Great questions, and I don’t know the answer. I do think I have a slightly better understanding on how hard it is to be a moderator.
I imagine the answer is case by case. It depends on context for sure, and even though I just reduced it to a simple formula, there’s probably a component that’s more along the lines of a feeling.
Got it. We’re good and I appreciate where you are coming from. I’d disagree and say it’s further back on that spectrum.
Those are both examples where people don’t seem to think of the origins. Ass is more commonly used for a butt or a person who is as rude as a butt, and “shit” is more often used without scatological reference.
Also, “jackass” seems to be just slightly on the “cutesy” side. It seems to considered a mild insult. A jackass is ornery and stubborn, not horrible.
“Piece of shit” is pretty unambiguously scatological, IMO. And while I agree that “jackass” is relatively minor as insults go, that’s sort of the point of the question: what’s the rubric for which animal-based insults are acceptable, and which are should be considered borderline hate speech?
Seems mostly to be based on how gross the animal in question is.
Has any poster done that here?
I think we are concerned here in keeping this board clean. Not in keeping the world clean.
Exactly what I just asked.
That is what I do.
I do not like the term MAGAts, but I am not sure if it should be modded.
To be honest, I find the entire idea of “dehumanizing” based on a nickname to be nonsensical.
We use nonhuman nicknames for people (either as individuals or as groups) routinely. And most of the time there is no harm.
That guy was being a weasel or a worm. He’s a sly fox. She was an odd duck. And so on.
The only time when it goes beyond a routine term, as is always the case with these terms, is when there is a lot of awful baggage or other history behind it that makes it horrible.
MAGAt is a still somewhat obscure neologism and has no extra meaning past what it is; a derogatory name for die-hard Trump supporters.
I’m not even a huge fan of the word, but I think efforts to label it “dehumanizing” are absurd.
Maggots perform a useful function and aren’t motivate by malice so no, that comparison is unfair to the maggots.
Not that I use the term “MAGAts”, it’s kind of juvenile. I just call them Nazis, or evil. Hostis humani generis or “omnimalignant fanatics” if I feel like being dramatic.
Most of those examples you gave have a connotation to them, or else they would be useless as nicknames. When someone is called a ‘worm’, something specific (and usually derogatory or negative in some way) is meant by that word, otherwise it would just be a meaningless utterance.
At some point, someone (or several people simultaneously) noticed the similarity in sound between ‘MAGA’ and ‘maggot’, and decided to use MAGAt as a term denoting the former, but implying something about the latter. There was a reason for this choice; there must have been - it’s just cause and effect. It may not have been a particularly ill-natured reason or choice, but the choice must have some reason behind it, or else it’s a completely random thing, which would be really weird.
Calling someone a ‘worm’ or a ‘maggot’ is dehumanising - literally, it’s equating them, in some way, to something that is widely considered less than human. There is a gradient of intensity to this from incredibly casual to exceptionally hostile (and I think the MAGAt thing is probably near the casual end for most people using the term), but the things are, I believe, on the same spectrum. I don’t think anyone has argued that all things on this spectrum are equal in value.
No, that’s exactly what is being argued here. Exactly. Because it’s being argued that any kind of dehumanization is unacceptable, and therefore equally of value in the sense that any such term should never be used, which is why I’m saying such an argument is nonsense.
And the “gradient of intensity” that you refer to (which is well-put, by the way) is a factor in the baggage that I talked about which makes a difference between one term and another.
Well, certainly that’s not what I was arguing. I don’t think it’s what @Babale was arguing either, since we’ve got things like:
Which clearly acknowledges the possibility of nuance to the whole thing. So who is it that’s making it a binary argument?
For me anyway, MAGAt seemed to be conflation of MAGA and hat, and served as identifying as those that are such big supporters they wear those red baseball caps everywhere. Since I only ever saw it written, I never associated with any sound, at least not until reading this thread.
//i\\
You quoted one half of a binary option Babale offered. The quote in context was:
That’s the binary: “dehumanizing insults are bad and should never be used,” versus, “dehumanizing insults are bad, but are acceptable when used against a sufficiently vile target.” Neither position makes a distinction between different kinds of “dehumanizing” insult, and both implicitly place all “dehumanizing” insults as worse than all “non-dehumanizing” insults.
Please note that I was responding to this:
As far as i can tell, this is not exactly what is being argued.
I feel MAGAs is fine. (They picked their own hat)
MAGAts is on the same level of wrong as democrats.
Juvenile, obnoxious on a bad day.
IMHO To call it dehumanizing is absurd in a world where less privileged are called worse things.
If this is “dehumanizing”; we need stronger terms for what we used to call that.
I think Atamasama’s post describes this position reasonably accurately:
That’s not true. If you think there are different levels of dehumanization that are acceptable under different circumstances, go with B, not A. If you think dehumanization is not uniquely bad as far as insults go, go with B.
Not that I am much of a user of the term myself (outside of this thread, of course) but it seems to me that the Mods are o.k. with the term. When they change their minds, I will of course change my ways.
So, sounds like @Atamasama does not agree with A, therefore he shouldn’t say that dehumanizing language is uniquely bad and always unacceptable.
Sounds like @Atamasama agrees with B.
Thank you for the correction.
But to be clear, your position is A, right? All “dehumanizing” insults are bad and should be avoided?
It seems like you are assuming that my argument is that calling people MAGAts is evil and wrong.
No, that’s not my point. My point is that calling people MAGAts is dehumanizing, and if you want to do that, you need to own that, not disingenuously pretend that it’s not dehumanizing because they deserve it and you don’t mean it.
I think I would probably draw some distinctions along the lines you raised - we have to consider the social context for an insult like “jackass” which has become incredibly mild, or when you compare someone to an animal’s property rather than the animal itself; but yes, overall, I would say that dehumanizing insults are bad inherently in that they make it easier to “other” people and to do horrible things to them.
I think “vermin” related imagery, and I would certainly count “maggots” in that category, are especially problematic.
But yes, I’d answer A.