[The E]

The dictionary agrees that the word has multiple meanings, and I am not disputing that.

But.

In the context of a discussion about sexual assault, there is one meaning that stands out above all others, and it's not "mean woman".
I think you're still somewhat missing the point here. It's not about you or Apollo being wrong in your use of language, it's about inconsiderate, unreflected use of language. By your choice of words, you are conveying meaning, and in cases like this, it may not be the meaning you wish to convey. The internet makes it easy to just shrug and say "Well, I don't care how you interpret what I am saying", which is something that I feel should not happen. Language is far too potent a weapon to play fast and loose with it.

[NGTM-1R]

In the context of a discussion about sexual assault, there is one meaning that stands out above all others, and it's not "mean woman".

Yeah, the one about justified complaining.

That's not even a joke on my part, though it'd work as one (thanks topic). I don't know, maybe I don't watch enough prison-related television or something, but outside a specific form of sexual assault I don't think that's the interpretation most people will come up with.

[Lorric]

The biggest problem here Battuta, and I've seen you do this before with me, is you can't get someone to buy what you're selling if you start out by sticking them on the defensive. You have to make people want to do what you want them to do, and you can't do that if you start out by making them feel uncomfortable/under attack.

What do you think has more chance of working, starting out with "c'mon son" or "Apollo, please listen to me, I'm not having a go at you, but..."

Can't stick around, have to go again!

[karajorma]

In the context of a discussion about sexual assault, there is one meaning that stands out above all others, and it's not "mean woman".

I'm going to have to completely disagree with you there and say that for most people who haven't had their conscience raised (and even quite a few who have), that's exactly the meaning people will take from it.  If anything this discussion is making that issue worse by trying to claim that other meanings should spring to mind faster.

It's pretty obvious from the context that Apollo was simply using it as the female equivalent of bastard. You're basically doing the equivalent of saying that had it been a man, and the subject had been about single mothers, most people would have thought he was saying "Fire this person whose mother and father weren't married when he was born".

[The E]

You're right. I didn't think about the matter enough to formulate my response in a way that worked well.

[Phantom Hoover]

for ****'s sake i tell you people to leave off on the analogies and what do you all do

[deathfun]

Anyone notice how Moderators and Admins have been at eachother these past few discussion wise? I've never seen it to such an extent

I was going to say stuff about context, but that was already covered

As for analogies, what's wrong with analogies? They're like poetic metaphors without the poetic part!

[Apollo]

Objectively those things are both true, but they are not a good reason to respond to a racist black author by calling him a nigger. Neither a racist white nor a racist black person has earned racism. They've earned scorn and disgust for their racist attitudes. This is both ethically obvious and can be solidly argued through game theory.

Additionally, I suspect you may have missed some part of 'my entire post', which contained a little more than that 

By being racist they have earned racist treatment of the same level. Anyway, which is the greater offense: calling a black man a nigger or laughing at a white man who was almost lynched?

I meant your "false equivalency" post, not the one you quoted or the one that came before.

In the context of a discussion about sexual assault, there is one meaning that stands out above all others, and it's not "mean woman".

I'm going to have to completely disagree with you there and say that for most people who haven't had their conscience raised (and even quite a few who have), that's exactly the meaning people will take from it.  If anything this discussion is making that issue worse by trying to claim that other meanings should spring to mind faster.

It's pretty obvious from the context that Apollo was simply using it as the female equivalent of bastard. You're basically doing the equivalent of saying that had it been a man, and the subject had been about single mothers, most people would have thought he was saying "Fire this person whose mother and father weren't married when he was born".

I think that's an important point. In a certain sense, treating that word as if it's always a horrible sexist slur has the effect of making it more offensive than it already is.

what the **** is wrong with some of you people

can we just agree that '*****' is an utterly, utterly ****ing pathetic excuse for an insult, and that if you use it you should have a giant, flaming chainsaw dildo rammed up your ass

okay

It doesn't appear so.

The difference is that a) that person's family member had nothing to do with yours getting killed, and b) that's a far more extreme application of eye-for-an-eye morality. A rapist deserves to be raped and a murderer deserves to be murdered, but those acts are so horrible that no human can be allowed to perform them, even in retribution.

On the other hand, that type of morality works fine for lower-level things like insults and fistfights.

No, that type of morality does not work for "lower-level things". By lowering yourself to their level, you make yourself no better than they are.

It also prevents the situation from escalating

The fact that you didn't start it inherently grants you some moral superiority.

EDIT: Another thing: if I call a mean woman a *****, I'm trying to offend her, and I don't particularly care why shy takes offense to it.

[Apollo]

The thing about white men not being able to jump as high when reminded of their race is interesting, though. Could you post a link to that study?

[karajorma]

By being racist they have earned racist treatment of the same level. Anyway, which is the greater offense: calling a black man a nigger or laughing at a white man who was almost lynched?

But by being racist you thereby insult all black people including those who had nothing to do with the lynching. So you fail on that level. If you use ***** to simply be the female equivalent to bastard, you're not deliberately using it in that way. If you're using it in the sexual connotation though, you are. In which case you are completely in the wrong because you've chosen to insult 50% of the planet for the actions of one stupid, ignorant person just because that person happened to be a woman.

[Luis Dias]

And I understand that reaction. It probably feels like hypervigilance, like policing, like cultural hypochondria. But once you've started to see the patterns of language and behavior that define a lot of our culture (and for me, it didn't come from reading feminist blogs or reading feminist books; it was a barrage of laboratory data and grim, grim experiments that overturned the idea that we really understand our own attitudes), a lot of stuff that once seemed ridiculous starts to become clear.

Too much nitpicking really does sound precisely like the over the top thought policing.

You know a lot of this stuff. So you should also know that word meanings also change. What if "*****" changes from such a "bad word" (can't believe it has been compared with nigger but ok) to a common insult like "****" and whatnot? Wouldn't that be a positive? My questionings here are not really against your criticism, which seem to be correct at first glance, but against the priorities here.

The meanings that individuals assign to a word are in many ways irrelevant. What's important is the network of exposure-driven semantic associations that the word can trigger. These networks operate in neural systems which are not directly regulated by what we think of as the conscious mind, and they manifest in behavioral patterns that actively defy the egalitarian goals and norms most of us subscribe to. These meanings - and the behaviors they trigger - are taught by cultural exposure, without consent or endorsement; they're statistical, frequency-driven aggregates of the messages floating around us.

That is really cool, but you see it's a double edge sword: while you can be correct in your worries here about the word "*****", you also assume this process is completely out of control. So don't try to control it. Let it flow. Too much emphasis on political correctness evolves the environment to a ****ty etiquette fest that will only dissuade people from even entering any debate, let alone be sympathetic to your agenda.

This is why we can't decide what a word means: most of the meaning is assigned by the cultural consensus, received by neural systems we can't easily regulate, and expressed through channels that we're largely unaware of but which turn out to be surprisingly consequential. It's a hell of a thing.

Agree and I can see the point of calling her a ***** and so on, but really come on.

[Lorric]

Yeah, I've got to catch you there Apollo, by being racist, you're saying being that race is a bad thing, not that person is a bad person. Keep the insults directed at the person you're trying to insult and that person only. A racist comment, anyone of that race that hears it will be offended, even if it's not directed at them.

[Apollo]

By being racist they have earned racist treatment of the same level. Anyway, which is the greater offense: calling a black man a nigger or laughing at a white man who was almost lynched?

But by being racist you thereby insult all black people including those who had nothing to do with the lynching. So you fail on that level. If you use ***** to simply be the female equivalent to bastard, you're not deliberately using it in that way. If you're using it in the sexual connotation though, you are. In which case you are completely in the wrong because you've chosen to insult 50% of the planet for the actions of one stupid, ignorant person just because that person happened to be a woman.

Perhaps you're right. I hadn't thought it about too much.

[StarSlayer]

By being racist they have earned racist treatment of the same level. Anyway, which is the greater offense: calling a black man a nigger or laughing at a white man who was almost lynched?

But by being racist you thereby insult all black people including those who had nothing to do with the lynching. So you fail on that level. If you use ***** to simply be the female equivalent to bastard, you're not deliberately using it in that way. If you're using it in the sexual connotation though, you are. In which case you are completely in the wrong because you've chosen to insult 50% of the planet for the actions of one stupid, ignorant person just because that person happened to be a woman.

I'm not sure that just because you intended to insult this particular "*****" right here it is any better than if you intend to insult this particular "nigger."   In both cases your still using a word that applies to a broad swathe of populace.  Your intent doesn't automatically transmitt to all parties that might be in earshot.

As I've stated before, if you remove the words mentioned on this thread from the lexicon what the hell do you use?

Why do you need to insult her based on her gender anyway?  Why not call her an ignorant pile of excrement?  There are plenty of insults available to level on a target that are not gender specific.  In fact bastard, if I'm not mistaken, is any illegitimate child not just male.  I'd argue that insulting a person based on things they have no control over such as gender, orientation or ethnic background are probably things we should strive to get away from.  I'm not saying it possible but it's something I actively, and not always successfully, try to keep myself from doing. 

When someone does something stupid you should call em' out on being stupid, pulling in that they are male, female, white, black, tall or small is really unnecessary.

I'm not advocating thought police nor do I think is Batts, simply that if everybody was a little more aware of what they are saying we might choose better wording.

[Luis Dias]

You know StarSlayer, that comment of yours would be quite sensible and honest if it weren't that hilariously ironic signature of yours.

Yeah. Exactly.

Now do you see why Batts et al are going really over the top on this? I mean, sure, I'd also want the human race to be perfect and so on (or do I?), but aren't there better priorities? Is this really the thing that we should be discussing right now?

[StarSlayer]

You know StarSlayer, that comment of yours would be quite sensible and honest if it weren't that hilariously ironic signature of yours.

Yeah. Exactly.

Now do you see why Batts et al are going really over the top on this? I mean, sure, I'd also want the human race to be perfect and so on (or do I?), but aren't there better priorities? Is this really the thing that we should be discussing right now?

Sir Isaac Newton was part Rottweiler.

Actually he figured out gravity because he drooled a lot.

True facts.

edit -LD good point, I'll adjust it.  For posterity's sake my sig was the following quote from ME2 :

"Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a ***** in space"

[Luis Dias]

Nonsense. That quote has embebbed in it the patriarchal oppression so ingrained in our society. Only men could ever think otherwise, since their brains are clearly testosterone damaged women brains. You might think that such a phrase refers to some trivial dog sexual or family shenanigans, but it evidently refers Isaac as the end product of oppressed and raped prostitutes, and insult to injury, refers to such a prostitute as a "*****", as if it was her fault to begin with.

Look how your own misoginy is so deep inside your psyche that you even find it necessary to quote an insult (even if momentarily taken as a compliment) towards women in general against a man. Clearly you need Battuta's help in this. Go read the amazing piece he linked beforehand on how you should shame yourself into not quote such a white supremacistic obvious linguistic oppression.

And after confessing your sins towards the non-damaged gender, you'll have lots of work ahead of you, like for instance teach Dawkins how he is so insanely wrong at exposing Newton's Principia as a "rape manual".





(E: joking and satire aside, here's why feminism goes really off the rails with me. Just look at this statement by StarSlayer!!:

edit -LD good point, I'll adjust it.  For posterity's sake my sig was the following quote from ME2 :

"Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a ***** in space"

JFC, I COULDN'T MAKE THIS **** UP.

e2: fixed Dawkins' hilarious takedown of feminist shenanigans. Look it up.

[Flipside]

This very much seems to me to be an argument about content vs context to be honest.

[Lorric]

Poor Starslayer will be all confused now I think...

I'm glad he put the quote there for me to read though before he changed it. 

[redsniper]

So since it's not that big a deal, can I call everyone in the thread *****es? I mean if someone's bothered by it, it's actually their fault for not realizing I meant the "female dog" definition of the word, so it's just nonsensical instead of insulting.