Until and unless a gang of gay people chases and beats a straight person down the street to cries of Breeder! and Str8! (how would you yell the numeral?), and until and unless those terms are used to taunt small children in school struggling with their heterosexuality, I’m not going to get terribly upset about the horrible, horrible gay people insulting the poor beat-up-upon heterosexuals.
The safe-sex thing is getting a little tired. If Scott had restricted his commentary to just “be sure you’re practicing safer sex using a barrier method to prevent fluid exchange,” though, I’m not entirely sure he wouldn’t have gotten Pitted anyway.
Actually, I’ve always liked the word “breeder”. Probably this is partly due to the band, which I love. But you know, even though I never have, and am not likely to ever breed (even though I’m het), I accept the term. I’ve never had it used derogatorily towards me, and I’ve never heard it used derogatorily towards others.
It may be the case that there is a euphemism for straights used by some in the gay community that I would find offensive. Haven’t heard it yet (all together now…oh, brother!), though. And it’s hard to imagine what it’d be.
All in all, I’ve got to agree with Miller on this one.
Gee. I thought it was polite, and a gesture of respect to refrain from calling someone something, after they asked you to stop. Even if you thought their request was a bit silly, or you didn’t completely understand their reasons for being offended. But because they asked, you’d stop. Out of respect. Because, after all, it was a word that wasn’t mandatory for you to use, and even though you meant it as “kidding”, obviously some people weren’t taking it that way. So—hey, no problem. You can stop using it around them. Because they asked.
But I guess I was wrong. It’s only considered polite for some people to do this. For other people, well, they’re off the hook. They’re exempt. They get to decide what is and is not offensive for other people. So, when someone asks them to stop referring to them by a certain word (because they deem it personally offensive for whatever reason, even if some think that reason is silly), these exempt ones can roll their eyes and act as if the person making the request is being unreasonable—because, after all, who are they, to decide what is offensive to them? The NERVE of them to feel entitled to form such a personal opinion!
Scott Evil–stop hijacking people’s threads with the safe sex messages. The point has already been made, and you’re just being a jerk.
Hastur–stop being an instigator. Yes, being called “faggot” is more hurtful to a gay person than “breeder” is to a straight person (sorry, folks, but tis true), but the rule is, if people ask you to stop using a word, you stop using the word. How the hell can we claim to have the moral highground if we act like the jerks we rail at in the Pit?
Various hetero folk–Get it into your heads that you don’t get to claim injury because you get called “breeder.” A) It’s pretty darn mild as categorical epithets go, and B)nobody has ever ostracized you, hetero-bashed you, or thrown cans of beer at your head from passing cars because you were holding hands with someone of the opposite sex. You have the right to ask people to stop calling you names, but you do not have any basis for claiming you are discriminated against.
Now everybody play nice and don’t make me come in here again.
I fully agree with Scott’s assertion that we should be able to discuss gay sex without patronising reminders about the need for precautions. As he says, the gay community is probably more keenly aware of the safe sex imperative than any other section of the population. He is also right that the self-appointed safe sex crusaders don’t seem to feel the need to contribute to threads about straight sex, and that implies a double standard.
Having said that, his contribution to the linked thread was an equally pointless hijack. The OP may have referred to herself as a “slut” but, as was subsequently pointed out, she was talking about a monogamous three year relationship - hardly providing fodder for the “remember children, use a condom” brigade.
Still, it hardly merited a Pit thread and the rest is just ugly.
But when they are asked to not use such terms, do they have the right to get defensive and drum up comparisons between the treatments of different “groups” of people?
Because, really, I saw nobody throw a hissy-fit or temper tantrum over another’s use of the term “breeder”. However, I saw someone who was calmly asked not to use such a term react as if his mother had just been raped.
(italics mine)
Let’s talk about that rule for a minute.
Sorry, Gobear: I understand the spirit behind the rule, but as phrased, it’s a rule that leads to idiocy like that moron in um…D.C.(?) who got hysterical about the term “niggardly” (which historically, etc has nothing to do with blacks.) or an uncle of mine who’s (an idiot…ahem) convinced that the term “jewelry” is a slur against Jews. :rolleyes: The piece missing rom your rule is “reasonableness”. (I feel like John Adams in 1776 quibbiling about “unalienable” vs “inalienable”)
That said: I think that objections to the term breeder are reasonable. I find the term breeder obnoxious. It’s not the worst think I could be called (refer to “jewing someone down” and you’ll hear about it from me!). I’m not emotionally damaged by it, but if someone uses it to refer to me personally (a friend of a friend of mine did once…in my presence), it provokes a mental :rolleyes: (and in the case of the friend of the friend, a catagorization of “asshole”). It’s obvious the term is intended to offend, by likening straight people to cattle. Why use it unless the intent is to offend?
Frankly on the SDMB, I find str8 worse, because it’s the first sign of the dreaded “chatspeak”. I say, if we allow str8 to pass unnoticed, next we’ll be seeing messages like:
i luvd u from b4 i saw u bcuz u r gr8!
and from there? It’s only ONE! SMALL! STEP! to 133+5p33|<
Wow. I’ve never objected before to being called a “breeder,” but the attitude of the assheads in this thread is changing my mind. Because I’m part of a majority I’m not supposed to be offended? Or upset?
God, what an ASSHOLE attitude. Eat me raw. Twice. With a fork. I have been ostracized and looked at askance for holding hands with a man…I had the audacity to bring my husband to Pride Day here in Richmond a few years ago. “Well, that wasn’t the place for that.” Bullshit. I’m bisexual; I married a man. I thought the idea was that the lifestyle choices one made, if they didn’t hurt any unwilling participants, deserved support. Unless you’re straight-looking around a bunch of gays, I guess.
I don’t give a shit about the word “breeder,” really…nice to see how quickly y’all would call me names and throw things at me if you had public opinion on your side, though.
(italics mine)
Let’s talk about that rule for a minute.
Sorry, Gobear: I understand the spirit behind the rule, but as phrased, it’s a rule that leads to idiocy like that moron in um…D.C.(?) who got hysterical about the term “niggardly” (which historically, etc has nothing to do with blacks.) or an uncle of mine who’s (an idiot…ahem) convinced that the term “jewelry” is a slur against Jews. :rolleyes: The piece missing from your rule is “reasonableness”. (I feel like John Adams in 1776 quibbiling about “unalienable” vs “inalienable”)
That said: I think that objections to the term breeder are reasonable. I find the term breeder obnoxious. It’s not the worst think I could be called (refer to “jewing someone down” and you’ll hear about it from me!). I’m not emotionally damaged by it, but if someone uses it to refer to me personally (a friend of a friend of mine did once…in my presence), it provokes a mental :rolleyes: (and in the case of the friend of the friend, a catagorization of “asshole”). It’s obvious the term is intended to offend, by likening straight people to cattle. Why use it unless the intent is to offend?
Frankly on the SDMB, I find str8 worse, because it’s the first sign of the dreaded “chatspeak”. I say, if we allow str8 to pass unnoticed, next we’ll be seeing messages like:
i luvd u from b4 i saw u bcuz u r gr8!
and from there? It’s only ONE! SMALL! STEP! to 133+5p33|<
gobear, I completely agree with you. I get the feeling that the safe-sex hijacking point has been sufficiently made w/r/t scott evil. I agree that “faggot” is, generally speaking, a lot more hurtful to gay people than “breeder” is to straight people, primarily because of the power dynamics involved. And I agree that claiming deep moral offense over some jerk’s use of “breeder” is really pretty weak. In fact, if you look way back up at my original response on that point, you’ll see that it was quite mild: “I frankly prefer that you not belittle anyone’s sexuality.” Playing stupid after that point was made is more offensive, in my book, than the original offense.
matt, where on earth did you get the idea that somebody had to be persecuted before it was acceptable to object to an epithet used against them? What’s that, the “You can’t be offended because you don’t have it as bad as I do” principle? Good lord, man, decent manners ought to extend to everyone.
FWIW, I am not offended by the term “breeder”. However, I am very much offended by your ability and willingness to divide the world into “Us” and “Them”. (It’s OK to insult Them. It’s wrong to insult Us)
If you honestly think that attitude is helpful, then I sincerely hope you stay out of politics. The fewer people we have who think like that in any position of any government, the better.
But matt - I think the point that racinchikki was making was the simple one that everyone needs to be treated with respect. Yes, gays, lesbians, TG/TS persons are extremely more put upon and subjected to slurs, discrimination, hate, and attacks - relative to vast “straight” population. In at least a 95:5 ratio, if not much, much more than that. 9500:5?
But we cannot respond to slurs with slurs. Yes, they hurt, but to respond back with them is wrong. As hard as it may be, and I am not innocent of using them myself, we need to try and treat others as we ourselves want to be treated. We may not succeed at it, but it is a worthy goal to work for, n’est-ce pas?
racinchikki is correct - racial slurs are wrong, sexual slurs are wrong, religious slurs are wrong, and there is no moral relativism that, in my book, justifies it.
And Hastur? Your comments here are not being constructive. You have good and intelligent things to say on this subject, and I’ve seen you post them in the past - but responding to racinchikki et al with a casually thrown out “newsflash” or comments about coffee seems baffling. Surely you don’t think it’s right to use racial slurs in any context, regardless of the victim, right?
The findings in the recent study by the Centers for Disease Control would dispute your assertion. If sexually active gay men have more info than a straight woman on safe sex, they’re not using it. A study of 40,000 people in high-risk categories found that gay men were nine times more likely to become infected with HIV than any other group of people.
I fail to see what you’re on about in the other thread. As noted earlier, the second freaking follow-up post warned the OP about the dangers of practicing unprotected sex (and rightly so, since it wasn’t made clear in the OP if safe sex was being practiced). There’s not a double standard if it’s being applied to the straight and gay community equally. Unless you’re going to claim victimhood because it wasn’t the first follow-up post that provided the warning.
“Very upset”? Hardly. I pointed out its homophobic connotations; you started a new thread to question whether that were true or intended; reasonable discussion ensued, in which both sides presented their arguments; the discussion petered out around the time somebody posted the results of a google search that indicated it really is used as a homophobic slur by a whole lot of people. That about sum it up?
“Ignorance,” with “bigotry” as a significant subset of the larger category.
A little clarification for fuckwads who didn’t read what I posted.
All I said (after contributing to the thread about sex with the ex) was that it was interesting that a thread about a straight slut contained only one or two safe sex warnings.
I did NOT fucking issue a safe sex warning. It was simply an observation I made. Get it through your fucking heads.
And I have never hijacked a thread with a safe sex warning. Rather, it seems it’s always my fucking (no pun intended) threads that get hijacked. So fuck the hell off.
Well, I was assuming that “reasonableness” was understood. Although, I may be overestimating the capacity for reason of this crowd. I think any sensible person would discount the niggardly" and “jewelry” objections as just plain silly. We’re on shakier ground with “cocksucker” and “bitch,” and then we dive right into the Slough of Despond[sup]*[/sup] with “breeder” vs. “fag”–whose feelings are hurt more? I think that if a hetero person objects to being called a breeder, the classy thing to do is to apologize and then desist from using the word. If we, as gay people, cannot respect others, how on earth can we have the chutzpah to ask them to respect us? Doubtless, my POV is simpleminded, but it seems to me that respect and tolerance have to be extended equally, or not at all. This “I’m the aggrieved minority, so I can abuse you, but you cannot abuse me” attitude is utter stercor bovis.
[sup]*[/sup] I think I ought to get extra points for working in A) a John Bunyan allusion, B) Yiddish, and C)Latin in one post.
