Plus Ça Change – October 23, 2026
I do like the strange places historical research takes me.
At issue: I want Marie to simply walk away, because the person trying to get under her skin is not worth it. He is beneath contempt. So, says I, in 1847, what is the equivalent gesture to giving someone the finger?
Turns out, it’s giving someone the finger. The phallic gesture goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. The Romans called it digitus impudicus, the impudent or shameless middle finger. It turns out that flipping the bird (although called something different) has been around for millenia. Who knew? So, one and done, this was easy. Marie flips the bird.
I think it particularly appropriate that one of the very few secular relics of science is Galileo’s literal middle finger, flipping the bird through the centuries, at the religious idiots who insisted that the Earth was the center of God’s universe.
Perhaps. Atlas Obscura did a piece on this. “Whether the finger points upwards to the sky, where Galileo glimpsed the glory of the universe and saw God in mathematics, or if it sits eternally defiant to the church that condemned him, is for the viewer to decide.”
