caver.adam wrote:I've heard many times where cavers refuse to be called spelunkers because of the history of how the word was used in the past.
No they don't. They dislike the term because of it's
current connotations among
themselves.DawgsgoCaving wrote: I am very serious about caving and very serious at becoming very proficient at the sport. Most of the people who teach me in addition to my mentor refer to it as caving, so I adopted it fairly quickly (I think I even remember seeing someone post "Cavers rescue spelunkers" on this forum the night after my first caving trip in Pettyjohn's haha).
I'm a little bit different than Dawgs. I am not very serious about caving. And I feel that the "cavers rescue spelunkers" line is condescending and assumes a lot of negative things about cave explorers that operate outside of organized caving (and gives some undeserved credit to cavers). For this reason, I'll let anyone call me a spelunker and I'll call myself a spelunker, but when conversing with Cavers I won't use the term to describe someone else. Call people what they are for goodness sake. There are plenty of perfectly good verbs and adjectives that we can use to describe a persons behavior and attitude. Using the word spelunker seems quite similar to swearing; It is often used in a moment of emotional surplus or a moment (or culture) of intellectual deficit, and it is usually inadequate as a word to describe anything or convey any meaningful thought.
This has of course been done before
in this thread.Among the many impassioned things I blurted in 2011 were these:
There are many people though who have been exploring caves for decades without any "proper" clothing, or equipment. And they have done so conscientiously, safely, rewardingly... It's just a wee bit comical that we sometimes use the term "caver" to distance ourselves from people who are just as responsible and safe as ourselves... It [gear] is largely a matter of purpose, I think. Don't do things you aren't equipped for... It seems a bit funny that the caving community has changed the meaning of the word without telling the rest of humanity and then proceeds to take offense at being called the by the arbitrarily disfavored term.
And Doug McCarty said,
Being "offended" because the general public doesn't understand our very imprecise bastardization of a commonly accepted and used word makes absolutely no sense to me.
I still feel the same way on the matter.