Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 June 10

= June 10 =

Deciphering a homophobic Anita Bryant quote
From our article: "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."

I don't get the "nail biters" part. Is that code for some other group she found objectionable ? SinisterLefty (talk) 04:37, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Like many things Anita Bryant said, it doesn't really make much sense. I suspect her mind wandered and she was looking for another group that might be considered to have a minor peccadillo / behavior considered societally inappropriate and her mind, such as it was, alit on people who bite their nails. (The structure of the sentence is such that it's working from greater to lesser offenses, to emphasize the fact that being gay is the greatest offense of them all.) "Nail biters" is enough of a non-sequitur (a lesser offense that is sexual in some way, like the others, would be expected) as to have perplexed others enough that there are online discussions: see https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/316634/specific-meaning-of-term-nail-biters-in-context-of-mid-1970s-america for example. Another thought would be she had the term "pillow-biters" in her mind and it was changed on the way to her mouth. - Nunh-huh 04:50, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * "Pillow-biters" makes a bit more sense, maybe that was what she meant. I believe that's an insult for gay men. So then she was returning to her original point that gays should be denied rights. She may have self-censored herself at the last minute and changed it to "nail-biters" intentionally. SinisterLefty (talk) 05:13, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Given her obvious ignorance of the subject (see farther below), it's unlikely she would have ever heard that expression (which I myself never heard until today). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:32, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * It's been in the article for 16 years, since this edit. (I'd wondered whether it had been tampered with since. Seems not.) The addition of which it was part is written in language that I think I can call unencyclopedic, so it may be worth checking the source. It's hard for me to attempt to think like a virulent homophobe, but I'd guess that the biographee might have thought that homosexuality and nail-biting were both psychopathological, or that both were disgusting to observe. (I'm the would-be messenger. Thank you for not shooting me.) -- Hoary (talk) 05:02, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, I must say that the original is harder to track down than I thought, but I think it's safe to conclude that the quote wasn't made up by a Wikipedian in 2003, since it appeared in print in at least one source in 1978: - Nunh-huh 05:20, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Traditionally you insult gays by calling them women (!), same goes for leftists, and communists. It feels like “nail biters” is a way to say they’re fretful like a worried woman. The religious right worked very hard to stoke the fears of gays so none of this is surprising. Gleeanon409 (talk) 05:23, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * It would be good if someone could actually find the original quote. The earliest I can find is The Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, South Carolina) 27 January 1978, Friday, p. 6. which has a similar quote, but no nail-biter. It's also a student newspaper, so less reliable than say, the New York Times.  The quotation given in that story is, "Making homosexuality a civil rights issue would mean you have to give minority-group status to prostitutes, to people who have sex with dead people or St. Bernards.". She probably said such things many times in many slightly different ways, so perhaps there is an actual quote with "nail-biters", or perhaps that was a later "improvement" by someone other than Bryant. - Nunh-huh 05:40, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Another similar statement from Anita Bryant's own 1977 book The Anita Bryant Story, p. 73: "If they [homosexuals] are a legitimate minority group then so are nail-biters, fat people, short people, whatever." - Nunh-huh 05:52, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * OK, then she probably did mean to say that. That is odd, though, as she combined saying rights shouldn't be granted to people who engage in what she considers immoral behavior with saying rights shouldn't be granted for trivial reasons. Not a strong tactic to argue both in one sentence, since, if homosexuality is immoral behavior, that makes it not a trivial reason. The whole "trivial" aspect is also easily countered by pointing out that people weren't arrested, committed to mental institutions, fired, etc., for biting their nails, so no special rights needed to be granted that group. The rights of fat and short people (not to be fired for their body shape, for example) have sometimes been contested in the courts, so those cases are somewhat more applicable (and therefore less trivial). SinisterLefty (talk) 06:12, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I took a look at Newspapers.com (a pay site, not comprehensive) and here's a quote from the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, on Oct. 12, 1977, p.46. Ironically enough, she's griping about being targeted by demonstrators who are trying to deprive her of her livelihood (public performances), while denying that she's promoting discrimination. This is part of a longer rant: "We're not talking about the same thing as with the blacks. Gays are not born that way. If they are a legitimate minority group, then so are nail-biters and fat people. The homosexuals' point is that they want to come out of the closet and not lose their jobs." This was in the wake of the defeat of a gay-rights ordinance in her home county in Florida. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:18, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I've often thought the solution to the problem of defining which are "legitimate minority groups" is to give blanket protections. Something like: "No discrimination in employment is permitted for any reasons other than those which can be demonstrated to affect job performance". However, we may still need to add some specific protections, such as for women of child-bearing age, because taking repeated maternity leaves could be demonstrated to affect job performance. SinisterLefty (talk) 08:13, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

"Each" versus "all"
Sentence A:  Original musicals The Cher Show and Tootsie, the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, and the new play Ink each won two Tony awards.

Sentence B:  Original musicals The Cher Show and Tootsie, the revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, and the new play Ink all won two Tony awards.

Are the two sentences saying the same thing? Or does the "each"/"all" distinction give a different meaning? Is one form correct and the other incorrect? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 14:23, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * In this case, I would parse both sentences to mean that eight Tony awards were equally distributed across the four shows. Sentence A, though, is unambiguous in that meaning; sentence B is, possibly, open to interpretation although I can't see logistically how in this particular example, given that I'm not aware that a Tony award can be shared. "Four children each ate two cakes" and "Four children all ate two cakes" might be less prescriptive examples; for the second, I could easily be prompted to ask "each, or between them?". Bazza (talk) 15:07, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, and I regularly see advertisers misuse this distinction, saying something like: "All 5 meals for only $9.99 !", when they actually mean each meal is that much. I'd like to see a court order them to deliver what they actually promised. That would get them to be more careful. SinisterLefty (talk) 15:21, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
 * "All 5 meals for only 9.99 each!" would be clear enough. As to the original question, yes, "each" is the one to use... or "all... won two Tonys each." Because using "all" and "each" in the same sentence sounds vaguely redundant, the "all" could easily be dropped. But native English speakers don't always pay attention to what they're saying. (Cue Weird Al's song "Word Crimes".) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:30, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * This isn't as bad as the use of "both" and "each" with the same referent, e.g. "Both of them each carry incredible physical strength ...". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:24, 10 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Sentence A clearly communicates that the four plays, combined, won a total of eight Tony awards. Sentence B is ambiguous, and may be construed as meaning that the four plays, collectively and in total, won an aggregate of two Tony awards.


 * Please consider these examples:
 * The four girls all found buried treasure;
 * She created four Wikipedia articles, which all attracted the attention of two professors;
 * Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta all had plenty of time.


 * In (1) the four girls discovered only one buried treasure (not four buried treasures); in (2) the four articles attracted the attention of two professors (not eight professors); in (3) the four separate parties all have an amount of time that, although its duration is unspecified, is equal, so the four have the one in common. (My examples stray from being direct analogues to sentence B, for the sake of demonstrating a more broad swath of the relevant theory, and to make more robust my illustration of the principle.) catsmoke (talk) 05:06, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately this is unhelpful. (1) is ambiguous as "treasure" is a mass noun : it might instead mean that each girl discovered their own stash of buried treasure (four in total). In (3), there is no information which leads to the conclusion that the amount of time is equal for each of the four; simply that, in each case, it is enough for whatever each of the four was doing. (For example, A may have been walking 1km and had 30 minutes to do so, B 4km with 90 minutes, etc.) Bazza (talk) 08:08, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:20, 13 June 2019 (UTC)