by liberal japonicus
Not sure if this is front page stuff, but Michael Irvin, former member of the Dallas Cowboys and Hall of Fame member, just appeared on the cover of Out Magazine supporting gay marriage and pledging his support to any pro football player who is in the closet and wants to come out.
"I don't see how any African-American with any inkling of history can say that you don't have the right to live your life how you want to live your life," Irvin is quoted as saying. "No one should be telling you who you should love, no one should be telling you who you should be spending the rest of your life with. When we start talking about equality and everybody being treated equally, I don't want to know an African-American who will say everybody doesn't deserve equality."
Irving isn't the first football player to support gay rights, Brendon Ayanbadejo, Ravens linebacker, wrote supporting gay marriage, and Scott Fujita, who I think I mentioned earlier and who has a fascinating back story, immediately stood with Brendon. Because Fujita was a New Orleans Saint and it was just before their Super Bowl winning season, it focussed a lot of attention, but I think that was as far as it got.
This had reminded me that in May of 2010, Sports Illustrated ran a story about Gareth Thomas, a gay Welsh rugby player. This is probably not news to many of you, but what interested me was that I remembered that cover teaser for that article was, 'Gareth Thomas, the World's Bravest athlete', which got me to wondering.
The Chinese character for bravery is 勇 and the character appears to be a man 男 and the element that provides the phonetic reading. At least that is what I assumed. However, looking up the etymology of the character, I was surprised to find that the meaning element was 力 and the phonetic element is the upper part and it is only by chance that the character for bravery would look like the character for man.
Was Michael Irvin 'brave' and what precisely is bravery? Certainly, it is a bit different from the bravery of Gareth Thomas. It seems we need a word for that type of bravery that, were it taken up, would make what was done not brave but mundane. Whatever we call it, here's hoping we see more of it.
Sean Avery, of the National Hockey League’s New York Rangers, probably deserves a mention, here.
They have the common lì root, though, which is one thing that makes them look alike. The other thing is just coincidence.
A tipping point is coming soon when coming out in favor of gay marriage won’t be courage, it will be catching up.
From my own experience, speaking up for equality wasn’t the difficult part, it was overcoming the 40 plus years of ingrained ignorance. An outsider would call it ingrained bigotry, but it wasn’t, at least not much. Mostly ignorance, passed down from generation to generation.
I’m by no means even slightly conversational in Mandarin, but there are other character-phrases that seem to translate to bravery better.
胆力: 胆 (gall, courage, nerve, guts, gall bladder) plus our friend 力 for power, force, etc.
胆魄 which is 胆 (courage, etc) plus 魄 (soul). I like this one, but whether or not I like it is sort of irrelevant.
Then there are the more complex phrases that are idiomatic, such as 不讓鬚眉 (which seems to translate to something like “yielding to no man”) or 捨生忘死 (which is given as something like “undaunted” or “unmindful of peril”).
Probably best to ask a native Mandarin speaker which might be the best fit, here. Again, I really like 胆魄.
Aside: thanks for the link to the etymology site; I hadn’t seen that. I’m having fun trying to recreate some of the conversational Mandarin I learned at age ~13. I did learn some writing, too, so it’s possible for me to verify the characters (the English version of the words is of course quite different from what I learned).
Not a Chinese reader, but i did grow up in Japan, which borrows the Chinese characters(though Chinese has modernized them more than Japanese, so some of them look a bit different, but are nonetheless historically related).
In Japanese this character 勇 also means brave (just looked it up to double-check).
I think your original point regarding the character holds (at least in Japanese) despite the etymology you looked up, because in the character for man (男) the bottom element ( 力 ) is the character for strength (meanwhile the top element means rice field). So my take is that
a) it’s not a coincidence that the character for man incorporates the character for strength; therefore,
b)it’s not a coincidence that the character for bravery incorporates the character for man.
i.e. it’s double-nested, if you know what I mean.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis partially on the topic of which Japanese characters incorporate the character for women (for example, “graceful”, “young” and “hard work” but also “jealousy,” “hate” and “lazy”.) So that’s interesting too.
Actually, your breakdown of the character is badly wrong. The upper element is not nan2 “male” (dan/otoko in Japanese), but yong3 甬 , which has nothing to do with nan2. Yong3 means 5 pecks, is the name of a river (the Yongjiang) and is also an old name for Ningbo. Yong3 provides the phonetic element, which is why, unsurprisingly, your character is yong3 meaning brave inter alia.
Even as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, I always enjoyed watching him Irvin play.
For some reason, I don’t consider what he did as a sign of bravery.
Great that he did. But brave? I don’t see how he should merit any such compliment for being man enough to accept the difference in others.
I think you might want to reread. Her link to the etymology actually says pretty much what you did.
Irvin is just being what Doctor Science and my grandma call a mensch.
slartibartfast, I think you’ll find that kachan’s interpretation refers explicitly to nan2 rather than yong3. Perhaps you should reread the comments?
A couple of hours ago, reflecting my ancient ways, I was reading the local newspaper, which had a blurb from AP on Irvin’s pronouncement.
Turns out Irvin’s brother is gay, which I would certainly think played a part in forming his “enlightened” perspective.
I don’t want to dump on anyone for misreading something, it happens all the time. But here is what I said
the character appears to be a man 男 and the element that provides the phonetic reading. At least that is what I assumed. However…
That ‘however’ signals that I felt my assumption was wrong. So I think, if we were trying to determine who was closest, I’d say Slart is closest.
And thanks for the other comments. Sean Avery, as noted by Model62, is good. I’d also note John Amaechi, basketball player who came out after he retired and Justin Fanshanu, who came out in 1990, and committed suicide in 1998 and Olivier Rouyer, who came out after his retirement in 2008.
Being a mensch is, as Angry Sam points out, at the heart of it, but that word has the same problem as the Star Trek intro ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’.
There’s also Donal Og Cusack, an elite Irish hurler who came out a couple of years ago.
Yeah, sure. But what does this have to do with smoking in the park and the overweening intrusion of the government into every facet of our personal lives?
Oh, crap. Gay. Can’t marry. I’ll go outside for a smoke now.
Perhaps you missed this part:
You need to click the link. If you click the link, you’ll note that the etymology breaks down to “bell, path, river in Ningbo” plus “power, capability, influence”. If you have an argument with that, you really need to address it to the character-etymology site, and not Dr. Science.
It would be a bit unfair to address the complaint to Dr. Science, since she hasn’t posted on this thread at all (the OP is actually lj).
I just noticed that Slart said ‘her link’, so I’ve gone back in and put a byline in as the ObWi style guide demands. Gary Farber’s not here and it’s ruining the blog!
…but that word has the same problem as the Star Trek intro ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’.
A split infinitive…?
My apologies to both you and Dr. Science, lj!
If Irvin had done this 5 years ago, it might have been considered brave. Especially given the level of homophobia in the black community. (Not that it is the only homophobic community. Just that it is one of those with that characteristic.)
Today, it is merely part of the emerging pattern. There is no danger in being pro-gay marriage today — people may disagree with you, but neither physical nor economic threats are at all likely. Nor are you likely to be rejected by your family for doing so. At most, you face some social threats: some of your friends may decide that they no longer like you.
I’m not close enough to the situation to know whether there might be some risk to coming out as gay personally (which Irvin has not) while still playing pro football. But I suspect that, if so, it is a problem which is fading fast as the greater society progresses.
I would say that his standing up and saying what he did is a good thing to have done. But not so much a brave thing to have done.
I’m with WJ. Before too long, a lot of people whose past will mark them as opportunists or insincere will get on this bandwagon. The Bachmann’s of this world will be left behind. If we were going to shout out people who are ahead of the curve, I would pick Huntsman.
Agreeing with McKinney, I think that’s why Huntsman hasn’t registered a blip on the early presidential polls for Republican hopefuls.
Open-minded. Decent. His own man. What Republican in his or her right mind would vote for someone like this?
bedtime, you have a very different definition of “his or her right mind” than I do. (Unless I missed the sarcasm indicator somewhere.)
I disagree with Huntsman on a number of issues. But of the Republican candidates so far in sight, he seems far the likeliest to get my primary vote. And I think any Republican who wants to reclaim our party for those who care about the good of the nation (and wants to have a prayer of winning a general election) will do likewise.
Feeling the need to vent, excuse me for going off thread.
But is there a bigger asshole in Congress — especially considering he apparently carries considerable sway (inexplicably, to me) — than Eric Cantor?
To me, Cantor exemplifies what is wrong with Washington — soley acting on behalf of his party, not, it seems, considering for a moment what is best for the country. A hardliner who ignores the value, or need, for compromise.
I have no doubt that Cantor did nothing to advance the negotiations on the debt ceiling last at the White House. If anything, he seems to be obstructing these talks. Yet he puts out the story that President Obama “stormed out” out of the meeting.
And good for Obama putting his foot down last night (at least as much as the man can bring himself to do). High time he calls out Eric Cantor and his ilk for what they are.
But is there a bigger asshole in Congress — especially considering he apparently carries considerable sway (inexplicably, to me) — than Eric Cantor?
Size is in the eye of the beholder. Because of recent personal experience, I nominate Ted Poe. I find Cantor no more or less offensive than, say, Pelosi. This is a definite bipartisan malady.
But, for sheer douche baggery, Ted Poe is hard to beat.
wj: Yes, that was sarcasm. Huntsman doesn’t seem to be a phony (like Romney) or an extremist like so many of the others.
I’ll stick with Cantor, McKinney. Just rubs me the wrong way.
All of the direct quotes I’ve seen have Cantor saying that he abruptly walked out, or similar. But it is interesting to see how pervasive the “stormed out” phrasing is used, sans quotes. If Cantor said that, why not quote him? And if he didn’t, why is it absolutely everywhere?
Whether Irvin was being brave or not depends on what part of the country you’re from. I live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, where such a statement is stating the obvious. But 40 miles away you’ll find lots of folks in California’s Central Valley who’d think he was nuts. And I expect my relatives in rural Minnesota and rural Indiana would think he was being downright subversive.