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Help[Opinions] Re: Desiree
in reply to a message by Fictionfan861
I really like it. I think it has a great meaning. Very sweet.
A little too sweet for my own taste, but it might not be in some situations.
I don't like alternate spellings of it. But I usually assume they're done to prevent pronunciation errors, and to distance the name from the connotations of the word "desire." It's unfortunate that people are so well trained, to interpret the names of women in the most sexualizing way available to the imagination, scanning for suggestions of "looseness." But it happens, it even happens to me sometimes. It happens often enough that I'd hesitate to use the name, even if I otherwise desired to use it. When I meet a Desiree, though, I certainly don't make any assumptions about her occupation or her sexual morality based on her name.
- mirfak
A little too sweet for my own taste, but it might not be in some situations.
I don't like alternate spellings of it. But I usually assume they're done to prevent pronunciation errors, and to distance the name from the connotations of the word "desire." It's unfortunate that people are so well trained, to interpret the names of women in the most sexualizing way available to the imagination, scanning for suggestions of "looseness." But it happens, it even happens to me sometimes. It happens often enough that I'd hesitate to use the name, even if I otherwise desired to use it. When I meet a Desiree, though, I certainly don't make any assumptions about her occupation or her sexual morality based on her name.
- mirfak
This message was edited 3/28/2019, 10:03 AM
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I’m not sure it’s about sexualizing women and their names. Maybe there’s a little of that, but there’s more to it. I think if you were doing free word association with a lot of people, many if not most would respond with something sexual if you gave them “Desire”. Maybe that’s a cultural thing, but there’s just so much sexual context built into that word. And if it were just a name with the meaning being “desire”, it wouldn’t be so bad, but this is literally just the word, sitting out there in the open. My Nana’s neighbours named their dog “Dildo”. I don’t think I was sexualizing dogs when I shuddered looking at that name written on the doghouse.
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Well... yeah, the word desire is loaded like that, in English at least. I was observing that when English-speaking people see Désirée and it's a woman, I think they're *more* likely to think "oh tacky stripperish name" because of the sexual connotation of "desire," than they are to think of something along those lines, when they see a person is named Désiré and is a man. This includes myself.
But I think you're totally right, that it's not like I made it sound - it doesn't mean people are scanning women for looseness, or over-sexualizing them. It's more complicated and less blameful than that.
But I think you're totally right, that it's not like I made it sound - it doesn't mean people are scanning women for looseness, or over-sexualizing them. It's more complicated and less blameful than that.
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Ah, gotcha : )
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