I’m glad you lack self-control because it gives me the opportunity to point out that people who are peaceful and honest should be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. Bullying people, whether it is because they are gay or because they are fundamentalists, is an ethical abomination.
Perhaps I should have included a smilie to indicate that my post was light-hearted. The rest of your post makes no sense, unless you’re calling me a bully.
C’est la vie.
Similarly, I only use the word “nigger” to refer to black people who are lazy, shiftless, drug addicted, or criminally inclined. I never use it to refere to black people who are hard workers, honest, and law abiding. That means it’s not hate speech, right?
Except that you yourself agreed that you thought “nigger” was worse than “fundie”. Thus, it’s not arbitrary, unless you claim that the admins’ reasons for calling “nigger” hate speech and “fundie” not are arbitrary, but just happen to have randomly picked the worse word.
And I can’t believe you’re still refusing to own up to what a silly argument you made. Seriously, Excalibre came in talking about the pain that the word “Faggot” causes him on a day to day basis because he could get jumped and beat up and killed TOMORROW, and you responded by pointing out that there are other countries where Christians are a persecuted minority. Uhh, right, your pain and his pain are awfully similar.
You’re better than that, Miller. Reread:
Which of those tests does “nigger” pass? Hint: “all of the above” is an acceptable answer.
Daniel
In case there’s any confusion: hate speech may include pejoratives labeling people for beliefs or other traits out of their control. I mentioned beliefs in that paragraphs because I wanted to distinguish my usage.
Daniel
Nigger IS worse than fundie. It is also worse than faggot. There is not a word with more murder, mayhem, and downright oppression in it than nigger. It is on a level all its own. But there is a continuum falling off from that, and the line has to be drawn at some arbitrary place. The decision here at SDMB has been to draw it somewhere between towel head (for Muslim) and fundie (for Fundamentalist Christian). It is quite possible that the powers that be might have extended the line to fundie if they had had friends or family who were fundamentalists who did not fit the stereotype of rabid hatemongers.
Is there any reason why people in foreign countries should be less important or less significant than Americans? For what it might be worth to you, the beatings, tortures, murders, and imprisonments did not stop in 2003. That was just the latest year for which I could find compiled numbers with a quick Google search.
It’s also quite possible that the powers that be realized that (and this has been repeated over and over again) their fundamentalist relatives have never had any reason to associate the epithet “fundie”, even if it is every bit as nasty as some claim it is (which I think is open for debate), with the sudden and daily fear of imminent violence.
So if you rate the likelihood of a typical gay poster on the SDMB (who probably lives in the US, as most dopers do) being randomly killed some day by someone calling him a faggot, the likelihood of a typical black SDMBer being killed by someone calling him a nigger, the likelihood of a typical Muslim SDMBer being killed by someone calling him a towel head, and the likelihood of a typical fundamentalist xtian SDMBer (or, for that matter, your sister) being killed by someone calling him or her a fundie, you’ll find that the first three are small but nonzero, and the fourth one is incredibly miniscule.
Do you either (a) disagree with that claim, or (b) not see how it could be relevant to defining hate speech?
There are two important differences here:
(1) We’re defining hate speech for the SDMB community. Therefore, what is relevant is the experiences of members of the SDMB community. When a significant minority of SDMB posters are from China, then the oppression of Christians in China will be relevant for these purposes
(2) We’re discussing specific words, and the weight that they carry. The reason “nigger” is hate speech is because people have said that specific word while committing race-based violence. The actual word is important, for purposes of hate-speech-definition. How many of the many examples of anti-Christian violence that you’ve so assiduously dug up involve the victims being taunted with that specific word?
Speaking of repeating over and over, I have said plainly — including in the post to which you are responding — that there is a continuum of these slurs beginning with nigger and working down. So you know very well the answer to your (a). With respect to (b), I have also said repeatedly that so-called hate speech has yet to be defined. How therefore can you ask me whether it is “relevant to defining hate speech”? I have already suggested how I think so-called hate speech should be defined. Search on “pej”.
Were you aware that the word “nigger” isn’t even allowed at Stormfront? Let me repeat that — it isn’t even allowed at a White Supremacist message board. You will not turn over a rock and find a person who doesn’t know the sheer impact of that word. There’s no need to invent something called “hate speech” to disallow that word. It should be disallowed because it stabs at the heart of a man’s dignity. It labels him as worthless, and ripe for extermination like any other vermin. That’s why the word is bad. Hate is too kind a descriptor. But like I said, that word is in a class all its own. Other words must be taken in context. Otherwise, you have the gaffe we had the other day when Cajun Man shut down a thread because, while skimming the post, he saw the word “faggot”. To his credit, he re-opened it after people explained to him that the OP was defending gays. It isn’t the word; it’s the context. If you can find, oh I don’t know, 10 posts where the word “fundie” is not used as a pejorative, I’ll stand down. (Not including clinical discussions like this, or usage of the word in an illustrative context, as in “I resent that. My mother is a ‘fundie’, and she is nothing like you describe”.) Meanwhile, your argument that because we don’t have a lot of Chinese people posting we shouldn’t care about fundie is ridiculous. Who knows how many lurkers there are? And besides, we’re not getting a chance to reach out to fundamentalists who just might — like my sister — be willing to go back to their congregations and say, “Hey, they’re no worse sinners than we are.” The insistence that fundie be a standard word to be used at will to bash people of faith (or the kind of faith you don’t like) is Neanderthal in its conception.
I think fundamentalism is to society what virus is to body. For me “fundamentalist” is simply an accurate term for someone with deplorable habits, “fundie” being a simple shorthand. Some of us, I suppose, are ostensibly bigots, since we are seen as lacking the “proper” regard for religious practice, especially that which is informed by scriptural literalism. “Hate speech” is the default practice, under such conditions, depending on one’s attitude, I suppose. Fundies who openly proclaim “God hates Fags” feel equally inconvenienced, so I suppose we’re all in good company.
You are the one claiming that the definition being used by the admins, which puts “faggot” on one side of the line and “fundie” on the other side of the line, is arbitrary. I’m suggesting a metric by which “faggot” and “nigger” are fairly close together (in fact, “faggot” maybe WORSE than “nigger” by that metric right now… I don’t know what the average American gay man’s likelihood is of encountering violent gay-bashing, but it may well be greater than the average American black man’s likelihood of encountering violent racism), and fundie isn’t even in the same vicinity.
Now, I have no idea if the admins’ thinking is in any way related to that type of argument, nor can I prove that that is the “correct” definition of hate speech, but it certainly seems like a reasonable one to me, is the one Excalibre was proposing way back in the OP, and is one which seems to clearly differentiate “nigger” and “faggot” from “fundie”.
Wait a tick… now you’re saying that “hate speech” shouldn’t be allowed, but only in really extreme cases, which you limit solely to “nigger”? Or is that not what you’re saying?
How many Chinese Christians are currently being threatened with violence, and are having the word “fundie” hatefully thrown at them during that potential violence? Why do you keep avoiding addressing this aspect of the issue?
When you show me photos of tortured and murdered Chinese Christians with the word “Fundie” spray painted on their bodies as a warning to other Chinese Christians, then we can talk.
What on earth are you talking about?
(a) At no point have I said that “fundie” was not usually used as a pejorative
(b) What on earth does that have to do with it being a “standard word”?
(c) What does it have to do with hate speech, unless either you or I or the admins are defining hate speech as “any pejorative term”. Granted, other people may or may not be doing such a thing, but I myself am definitely not, and as you claim that you have no definition of it, and the admins’ definition is arbitrary, it doesn’t sound like either you or they are either.
To repeat myself once again from the top:
(1) Let’s propose a definition of hate speech in which a word is hate speech if it is frequently associated with life-threatening violence towards members of a specific group among whom there are, or are likely to be, meaningful numbers of dopers
(1a) I’m aware that this definition is not even close to cut and dried
(2) I claim that there would be some definite value in banning speech of that type, in that it would make the board a less hostile environment for members of those groups in a much more profound way than just some “everyone has a right to never be offended” happy-happy hand-holding fashion
(3) I claim that under that definition, “nigger” and “faggot” are inarguably hate speech, and “fundie” inarguably isn’t
(3a) I note that, in those three examples at least, this proposed definition corresponds nicely with SDMB admin decisions
I constantly fail to see how fundie is any more pejorative than fundamentalist. Or for that matter how homo is any more perjorative than homosexual. All four words seem to me to be usable in both rude and non-rude ways, and as such none seem to be hate speech in there own right.
Yep. I don’t think there’s a single word in English with the same weight as “nigger”, though “cunt” comes pretty close. I don’t think any slur besides those has anywhere near the weight.
Dammit, sometimes arguing with you is like nailing Jell-o to a wall. First, the incidence of violence against the group in question is not up for debate here, as far as I know, and I’m aware that Christians have suffered and died for their beliefs (and seriously, I really think the “who’s the bigger victim” game is ugly.) The question is whether the word “fundie” is connected to violence against Christians the way the word “nigger” is to violence against blacks, or “faggot” to violence against gay men (I’m not familiar with any slurs quite as vicious against other queer people, though I’m sure some exist.)
Christians have suffered. “Fundie” is a pejorative. The thing is that the two facts aren’t connected. Have fundamentalist Christians suffered disproportionately compared to other Christians? Have you ever smelled the beer on someone’s breath as he corners you (with his buddies ready to back him up) and calls you a “fucking fundie”, and wondered if you were going to give the shit kicked out of you, or worse?
Have any of the Christians on the board been persecuted that way? Have you ever been the target of violence for your faith, Liberal? Do you have any cause to believe you will be? Do you know any Christians who’ve been killed for their beliefs? The thing that makes “faggot” hard to deal with is that, for gay people, the violence seems more immediate because virtually all of us have experienced it, or been threatened with it, or known close friends who’ve suffered it. I don’t think many of the Christians on the SDMB can make that claim at all, and I think worldwide the number of Christians who’ve truly experienced what minority groups face is a small fraction.
Why is it a continuum? No one’s argued that “fundie” is pejorative. But the difference between a pejorative and a word used as a violent tool of oppression is not quantitative - it’s qualitative. There is a non-zero risk of violence against me when I hear the word “faggot”; there is zero risk of violence against your sister when she hears the word “fundie”. That doesn’t make it okay to call her that, but it means calling her that is something far different from hate speech.
I agree. And you’ve really made me reconsider my own use of words; I now dread to do a user search to see if I’ve used it, because while it’s not one of my favorite words, I probably have.
But that doesn’t make it hate speech.
Do you realize that that’s pretty damn close to what the word “faggot” says? I agree that “nigger” is a word that is a greater weapon than “faggot”, and the number of black people who’ve suffered is probably several orders of magnitude greater than the number of gays. But the word “faggot” is the same kind of weapon - it’s one that reminds you that you’re not wanted, that you’re not a person, and that you’re not safe. And I don’t think it’s right to trivialize the suffering of faggots everywhere by claiming that “faggot” and “fundie” are analogous.
You ain’t helping your cause any by comparing people like Lib’s sister, or my dear friends Summer or Angela, or my east coast relatives, to the Fred Phelps crowd. That’s a really fucking shitty thing to do, Loopydude.
It’s probably true that “fundie” and “homo” are more frequently used in a pejorative context than their long forms, if only because rational discussion generally favors whole words rather than nicknames. But yeah, I don’t necessarily see “homo” as a pejorative at all. I’ve certainly used it myself and didn’t mean any harm, and the fellow homos I was describing with it didn’t seem upset by it.
What cause would that be, and what do relationships have to do with it? Hey, my Mom’s brother is a quintessential fundamentalist who is off in the Middle East converting Arabs even as we speak, if he hasn’t gotten himself killed yet. Some folks admire him. I don’t. He’s still my uncle and I still like him. He still likes me though he knows I think he’s diseased. I guess I’ll feel shitty as soon as somebody has cause to call me an opressor. Otherwise I’m entitled to my oppinion, fuck you very much.
I just want to point out that I agree with that. (To a great extent.) But I am not the one who connected the two. It was suggested to me that hate words are identified by being precursors to violence, and that Christians, and fundamentalists in particular, are not presently suffering from violence. All I wanted to clear up was the false notion that is apparently out there that Christians walk the world wearing signs reading “Civis Romanus sum”, protected from oppression by their great power and numbers. That is not the case.
So, something is disqualified from being hate-speech so long as it’s aimed at people you actually do hate?
I’d say hate speech is associated with demonstrable oppression, which should be obvious even to an unregenerate sophist such as yourself. Otherwise it’s over-the-top bitching about sticks and stones. And even though my uncle is crackers and wants to promulgate some rather heinous misconceptions, I can’t bring myself to hate the guy, which is how I feel about most fundamentalists.
Liberal, you’re just pathetic. This is the last time I dignify such inanity with a response. Have a great life.
I reckon that promulgation of some rather heinous misconceptions is as promulgation of some rather heinous misconceptions does.
Nice job of totally failing (for the umpteenth consecutive time) to actually respond to any of the meat of what Excalibre or I just posted, Lib.
I don’t get it. How many times does one get to be a “jerk” before some mod does something about it? Is there some special club I can join that gives me immunity from the rules?