So insults that refer to someone’s health, their weight, their sexual promiscuity (or lack of), their economic status, or their educational status, can not be slurs?
Do you consider gender identity and sexual orientation to be immutable characteristics? How about nationality or current citizenship?
You’re not getting it. It’s not about you. It’s not about how you use the word, nor about how you would like to have the word used. It is about how the word actually is used by bigots towards the target of their hate. “Illegal” is used by racists to refer not only to those who have entered or stayed in the country without proper authorization, but also to refer to people who are here legally, who were born here, who’s families have been here for generations.
That the only thing they have in common with the undocumented immigrant is ethnicity kinda makes the use of it a slur. It’s certainly not accurate, so that excuse for its usage is bullshit. It’s just a word for hateful people to demonstrate their contempt for the other.
First, I don’t think religion is immutable. Yes people tend to stick with it, it’s heavily influenced by your parents and environment, etc. but still, people change religions and largely adults in this country can choose whatever religion they want.
Second, if you are taking the word slur to be synonymous with insult, then sure there are religious slurs. But if a slur is something more than a mere insult, something that is so bad all the time that it should never be used? Then no. Insulting someone’s religion is rude and insulting, but so is being called an asshole. Being called something rude and insulting is not sufficient to be escalated to being called a slur. The interpretation you’ve constructed has no limit - anything can be a slur and the term becomes meaningless.
I’m trying to think of an example to illustrate the severity that a slur carries. Let’s say a person breaks into my house and presents a threat. I am willing to kill that person but I am not willing to call them a slur. Surely killing that person is worse for that person than anything I could verbally call them, but still I would not because slurs carry that large of a weight of wrongness.
I think each of those are not fleshed out enough to determine. Insulting someone who has Downs Syndrome by calling them a “downie” would be a slur. If there were similar insulting terms referring to people with ALS that would also be in that category, but I’m not aware of those. Calling an overweight person a “fattie” is certainly rude, but not a slur. Calling a person who has sex with a lot of different people in a short amount of time a “slut” is insulting, but not a slur. Same with income but I’m not coming up with derogatory names based on economic status. “Ghetto” is the first that comes to mind but that has racist undertones so probably borderline on that one. When walking through the tent cities of Oakland I’ve referred to them as Hooverville - that’s not a slur in my book. Educational status, same - no slurs associated there.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are immutable. Nationality and citizenship - I’m unclear where that would apply. I make fun of Canadians because they say “sorry” all the time - does that count?
Are these arbitrary? Maybe - I think the objective measure of immutable characteristics is a useful way to distinguish between an insult and a slur. For me, insults are situational and slurs are never.
For both you and iiandyiii, how do you delineate between an insult and a slur, and do you find the distinction important?
Under what circumstances is it okay to call people these things?
For me, it’s the element of dehumanization – some effort to reduce some group to less than human, or a lesser form of human, even if only rhetorically. That’s the common factor with all slurs, IMO.
The reason that you do not call someone who breaks into your house by a slur is not to respect the rights of the person who has broken into your house, but to respect all the people who can also be referred to by that slur who are not breaking into your house.
I would actually put “slut” into the catagory of slur, but YMMV. I was thinking “retard” for mental capability, “gutter trash” for income… I really don’t want to keep going on, but yeah, there are slurs for all that.
Well, no, you (not you, I hope) make fun of Mexicans because they are ‘illegals’.
I delineate when it is used against people to whom it is not accurately labeled. When you call a woman a slut because she had flirted with one guy, well, that’s not accurate, as a slut is someone much more promiscuous than someone who flirts with a guy, and it is also pointing out that, in the mind of the speaker, that there is something wrong with that. If you call someone a retard because they made an error, then you are not only being inaccurate (their error does not mean that they are actually mentally disabled) you are also harming people with actual mental disabilities.
If you call someone who has lived here their entire life, whose parents have lived here their entire lives, and so on, an illegal, based solely on their skin color, then it becomes a slur. It’s not accurate, and you are insulting not just them, but their entire ethnicity.
And that’s basically when a word is a slur. When it is not an insult only to the person it is directed at, ut also dehumanizes an entire demographic.
And when they say that there is something wrong with your behavior, and they then link that behavior to a word the defines a group that is perceived to have that behavior, and you are using that word to demonstrate that you feel that that behavior is wrong, that’s what starts a slur.
Sorry - that’s not really what I was asking or I’m not understanding. Are you saying an insult is where something is inaccurate, and a slur is an insult towards a broad demographic?
That latter, I think. It’s not just that it is inaccurate, it may be “accurate” in many cases. It is when the negative aspects of that label are then transposed to someone else who only resembles the first in those negative aspects that the word is now used to describe those negative aspects.
As I’ve used as an example many times, I consider “illegal” to be a slur because it is used against people of hispanic origin that are legal residents or citizens. That usage means that it is not about the legal status of the labelee, but instead, about the ethnic origin.
Ok. That seems more like a group insult to me rather than what I would consider a slur based on the criteria I mentioned above. I understand your position though.
Are you going to respond to my post about religious slurs? The idea that kike and raghead and muzzie (etc.) aren’t actually slurs, and thus sometimes okay to use, seems totally nuts to me.
Post #480. Those you mention here seem race based to me. I’ve legit never heard the word “muzzie” before. People are creative in their efforts to insult others, obviously.
ETA: jokes on me, I missed post #481. Let me read it.
I’ve only heard of 3 of these. The ones for Jewish and Arabic people I consider race based. I’m not sure the others, but if hebe is like Hebrew, I don’t know if it’s much different than bible thumper/fundie, etc. Insulting and derogatory yes, but a slur…I’d have to read for more background due to my lack of familiarity.
Calling someone an asshole, pond scum, neanderthal, sub human/proto-human, feces sculpted in human form, all of these reduce a person to something less than human. Comcast employees are neanderthals! insults the group of Comcast employees and reduces them to less than human or a lesser form of human. It’s insulting, but I wouldn’t blink an eye at it. Do you consider that a slur?
So you’re saying that no one ever uses “kike” against Jews (religious Jews as opposed to ethnic Jews)? No one ever uses raghead against Muslims rather than Arabs?
If not, under what circumstances is it okay to call religious Jews “kikes” or Muslims “ragheads”?
Hell, under what circumstances is it okay to call Muslims muzzies?
Are any of those mostly or always targeted at a specific group, whether it be based on religion, race, gender, sexuality, gender ID, national origin, immigration status, etc? If not, they’re not in the same category.
That’s the difference – is it meant to be dehumanizing, and is it mostly or always directed at members of a specific group? Then it’s probably a slur.
I don’t know - If I’m trying to dehumanize Comcast and everything associated with them, is that sufficient to convert *neanderthal *to a slur? Literally not human mind you. Your criteria means that neanderthal directed towards members of a specific group is a slur.
I find the religion based examples you gave to be thought provoking. I think of them the same way - never okay category - but they don’t fit that neatly. Maybe religious based insults get some kind of special treatment. How many exceptions does there have to be before a new guideline is needed.
If neanderthals were a class of citizens that were oppressed, then yes, I would consider your usage to be a slur. ( I seem to remember geico commercials from way back that implied that the neanderthals were not amused)
Put it this way, if I said that Comcast were a bunch of “n-words”, is it comcast I am insulting, or all the other people that that word may refer to?
It is using a term for a group of people as an insult. Implying that there is something wrong to be a member of that group. I can specifically say that it is wrong to be a member of comcast, that’s just insulting to comcast employees. If I then compare their ineptitude to the perceived negative traits of a third group, it really is that third group that I am slurring, not the comcast employees.
A group insult insults a group. A slur insults a group sure, but it also insults anyone else that is labeled by that word. That’s what makes a slur a slur, its meaning surpasses the specific person or persons that you are speaking of, and implicates an entire demographic.
And, we are getting way off topic here, but at the same time, circling back around. Just one more thing that the left and the right cannot agree on. If you know that the language is hurting people, the people on the left tend to adjust their language, the people on the right tend to argue that people shouldn’t take offense.
I did start off by saying I avoid usage of the term because it could be distracting to discussion or inaccurate. I do this while still believing it is not a slur like other slurs.
And then there are the assholes doing 15 MPH under the speed limit with no one in front of them.
Which isn’t illegal; but it’s an open provocation to everyone else using that freeway. Just as calling any person you run across with skin slightly different from the norm in America “an illegal” isn’t necessarily wrong or inaccurate, but it’s probably going to be viewed as a provocation.
Out of curiosity, what do those who are happy to call undocumented immigrants “illegals” think when I call Dear Leader a “child rapist”? No, Trump has never been convicted of rape, but the “illegals” have generally not been convicted of anything illegal either.
Of course the credible allegation against Trump is just that he pimped 14 year-old girls to his millionaire friends. IANAL, but wouldn’t that make him an accessory to child rape?
But the child rapist is now POTUS, while the Trump-licking haters are proud to slur hard-working immigrants as “illegals.” Welcome to modern America.
In my opinion, the benchmark for letting someone in isn’t whether they can make a better life for themselves here; it’s whether they can make a better life for us. Whether they can make a better life for themselves strikes me as irrelevant. If you want to claim that that’s what you meant, then I think you picked an incredibly silly way of putting it; and if it’s not what you meant, then I don’t think you have an opinion worth considering.
Because – like you quoted me as saying – the question isn’t just whether one place is slightly worse than another; but whether someone can, as it were, make a better life for themselves in that second location. Ask them not whether Alabama is worse than California, but whether they’d say they could make a better life in California.
I’m referring to your statement: “Possible, maybe, but it would be pretty hard. They’d have to hold no job, buy no products, and never fix up their house or mow the lawn.” I’m taking issue with how you said “no” and “never”, because I figure it doesn’t have to be a matter of “no” and “never” to qualify; I figure that “almost never” could be awful, and that “hardly ever” could be awful.
It doesn’t need to be an absolute “hold no job,” is my point.
How is that relevant? I suggested cracking down harder – and, the way I see it, if we started ‘cracking down harder’ on the ones who become known to the authorities upon getting caught doing something else, then that would qualify. I don’t need to propose a method for catching all of them; just for doing more.
I’m not sure. What’s currently the responsibility of local police if, say, they realize a guy they have in custody happens to be wanted on federal criminal charges? Is it their responsibility to keep him in custody? Or do they only have a responsibility to pass along info to federal law enforcement? Or is it not even that?
That’s not a rhetorical question; I’m genuinely curious.
I’m probably not. But, again, the fact that I’m saying we should crack down harder doesn’t mean I need to have a plan for cracking down on all of them.
(You get that, right? If I say we should crack down harder on shoplifters, that doesn’t imply the ability to catch every shoplifter.)
But, again, the analogy doesn’t strike me as useful.
Say there’s someone who snuck into this country illegally – such that there’s no official record of him having done so, and there’s no documentation of him ever having crossed the border. And say there’s someone else who was documented as having entered this country: official records exist of the date he crossed the border, just like he was given government-issued paperwork specifying the exact date on which he’d fall out of status and become deportable; possibly he still has that document on his person!
You want to call both of those guys undocumented? You could, of course; but I don’t see that as especially helpful.
But I’m just as happy to call a murderer “a killer” or “a felon”. And I’ll gladly refer to a particular murderer as “a capital offender” – and if he’s not “a fugitive” but is already locked up, I may well refer to him “a death-row inmate”. By analogy, I guess that’d be like unto referring to someone as – deportable? Or as a deportable?
This is the exact same argument I use against giving money to beggars on the street - “What can you do with the $1 that will help ME? Whether or not it helps YOU is irrelevant!”
I go on my merry way, saving a $1 in the process :rolleyes: