The Importance of Forgiving Gammas

I suppose that using terms from the Social/Sexual Hierarchy is a bit passé these days. Over the past few years they’ve filtered down to the general vernacular, and in the process they’ve lost their distinctive meanings. It’s the same thing that happened to the word ‘Retarded’. Originally a medical term denoting developmental delays (lit. “Mentally Retarded”) it became a put-down used by the hoi polloi. Similarly terms like ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ (and less commonly ‘Gamma’) have lost their...