposedly “cold” personality and even, most recently, her failure to apply “The Rules” style of dating in her politics. The ratio of trenchant political commentary to personal pot-shotting on the subject of Hillary Clinton in the larger media realm is precisely echoed in the pages of this book, which seems intended to reprise the op-ed fixations, not to bury them. The result is a good deal of convenient psychologizing, self-absorbed meanderings and unearned snipes—and a handful of efforts to take a respectable step back from how-do-I-personally-feel-about-Hillary thumb-suckery.
…
Thanks to its more insightful contributors, Thirty Ways does provide grist for thought. Among those writers who thankfully manage not to dwell on themselves are Katha Pollitt, who considers what the torrent of sexualized epithets about Hillary Clinton suggests about male hysteria; Deborah Tannen, who draws on actual interviews she conducted with actual women to diagnose the double bind that all female professionals face; and Leslie Bennetts, who argues that Clinton’s many self-appointed psychoanalysts have woefully “missed the point” by asking all the wrong questions: “The real problem is our own schizoid relationship with female gender roles—and the fact that we don’t even recognize the true nature of what’s bothering us.”
What would you have said had you written for the book? I think I’d be disqualified for not finding her a vivid topic in my personal life. Perhaps that’s a good effect of the very strong women philosophers I know and have known.
Many thanks to Feminist Law Professors: Have a look at their discussion.
“The Sex of Your Surgeon May Matter” January 30, 2008
The NY Times reports on a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by researchers at Columbia University. The question they address concerned why the treatment of women similarly affected by breast cancer varied. In particular, they looked after radiation treatment after lumpectomy, which is documented to be the better course of treatment.
The researchers analyzed data on nearly 30,000 women aged 65 and older who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 1991 and 2002 and who received lumpectomy. They also analyzed data on the 4,453 surgeons who operated on the women.
About 25% of women do not get the preferred treatment. There were two sets of facts that made a difference:
1. As earlier studies indicated, demographic factors mattered: Older women, black women, unmarried women and those living outside urban areas were less likely to receive radiation.
But the new report looks at doctors behind the treatment, and it found:
2. Women who received radiation were more likely to have a female surgeon. Women who were treated by more experienced surgeons were also more likely to receive radiation treatment, as were women treated by doctors trained in the United States. (Note: the study was of women treated in the US; it is not a comparison among countries.)
The article states,
Dr. Dawn L. Hershman, co-director of the breast program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University, said … “There are many fantastic male surgeons….It shouldn’t be taken that every woman should be seen by a woman, but there are some contributing factors to this difference that we need to investigate further.’’
It seems important to know also whether the influence was evenly distributed over those with the unfortunate demographics.
And finally the article reveals a small tension between the author and the person doing the titles; while the title has the term ’sex,’ the article uses ‘gender.’
Gender neutral pronouns January 10, 2008
The lack of an obvious third-person singular, gender-neutral pronoun in English is a familiar feminist topic. So it’s fascinating to read that a new one may be evolving. Apparently, some younger speakers are using the word ‘yo’ in this way, as in “Yo looks like a freak” (via The F-Word). But there’s also a very old alternative, singular ‘they’, of which I’m a great fan. This one goes way back, as this web page documents (and as Anne Bodine documented in a nice paper from the 1970s). It continues to thrive in spoken, and even written English despite all the best efforts of prescriptive grammarians. Now I’ve learned (thanks, Sally!) that this may be due to divine sanction. And a lovely mug commemorating his fact has been proposed (though, as you can see, ruled out at the same time).
If someone were to manufacture this mug, their efforts would not go unappreciated. Though I’d be grateful if yo could insert some quotation marks.
