The Morning Rant: J.V. Edition

Oh, Come On! Now Santa Claus Should Be Gender Neutral?

America is completely confused these days: A new survey found that over 27 percent of people asked would re-brand Santa Claus as a woman or gender-neutral. The poll, from a graphic design company, reported that 10% of the people surveyed wanted Santa Claus to be a woman, and over 17% wanting HIM to be gender neutral. Or…wanting him to ditch the fancy red suit for skinny jeans and an iPhone. Oh, and tattoos. And Amazon Prime instead of reindeer.

Insulting a Viking is easy: Vikings, like 14-year-old boys, almost always used sexual put-downs. But beware of the consequences.

The worst was implying that a man was sansorðinn -- "used in the position of a female (blauðr) by another man," in other words "demonstrably sodomized." That could be punished by fullrettirsorð "full penalty," meaning that the insulted man could kill the insulter with impunity. The authorities would look the other way. The insult didn't have to be that direct, as long as the meaning was clear. Calling a man a "mare," or a "woman," or worse, argr (its polite meaning is "cowardly"; its sexual meaning is "emasculated, unmanned, womanish") could also call down the weight of fullrettirsorð. In the Lokasenna ("The Insolence of Loki"), the term argr is bandied about openly.

&topic=world_news"> posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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