I never considered myself "DIR" and I never cared for the term stroke but lately out of total frustration I find myself having a strong urge to use the word.
An example...recently, in response to a question about finning techniques other than a flutter kick (which is often the only kick taught in entry level courses and the only one required by training standfards), I discusses some other kicks, their uses and some situations where a flutter isn't the best. I also tied that in with trim because no finning technique works well with the head up (or head down) trim we so often see. One poster responded, more or less, accusing me of "scuba ilitism" (preaching only one right way). I thought that funny since it isn't me teaching only one kick and leaving students knowing nothing about trim to go about head up, fins in the silt and negatively buoyant to avoid pushing themselves to the surface if when they kick (because of the head up trim).
gosh, I'm sorry but when you give useful information that ADDS to the divers choices and hand them options that can only improve their diving, increase their understanding and hence their enjoyment of diving and help them solve problems that so many divers strugle needlessly with from day one...and then some one calls you an "elitist", I get MONSTER urge to use the term stroke. Face it, divers wouldn't be asking such questions on a forum if they were really given any choices by the "non-ilitists" who trained them. Who is it pushing only one right way? Oh, they say "do as you like, it's all good" but they only teach one way and they teach that in such an incomplete fashion as to give the diver only one incomplete choice and a lame one at that. If that's not, to use a GI phrase, "abject strokery" (both the diving they push and the accusations they throw around) than nothing is and we need a new definition for "stroke" or a new word to describe it. This term "scuba elitist" is every bit the sharp put down as the term "stroke" is yet the folks who whine about one term toss around the other like their using it to save the world or something. Now, I suppose that being called a name like "scuba elitist" or having honest information refered to as "scuba elitism" by folks who don't have a technical arguement (other than they don't understand the arguement in the first place) doesn't justify responding to such idiotic name calling (that's what it is) with more name calling. My mother always said that if you don't have anything nice to say that you shouldn't say anything and two wrongs don't make a right. So...lets be polite and not call strokes, strokes. I'll try it my mothers way and just ignore them in the hopes that their mothers some day teach them the same lesson.
End of rant.
