Ptahlis: Not unless you like “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual - by the time you’re done saying it, the parade’s over.”
Scylla: Do you think that the fact that a man can call his wife Poopsie but you can’t call her that is a discriminatory claim to special privileges?
There is a big difference between the above words. Hatefull words have power becasue the people saying them have power. If I use the phrase “Stupid Nigger”, I’m bringing forth hundreds of years of oppression and attempting to remind someone of their so called place. If a black guy calls me a honky, it doesn’t do anything. A persecuted minority calling the majority names is not hurtfull or offensive. They do not have power in society. The same goes for Jeezer (which I also don’t use) the majority of people in society are “Jeezers”. Also “breeder” it doesn’t have that hurtfull tone because it’s being used by a minority to describe the majority.
goboy:
WHat Jack said. “Breeder” is a derogatory only term based on my sexual orientation. It doesn’t hurt my feelings, but speaks as poorly of you as it would if I were to call you a “F*&$ing queer.” The irony is that you use it against me in a thread specifically dealing with the damage caused by such prejudice. The double irony is that you are a member of the discriminated group and claim to know better.
Still looking for that quote.
Matt:
Already covered this. Short answer, no. For the third time, terms of endearment are not at issue.
Thanks oldscratch; I’d agonized over whether to include this argument in the debate, but ultimately decided against it because 'Scylla et al will just reprise their “double standard” mantras and stick their fingers in their ears; it’s a concept that’s way too subtle for them. Let’s watch, shall we?
Your inability (or refusal) to understand the parallel is the issue, here, 'Scylla. For the third time: if you can understand the parallel, you will understand the point. After all this point has been made separately by at least two different people. Your denial of the validity of the point just demonstrates your stubbornness (or stupidity); it doesn’t alter the fact that the two instances are exactly parallel: it’s where they overlap where the crux of this whole issue lies.
Oldscratch:
I don’t understand. So, if a white person attends a mostly black school in a mostly black community, then he is the minority. In that case is it ok for him to use the term “nigger?” Is it wrong for them to call him “honky” since he is a minority.
What about if that same person goes to Africa?
How about if you are the only mentally able person in a room full of retarded people. Is it ok to say Retard?
I don’t think your definition works.
I see only three possibilities
A word is derogatory in all contexts
A word is derogatory based on its intent when used
A word is derogatory based on how it is perceived.
An example of #1 would be “asshole,” or “Fuckface.” No confusion there.
I’m not sure if “queer” is #2, 3 or a combination.
Ahem. I am still curious about this one, and I don’t believe Scylla/MGibson responded to it. “We all have terms for each other that we allow usage only from certain people. Older men may not think it acceptable for young’uns to call them by their first name, yet allow their peers to do so. Do you consider this a ‘discriminatory claim to special privileges’?”
Let me try this. Do you feel the same pain and insult when a black guy cals you honky? Ever wonder why there aren’t terms that denigrate white people like that? It’s because of the social climate. Use some common sense Scylla. Nigger is extremely offensive. Honky isn’t. There are reasons for that.
Faggot is extremely offensive. Breeder isn’t.
People can be denied housing because they are “faggots”. Won’t happen to “breeders”.
Now there are some exceptions. Here in SF two friends of mine were thrown out of The Cafe for kissing. The problem? They happened to be a man and woman. I have a big problem with that, but it doesn’t even begin to compare to the harrasment that queers get.
Lissener:
I don’t see why I should accept the validity of the term of endearment parallel.
Does being gay afford a special brotherhood, where all other gay men are your S.O.?
I call my mother “Mom” and my father calls her “honey.” THese terms define our relationship. It would be weird (almost typed queer) and innapropriate if we changed terms.
But, how do you automatically have a special relationship with gay men you have never met?
Did you read my hypothetical? Would you agree that that particular case would be rude?
Do you see how Rudy could have fallen into just such a misinterpretation by his use of the word?
Gaudere:
Hmmm. The difference between childhood and adulthood seems to me to be more synonymous with a term of rank rather than familiarity. Being an adult, if a an older man told me to call him Mr. Jones because I was a young wippersnapper but let all the other geezers call him Ted, I would probably tell him to shove it.
Your average adult may have assumed athority over legal children in his presence, and may require the use of a surname legitimately, just as my boss may wish to be referred to as “Mr. Jones,” and not Ted, if he’s a prick. My peer in the next cubicle does not enjoy this option because he has no athority over me.
I have no athority over the gay community and cannot reasonably expect to recieve an honorific form of address whether it is inclusive or exclusive.
The gay community has no athority over me and also can make no such expectations without being prejudicial.
How’s that?
Again (again, again, again): this is not anything that can be explained to you. Unless you make a huge effort at empathy, you will continue to be incapable of understanding. I can’t force you to make that effort, and it’s extraordinarily obvious that you’re not willing to make it, so we will continue to discuss this (insofar as we :yawn: continue to discuss it) from opposite ends of the spectrum.
I read it, but nothing seemed worthy of response.
A). Yes, but this is so not about Rudy anymore. Looks like it’s about you, dude.
B). That said, Rudy doesn’t strike me as the pinnacle of the modern enilghtened man. Not having seen the exchange in question, I’ll have to withhold benefit of the doubt for now.
There’s a time and place for everything. All I’m saying is no group has a monopoly on any particular word. I wouldn’t appreciate someone using certain words in public even if they themselves belonged to that group. But that’s just me.
Marc
I’m entertained by the contortions 'Scylla can pull his logic through in his efforts to be the only one left who denies the parallels between other, analagous forms of privately coded speech.
Lissener said:
“Again (again, again, again): this is not anything that can be explained to you. Unless you make a huge effort at empathy, you will
continue to be incapable of understanding.”
I apologize for my ignorance sir, I will strive to evolve gayness so that I can recieve the benefit of the ESP that makes me a part of the one-true-gay-gestalt-organism.
What superpower is it that you are exactly claiming. What am I missing. I’m pretty smart for a non-gay. Take pity on me, sir. Don’t give up hope. Explain slowly and use small words and I’ll try to get them into my inferior non-gay brain.
“I read it, but nothing seemed worthy of response.”
I admit I am not worthy of your holy gay wisdom, but please anser a supplicants simple question (asked for the third time without response btw,) Do you find the use and exclusion of the word “queer” as shown in my hypothetical to be prejudiced or not?
Please come off your holy high horse. Not ONCE have I called you a name or made a disparaging remark.
Okay, sorry for my sarcasm, but this is a lifelong argument for me: I sometimes resent that I must so relentlessly educate people just to be seen as human.
There, that’s what I mean. I didn’t mean anything about ESP. I meant until you can try to imagine what it’s like from the other side of the argument, you may never understand it. Until you understand what it’s like to be in the position of being a member of a group that is marginalized and dehumanized by the culture at large, you may never understand. My plea for empathy was, in all seriousness, meant to suggest that unless you sit down, quietly, and imagine yourself in my shoes, you very well might never understand what we’re trying to say.
It just seems patently obvious to me that you see the world from the narrow perspective of your own experience and are not willing to imagine what anyone else’s perspective might be like. Not only that, you’re not even willing to take their word for it that their perspective may be different. Which I can’t see as anything besides willful, active denial.
Your opinions don’t make me one one-thousandth as angry as your arrogant refusal to imagine a perspective different from your own might exist, and that those different perspectives are every bit as valid as your own.
Until I see some sign that you’re willing to let go of your seemingly desperate hold on your “my way of looking at the universe is the only way of looking at the universe,” I feel I will continue to be angry at you, and that the tone of that anger will come out in my posts.
That’s a pretty big assertion, and I don’t see why it’s the case. What gives a word power? What is the relationship between real world power and the power of words? Can you provide a reason for why your statement is true?
I’m (ethnically) Jewish, and if a black guy called me a “fucking kike” I doubt my reaction would be much different than if a white guy called me that. Yet one is supposedly a member of a group that has power and one isn’t.
Ok, so you don’t take offense to being called “honky”. That doesn’t particulary mean anything though, unless you’re claiming to be representive of whites in general. If a black guy I didn’t know called me a “honky” I’d be offended; is it your position that I’d be wrong to feel that way?
I disagree. What makes an insult hurtful, in my opinion, is not the word itself or whether the term describes a ruling majority or a persecuted minority (and for that matter, majorities can be persecuted, and minorites can rule), but the intent of the speaker (or writer) to insult or degrade. Where ambiguity enters into it is that we can’t know what the person who uses the word means, we can only guess based upon our knowledge of the language and the context in which the word appears.
Would using the word “nigger” automatically make me a racist? No. Would using the word “nigger” to derogatorily describe black people I don’t like make me a racist? Yes. While Jim Crow and slavery are quite dead in this country, anti-black racism isn’t dead, and so if I use the word “nigger” people may assume that I am a racist and am purposelly using the word in a racist way. And that is why they may become offended. However, while the people of Wisconsin aren’t particulary powerful on the national scene, if I refer to them as “cheeseheads” most people wouldn’t be offended because there is practically no anti-Wisconsin sentiment in this country, so almost no one would assume I was seriously trying to offend them.
If a member of a minority group refers to me using a derogatory term (like “breeder”) I’m probably going to assume (unless I’m friends with them, or I have some reason to think they’re just joking) they’re trying to insult me, and I won’t like that. Depending on the situation, it may not mean much to me, but it will still offend me.
Also, if you’re using “jeezers” or “fundies” to describe Christian Fundamentalists, or born again Christains, as opposed to other types of Christians, then they’re not a majority of this country and some of them probably consider themselves a member of a persecuted minority, though that doesn’t necessarily make it so.
Lissener:
Very well, may I humbly suggest the possibility that I have considered your perspective and that perhaps I can empathize to some degree, but in spite of that, still find myself in disagreement.
I might also suggest that it might be an accepted courtesy in a message board for you to respond to a direct question with someone that you are engaged in a discussion with that is now being asked for the fourth time. In the hypothetical I described was the straight man treated in an unreasonable and prejudicial manner?
Why is it that the supposedly derogatory terms for white heterosexuals really aren’t? “Cracker”, “Honky” (which I haven’t heard someone called in about 15 years), “Breeder”, “Whitey”, etc… Being called any of these things doesn’t bother me in the least and I’ve never seen anyone else consider them fighting words.
I think a lot of it has to do with how people react to the terms. If you don’t want people to call you “faggot” or “nigger”, simply don’t get upset when people use that term. They see it has no effect, they stop using it because they’re only saying because they know it bothers you.
(That said, I agree with Esprix- if I call someone “faggot” I’d better be damn good friends with them.)
I think the important thought that came out of this discussion was the fact that a group of people identify themselves as Queer Nation. I believe faggot is much like nigger and is offensive. But a group name is more or less saying that it is an official way for outsiders to address the people identified with the group. I personally don’t use the term queer because it does have a very negative connotation( plus how embarrassed I when I found out how my favorite childhood game “smeer the queer” was named.) Not that logic is a major part of reactions, but I think use of the term queer should be given the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t meant to be offensive.
On the other hand I think the United Negro college fund is a remnant that is still used for continuity, but doesn’t make it right to use negro as an everyday word
The reason I didn’t specificlly respond to your hypothetical is because I would simply have repeated the following:
I have a right to be myself with people among whom I feel safe. You many never understand that I might feel safer–not even physically; just emotionally–among a group of gay men. And how we interact with and address each other is not, in any way, any of your business. We can call each other anything we want, anything at all. The relationship I have with other members of that group is different from the relationship I may have with you. Each relationship–every single relationship you’re in–has its own “rules.” There is no governing body of relationships that says that “what is true in one relationship must be true across all relationships,” which you somehow arbitrarily insist there is. I can choose to interact differently within different relationships. That’s one aspect of this discussion.
Another, entirely unrelated aspect, is that the given, the baseline, the default for communicating with people with whom you have not yet developed a relationship that has its own rules, is that there are certain words that we as a society have agreed to graciously avoid; words that have a great deal of emotional baggage. I’ll spare you another listing, but these words tend to be labels used by that segment of a population that holds the greatest “power” to separate, diminish, and marginalize members of that population that are different and that lack power. As such, they are words that have a practical use as weapons, and some of us have experienced actual thefts from our lives with these words used as weapons: thefts of dignity and safety and peace. We agree, as a society, to refrain from using these words unless A),, you intend to inflict that emotional baggage on someone (or at least could give a shit whether you do or not), or B), you’ve entered into a relationship with someone and have agreed upon relationship-specific exceptions to that cultural consensus.
That’s it. You live in a culture that adheres to the second aspect–which you’re free to break at the expense of displaying a disregard for that consensus. In every other relationship you are a part of–every single one–you must negotiate exceptions to this exceptions relationship by relationship.
I have gay friends who like the word “queer,” and those who don’t. Part of participating in a relationship–of any kind–is that you try where you can to honor those feelings. I have a couple of straight friends the nature of whose relationship with me allows for the “bending” of some such “rules,” but not for others.
You, Scylla, don’t get to dictate that the social consensus trumps the private agreements of individual relationships. Nor do you get to dictate that what holds true in one relationship must hold true in all other relationships.
You must, to honor the humanity of the people around you, use the cultural consensus as a guide for dealing with people who have not specifically entered into a relationship with you that differs from it.