Yes, I know there is a thread in the Pit that I have not even bothered to post in and one in IMHO that I did. But my comment/question is about rules so belongs here.
We have a poster who uses the word “wypipo” as follows in reference to other posters:
Its intent is to provoke a response to that implication.
Quite a few posters opine that they would not be insulted to be called that, to be called a big, stupid, over-privileged, racist baby, and they are free to not be. I’ve admitted in the IMHO thread that it really only evokes a roll-eyes from me and a not bothering to engage with the poster further as not worth my time.
But should a word used with the intent of insulting other posters as racists be given a pass in non-Pit threads?
No. It is a deliberately abusive term, the equivalent of n****r, and should be treated as such. If you want to refer to white people, you refer to them as white people.
I note that the poster in question got a Warning in that thread. So I assumed the question is already answered: don’t use an insulting term against posters on this board.
Not sure your assumption is valid. The first time using it aimed at other posters got a pass and only its use in an otherwise insulting another poster series of posts (including calling the poster bwana and baas) was there moderation of the poster.
I’d prefer explicit confirmation rather than an assumption.
The above was to BigT. To this … okay, it hits annoyance. Gratuitous insults, even ineffective ones, derail potential conversations in non-Pit threads. I am annoyed that an intent to call other posters racist outside the Pit is being given a bye.
But no it is not a serious level insult to me. There are “fighting words” insults; this one aint on or even near the list. Use of “the n-word” as an insult would OTOH be at the top of the list.
Agree with Hilarity N. Suze, not equivalents. Not even close.
That’s pretty much right. Why would I care about a slur being used against me, a slur that makes fun of me for being in a group of relative power and privilege? Why would I care about that any more than I’d care about a three-year-old’s punch?
Except sometimes I would care about the three-year-old’s punch: if I were trying to have a civil conversation about politics and my nephew kept coming up and smacking me, I’d be irritated. And if the person I was talking with insisted on punctuating their arguments with ineffectual little punches, I’d not be interested in continuing the conversation.
It’s a small deal, and I don’t think it’s worth a warning for, much less worth the histrionics of saying O NOES IT’S AS BAD AS THE N-WORD or whatthefuckever. But it does come across as a little bit edgelord and a lot weaksauce. Folks fine with my having that impression are good to go, but if you’re wanting to be taken seriously, it’s one of the terms (like god-botherers and hand-stabbers and Democraps and Repuglicans and Bernie Bros and Killary and Drumpf and so on and so on) that’s worth avoiding.
That ship sailed when TPTB decided calling racists “racists” was verboten outside the Pit, but politely-worded or pseudoscientific racist insults were A-OK. All conversation about race here is patently farcical because of that.