4 ms·

It's almost exclusively pronounced puff where I am. The problem is that the author doesn't really know the cultural nuances, simply saying it's a possible issu

It's almost exclusively pronounced puff where I am. The problem is that the author doesn't really know the cultural nuances, simply saying it's a possible issue isn't helpful because they don't know the relative usages of certain words. I wouldn't be particularly worried about using poof because there already homophones that are innocent so it isn't like fuck. Plus at this point Im not even sure if it's derogatory or just slang for gay. But anyway, I'm firmly in the intent camp when it comes to words. If the word as used is obviously not meant to offend, offense shouldn't be taken. The world's got enough problems without extracting insults from open source projects. Fwiw puff the magic dragon to me is synonymous with smoking weed.

skissane 4y ago
> It's almost exclusively pronounced puff where I am. At high school in Sydney, Australia in the 1990s, I remember hearing poof as an anti-gay slur a lot - to the point that if I hear the word, that's the first thing that pops into my head. And poof is a clipping of poofter, which I heard a lot too, and the two words get mentally merged together. Whereas puff, to me that's a completely separate and unrelated word, which is pronounced differently, I never thought of connecting the two. From what you are saying, in some dialects in England, the two words are pronounced the same – didn't know that before > Plus at this point Im not even sure if it's derogatory or just slang for gay. It is derogatory, but it also has "re-claiming" uses. Few will be offended by a gay person using it, but someone who isn't gay calling gay people that is going to offend a lot of people. Similar to the situation with Black people calling themselves the n-word versus non-Black people doing it In Australia, poof and poofter are associated with the so-called poofter-bashing, an epidemic of violent assaults and murders of gay men in the 1970s thru 1990s, in which the police were complicit. I think that history makes poof/poofter more offensive in Australian English than they are in British English https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/australia/australia-gay-men-killed-suicides-sydney.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/australia/australia... > Fwiw puff the magic dragon to me is synonymous with smoking weed. When I was a little kid, my mother used to play "Puff the Magic Dragon" (the Peter, Paul and Mary song) all the time. That's what it makes me think of, my early childhood. I know some people linked it to weed, but that's never been a prominent link in my head-and it is a link which the band themselves have always vehemently denied. Anyway, who really wants to mentally associate weed with their parents’ taste in music?

skissane 4y ago

> It's almost exclusively pronounced puff where I am. At high school in Sydney, Australia in the 1990s, I remember hearing poof as an anti-gay slur a lot - to the point that if I hear the word, that's the first thing that pops into my head. And poof is a clipping of poofter, which I heard a lot too, and the two words get mentally merged together. Whereas puff, to me that's a completely separate and unrelated word, which is pronounced differently, I never thought of connecting the two. From what you are saying, in some dialects in England, the two words are pronounced the same – didn't know that before > Plus at this point Im not even sure if it's derogatory or just slang for gay. It is derogatory, but it also has "re-claiming" uses. Few will be offended by a gay person using it, but someone who isn't gay calling gay people that is going to offend a lot of people. Similar to the situation with Black people calling themselves the n-word versus non-Black people doing it In Australia, poof and poofter are associated with the so-called poofter-bashing, an epidemic of violent assaults and murders of gay men in the 1970s thru 1990s, in which the police were complicit. I think that history makes poof/poofter more offensive in Australian English than they are in British English https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/australia/australia-gay-men-killed-suicides-sydney.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/world/australia/australia... > Fwiw puff the magic dragon to me is synonymous with smoking weed. When I was a little kid, my mother used to play "Puff the Magic Dragon" (the Peter, Paul and Mary song) all the time. That's what it makes me think of, my early childhood. I know some people linked it to weed, but that's never been a prominent link in my head-and it is a link which the band themselves have always vehemently denied. Anyway, who really wants to mentally associate weed with their parents’ taste in music?