I can’t respond to this because Alice has decided I’m an ass. Sorry. I dont know nothin bout nothin. 
Who is speaking on behalf of others in the hypothetical or academic sense? I believe the people speaking up have direct experience. I find the people contributing to this thread credible and trust their experience and judgement.
Worst case? I stop using the word unnecessarily. BFD. Best case- I don’t inadvertently offend someone out of ignorance. Seems like a good deal to me.
It’s customary, when flouncing your way out of an argument you’ve clearly lost, to confine your comments to a single post. Just FYI.
Let me make this a bit more clear - some of the posters in this thread are transgendered. Those posters have expressed that the word ‘tranny’ is offensive.
If you are participating in this thread than you are interacting with people who are transgendered and who have indicated that the word ‘tranny’ is offensive - if you continue to use it then you are making yourself look like an ass.
Does that provide some elucidation?
Yep. I don’t know how to explain this delicately enough. Let’s just say that two of the offended posters who have called “tranny” hate speech are transgendered.
I agree
Hahahahahahaahahahahahaha.
Wait.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
That’s awesome. Did it occur to you that maybe I don’t have the ability to post more than one response at a time? No? Go figure–an assumption of how everything is supposed to be because you didn’t ask. Who knew? Everyone must know that and be that way or they lose.
Good lord. For a bunch of people who claim to fight ignorance, you all certainly don’t make it welcoming to challenge your beliefs. So ignorance is really “someone who disagrees with us or challenges us”?
I didn’t lose this. And if anything, I will be more inclined to hold my own beliefs because of what I read in this thread. Thanks y’all! With that, I’m going to stop posting in this thread because I want to interact in the real world. Thanks though, in all seriousness. This has been good times.
Two=everyone?
I am wrong=a few?
What makes you think I’m not a tranny?
I am embarrassed for you.
Then, kindly answer the questions I asked in post 73.
Again, are you saying that as a white heterosexual I cannot say that the words nigger or faggot are offensive?
You asked how many posters here had heard a transgendered person say that “tranny” was offensive.
Since all the posters in this thread saw two posters they knew to be transgendered post just that in this thread, everyone but you has.
This is why I don’t think 100% is achievable with words like this. When they become taboo, they take on shock value. That is accessed by comedians, shock jocks, and their ilk, including a small segment of the community targeted by the word. Who has more right to use the word than them, it was used as hate speech against them? Who’s going to challenge them?
I think you have to be happy to get to 95+%, sometimes. Doesn’t mean you give up sharing your feeling on it’s use. Of course savy people know that 'cause your trangendered friend says does not give you leeway!
Hypno-Toad, it is my official opinion, as a moderator, that Eve’s response was not threadshitting – she was using hyperbole to make a specific point about language she found offensive. Threadshitting is “you’re assholes to be discussing this,” not “let’s discuss why this is problematical” – and you’ll note that this is the nature of the discussion that has ensued. Please leave moderation to the mods.
living_in_hell: given that at least two transgender Dopers have participated in this thread saying that “tranny” is offensive, your response seems somewhere between irrelevant and disingenuous, as numerous participants, not all of them transgendered, have pointed out to you. I’m not going to call it hate speech, but I will call it offensive and suggest that you avoid going out of your way to be offensive, which is considered jerkish behavior.
No warnings issued, to anyone.
I’m moving this thread to Great Debates, which seems a better home for it in the direction it has taken.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
It seems so hard for Dopers, at times, to say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that term was offensive. I’ll try not to use it in the future.”
If I know I’m offending someone who has done nothing to deserve ill treatment, I try to stop. I may not always succeed (case in point, I still slip and say “retarded” when I know that it offends people. I usually catch myself in time), but why the resistance to trying?
And no, someone doesn’t have to beg or ask nicely in order for me to try to stop offending them.
Have I ever met a trans person? Well, other than the one I’m dating, I’ve only spoken with about two dozen or so.
How many have you met?
Wasn’t very mysterious, either.
Oh please. I didn’t feel like retyping the entire story and modifying the few bits that needed to be changed. Feel free to amend my story to include the extra drama, which would still have been appropriate to a generic cheating spouse afraid of being found out.
I’m not saying we should use tranny. I’m just saying there are better ways to educate people (see my previous suggestions), and the story didn’t depend on making fun of him/her. If anything, it makes fun of the cheating guy. The cross dresser comes across as clever. The writer came across as ignorant, but not a hater.
There are a lot of people who use terms, who aren’t even aware that they are offensive to some, that’s just the only term they’ve heard used for that situation. It’s important to educate them, but it’s not necessary to ascribe intentions or meanings that aren’t guaranteed to be there.
Anyway, even assuming the writer was an evil bigoted Nazi monster, and anyone who ever utters the phrase ‘tranny’ should be promptly flogged, the important questions still haven’t been properly answered.
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What term(s) should we use?
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Is there some kind of consensus about this within the community itself?
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Is there an acceptable non clinical term for contexts in which that isn’t appropriate?
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What terminology do we use for an ambiguous situation? A man in woman’s clothing could be a legitimate sexual minority, it could just be a fetish, it could be cosplaying, it could just be a request from the client. Is there an all encompassing term?
Black rappers do no use the term nigger all the time. Sorry, it doesn’t happen often at all. They may use the term, “nigga”, but the don’t (generally) say “nigger”. The two words are not the same in usage or understanding.
Second, am much I can appreciate why people should not use the word tranny, it is not the same as many of the other slurs listed here for a variety of reasons.
Third, isn’t the guy in the story a transvestite, not a transsexual? I am not sure why we are equating the two. Not to mention the humor in the story doesn’t really rest on him being a transvestite IMO.
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Trans sexual, Trans vestite, Trans person
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There is some debate over the meanings of transsexual VS transgendered but in general see 1
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See 1. Also, it’s generally polite to call a person by whatever gender they present as.
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I dunno. When in doubt, just avoid pronouns as if you’re on a sitcom doing a shtick.
Brickbacon
What exactly is the difference between “nigger” and “nigga” kindly educate me.
[QUOTE=Brickbacon]
Second, am much I can appreciate why people should not use the word tranny, it is not the same as many of the other slurs listed here for a variety of reasons.
[/QUOTE]
How and why exactly is it different? Because they sure seem equivalent to me.
Geez, not gonna take the bait and get into a long rant about this, but I will try to make an analogy for you. Was Qaddafi the same as Hitler? What about Pol Pot, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Mubarak, or Amin? Yes, they are all pretty much evil dudes, but them being evil doesn’t mean they are “just like Hitler”. It’s not only wrong, but it’s also lazy thinking.
I find particularly annoying when someone tries to anchor whatever word they find offensive to another slur in order to take some logical shortcut or to make an appeal to emotion. You can’t say someone is retarded, that’s like calling a Black person a nigger. Did you say he was white trash? That’s like calling him a nigger. Don’t say something is gay, that’s like saying someone is a nigger. No, it’s really not. And I don’t say that to defend people who are committed to offending others by using such language, but there are a number of independent, unrelated reasons why someone should not use those words. First and foremost, all people deserve a basic amount of respect, and if they don’t want to be called x, then you should try hard not to do it. That’s enough of a reason. Resorting to false analogies just undercuts the argument.
It’s not bait. Tranny reduces is a derogatory term that reduces some one to a kind of subhuman other. How is that different from some one calling me a kike? No, Hitler never exactly rounded up the transcommunity and put them in camps*. No, there hasn’t been centuries of transpersecution. But, I’m still not seeing a significant difference.
- The Nazis did round up gays, lesbians and others they labelled as ‘sexual deviants’ presumably, some transfolk got sent to the camps.
Did I say it was not a derogatory term? My point was that not all derogatory terms are the same. Just as all brutal dictators are not the same. When some people were justifying the Iraq war because Hussein was just like Hitler, most thinking people naturally saw how tortured the analogy was. As much as I don’t think it’s a useful exercise trying to rate slurs in terms of offensiveness, I think we can all agree that the reason people attach slur x to the term nigger is because most thinking people agree that nigger is one of the most offensive things someone can say. Given that that is the case, it makes just as much sense as comparing every dictator to Hitler. Dictators are bad because they are brutal thugs, not because the can be compared to Hitler. Doing so either means you don’t respect the person you are talking to, or that you are a lazy thinker.
Furthermore, if the term is nigger is so vile and unacceptable, why is it okay for anyone to use it to make some illogical and extraneous rhetorical point?
PS. What does the Nazis rounding up gay people have to do with anything?