Actually, I don’t see any sniggering in your list, and in fact many of them are just the name itself.
If you find someone’s post offensive, you can Pit them.
:smack: I apologize, I completely misunderstood your complaint. And you make a valid point about the insult; I’m not sure why it has never occurred to me but of course you are right.
If they are being offensive outside the Pit we can still report them, right?
You personally? No. But anyone else can.
I’m not worried that I may have once again said something stupid.
I’m very worried that people may think I was speaking with hatred and malice. I feel I should expand and clarify that, but I don’t know how at the moment.
heres the former bar me and johnny l.a. refrenced Redirecting...
Although it closed a couple of years ago due to the gay couple that owned it breaking up it was named that before it was a gay bar due to the front door being impossible to open so you had to go through the parking lot door … Now the antelope valley isnt the most enlightened place in california but its improved by a lot … (see by "pepper bellies thread for into on that one)
but yeah it was a sad day when it closed the 2nd or 3rd time
Fair enough. Thanks for the reply.
I know, right? Like I said in a later post, it never struck me as homophobic until it was specifically pointed out as a homophobic slur. I realized then that I don’t see it very often anymore, and I guess that’s why.
*what *is a slur?
Beginning of the last line of this post:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=22277308&postcount=16
Cocksuckers is a homophobic slur? :dubious::eek::rolleyes:
Tell Al Swearingen that.
I prefer to talk to real people. That word implies that the person being insulted is doing something a straight male wouldn’t do. If being gay wasn’t a bad thing in some people’s eyes that word wouldn’t be an insult in the first place.
"Motherfucker. " no one is implying that the person actually had sex with his mother. The term has lost that meaning and become a general curse expression.
Yes. For example, there some discussion of it on page three of this thread when a hockey player got fined for using it:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=826602&page=3
You can find threads on this board complaining about/wondering about the term all the back to 2001, so it’s not even a new thing.
I don’t know who Al Swearingen is, but he must say it a lot because his name is brought up in that thread above, too.
Looks like he’s a fictional HBO character based on a real person from the 1800s. I’m not sure why he’s been brought up in this conversation – just because racists say “nigger” in a 1970s movie that takes place in the 1860s doesn’t mean it’s OK for me to call people that today. HBO was probably trying to be historically accurate, homophobia and all.
And “Smear The Queer” was a fun little tag-like game played by children at recess and, in my school, during gym. Just because you personally are not offended by a word or term doesn’t mean it isn’t offensive at all.
I find the term cocksucker highly homophobic.
I also find it mildly misogynist. The use makes it clear that it’s a woman’s job to suck cock. A man who does so has lowered himself to the role of a woman.
Probably not!
(I agree with your larger point, however.)
I’m offended there are so many apologists for that thread. It’s sole purpose was to highlight stereotypes and slurs about gay people. It doesn’t matter if there’a real bar with any of those names, the name of an actual bar would not fly as an excuse if this kind of thread were aimed at other groups of people. And it doesn’t matter how any of you feel about particular words or the names of bars, or the intent behind them, anybody can come across that thread and repeat what they read there with a completely different intent.
I used to tell a lot of ethnic jokes. Not to denigrate people, but because there was true underlying humor in them that could have applied to many people, and sometimes because it illustrated things people should know then is more easily received if conveyed with humor. Long ago now I decided to stop that even if the jokes could have been considered harmless by a reasonable person because I don’t want someone repeating a joke I told in a way used to be hurtful. Something as simple as a different tone of voice used in some jokes is enough to change the intent of them to something mean and nasty in nature.
The lines can be blurry sometimes, but I don’t think they’re blurry here at all. What would happen if there was a thread on naming bars using derogatory terms for women’s anatomy? There is an bar called Hooters, a whole chain of them, would that justify such a thread?
And I’ll stop using the word ‘cocksucker’ as an epithet too. I should have before, someone on the board has asked that we stop doing that several times. I should have thought more about it at the time.
Since the OP and several participants in the thread are gay, this seems like a highly dubious assertion.
There’s a cultural tradition in the gay community to give (some) bars names that are corny salacious puns. I think this is an in-your-face jab at bigots who see homosexual acts as “unnatural” or “perverted”, a reaction against the long era when homosexuality was forced to hide. We’ve progressed a long way, and the range of normal human sexual behavior is now widely and openly accepted by the civilized majority; bigotry is still widespread, of course, but I hope we’re at a point where it’s homophobic bigotry that’s now seen as disgusting and unnatural. So I wouldn’t hesitate to share and celebrate this type of corny salacious joke in the company of gay people who know me, where the joke is to exacerbate the discomfort of bigots.
Roderick Femm inferred “sniggering” out of thin air. You’re inferring an intent to slur gay people with equally little objective foundation. Nobody was using words referencing homosexual acts as slurs in that thread (i.e. like the “cocksucker” thing, which I agree is legacy vocabulary that we should get rid of). Unless you think there is something wrong with homosexual acts, making silly salacious puns about gay sex is not in itself a slur, it depends entirely on context and intent.
The lesson I’m taking from this is just that great caution is needed when this kind of conversation takes place on the internet where people don’t know each other so well and where intent can be so difficult to discern.
Just because come people don’t mind the use of that kind of language doesn’t change the purpose of that thread.