5 ms·

as far as the n-word and c-word, why not consider the opinion of black people and women in this argument?

cfadvan 8y ago
This may come as a shock, but neither group is really cohesive and homogenous, and therefore each present a multitude of opinions on the topic ranging from permissive to prohibitive.
- djtriptych 8y ago
  This isn’t true.
Jedd 8y ago
> as far as the n-word and c-word, why not consider the opinion of black people and women in this argument? Not really an argument, and as noted above I already do - but find it tricky as it's a moving target (not just those two words, but the greater field of word choice), and it's not as though there's a regular 'all hands' meeting for black people, women, Irish, Asians, short people, people who like coriander, etc where they decide collectively what the official position will be for their demographic. As noted, I consider Reginald Hunter's opinion -- he thinks you, me, he, and everyone else should use the word a lot in order to remove / defuse its power. Living in Australia there's a bunch of generally harmless words that are evidently quite powerful in the US. Always amusing to hear stories from friends travelling through the US who get hateful looks for using pussy, fanny, arse, and of course the c word, in casual conversation. But we (I speak for all Australians, naturally) don't think you (everyone else on the planet) needs to track our cultural foibles.
- dnomad 8y ago
  > As noted, I consider Reginald Hunter's opinion -- he thinks you, me, he, and everyone else should use the word a lot in order to remove / defuse its power. For future reference, this is a stupid idea. Certain words have derogatory "power" towards a group because there remains groups of real people who still possess possess real prejudice towards that group and want to dehumanize that group. Nobody cares if you call somebody a "Neanderthal" (extremely offensive, Neanderthals likely possessed an older and more refined culture than the hyperaggressive saipiens) but go to Japan and start talking about "Shina" or go to Germany and use "untermensch" and the fascists will come crawling out of the woodwork like ants drawn to sugar. There is no reason to believe that using words a lot would remove their power. Instead, history as shown again and again (open a book for gods sakes), normalizing such language only empowers the fascist elements and silences the victims. Normalizing these words is a prelude to bloodshed precisely because they are the leading edge in a real campaign to dehumanize real people. There's a reason the German pre-war press often referred to the traitorous Jews, the Rwandan radio stations often referred to Tutsis as cockroaches and Trump refers to immigrants as animals and rapists. This isn't about "political correctness," this is about removing real people from society.
- djtriptych 8y ago
  Sure women and black Americans don’t agree on everything, yet you can speak for all non-blacks and men lol.
  - Jedd 8y ago
    > Sure women and black Americans don’t agree on everything, yet you can speak for all non-blacks and men lol. I didn't think my parenthetical comment needed to be labelled as sarcasm.

This may come as a shock, but neither group is really cohesive and homogenous, and therefore each present a multitude of opinions on the topic ranging from permissive to prohibitive.

djtriptych 8y ago
This isn’t true.

Jedd 8y ago

> as far as the n-word and c-word, why not consider the opinion of black people and women in this argument? Not really an argument, and as noted above I already do - but find it tricky as it's a moving target (not just those two words, but the greater field of word choice), and it's not as though there's a regular 'all hands' meeting for black people, women, Irish, Asians, short people, people who like coriander, etc where they decide collectively what the official position will be for their demographic. As noted, I consider Reginald Hunter's opinion -- he thinks you, me, he, and everyone else should use the word a lot in order to remove / defuse its power. Living in Australia there's a bunch of generally harmless words that are evidently quite powerful in the US. Always amusing to hear stories from friends travelling through the US who get hateful looks for using pussy, fanny, arse, and of course the c word, in casual conversation. But we (I speak for all Australians, naturally) don't think you (everyone else on the planet) needs to track our cultural foibles.

dnomad 8y ago
> As noted, I consider Reginald Hunter's opinion -- he thinks you, me, he, and everyone else should use the word a lot in order to remove / defuse its power. For future reference, this is a stupid idea. Certain words have derogatory "power" towards a group because there remains groups of real people who still possess possess real prejudice towards that group and want to dehumanize that group. Nobody cares if you call somebody a "Neanderthal" (extremely offensive, Neanderthals likely possessed an older and more refined culture than the hyperaggressive saipiens) but go to Japan and start talking about "Shina" or go to Germany and use "untermensch" and the fascists will come crawling out of the woodwork like ants drawn to sugar. There is no reason to believe that using words a lot would remove their power. Instead, history as shown again and again (open a book for gods sakes), normalizing such language only empowers the fascist elements and silences the victims. Normalizing these words is a prelude to bloodshed precisely because they are the leading edge in a real campaign to dehumanize real people. There's a reason the German pre-war press often referred to the traitorous Jews, the Rwandan radio stations often referred to Tutsis as cockroaches and Trump refers to immigrants as animals and rapists. This isn't about "political correctness," this is about removing real people from society.
djtriptych 8y ago
Sure women and black Americans don’t agree on everything, yet you can speak for all non-blacks and men lol.
- Jedd 8y ago
  > Sure women and black Americans don’t agree on everything, yet you can speak for all non-blacks and men lol. I didn't think my parenthetical comment needed to be labelled as sarcasm.