I have a question for folks here, mainly around English linguistics but would love to hear of parallels in other languages. If you're not big on cats, just skip the next paragraph, which I've include for the context to be clear and show why I have provided the picture.
This morning, one of my cats was acting up a bit, hopping on the table where I have an electronics project, and searching for something to pilfer. In order to halt this behavior, I distracted him with a good deal of play with his toys (he is very athletic, so, lots of tossing a toy mouse for him to chase, then walking over to where he's left it because he doesn't fetch anymore). The image is of the culprit now that he's worn out.
While trying to achieve this state, I had a modified aphorism occur to me:
Idle cats are the Devil's playground.
It occurred to me then that I'm not sure if there is an extant term to describe taking an existing aphorism and modifying it while still conveying the same or similar meaning. For those not familiar, the original aphorism is "Idle hands are the Devil's playground" (apparently of biblical origin), meaning roughly that busy people don't often get into trouble or conversely that bored people will get into mischief.
There is a term, if informal, to describe, often intentional, mismatch of parts of aphorisms (ex. "Not the sharpest egg in the attic"), malaphor. Can anyone think of a similar extant term for a modified aphorism? If not, after trying multiple prefixes, I think that the least clunky seems to be "transaphor" (trans- meaning to change).
Anyone have thoughts on the matter?
Personally, I block pretty much all exclusionary communities for a few reasons:
I frequently do not see the community name before looking at a thread and finding something interesting to converse on, partly because of my neurodivergences. This leads to breaking rules without intending to. Safer to block.
I sometimes have experienced RSD as a symptom of my neurodivergences and thus intentionally take action to prevent it.
I value inclusivity and anarchic social organization as fundamental parts of my ethical framework and find social exclusion based upon a person's immutable traits incredibly offensive (the intensity of this is definitely related to my neurodivergences as well).
This is not to say that I don't believe that women deserve a space where they have control and agency, especially with the immense amounts of misogyny on the Internet and meatspace. Nor do they need to consider my feelings nor any other man's when deciding their rules and whether to be inclusive or exclusive.
I do, however, think that the hard-line exclusionary practices diminish the perspective, both for the participants and for men who could definitely use the insights into the bullshit that women have to continue to deal with. Lots of missed opportunity to build understanding and strengthen allyship. It also makes it easier for toxic exclusionary ideologies, like TERFs to take root (every group excluded makes it easier to excuse excluding another) while also preventing people who have not discovered their feminine gender identities from participating in conversation with other women in ways that could help them to uncover important things about themselves.
Anyway, enjoy and I hope that you find your space helpful to you, regardless of what myself or any other man feels about it. If the community does become inclusive, I'd definitely like to to know so that I can unblock it.