Offensive Article, please edit

I interpreted this as being a doctor's office that was cold. Is igloo an offensive term? Genuinely asking, I've heard that used to describe somewhere that is cold.

I am interested to know too as I would never think that as a racial term but I can see why that would be offensive. As Tiger Bride said I assumed it was a cold gynocologist office. I think it is informative to know that it is actually an offensive term but I do not think it was meant to be offensive.

I agree with the previous posters. This is an ironic situation.

Read through the article 3 times. They seem to have listened and edited out that phrase.

View Quoted Comment As with many small and distant populations, the Esquimaux/ Eskimos were as badly treated as most indigenous peoples, by explorers or settlers from Denmark ( Greenland) or the French and English ( Canada) or the Russians then Americans ( Alaska) . Starting with not using their tribal or language names Inuit ( or Inuktitut and Inupiaq) or Yupik, and Europeans called them the raw meat eaters, or Eskimo. In part of Inuit territory, Igloo means only the domed ice houses, used as temporary hinting camps by most, housing for others, when above the treeline where there is no wood to build from, and long ribs of whales, and jawbones are used to frame mostly subterranean houses. The rest of Inuit territory, any long tern dwelling is an igloo. The dome design, properly done, can with the heat of 1 adult go up to at least the 40's, with a couple just body heat can bring it to the 60's, which we call summer like. And, they are impervious to polar bears, and wolves. Most people have heard, Eskimos show their hospitality by leaving their igloos with just their wives, and allowing outsiders to spend the night with them. Every navy ot trading ship knew that. And invited you with Eskimo kisses, coming nose to nose. Well both are untrue. Traders/ Explorers / Trappers would wait for village men and some younger able women to go off on a hunting trip, on land or by sea. Leaving their wives and children alone, a few days or weeks or more. And outsiders would rape them at will. Before modern air travel, and recently trucks in limited places, the only transportation up there was by foot, dogsled, or by water. Outsiders came out of the blue, maybe years since anyone had dropped in, by mofern ( relatively) ships, woild leave with anythingade of hides, shells, carved ivory or gemstones, strip a place, and with most women as adults 4'6"-5', the women often left dead from injury, or pregnant. Just as people in South and Central US, Britain, and elsewhere talked of dark skin women liking "it" , "wanting it," and starting young, basically rationalizations for rape, so with the Arctic peoples. Inuit and Indian villages in far Northern Canada, Inuit and Yupik in Alaska, Inuit in Greenland often live in settlements of 10 to 20 families, or 1200 in 12 villages over an 800-1000 mile area of coast. So a single shipload of outside traders could drop 20 to 100 men with the 20-30 women at home, stay a night, rob everything, go back to sea. . As for rubbing noses being Eskimo kisses: people have different senses of personal space. In Inuit tradition, you announce yourself when approaching is not a short distance. And in 10 degee or 20 below, people commonly wear hooded parkas, fur lined, with 5-8 inch wolf or fox hair around the hood. To talk in a windy cold outdoor place, they had in old times have to walk up with parkas face to face, the ends of the fur circles in front making a 10-15 inch breath and body heated space, to talk in the wind and with mouths often covered. Outsiders often claimed they thought the person was coming to kiss them, if accused of grabbing amd manhandling a woman or child. She started it with her kisses, would get you off in a magistrates od ship captain's hearing when villagers tried going to authorities. A gyno, a gynecological exam, has too often been a shield for doctors and coaches for sexual abuse
Doing them when totally unneeded, for the sexual gratification of those in charge or the doctor, often medicated. Given the long history of outsidets taking advantage of women in their homes, igloos, I don't know exactly what welcome as with the words gyno and igloo is supposed to refer to. But given the history, which still goes on too often, I fel about it the way older black families would discussion or using shackles and nooses.
And why such a phrase should be in an article of bridesmaid dresses? Makes me think it is in the writers vocabulary generally, UGH, and just slipped in here.

View Quoted Comment Please see my 12:30 post.
🙂Yes, ironic. But o er time we have agreed more than not. I think our recently being on opposite sides is just more memorable.🙃

View Quoted Comment Please see my 12:30 post

View Quoted Comment Actually, built right, an occupied igloo is quite warm. It is the gyno reference with igloo that is awful.It sounds like some juvenile remark from a movie. That, like references about Nazis any time someone in authority says anything controlling and unpopular, lead to all kinds people making ocomparisonsto Nazis. An ignorance of history. Your mean ol' teacher is not enforcing the new rules with machine guns, or taking everything from you, your family, and anyone like you, and sending you to a work or death camp. Whatever else, my writing teachers would have edited it as extraneous, and not advancing the narrative, if for no other reason.

View Quoted Comment

"I don't know exactly what welcome as with the words gyno and igloo is supposed to refer to...And why such a phrase should be in an article of bridesmaid dresses?"

The replacement phrase in the article is "as welcome as a root canal". The full sentence is that some bridesmaids enjoy dress shopping, and for others, dress shopping is unenjoyable: "as welcome as [thing that is not fun]". In context, the igloo gyno refers to a cold doctor's office, i.e. having to get a pap smear on a cold table. It is not meant to refer to a gynecologist in an actual igloo. It is a clunky phrase but she was referring to a colloquial use of igloo as somewhere that is cold. Going to a gynecologist with a cold office is unenjoyable, as some bridesmaids find dress shopping unenjoyable.

Unfortunately, the term igloo refers to only one thing, used by one ethnic group in the world. People would not set gyno ____anything in a cold vestry, or synagogue, or captain's office, or anything identified with a specific group only. Welcome as a root canal says it, more neutrally.

Thank you to tech support and editors for making this change.

View Quoted Comment Yes, very, very, very ironic. 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊


I would like to learn more about the Inuit. Are there any resources that you recommend?

Thank you for calling this out, Judith! We always want to do better, and never want to exclude or offend with our language, so we changed the article today.