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> ad-hominen The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person o

> ad-hominen The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person or institution. As soon as I hear either word I assume the user is merely axe grinding and has no interest in conversation. If I say "Bill is sexist", What precisely does that mean? That Bill hates all women? That Bill generally assumes female engineers are less skilled? That Bill will try to sleep with women he works with? As a statement it conveys nothing. It is nothing more than an attack on Bill.

coldtea 13y ago
>The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person or institution. As soon as I hear either word I assume the user is merely axe grinding and has no interest in conversation. Well, the same applies to me too -- not sure why you commented that to my response. Although I still believe there are some legitimate cases for the use of such words -- a KKK member is racist. A guy believing that blacks are lazy is racist. Someone like Zimmerman is racist. A guy hiting his wife is sexist. Somebody denying a promotion to a programmer because she's a woman, is sexist. When these terms are used by privileged people they are, more often than not, misapplied and/or exagerrated to death. They are used as token examples of tolerance, as a show off to how progressive they are.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > A guy hiting his wife is sexist. A man can hit a woman (whether or not he is married to her) for reasons other than her gender. So, no, I'd say this is an invalid statement (unlike your other examples, which seem to be more valid.)
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Yeah, that's correct. I was thinking of the example of the guy beating his wife to "put her to place" and show her who "rules the house", but clearly there can be other examples too (and of course men hit men too, all the time).

coldtea 13y ago

>The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person or institution. As soon as I hear either word I assume the user is merely axe grinding and has no interest in conversation. Well, the same applies to me too -- not sure why you commented that to my response. Although I still believe there are some legitimate cases for the use of such words -- a KKK member is racist. A guy believing that blacks are lazy is racist. Someone like Zimmerman is racist. A guy hiting his wife is sexist. Somebody denying a promotion to a programmer because she's a woman, is sexist. When these terms are used by privileged people they are, more often than not, misapplied and/or exagerrated to death. They are used as token examples of tolerance, as a show off to how progressive they are.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> A guy hiting his wife is sexist. A man can hit a woman (whether or not he is married to her) for reasons other than her gender. So, no, I'd say this is an invalid statement (unlike your other examples, which seem to be more valid.)
- coldtea 13y ago
  Yeah, that's correct. I was thinking of the example of the guy beating his wife to "put her to place" and show her who "rules the house", but clearly there can be other examples too (and of course men hit men too, all the time).