Jump to content
gdf

Life

Recommended Posts

This once again comes down to a very simple thing:

 

If you can avoid hurting someone by simply not using a fucking word, and you choose to use it anyway? Yeah, you're kind of an asshole. If you're okay being an asshole, then I guess whatever fine but that doesn't mean you're not.

 

I really don't think it's that simple. People are hurt or offended by any number of things, reasonable or unreasonable alike. I think it's the job of any reasoned person to evaluate whether or not whatever thing they're doing or saying is worth the risk of offending someone. I mean, my political and religious beliefs are sure to offend some people but I hold them nonetheless. I imagine what you're saying here is that making an offhanded remark isn't nearly important enough to take that risk, but I still don't think that means that it's a foregone conclusion for every person. You saying that they're kind of an asshole for not making the same judgment as you seems presumptive.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Man, I'm honestly not sure what to think about some of the stuff going on in this thread. It almost seems like the logical conclusion would be that we should never describe anything in a negative way because almost any negative word might have some negative connotation that would be offensive to someone.

 

I use a lot of the words that you guys are claiming might be offensive and have never in my life seen any indication that anyone has been bothered by them so I never would have imagined that they could be considered offensive. And I'm still doubtful on some of these. I mean, referring to things as "crazy" or "dumb" or "stupid" or "lame" or "silly" is such common vernacular that everyone uses and most of those types of words are clearly divorced from their original connotations to such a degree that I'm willing to bet most people could go their entire lives using those words and never run across a single instance of someone hearing those words and being offended.

 

This is a weird topic for me because there are definitely some words that I recognize are harmful and that I do my best to scrub from my vocabulary when I become aware of how my usage of them impact others. Going back to the term "retarded", I still use it from time to time in situations where I am absolutely certain there is no possible way for anyone to be offended, like if I'm having a private conversation with my wife. But beyond that, I've pretty much dropped it from my vocabulary because it is clearly a term that a good number of people find offensive rather than funny. And that is the whole reason I started using it to begin with, because it was a funny thing to say. Not so much any more.

 

What it all boils down to for me is balancing my desire to have fun with the English language with my desire to not be a shitty person to other people. I think it is inherent that some of the funnest and funniest words to use are often going to be offensive on some level to some people. I don't really have a desire to to scrub every possible offensive word completely from my vocabulary because that leaves me with a bunch of boring and unfunny words to use. I guess my approach then is to try to scrub the bad ones as best as I can and not worry too much about the other stuff unless someone calls me out on it, at which point I'll either add that to the list of words to scrub completely or just not use it around that person depending on how convinced I am of it actually being an offensive word. Does this make me a shitty person? In that regard, sure. I guess I'm fine with being a little bit on the shitty side in some regards.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really don't think it's that simple. People are hurt or offended by any number of things, reasonable or unreasonable alike. I think it's the job of any reasoned person to evaluate whether or not whatever thing they're doing or saying is worth the risk of offending someone. I mean, my political and religious beliefs are sure to offend some people but I hold them nonetheless. I imagine what you're saying here is that making an offhanded remark isn't nearly important enough to take that risk, but I still don't think that means that it's a foregone conclusion for every person. You saying that they're kind of an asshole for not making the same judgment as you seems presumptive.

Yes, it's not that simple. But also it kind of is. For example, in the case of the word "retarded", who benefits from using it pejoratively? Nobody. Who's hurt? People with mental issues.

 

Solution? Don't use it pejoratively!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, it's not that simple. But also it kind of is. For example, in the case of the word "retarded", who benefits from using it pejoratively? Nobody. Who's hurt? People with mental issues.

 

Solution? Don't use it pejoratively!

 

Take the case of the word "issues", who benefits from using it casually? Nobody. Who's hurt? Potentially people with mental differences.

 

Solution? Don't use the word issues casually!

 

I dunno man, I don't think our use of language can/should be boiled down to gains and losses. If all language was meant to have measurable benefit, I'd say there's no use for practically 90% of the speech conveyed on a daily basis. Does that mean we shouldn't be talking at all?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Take the case of the word "issues", who benefits from using it casually? Nobody. Who's hurt? Potentially people with mental differences.

 

Solution? Don't use the word issues casually!

 

I dunno man, I don't think our use of language can/should be boiled down to gains and losses. If all language was meant to have measurable benefit, I'd say there's no use for practically 90% of the speech conveyed on a daily basis. Does that mean we shouldn't be talking at all?

And see that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I'll be more careful in the future.

 

Is that so hard?

 

It's not about measurable benefit. It's about not being a complete shitbird.

 

I have no problem being an arsehole to someone who asks me not to use a word because someone else could be offended by the word.

Well then fuck you I guess.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Theoretically douche is for vagina and enema is for anal, though I don't really know if there is any functional or substantive difference. Also, anal sex != gay sex fwiw.

 

A douche serves absolutely no function whatsoever, and is potentially bad for someone. Enemas are, as far as I know, generally safe (barring people who go for wacky coffee and wine cocktails).

And there are probably more women and straight men who receive anal than there are total numbers of gay men, just from a raw numbers perspective (several billion compared to a few hundred million).  So yeah, characterizing anal as gay is just silly. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On the topic of douche or douchebag, I think it's a really great insult because it was a product invented to make those with vaginas feel ashamed of themselves, and it turns out it's not actually good for you. It is a device invented with largely misogynistic intentions that's physically unnecessary and can cause more problems than it solves.

It's kind of poetic in that way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re: The Conversation Meta Conversation

 

Good communication is not about scrubbing your vocabulary down to only the safest and most universally acceptable words; It's about caring enough about the sensibilities of the person or persons you are interacting with to know when you have crossed a line. Then you apologize, remember for next time and life goes on. Human relationships are messy and it could be argued that expectations to the contrary are kinda naive.

 

This does not mean running around hurling abuse at people and then acting surprised when they take offence. You should respect where peoples boundaries are and, unless you are deliberating trying to antagonize them, you should endeavor not to disrespect those boundaries. But it also does not mean walking on fucking egg shells. I hate that. It's hollow, self serving bullshit that sucks the potential for candid conversation down the drain. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know why you're so focused on the words themselves rather than the context and intent behind them, the things that give them meaning.

The word "retarded", when used pejoratively, has a context and intent, and that is to demean the thing or person to whom it is referring. And considering its origin (in this context) is "mentally retarded", it is unequivocally rooted in assuming that those who would have medically been labeled as such in the past are worth less than those who aren't. I don't think it's even possible to look at the pejorative use of the word and not come to this conclusion, unless you are incredibly ignorant of society as a whole.

 

I think you're completely misunderstanding how language works if you think "words" can even exist outside of context or intent. I am intimately familiar with the art of wordsmithing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re: The Conversation Meta Conversation

 

Good communication is not about scrubbing your vocabulary down to only the safest and most universally acceptable words; It's about caring enough about the sensibilities of the person or persons you are interacting with to know when you have crossed a line. Then you apologize, remember for next time and life goes on. Human relationships are messy and it could be argued that expectations to the contrary are kinda naive.

 

This does not mean running around hurling abuse at people and then acting surprised when they take offence. You should respect where peoples boundaries are and, unless you are deliberating trying to antagonize them, you should endeavor not to disrespect those boundaries. But it also does not mean walking on fucking egg shells. I hate that. It's hollow, self serving bullshit that sucks the potential for candid conversation down the drain. 

 

This is a much better way of stating exactly how I feel.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

However, these lists were also created by people, for a reason. People I might interact with one day without realizing! To take their advice onboard preemptively is hardly censorshp: I haven't lost the ability to talk about any subject over how I'd prefer to carry myself in conversation.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re: The Conversation Meta Conversation

 

Good communication is not about scrubbing your vocabulary down to only the safest and most universally acceptable words; It's about caring enough about the sensibilities of the person or persons you are interacting with to know when you have crossed a line. Then you apologize, remember for next time and life goes on. Human relationships are messy and it could be argued that expectations to the contrary are kinda naive.

 

This does not mean running around hurling abuse at people and then acting surprised when they take offence. You should respect where peoples boundaries are and, unless you are deliberating trying to antagonize them, you should endeavor not to disrespect those boundaries. But it also does not mean walking on fucking egg shells. I hate that. It's hollow, self serving bullshit that sucks the potential for candid conversation down the drain. 

 

Yeah in the end it's about combating latent problematic culture, not achieving a platonic ideal of politicalcorrectness (had to omit the space to get past the comedic censor). Human empathy comes first.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Language has a way of impacting our thoughts - doing a simple action like removing harmful words from my vocab eventually does have an impact on how I consider these subjects and people in a larger way, I believe. It's not self-censorship, it's believing that people shouldn't have to hear garbage words come out of my mouth. As someone who gets shitty language thrown at consistently, I know how it feels. My life has improved 10000% by surrounding myself with people who make a point not to use shitty language. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Language has a way of impacting our thoughts - doing a simple action like removing harmful words from my vocab eventually does have an impact on how I consider these subjects and people in a larger way, I believe. It's not self-censorship, it's believing that people shouldn't have to hear garbage words come out of my mouth. As someone who gets shitty language thrown at consistently, I know how it feels. My life has improved 10000% by surrounding myself with people who make a point not to use shitty language. 

 

Apropos of nothing in your post, or perhaps just as a caveat to my earlier statement- I should note, perhaps obviously, that my experiences are largely informed by my privileges and the fact that I am not a member of a marginalized or vulnerable group. In other words, I don't get dumped on very often. It's something that I lose sight of on occasion but certainly informs the way I think about these things.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

woah this thread is crazy now what happened?

 

 

so I went to GDC with some friends I met in the last two months and it was amazing. We are closer than ever and I met so many great people, now back to real life shit :/

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I do find "silly" annoying as it's sometimes used on this forum ("saying that/thinking that way is silly") because it feels patronising and vague, but I'm re-evaluating that a bit now seeing that it's possibly an effort to stay away from offensive terms.

 

As for douche(bag), I was just thinking the other day about how it's strange that despite being a vagina-related insult, it gets a pass as an insult where, say "pussy" or "cunt" don't.

 

On the topic of douche or douchebag, I think it's a really great insult because it was a product invented to make those with vaginas feel ashamed of themselves, and it turns out it's not actually good for you. It is a device invented with largely misogynistic intentions that's physically unnecessary and can cause more problems than it solves.

It's kind of poetic in that way.

 

RE: the douchebag thing.

 

I think a key is that, in North American culture anyway, it's a word for a gendered thing (yes, douches are used to clean vaginas) but not as a gendered INSULT. When you call a woman a bitch, you know exactly what you're saying. When you call a man a bitch, you're mocking him for acting "like a woman". When you call a man or a woman a douche, you're not bringing that baggage along. I was linked to an article late last year (possibly by someone on this forum, I don't remember) that laid out the case for using "douche" pretty well. The short version for those who don't want to read the whole thing: The noun "douche", when referring to the actual thing, is LITERALLY an outdated, sexist, and potentially harmful tool. If a person I encounter also fits that description, I have no objection to using the word to describe them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have been told a couple of times by women in person that the word douche offends them. I do my best to not use it, but it was a favored insult for quite a long time and it can be difficult to shake at times.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The issue for me is less about offending individuals and more about allowing my choice of words to further perpetuate the idea that certain groups of people are lesser or undesirable. ie. Words that make those with mental differences out to be defective are not necessarily offending anyone but they reinforce the idea that it's bad to be anything but the mental state considered to be sane.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think there's two sides of this getting a little muddled here. One is the use of (I guess we've come to ableist as the basis of offense in this particular discussion, which works.) ableist language in everyday, casual "Did you see that crazy video/lame video/retarded video?" style language, and one is the use of ableist language in describing particular social or political things "Did you hear about that insane new bill in congress/that retarded thing that politician said/those crazy people whose agenda is very different to mine?" when one very definitely wants to insult and degrade an opposing view.

My main issue is there, in that I don't want to use language that, in total, contributes more to negative effects on people I'm not directly talking about than the people I am talking about, but still want to very much insult people whose political or social views I find abhorrent. The vast, vast majority of ways we have to insult people depends on some broadly socially negative stereotype of someone. I think language itself depends on that fact, that the way we denigrate people is by way of comparison to people we find to be lesser, and once you remove mental, physical, racial and sexual differences from that you end up with only the generally accepted name for the group or person you disagree with, and that's not going to function as an insult to them. It's just their name, and suddenly you end up with no tools because of an interest in not using hurtful tools.

I guess I'm mostly reacting against Twig here, even though I can't find a specific post that encapsulates what I object to. I feel that there is a very important, very complicated line between 'unusefully hurtful language' and 'usefully hurtful language'. There are absolutely things in the world that intend and have the capacity to achieve results far more hurtful to the groups we're discussing now, that have no similar impetus to monitor their language the same way anyone concerned with this is. There is certainly a balance between effectively combating people who intend, very directly and explicitly, to remove and roll back laws regarding the social, political, economic and individual well being of hundreds of thousands of real people who will directly suffer because of those possible actions. There is definitely a balance to be struck between the harm of calling Rand Paul crazy and the harm he could do if people who disagree fail to act in a similar linguistic and social sphere as the people who are possibly swing-able. On a purely anecdotal level, I've had a lot more success (as a 'crazy' liberal socialist) talking to traditional, conservative people in my area when I get aggressively insulting in any way I can to their usual leader's positions. For better or worse, a lot of people simply do not care or notice about anyone's efforts to avoid insulting anyone. Many people see it as a reason to disregard your position prima facie. I guess basically I really don't think there's a binary choice between 'BAD' and 'GOOD' when it comes to language. It's inextricably tied to (unfortunate) social ideas about the worth of people with various physical or mental disorders, and you can't just set aside anything that can be offensive to anyone ever. Human experience is far, far to  broad to do such a thing.

I guess in summation/for clarification:
(1) I'm a little drunk. Spring Break WOOO.)
(2) I'm writing a paper recently.
(3) There isn't a binary between "Shitbird" and "Good Person". Language is highly situational. The world isn't a morality slider on the stats screen. Sometimes 'bad' and 'good' can be mixed together, and the end result has to be measured as the difference between the two. Sometimes negative language is necessary to individually maintain a larger sense of right. I don't know that I could stay sane without occasional calling someone a motherfucking moron with idiotic, neanderthal-esque ideas about the world. If I actually had to maintain perfect PC language I'd be so pissed and frustrated I'd be right back to baseline SD asshole-ry. People are fallible. Everything is so fucked in terms of 'normal' outlook that I'm willing to take a whole lot of bad with a smaller amount of good. 
(4) I also think the internet isn't comparable with ingrained human thought as to the visibility of their speech and the possible broader effects of it.
(5) I love you Twig, and also I love you Gormongous in particular. Also the rest of you. But not megaspel. So far I don't love them. Sorry.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Scrubbing words that denigrate the mentally ill from my vocabulary or even just trying not to say 'fuck' and 'shit' all the time doesn't mean I'm walking on eggshells because I'm still a person who uses direct verbal confrontation.

It's a challenge to use more colourful language.

Trust me when I say I don't lose my conversational teeth when I stop calling people crazy.

Megaspel, as an Australasian the word 'cunt' is not divorced from being a female slur. People are just as likely to call a woman a that as they are certain mates as they are people they don't like.

It's use isn't even that widely accepted any more.

It can be standard banter to call your mates a bunch of horrible shit but the 'fun' comes from the fact that those words still have meaning.

Also plenty of words still hurt people around you. Words like stupid or moron may feel at least fifty years divorced from their contexts but plenty of people still feel shitty from other words. You're not always directly interacting with people who will be hurt by your language.

As someone who has had a complicated relationship with the word 'faggot' or the use of 'gay' as a negative I know that using them frequently can hurt plenty of people on the sideline even if it's common to try and state that the words mean arsehole or 'dumb/shit' now. Plenty of the people affected by your language won't directly confront you over your use at the risk of drawing a target on themselves.

Plus for the affected specifically it can be hard to differentiate someone who says retarded or faggot 'recreationally' from someone who sneers at those affected people.

Brodie, yeah it's kind of privileged to use language that won't just offend one person but a whole bunch of marginalised people and to only hold yourself accountable for what you say when someone offended finally pulls you up for that.

It's also not uncommon for the offended person to be told in the same conversation that they shouldn't even be mad because the word "doesn't mean that anymore". Despite the fact that clearly it fucking does because that's still part of the racy appeal of using the word.

Basically it's expecting the offended person to wade into a potential quagmire of a discussion that could may well cause more hurt and also leave a stigma on them in order to receive an apology and the faint promise that next time will be different.

Also 'remember for next time' is pretty self serving. I doubt you mean "I will not use that word again" as much as "I'll try not to say it around you" because you resent scattering eggshells even though one can still find a minefield when they use words that they already know can hurt people and have direct experience with that.

Plenty of people don't want to deal with a potential asshole but they'll still feel hurt about it.

So some person can still find a shitty mark on their day without the offender ever being pulled up for it.

I don't have completely sanitised language. I can speak with intent to offend. But I will try to use language that doesn't contribute to marginalising minorities having known what its like to feel like an isolated and marginalised minority.

--------------------

In other news we're having some trouble with our kitten who has been having a run of digestion problems leading to multiple accidents this week. One of the worst things is that as a long haired cat he's still got crumbs of things in his hair and has had to be quarantined to a single room to avoid tracking poop everywhere.

It's getting me pretty frustrated that I can't interact with the kitten to the degree I want to because it's not clean.

He had vaccinations yesterday so maybe that's what this new thing is. We've also put him on a diet of only biscuits.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Enemas are, as far as I know, generally safe (barring people who go for wacky coffee and wine cocktails).

Coffee and wine cocktails?!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×