Sterotyping or not, matt_mcl’s anger and disgust are very clearly revealed by his little skit. I don’t share the sterotyping, but I surely share the anger and disgust.
:mad:
I think it’s presumptuous to characterize the attackers and their motives when we know nothing about them.
Where do we get the conclusion that these were 3 queer hating rednecks from?
Who do I think is being stereotyped? Are you serious?
You don’t need to accuse when you can simply ask.
Yes, Scylla, I think Biggirl is serious. The one thing we do know about the real “Jimbo and Biff” is that they did, in fact, beat up somebody they didn’t know for no apparent reason other than that they found him undefended at a time and place where they wouldn’t normally have found him. This, I submit, implies that they are violent, cretinous fucks.
Yes, cretinous violence is frequently a trait of the “redneck” in caricatures. But it’s hardly unfair to portray clayton_e’s assailants as that type of person.
Ah, I see Scylla. We should not say that violent men call the people they beat up “faggots” because that makes them look homophobic.
Are you serious?
xeno:
I share your judgement of the parties responsible. I don’t see why we need to assign them a stereotypical socioeconomic group.
How do we know they were 3 rednecks?
If we don’t know that, why would we assume they were?
It’s certainly convenient to assign them a category and motivations. It gives us a group to despise.
What if it turns out they were black? Shall we rewrite the script along the proper stereotype? Would that then be ok?
It’s also just stupid to make the assumption without data.
All that we’ve heard is that 3 people came out of nowhere and attacked him for no reason. That doesn’t give anybody a lot to go on.
What little we’ve been told doesn’t sound to me like a typical bashing. It sounds like a deliberate sneak attack.
Damn straight.
All we know is that Clayton got beat up early in the morning on a park bench by three men.
What I’ve seen applied so far is:
-It’s a rural area so it was probably some rednecks.
-Everybody knows rednecks don’t like strange and fun ideas, being the ignorant scum that they are.
-Everybody knows rednecks hate gay people and that they probably thought he was gay, and that’s motive enough for any redneck.
Therefore it was 3 rednecks going gay bashing.
Now I’m wondering which part of that dialog depicts Jimbo and Biff as rednecks? I think some people in this thread are working from their own assumptions.
As I read matt’s imaginary dialogue, nothing is implied about Biff and Jimbo’s ethnicity, religion, background or appearance. They are portrayed as intolerant of differences. I’ve actually known people with those names btw (both Jimbo and Biff), and interestingly enough they haven’t all had the same background.
O.K. Scylla. People who beat up perfect strangers for no reason should not be depicted in a make-believe rant uttering the word faggot because we do not want to defame violent assholes.
matt should have said something different, like:
-The fuck should I know? Little nice guy doing something completely harmless and fun I’ve never heard of before? What the fuck?
Because we don’t want to offend assholes by intimating that the call the people they beat up assholes. And I’m still looking for those redneck signifiers.
::Shrug::
Maybe. That’s always a danger.
“Jimbo and Biff” sound like some pretty stereotypical redneck names to me as does the way they’ve been characterized.
I certainly see in Matt’s dialogue a couple of burly white boys with mullets looking to bash a queer.
That looks to be the picture he’s painting.
Do you think I’m mistaken?
you were thinking it was probably more along the lines of coporate accounting execs? Daytraders maybe? In YOUR mind what does a group of people who decide to jump and beat up someone for no other reason then their own “enjoyment” look like Scylla? I dont picutre suits, or a pack of grannies or rogue schoolteachers myself.
I think all anybody’s trying to say is that “faggot” is a common epithet used by the type of people who are stupid and insensitive enough to go around beating up random people. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had said it, and if so I doubt they really thought about what it meant.
Spend some time around average teenagers sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.
Yes, Scylla, I think you’re mistaken. You’ve been asked now what part of the dialogue indicates “redneck”, and all you can come up with is the names of the two characters. I don’t think the honour of rednecks really needs to be defended here…you’re the only one associating them to this story.
Hm, Scylla does have a point - we have very little information to go on here, and very few inferences can be made from what we actually know. Three men beat someone up who was apparently doing nothing to deserve it - from that, I can conclude that these men don’t mind outnumbering their victims, that these men are violent, and that something made them want to beat clayton_e up. I can only make conjectures about the rest, and I probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark, but I have no facts to back anything else up.
FTR, I think it stinks to high heaven that anybody felt the need to beat anybody up. God forbid people should just leave other people alone to live their lives the way they choose to live them.
And, in parting, let me say that the Dopers that have come in here to say how much they would like to stomp the guys who beat clayton_e up sound a little like thugs themselves. Would it be too Ghandi of me to say that violence shouldn’t be answered with more violence?
featherlou: Oooh, little miss gandhi-pants here wants us to go all ahimsa and everything…
(How’s that?)
I am from Northern New York – the opposite side of the mountains from clayton_e and Palve, to be sure, but I know their town, I spent a semester at the college there, and I have a very clear picture of the sort of people who assaulted clayton_e from my own earlier experiences with such folks.
Here in the Tarheel State, I live next door to a couple of redneck families. They have a live-and-let-live, here-want-a-beer? sort of mentality that is to me head and shoulders above the he’s-not-like-us?-he’s evil! one that prevails in much of Upstate N.Y.
Clayton, I add my regrets to all those who have commiserated with you on what happened. May Commo. MacDonough rise up from his statue and shoot a few broadsides at the cretins who attacked you!!
And, for those of you who thought matt was hijacking the assault by depicting it as like a gay-bashing…
The point to the whole thing is that nobody deserves bashing for being who they are, whether they want to hang out in the Montreal subway or on a park bench on Elizabeth Street, or for any other reason. And IMHO matt targeted their probable attitudes quite well, albeit with a rather broad brush.
While I don’t wish to make light of the situation, I can’t resist imagining what a non-stereotypical version of matt’s dialogue would look like:
– Oh, I say, Nigel!
– Aye, Rupert?
– Lo, beholdest thou yon cream-faced loon who sitteth on yonder bench?
– What sayest thou, Rupert?
– He sitteth upon a bench, sirrah!
– He sitteth upon a bench? Be he a natural fool?
– I know not, Nigel. Forsooth, what manner of base-born varlet sitteth upon a bench?
– Aye. Methinks he affecteth a most unnatural singularity.
– Thou say’st rightly. It behooveth us to trip him at the heels and break his pate…
I associate the name Biff with blond headed Frat Rats in cardigan sweaters, not rednecks. Jimbo is a little ambiguous. Billy Ray or Bobby Jack or other two-named combinations would be more stereotypical redneck. Pretty weak, Scylla.
Yeah, you’re right, a dialogue between Biff and Jimbo living in a small town in Upstate New York saying “Fuck” a lot and calling people retards while looking for queers, faggots, and other noncormfists to bash for the fun of it is clearly not an attempt to depict a stereotypical redneck.
How silly of me.