I generally interpret constructions like the one referenced in the OP as puerile at best, and absolutely distinct from quoting somebody’s actual speech.
As a rhetorical device I think it’s severely lacking because it gives cover for folks to shrug and go, “well I don’t use that word so the sentiment clearly doesn’t apply to me.”
I definitely think any posts like the one from the OP should be closely scrutinized, as it seems to have been in this case. I would not want this board to be a place where that kind of speech is used casually, even in a “putting words in the mouths of bigots” kind of way.
I’d like to enter into evidence … “Blazing Saddles:”
Many/most of us know it. We probably also know how controversial it was in its early days among those who couldn’t readily discern its satirical take on racism.
And it made fairly liberal use of racial epithets.
Many would say the movie simply couldn’t be made today. Some would clearly say that friends probably shouldn’t/wouldn’t openly throw the biting dialog around in earshot of others. All of that would be fair.
But could a BBQ Pit … or … Cafe Society thread about the best movie quotes/scenes of all time include “Blazing Saddles” lines that include that word?
What about if ‘that word’ has been bowdlerized?
Was Mel Brooks really doing the “I’m not touching you” bit??
And there’s what I observed before – the presumed per se “wrongness” of that set of letters/sounds being even printed, read, spoken or heard unless you can otherwise justify it. We have reached the point where in our culture it is assumed there is no other reason for quoting it, than an intent to “get away with it”. um… progress?
(I mean sure, it doesn’t help that some tech bros wasted half a year trying to force ChatGPT to say it and whining that this meant it was “woke”, but really, context, people!)
It also represents another nuanced flavor of the use of epithets, not confined solely to racist usage (QT seems to like “bitch,” too). He’s – generally – neither mocking racists via satire (Brooks) nor using epithets as hate-speech.
His thoughts, and the thoughts of some of his go-to actors, on the subject:
Could one quote Tarantino, then, in a Pit or CS thread about lines or scenes?
This one strikes me the way that “MAGAts” did/does: maybe self-censor, but do we need a bright line rule?
I don’t know that a bright line rule is called for. I also didn’t like that post at all (the one that introduced the racist-sexist epithets into the conversation).
When I was a teenager, I was getting harassed by some other teens who were saying some gross stuff about me. When an adult intervened, I told her that the words they used were the equivalent of using the n-word. (I said the word–which I don’t, for cultural reasons, say or type now).
She ignored me. I repeated the analogy, and the word. At that point, she–a Black woman–glared at me, and said something like, “The first time you said that, it was just you making an argument. Second time you say that, it sounds like you’re saying something yourself.”
I was shocked, and denied I meant anything by it. But thirty years later, I still remember that exchange, and it informs my unwillingness to engage in explicit mentions of racist epithets, and especially informs my unwillingness to introduce them into the conversation as an attack on my opponents.
I think that post, putting racist and sexist epithets into the mouths of Harris’s opponents, was not great.
I think you’re focusing too much on the word and not enough on the expression of hate. This is an expression of hate:
A vote for Trump is a vote against that uppity n/99/r bitch Harris. Is a vote for project 2025.
It is hate speech directed at a prominent woman of color.
We don’t need a bright line rule against particular words. We do need a fuzzy rule against expressions of hate, independent of whether or not this example should’ve been moderated. Our current fuzzy rule puts ascribed hate speech on the permitted side. I would rather see hate speech be moderated whenever its use is unnecessary. Implementation of this is necessarily fuzzy, but shifted from our current rule.
Quoting again because I think it captures the issue so well:
I prefer the first option, but the rules would still benefit from making the second option explicit in the rules.
Look, I’d be the last poster to say there isn’t such a thing as hate speech. Or that hate speech laws are bad. I’m very much on record as being in favour of them to a degree way beyond American or even European standards. I’ve been castigated right here for my stance, in fact.
But that’s for actual hate speech. Which this is not.
I’ve been the recipient of enough actual targeted racist hate speech in my life to recognize it when I see it.