• sunsofold@lemmy.zip
    1101·
    3 days ago

    Sign language can be fun. There’s a great Adam Hills special with a sign interpreter where he says, ‘there will be a lot of moments tonight where there will be a laugh as I deliver a punchline, and then there will be a second laugh a moment later as everyone sees the sign for clitoris.’

    • tmyakal@infosec.pub
      8·
      2 days ago

      I saw John Stewart doing stand-up in Rochester back in the mid-00s. Rochester has a relatively huge deaf population because of the NTID, so the show had an interpreter but it also had closed captioning on some projection screens. Stewart spent ten minutes mumbling as fast as he could so he could comment on how well the transcriptionist was doing.

      It was very funny for the people who could hear him, but I imagine the deaf people were much less amused.

        • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works
          10·
          2 days ago

          Short video is loading… gdpr notice pops up… I refuse any cookies and click the popup away… short video has finished playing

        • lokalhorst@feddit.org
          6·
          2 days ago

          A small, sensitive, erectile part of the female genitals at the anterior end of the vulva.

          This is a very outdated definition for clitoris.

          • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
            6·
            2 days ago

            Alright, so I fully know about the extent of the anatomy and physiology of the clitoris , but I’m struggling to see a way that this is outdated.
            Lacking in clinical precision sure, but it’s not like it’s describing as a vestigial nub that may offset hysteria.

            • lokalhorst@feddit.org
              4·
              2 days ago

              The “small erectile part at the end of the vulva” is only the visible part of the clitoris. It is in fact way bigger and looks like this

              • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
                4·
                2 days ago

                Sure, like I said: I know the anatomy. It’s lacking in clinical precision, but it describes what people mean when they say clitoris, which is the glans.

                If someone says to rub their clitoris they’re not asking you to rub their labia majora. (They might appreciate it but it’s not what their asking)

                • lokalhorst@feddit.org
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  That’s what people usually mean when they talk about the clitoris, you are right.¹ But we are talking about a language vocable in a dictionary here, not about colloquial language. Sign language is not something like an auxiliary language, but a natural one. This is why we can expect from a sign language dictionary that it uses the precise terms. My wife is working as a sign language interpreter and she very often has to prepare vocabulary before a job, then she uses these sites as a dictionary. Common jobs are medical consultations, but also medical conferences are possible. Then she needs precise terms. She doesn’t speak ASL so I can’t ask her about this specific sign, it could be that it can be used for both meanings.

                  Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to win an argument here. I just want to give another perspective!

                  ¹I guess people mean this because the term is older than the knowledge about the anatomy of what it describes. People often just don’t know. This is something that can change.

      • sunsofold@lemmy.zip
        4·
        3 days ago

        I have a memory of it being the tip of the middle finger circled in front of the crotch in a motion similar to clitoral masturbation, but there are also a whole pile of variants/dialects of sign.