3 ms·

She's allowed to be offended with those comments (or single pun), but the method of communicating her offense was definitely not called for. And honestly, even

She's allowed to be offended with those comments (or single pun), but the method of communicating her offense was definitely not called for. And honestly, even if it were sexual, it isn't sexist. I think that's a distinction that certainly needs to be made. Calling Adria a c*nt and other horrible things online definitely is sexist though.

Draco6slayer 14y ago
Is insulting a female inherently sexist? I wouldn't call someone a sexist if they called me a dck or a son of a btch. Obviously the response here is sexist, but calling somebody bad names is not sexist, regardless of their gender.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  IMHO, sexualized epithets are sexual. It's more productive not to muddy the waters though: it's not like there are only a handful of ways to insult someone.
  - Draco6slayer 14y ago
    I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone for their gender or insulting a gender overall. English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to a gender, but that doesn't mean that the words define the gender themselves. Nobody in Spain thinks that chairs are 'where women belong' or anything like that.
    - geoelectric 14y ago
      Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty angry if you call them a waitress. I don't necessarily think that response is justified when no offense is actually meant. But the point is that there has been an identifiable trend in our language towards moving away from gender-specific terms for roles that shouldn't otherwise have a relevance to gender. I'd argue this movement is overdue for epithets. I think "asshole," "asshat," "assclown," really anything in the venerable ass family, makes for an ideal gender-neutral epithet. We should use these more often! Edit: typo
      - gdwatson 14y ago
        That's always seemed an odd quirk of the restaurant industry to me. Server to refer to a person sounds stilted to my ear; a server is a computer to me, but a waiter or a waitress is a person. So a sincere question: Why would someone be offended to be described as a waitress?
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - youngtaff 14y ago
        Server is a US thing (maybe AU, NZ too?), we don't use it in the UK. I find server to refer to a waitress and waiter a really odd term, almost de-humanising but that might just be a cultural difference.
        Draco6slayer 14y ago
        To be entirely honest, I've never heard server used in the US, and a few of my friends are waiters and waitresses.
    - WildUtah 14y ago
      English is not a romance language. It acquired quite a lot of French words and a few grammar patterns after an unfortunate event in 1066 but remains a distinctly Germanic-family language. Most of the French grammar bits have been discarded in quotidian speech long ago; how often do you hear the subjunctive voice used in English? English is distinct from other Germanic languages, though, in the same way. Most European languages of any stripe are gender-heavy while English mostly applies grammatical gender mostly only to vehicles and individual sexually dimorphic animals.
  - Draco6slayer 14y ago
    I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone for their gender or insulting a gender overall. English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to a gender, but that doesn't mean that the words define the gender themselves. Nobody in Spain thinks that chairs are 'where women belong' or anything like that.
- sdgwerwer 14y ago
  Well, it's not inherently sexist, but in Adria's case we can expect that some of those insults were motivated by misogyny.
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    As is much of the defence of her behaviour are quite clearly double standards driven by misandry.
WalterSear 14y ago
Is she? She published this joke about sexual humiliation from the same conference: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation to thousands, and then, at the same conference, got offended by overhearing joke conflating dongles to genitals. I agree with you that resorting to sexual slurs is immensely counterproductive and makes one look stupid, but I can also understand why angry people would reach for them, since this is in the line of the discussion. Understand, but not excuse. Still the point stays - you don't make penis jokes and then get offended by penis jokes.
- samiur1204 14y ago
  I'm not saying that getting offended is the right response, I'm just saying she has the right to be offended. I get offended by people walking slowly in front of me. They're not doing anything horribly wrong, I'm just annoyed. Again, I understand her being offended, but do not excuse it, as you say.
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    I'm questioning whether she was offended at all. She certainly has the right, but her actions before and since (ie at previous speaking events, comments on her twitter feed, mishearing an innocent comment as a sexual one) beg the question. And yes, sadly this is relevant, because, as much as we all have the right to decide when we are offended and not, there will always be people, consciously or not, who will game the system. And you aren't offended by people who walk slowly in front of you - you are annoyed.
  - CRConrad 14y ago
    When someone walks too slowly in front of you, they are annoying, not "offensive". You are perfectly with in your rights to be _annoyed_ at them -- but you are _not_ "offended". In order to be offend-ED, some would have to actually _offend_ you, not just annoy you. Similarly, in this context, I'd disagree: No, saying "dongle" in earshot of someone who tweets about "enhancing" the contents of one's shorts by stuffing socks down them does not give the over-hearer any "right" to be offend-ED, since it obviously isn't anything that this worthy regards as particularly offens-IVE. She obviously claimed the right to _maintain_ that she was offended, but by any sensible definition of the word she actually wasn't. [Edit:] Duh, that's what I get for replying in a browser tab I opened ages ago -- I see someone said most of that already.
reinhardt 14y ago
I am offended by the "c*nt" word. I don't mean cunt. I mean literally "c-star-n-t". Louis C.K. explains why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLrBLxbLxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLrBLxbLxw
coldtea 14y ago
>Calling Adria a cnt and other horrible things online definitely is sexist though.* I'm not sure. We call other people names, "a dick", "a cunt" etc, all the time, including people of our own sex, if we think they deserve it. So, if Adria deserves the verbal abuse --and judging by what she did, one can easily think she does-- then there's nothing sexist about it (even if the swear words concern sex. Just as when we call a guy a "jerk-off" there's nothing sexist about it).

Draco6slayer 14y ago

Is insulting a female inherently sexist? I wouldn't call someone a sexist if they called me a dck or a son of a btch. Obviously the response here is sexist, but calling somebody bad names is not sexist, regardless of their gender.

WalterSear 14y ago
IMHO, sexualized epithets are sexual. It's more productive not to muddy the waters though: it's not like there are only a handful of ways to insult someone.
- Draco6slayer 14y ago
  I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone for their gender or insulting a gender overall. English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to a gender, but that doesn't mean that the words define the gender themselves. Nobody in Spain thinks that chairs are 'where women belong' or anything like that.
  - geoelectric 14y ago
    Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty angry if you call them a waitress. I don't necessarily think that response is justified when no offense is actually meant. But the point is that there has been an identifiable trend in our language towards moving away from gender-specific terms for roles that shouldn't otherwise have a relevance to gender. I'd argue this movement is overdue for epithets. I think "asshole," "asshat," "assclown," really anything in the venerable ass family, makes for an ideal gender-neutral epithet. We should use these more often! Edit: typo
    - gdwatson 14y ago
      That's always seemed an odd quirk of the restaurant industry to me. Server to refer to a person sounds stilted to my ear; a server is a computer to me, but a waiter or a waitress is a person. So a sincere question: Why would someone be offended to be described as a waitress?
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - youngtaff 14y ago
      Server is a US thing (maybe AU, NZ too?), we don't use it in the UK. I find server to refer to a waitress and waiter a really odd term, almost de-humanising but that might just be a cultural difference.
      - Draco6slayer 14y ago
        To be entirely honest, I've never heard server used in the US, and a few of my friends are waiters and waitresses.
  - WildUtah 14y ago
    English is not a romance language. It acquired quite a lot of French words and a few grammar patterns after an unfortunate event in 1066 but remains a distinctly Germanic-family language. Most of the French grammar bits have been discarded in quotidian speech long ago; how often do you hear the subjunctive voice used in English? English is distinct from other Germanic languages, though, in the same way. Most European languages of any stripe are gender-heavy while English mostly applies grammatical gender mostly only to vehicles and individual sexually dimorphic animals.
- Draco6slayer 14y ago
  I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone for their gender or insulting a gender overall. English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to a gender, but that doesn't mean that the words define the gender themselves. Nobody in Spain thinks that chairs are 'where women belong' or anything like that.
sdgwerwer 14y ago
Well, it's not inherently sexist, but in Adria's case we can expect that some of those insults were motivated by misogyny.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  As is much of the defence of her behaviour are quite clearly double standards driven by misandry.

WalterSear 14y ago

Is she? She published this joke about sexual humiliation from the same conference: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages: http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation to thousands, and then, at the same conference, got offended by overhearing joke conflating dongles to genitals. I agree with you that resorting to sexual slurs is immensely counterproductive and makes one look stupid, but I can also understand why angry people would reach for them, since this is in the line of the discussion. Understand, but not excuse. Still the point stays - you don't make penis jokes and then get offended by penis jokes.

samiur1204 14y ago
I'm not saying that getting offended is the right response, I'm just saying she has the right to be offended. I get offended by people walking slowly in front of me. They're not doing anything horribly wrong, I'm just annoyed. Again, I understand her being offended, but do not excuse it, as you say.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  I'm questioning whether she was offended at all. She certainly has the right, but her actions before and since (ie at previous speaking events, comments on her twitter feed, mishearing an innocent comment as a sexual one) beg the question. And yes, sadly this is relevant, because, as much as we all have the right to decide when we are offended and not, there will always be people, consciously or not, who will game the system. And you aren't offended by people who walk slowly in front of you - you are annoyed.
- CRConrad 14y ago
  When someone walks too slowly in front of you, they are annoying, not "offensive". You are perfectly with in your rights to be _annoyed_ at them -- but you are _not_ "offended". In order to be offend-ED, some would have to actually _offend_ you, not just annoy you. Similarly, in this context, I'd disagree: No, saying "dongle" in earshot of someone who tweets about "enhancing" the contents of one's shorts by stuffing socks down them does not give the over-hearer any "right" to be offend-ED, since it obviously isn't anything that this worthy regards as particularly offens-IVE. She obviously claimed the right to _maintain_ that she was offended, but by any sensible definition of the word she actually wasn't. [Edit:] Duh, that's what I get for replying in a browser tab I opened ages ago -- I see someone said most of that already.

reinhardt 14y ago

I am offended by the "c*nt" word. I don't mean cunt. I mean literally "c-star-n-t". Louis C.K. explains why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLrBLxbLxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuLrBLxbLxw

coldtea 14y ago

>Calling Adria a cnt and other horrible things online definitely is sexist though.* I'm not sure. We call other people names, "a dick", "a cunt" etc, all the time, including people of our own sex, if we think they deserve it. So, if Adria deserves the verbal abuse --and judging by what she did, one can easily think she does-- then there's nothing sexist about it (even if the swear words concern sex. Just as when we call a guy a "jerk-off" there's nothing sexist about it).