Hey American Left: Can we stop calling people "trash?"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

As a “leftie”, I’m also with the OP.

The context in which I see it lately is the following:

“Men are trash because patriarchy. If you are upset at being called trash, maybe sit down shut up and listen to women until you agree that you are trash. Also, rapists are trash and people who defend rapists are trash.”

Fine, but if everyone is “trash” regardless of their actions, then what’s the point? If there is no way to differentiate the rapists from the non-rapists which seems to be the point of “men are trash no matter what they do,” then how can we communicate with each other about what is right and what is not?

62

…so what I’m getting from this thread is that this is **really **a passive-aggressive rant against black people, feminists, and “social justice warriors”? Because the word “trash” on its own is pretty fucking innocuous.

63

It’s current slang, in the context used in the OP.

It’s different than “white trash,” or “piece of trash,” or “trashy.” You can call people or things “trash.”

“That movie was trash.”
“I can’t believe we had to stay after class. That’s trash.”
“Harvey Weinstein is trash.”

I’m not touching the rest of the post, but I thought I’d clarify that for the out of touch.

64

…“that movie is trash” is the kind of thing that prompted the OP to say “If you believe in basic human dignity for everyone, as you fucking should, then you shouldn’t call anyone trash.?”

Really?

I don’t think I’m that out of touch. I’ve heard the word “trash” in the context you’ve put it in plenty of times. It has never prompted me to rant on a messageboard about “basic human dignity.” Calling Harvey Weinstein “trash” is not just a sentiment held exclusively by the “American left” and it is probably one of the more polite things one could say about the man. It isn’t “current slang.” Its been used forever. In the context of the OP you should be able to provide some examples from this very messageboard, because Richard claims it happens here. So can you quote some examples from this board that you consider infringes on “basic human dignity?”

65

He’s saying it’s a generic term for bad.

66

…calling people “bad” infringes on “basic human dignity?”

The “American left” keep calling people “bad” and should just stop?

Is that really what the OP is all about?

67

The operative phrase in the OP, AFAICT, is “No person is trash.” It’s fine to call things trash, but not people. For instance, your argument in some thread may be trash, but you’re not.

68

…MoonMoon gave an example.

“Harvey Weinstein is trash.”

Is this a sentiment coming exclusively from the “American left?”

Do you think calling someone trash infringes on basic human dignity more than any other insult?

Is “Harvey Weinstein is trash" worse than ““Harvey Weinstein is human excrement?” “Harvey Weinstein is pile of garbage?" “Harvey Weinstein is a piece of shit?"’

I’m talking specifics here. Because reading through this thread: and looking at the direct examples given in this thread, we aren’t talking about trash being a generic substitute for “bad.” Because if you read through the thread you will see people allude to white supremacists and neo-Nazis and Charlottesville and the patriarchy and it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of people want to call out a very particular sub-set of the “American left” but they don’t actually want to “call them out by name.”

69

So are we seriously suppose to refrain calling people like Weinstein things like trash, scum, assholes, serial rapists, bad, jackasses, etc. ?

Or is this meant to just not dehumanize people for minor things? Clothing choices, the way they talk, I’m trying to think of a few other generally generic things people might call others trash for. …

If that is all the op is really asking for that is easy, but dammit, I reserve the right to use trash and stronger for actual criminals. Oddly enough, I pretty much don’t use trash anyway, I would tend to use stronger words.

70

Isn’t the whole point of insulting someone to dehumanize them? There are certain types of people who are trash. Child abusers, rapists, racists, con artists, Flyers fans – they’re all just trash.

71

Exactly, well maybe not the underlined ones, but I’m only saying that as I’m afraid they’ll track us down and beat the shit out of us otherwise.

72

You need to pick a side.

73

Help me understand where you’re coming from, because this feels like a really unfair criticism to me.

What is passive aggressive about my OP? I am directly identifying what I object to and why I object to it, and specifying the target of my criticism—which is by no means limited to feminists and black people (??).

I have directed my objection—is it really a rant?—at the Left because that’s where I see it coming from in my bubble, and because I think we adhere to principles that make this kind of discourse bad.

I certainly understand if you think I am misreading some kind of slang. Or being oversensitive. But the accusation in your post seems totally out of left field to me. I genuinely don’t understand.

74

…I genuinely don’t understand the OP. I really really don’t. So find some examples, here on this messageboard, of people from the “American left” using the word “trash” that you feels infringes on “basic human dignity”. Show me where the use of the word “trash” coming from “the American left” is objectively worse than calling them a “peice of shit.” I don’t need the user name. We probably don’t even need context. Just the quote. This angers you to the point you felt you needed to post a thread about it. It shouldn’t be hard to find a few examples.

75

This seems like a very straightforward point that has gone in wacky and unexpected directions. Is this one of those performative disagreement kind of things, where once you’ve decided you don’t agree, you feel like you should act completely bemused so that your disagreement registers hard enough?

76

I think the problem is more one of calling people trash based upon superficialities. I think there is a lot of superficial, tribalistic thinking that is running rampant and flies in the face of what many would consider to be true liberalism in the service of humanity as a whole. People are just running away from unpleasantries and sticking their palms to their ears and hurtling insults at anything that is in any way unpleasant on this board. Perhaps it’s the way to go in fighting ignorance, but the brush, the brush seems to be so broad these days - and scalpels of yesteryears liberalism have been thrown away and replaced with blunt mallets that want nothing but to pummel anything even slightly odious into oblivion.

Man, that was a good bloody mary.

77

This, especially among young folk today (of which I am not by decades). Richard Parker specifically said he heard this among young people he comes in contact with. I’m pretty sure right-wingers of the same age group call Hillary Clinton “trash.”

BTW, MoonMoon, a couple of years ago you youngsters were calling yourselves trash of things you like. For instance, Hamilton fans calling themselves “Hamiltrash.” Is this still a thing, or have I been away from tumblr too long?

78

I don’t see it as a left or right issue as much as a social issue today. It doesn’t bother me to call someone trash who has committed some terrible crime or atrocity but it does bother me when we call names for political or religious type beliefs. Just a guess on my part but I would almost bet that about 70% of the population is not very well informed. They get convinced on something and just go that way. We usually have about 4 years to get them to thinking the other way. Name calling won’t do that.

79

At best people might be well informed about issues that are of importance to or have an impact on them. But the problem is is that there are a lot of issues being talked about at once - gun control, abortion, sexism, racism, reiigion, immigration, drug abuse, poverty, crime, international trade, military spending, student loans, the federal reserve. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Every time I have a conversation about any of these issues with anyone, they never seem to be able to answer very basic questions about the unquestioned facts concerning the matter. One example would be when I had a conversation about a police shooting with a history professor who was ranting and raving about how unfair the justice system was. Through the course of our conversation it became apparent that he did not know that the case had gone to a grand jury; he also did not know what a grand jury was. _Pointing these things out to him did nothing to shake his very solid belief that he was a very well informed person. Another person I had a conversation about gun control with could not tell me what percent of gun deaths were suicides when I asked. I asked a staunch supporter of Hillary what policies of hers he liked - he could not name a single piece of legislation she had supported. Another guy, highly educated, tells me the TPP is a very simple thing to form an opinion on - it’s a 6000 page document which is not available to the public in its entirety. And this is all just off the top of my head.

My point is that most people, out of necessity, must go on faith when making decisions about where their support on these issues will lie. I was gonna say a bunch of other things but I forgot what they were - something about humility and tolerance and a bunch of other nonsense that would be unlikely to be read by anyone.

80

This is something I might have said a couple years ago. But no longer.

I used to live in this world where I thought that, deep down, there was some good person in everyone, waiting to get out. That they were just hurt or damaged and that, if we could find that hurt and damage, we could fix things.

But then Trump was elected. And I saw how those who supported him acted. I saw these people who were dehumanizing themselves by showing an utter lack of empathy. I saw people defend the most vile things. I saw people enjoying the suffering of other people just because they were on the other side, not for any wrong they believed they had done.

Yes, some people are just hurting. Maybe even most. But I finally realized that there are a group of people who aren’t. And it’s not some super tiny part of the population. Everyone knows at least a couple of these people in their lives. They may put on a good face, but I saw them for what they are.

So now I can no longer object to calling the worst of these people trash. Rapists are trash. KKK members are trash. Neo-Nazis are trash. Yes, their depravity is uniquely human, but, in another sense, they are dehumanizing themselves. They are denying the core principles that makes someone human.

I’ve seen how much harm these people do, and I can no longer fault the people they hurt from lashing out back. I can no longer myself be sure that there is any underlying good person there to reach.

I see the divide, but my response is different. Yes, ideally there wouldn’t be one. But it’s just a symptom. The problem is that there are people that used to always be shunted off to one side, away from the national conversation. Now they are part of it, and they are primarily dragging one side away. And that side is letting them, causing the other side to want to become even more distant.

The divide is because one side wants to dig in its heels and is willing to appeal to the worst of humanity in order to do so. And I cannot in good conscience tell people they are wrong for calling those people trash. They are fouling up humanity.