a seemingly little thing that really really bothers me

[keryx]

Use of the verb "to stalk" to mean "follow in a cute and fun way" instead of "be a creepy predator".

I've seen it a million billion times lately, and this has got to stop. It's one of those cases where yes, the standing definition can refer to a number of different things, but it's also a very specific, mostly gendered, crime, and one that gets trivialized enough as is. If you wouldn't say a hurricane "raped" Florida, than you shouldn't talk about "stalking" Colin Firth.

That's all. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Comments

[catchstars.livejournal.com]

The stalking-trivialization thing is biggest in magazines for teen girls. I keep seeing articles where they talk about which celebrities are 'stalk-worthy' or they will ask most male interviewees how they feel about being 'stalked' by young girls. I wonder how most of these people who use that word would feel if they actually had been stalked. (I'm personally pretty careful about my use of that word regarding humans, but I do use it to describe the actions of animals, like a pet cat stalking a mouse.)