Unsoil yourself, Jimmy. I’m just commenting that I find it amusing that some people are trying to conjure up actual outrage over something so silly.
Hey, I am just going with the spirit of the OP here and most of the OP’s defenders.
Enjoy, I’ll be hear all weak.
Sometimes I say the opposite of what I literally intend to convey, you see.
Who’s trying to “conjure up actual outrage,” anyway? People want to say pansy doesn’t mean what it does, I’ll point them towards a dictionary.
Hey, lady, as a black female, you’re ultimately responsible for all of this. I demand an apology!
Not about the same thing exactly, but I feel this well-done blog (not written by me) post sums up how I feel about your asinine statement here (warning: tldr): Intent! It’s Fucking Magic!
Also, I’m lulz-ing at the mostly heteronormative types in this thread that can’t see why, regardless of what Chessic Sense may or may not have meant, his words could have been chosen better.
But hey, what’s straight guy privilege good for if you can’t use it?
Oh my god, no!
Are you black?! I’m so sorry if I was rude to you!
See, because, in this thread, everybody’s saying that I’m being way too politically correct? And so… I said… because racism…
Yeah yeah yeah…telling it to the fucking judge. We don’t care what your INTENT was…you used the words you did…now you be judged and damned too.
I was in college and I really needed the money.
Well aside from the OP, and K_Gibbs making an entrance to take great offense, it is a bit ridiculous, if not outraged, to claim every time someone uses the word “pansy” they mean it to be homophobic or sexist. This reminds me of a thread I saw not too long ago wherein someone used the word “gypped” to mean ripped off. Someone came in, indignant as ever, claiming the term was offensive to gypsies. Fine, but most people don’t even know the origins of the term, so how can they be bigoted when using it? It’s not like “nigger rig” or something, where everyone knows what you’re talking about. When I hear the term “pansy” I just think of some loser wiener type person, the gender being irrelevant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called dames pansies, and have heard them referred to as such, with no thought of gayness. I thought this was true of most people, unless some of them actually think of this term to denote homosexuality, or better yet, run off to the dictionary to confirm what they’re hearing means exactly, literally what they think it means.
No, you apologize to me because somewhere in the world, someone played a mean and stupid joke on a handful of black people.
Damn right.
I promise this will be the last time I belabor the point, because at some point we’re just not making sense to each other, but I have not claimed that they mean it to be anything. How could I know that? It does nobody any good to argue about the speaker’s intent. How many people are going to come right out and say “fuck yeah, I’m talking about faggots/bitches/jews/blacks/the lefthanded; I mean to insult them?”
Analogy time. Even during Reconstruction, when the argument was essentially over whether blacks were human beings or not, most of the conservative population wouldn’t actually say they intended to be racist (and certainly not by our standards). They just said this is the way things are supposed to be – we’ve even got science to prove it. Some of them, I’m sure, never even considered another possibility. Some of them really just believed that hey, blacks are just inferior, no biggy, they’re still cool with me same as the other animals. But they were still being racist, weren’t they? Because of the effect of what they were saying and doing.
Eventually they figured out slavery wasn’t a great idea, and then later they decided de facto slavery was pretty shitty, too. And over time, the meeting point, that line where something was obviously racist shifted up and up. The whole time, previous generations were clinging to and trying to pass on what were rapidly becoming viewed as racist traditions. Not all of the people who picked up on the traditions were actually into the full racist component of them, but they picked them up because that’s how traditions work. But gradually, the more people examined them, the traditions died out. And we became a little less racist at each step.
And if I went to an anti-healthcare rally in full blackface this weekend, wearing a suit to look like one of Obama’s, and pounded a jungle drum and threw bananas around, obviously nobody would bother asking me if I meant to be racist. Because even if I was that one person out of a billion who was ignorant enough or insane enough to do something like that without feeling antipathy toward blacks in my heart, who fucking cares? I’m way behind the times on that kind of behavior. So clearly there’s a kind of always-shifting window when it comes to bigotry. Stuff that is acceptable now won’t be pretty soon, and stuff that used to be just isn’t anymore.
And obviously, right, there’s a spectrum of totally hateful to pretty unpleasant to just a little bit interesting, and the examples I’m using are very extreme ones and I don’t intend any kind of equivalence. I’m just saying that very slowly, as society figures out that it does a lot of fucked up things to itself, it doesn’t hurt to think about where something like “pansy” or “gyp” or “faggot” or “nigger-rig” came from. And lots of people don’t think about that. Not thinking about it doesn’t make them bigots, but it also won’t excuse the use of bigoted language forever. And pansy is a word, I think, that has its roots in an incontrovertibly sexist and homophobic tradition. So when somebody uses it, I don’t think it’s hypersensitive or out of order for somebody else to say, hey, you should think about why you used that word. This is the process.
If we ever get avatars on the SDMB this just has to be Jimmy Chitwoods.
Would it have been better if I said “it is a bit ridiculous, if not outraged, to claim every time someone uses the word “pansy” it is homophobic or sexist”? How far from a word’s origins do we have to before its origins have no bearing? If a word, at any point, has been offensive, can it never be part of harmless and inoffensive vernacular?
LOL.
My cousin had one of those. It turned him lame.
The difference is that I’m delivering a measured response. Causing a national hoopla over a PA gag is overreacting. Answering message board criticism with message board rebuttals is reacting in proportion.
OK. So I meant effeminate man. You don’t think I meant to apply every single attribute of an effeminate man to these whiny, bitchy black women, do you? I’m clearly applying the attributes of easily-hurt-feelings, weakness, etc, to these women. I’m not implying that they are actually men that act like women. That’s obvious, isn’t it?
And how is the stereotype of the gay man relevant? It’s like you think “If a person is gay, they are effeminate. He’s calling these people effeminate. Therefore, he’s calling them gay”. You don’t see the fallacythere? If X, then Y. Y. So X?
Also, you’re a whiny bitch.
:smack: Yes, it definitely does mean “gay”. It also definitely means things OTHER THAN gay. But that doesn’t mean you should take “either or both” definitions as the intended meaning. You should take the one that’s in common usage. The one that makes sense in context. The one that means “weak”.
Maybe that’s because “so many people” possess enough social intelligence to interpret “pansy” correctly. No one is calling for anti-gay violence or remarks. You’re making shit up. Drop the act, pansy.
Chosen better? You make it seem like I’m trying to avoid offending you. I chose my words just fine. The normal people knew what I meant and the social retards* got offended. Such is life.
What *exactly *do you think I mean by that, hmm?
Why do you hate the crippled?
Wait… is crippled offensive too?
Oh bullshit.
So, everytime a black person calls another one a nigger, they are a ragging racist? Every woman that calls another a bitch or a ho is a ragging sexist?
Personally, I think if I get a bunch of shit for using those words, they SHOULD too, but even old asshole me realizes that content and intent count for something.
Everything is offensive, you queer!
sniffle
:D:D
See, you fucked up a little bit there. Because yeah, they’re perpetuating bigotry, in my opinion. So my answer is, same as everything else, I don’t know if they are racist or sexist, but they should think about whether the language is.
And if we do get avatars, you guys can have this one.
In response to that I would ask: how far from the origins of pansy – effeminate or homosexual man – do you think the usage in this case – whiny bitch – really was? Is this really a situation where I have to pass judgment on a word that has at some point been offensive in some obscure way, and is now entirely innocuous? Or is this a case where the word as used matches almost entirely the bigoted usage, except the specific connotation is being disclaimed?
I’ll ask it again: how do you suppose the word “pansy” ended up being synonymous in all of your heads as a limp-wristed, whiny, ineffectual whiner? What’s the connection there, if it isn’t the one I’m suggesting? And what exactly do you think is the qualitative difference between you guys and your “pansy” and “retarded” and “lame” and my great-uncle and “nigger?” Because you act exactly like him in a conversation about your usages.