I have only been in SDMBs for a few months, but I’ve never in that time seen a pit thread that said something to the effect of “That Nigger/jap/fag/wop that…”.
It’s no more acceptable to use a person’s fat with which to insult them than it is to use their race, religion or sexual orientation.
And it does not MATTER if a person can or cannot lose weight. It’s still JUST as bad as a racial slur or gay slur.
To say which group has more of a right to complain about the treatment they’ve received is just ludicrous! If you did that well then. …
Jewish people would be able to say to gay people "huh! You don’t have right to complain, MILLIONS of us were gassed to death!! to what? a paltry few thousand of you that get discriminated against? And only a few of you have gotten killed in comparison to OUR suffering.
And so on and so forth.
It’s not the use of the word fat as a descriptive phrase that is being “PC’d” against in most of these pile-ons. In fact, if some of these anti-PC people would read PAST the first few sentences in a person’s post they would see that many of the fat people themselves say just that.
It’s the then comparing the being fat to being lazy, out of control, evil, bad… ad nauseaum, as if the being fat is what the problem is, rather than the person’s actions. As if one is directly related to the other. THAT is what causes a majority of these pile-ons.
But the “anti-PC” people are too busy screaming “JEEZ, too PC” to notice what the message is.
If you feel the need to say something like “that fat bitch rear-ended my car,” that’s fine. My issue (and I hope I’m making this clear, I really do) is that when you go ON AND ON about the physical characteristics of the person you’re insulting, and the physical characteristics don’t have anything to do with the person’s actions, be prepared to get asked why that person’s hair/skin/body type/whatever had anything to do with what they did to you.
I agree that insults should be the icing. To extend your metaphor, I feel that when they start to make up the bulk of the cake, the OP is going to run into problems.
It’s not the insult I have a problem with, it’s the frequency, and I think that’s what you (and the OP in this thread–see, CuriousCanuck, I’m not completely OT) aren’t understanding. Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly enough. However, I hope I have now.
That, I happen to agree with to a certain extent. To argue / rant / whatever in such a fashion detracts from your arguement. granted. But to suggest that one is a bigot for usingthe insult at all is what I have an issue with.
I just dumped someone two weeks ago. After dealing for weeks with his obsession with making jokes about vaginas(weird for a homo), he just had finished making yet another misogynist comment(You shop with 'em, you don’t sleep wth 'em.) when he immediately said that something was “retarded.”
That was it.
It was the final thing for me to tolerate. I told him that he had to leave.
I don’t think it is acceptable to use slurs.
I’m not talking a joke between friends who understand what is meant. I am talking about slurring others when one is mad.
He couldn’t understand that saying something was retarded was the same as some kid saying something they dislike is gay.
At first, I was going for over the top ludicrousness.
Then I was incredulous at his attitude and his desire to hold onto his “right” to be a bigot.
After a couple of follow-up posts, I saw that he was a real “winner” and figured it was pointless to stay.
Were my words constructive? No, of course they weren’t, nor were they meant to be. I wanted to mock him. He chose to see it as some competition. Pointless.
Ever notice how people who bitch about the world being too “PC” are always the ones who are offensive loudmouths with no tact whatsoever?
Sorry, Canuck, but a woman’s weight has fuck-all to do with whether or not she hit your car. You could benefit from being a little more PC. Just accept the fact that you fucked up and quit arguing about it.
Fat people are not killed for their state of being. They are not beaten to death for that sole reason, nor are they subject to the systematized exclusions that race especially, as well as religion have been.
Fatness is a lifestyle issue, too much fucking calories, not enough burning them. Americans seem to have elaborated a culture of boundless excuse making and endless victimhoods, but being fat is not remotely comparable with any of the cited discrimination.
Fucking idiocy.
As much as I despise the phrase PC, this sizism idiocy and excuse making culture clearly desserves the label.
I guess you’re calling me stupid, although God knows why you feel the need to be so rude. In the uber-tolerant spirit of your post I’ll see your “improbably thick skull” and raise you a “reactionary nitwit”.
Who said anything about tolerance meaning smiling and nodding in the face of insult?
What you seem to think of as ‘tolerance’ is in reality anything but. Your disgusting pc brand of ‘tolerance’ invariably manifests as any excuse, however contrived and offensive to common sense it may be, to hysterically harangue and sactimoniously sermonise. You wouldn’t know real tolerance if it bit you on the arse.
But that is my point. His desire to ‘hold on to his right’ seemed, at least to me, to be inspired by your over the top ludicrousness. (Which, BTW, really seemed like an attack.)
He at first seemed to be willing to discuss his word choices, and may have seen the error of his ways. It’s possible he could have been enlightened. It’s not as possible now because I’m sure he feels attacked. My point is that when attacked, our first instinct is to defend our position, right or wrong. And since nobody wants to be proven wrong, certainly not by someone who is attacking them, we sometimes dig in and convince ourselves we’re right.
Think about it: What may have happened if it were gently pointed out to Ken that what happened to him was indeed foul, and we felt for him, but that his comments on the woman’s appearence weakened his rant and may hurt some feelings here. Maybe that would have gotton through to him?
Ya know, it’s funny, but I was just thinking that it’s really easy to go for someone’s throat when all you use to judge them are examples of their behavior at their worst. 'Course, I would NEVER accuse you of being judgmental. I’m not a Judgist.
I know this is a subject where emotions tend to run high, which is why I’ve always been reluctant to speak up before. But I guess I have to admit to being something of a Judgist.
I’ve heard all this talk about how you shouldn’t judge by appearance; that there’s no way to tell if someone’s wearing robes and powdered wig by choice or bad habits or a condition they can’t control. I’m just not convinced. Fine, fine, there are conditions that may result in a powdered wig and gavel use that no one can control, but I don’t buy that they’re anything other than a tiny minority. Simple fact of the matter is, 95 percent of the time, when you see someone in robes and powdered wig banging a gavel on things, they’re that way because of their own lack of willpower. You tell me why no other country has such a problem with powdered wigs and gavels if it’s so uncontrollable.
So, yeah, I’m a Judgist. I guess if people want to think badly of me, so be it.
Yes, but not at the expense of thought. This is not anyone’s own personal dumping ground. And as I just said in the hereafter mentioned thread, if you want to rant free of criticism, this is not the place for it.
“To the fat moronic bitch”…gee, yeah, that’s just an adjective, just as moronic and bitch.
If that is truly how that thread Title seems to you, I have an exercise you can perform to facilitate more independent thinking:
Get a pair of XL pliers
Put them on your neck
Pull until you feel a ball of hair emerging
Pull until the ears on that ball are roughly six inches away from the hole wherein they had previously been trapped.
Congratulations! You have not removed your head from your own ass.
Marlon Brando, physically, is fat. That is an adjective. However, when used in the manner of the OP thread and title, it is not merely an adjective but a manner of saying “this person is bad because she is overweight.”
And it has no place as an identifier of worth any more than “She is underweight. That one fact about her must indicate that she has a post-graduate degree in combinatory physics.”
A person’s weight has fuck-all to do with their intelligence or personal worth. As such, yes you WILL get flamed for indicating that you can spot a person’s value in their weight. Weight, hair color, shoe color, sexuality, breast size, status as a vegan/vegetarian/etc, number of fingers on one’s hand, hat size… all largely irrelevant in determining a person’s worth. Insulting someone for being fat is about as intelligent as saying, for example, “You have small tits! You stupid shit!”
Yeah! Let’s police the PC Police! How dare they be offended! How dare they express their reactions here in the Pit! They are just bigoted against bigots! I say let’s ban all intolerant people!
The pc brigades’ reactions of contrived outrage over imagined offence are nasty, spiteful, designed for maximum confrontation, and above all personal. They are unlike and usually out of all proportion to the original impersonal remark that sets them off.
And I frequently find myself thinking just what Zoe said, but without the sarcasm:
You have it backwards. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Not - treat others as they treat you.
Shit, if we lived by your rule, everyone on the planet would be an asshole to everyone else. Then nobody would be able to tell the difference between true assholes and non-assholes who are only assholes because they are being treated like that from the true assholes. Yikes.
For future reference. What word would you (any of you) have used to describe said woman? Do we need to keep references to others as simply ‘that man or woman’ or just use ‘person’ ? Is the word ‘person’ still okay?