[Lorric]

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.

Ah, no-no-no. Because dog can be an insult too.

I hope no one directed that woman to HLP when they complained, to see the enlightened minds here show her the way. I shudder to think the reaction on seeing this thread...

[karajorma]

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.

Yes but the question is why does it apply to a broad swathe of the populace and wouldn't it be smarter to rob it of that power instead of fighting a near futile war to try to persuade people to stop using it? I'm pretty much of the opinion that the smartest thing to do would simply be for feminists to simply used the word ***** for men and bastard for women. A few years of that would quickly rob the word of any of it's power. Even if it did fail to remove its power, you'd have a drop in replacement for it now.

Or you can tilt at windmills trying to get the whole world to agree to do things your way.

Why do you need to insult her based on her gender anyway?

I'm not saying I need to insult her based on her gender. I'm pointing out that every single synonym for ***** is either male oriented or something which you're not supposed to use for the same reason as *****. This is where the comparison to the use of racial slurs fails. I can easily call an idiotic black man a wanker, arsehole, or bastard without any issue of race.

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.

But none with the sheer oomph of the kind I mentioned above.

[Luis Dias]

Love how this thread derailed quickly into a discussion of the linguistic oppression we unconscious and mentally depraved white supremacists are enforcing to the world.

[General Battuta]

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

Where has anyone proposed removing these words from the lexicon? (I doubt you'd particularly struggle to avoid using '*****' or 'nigger' in your day to day life.)

***** can also refer to a mean women. This definition is not inherently sexist and is at least as common as its other meanings. Some people still perceive it as sexist, but that is not the fault of the speaker.

But the word ***** [...] can never mean 'a mean woman'. Words can't be stripped of their historical force, and [...]

Dude, the ****ing dictionary would like a word with you. 

If you've read the thread you're already quite aware of why the dictionary is irrelevant to the argument.

And while I don't actually use the word '*****' to refer to women at all, the first thing that comes to my mind when hearing it is the generic 'mean woman' meaning, rather than what you think when you first hear it.  Which I think is the main problem.  There seems to be this thought process going around that 'one of us has to be completely wrong about this and whoever is wrong should be strongly ridiculed for being wrong and it sure as Hell isn't going to be me, so start the rude posting!', when the fact of the matter is that especially in this case both points of view have merit.

I have no trouble believing that this is the first thing that comes to your mind. Unfortunately, it is scientifically demonstrable that it isn't the only thing that comes to all of your mind, nor the minds of men and women nearby. And it turns out these other, unintended meanings have a powerful effect on behavior.

I have no interest in ridiculing anyone, as I've said explicitly several times in the thread.

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!

Your alleged problem would be easily defused with close reading of the thread, as I've said this exact thing many times.

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.

This was explicitly what I said to you in the second post on the topic, so I'm glad you're thinking about it now. With the important addendum that ***** is always a gendered, sexualized word, not the female equivalent of bastard. We have no say about this; you cannot decide to use it otherwise. It will always activate those semantic associations.

(Bastard was a pretty serious insult back in the day, when being a bastard was a huge threat to your life and social standing. That's no longer always the case today. Unfortunately, being a ***** is a threat to your physical safety and social standing.)

If we set aside the manufactured arguments about dictionaries and censorship (neither of which have anything in particular to do with the topic) I hope it's clear by now why this isn't an area where you can fight fire with fire.

[General Battuta]

Jesus Christ. Somebody fire this *****.

This is the wrong way to attack the problem, and an unfortunate product of the same system that drove this appalling article.

[General Battuta]

I'm honestly not surprised this discussion has gone the way it has. People seem to lash out at the idea of a hypervigilant feminist nanny state that raps them on the knuckles every time they say an Incorrect Word.

But we police ourselves constantly. There are things we don't say in all sorts of situations, by our own choice, because we've internalized attitudes and beliefs that guide our behavior. 'Free speech' has nothing to do with that. I like to believe that people in general have the power to consider how they speak and what effects it has.

I say '*****' all the time - son of a *****, that problem set was a *****, quit *****ing. I may even need to examine some of this usage. But what I'm arguing here is that you shouldn't invoke '*****' to fight a situation in which a man is being mocked for being turned into a *****. Sexual violence is clearly already active. Why invoke sexual violence to fight sexual violence?

[Lorric]

"alleged" problem, huh? You're awfully good at telling others how to behave, but not very good at taking a look at yourself.

[Luis Dias]

I'm honestly not surprised this discussion has gone the way it has. People seem to lash out at the idea of a hypervigilant feminist nanny state that raps them on the knuckles every time they say an Incorrect Word.

If you have any doubts at the existence of such a thing, just watch how easy for me it was to get StarSlayer change his signature. As if quoting one of the funniest ME2's jokes was a problem.

And that was my point. I acknowledged yours.

Why invoke sexual violence to fight sexual violence?

Bad taste, most probably, written fast and in jest. Uncomparable with a paid article written "with a straight face", and I'd guess, lots of ponderation. Did I mention she got money to write it?

[Lorric]

Jesus Christ. Somebody fire this *****.

This is the wrong way to attack the problem, and an unfortunate product of the same system that drove this appalling article.

Why do you keep changing this post? That's about the fourth time you've done it.

[General Battuta]

"alleged" problem, huh? You're awfully good at telling others how to behave, but not very good at taking a look at yourself.

Nope, I'm confident I've been extraordinarily polite in this thread. Earlier I said I'd repost this passage every post because people (like yourself) would lose sight of it, and I should have followed through a little better:

I feel like this is a really tough discussion to have because it's hard to say '***** is the wrong word here' and explain why (which is not a simple thing, and touches on a lot of cultural hot-button issues) without it seeming like censure. I don't blame anyone for using the word; we live in a culture with a deeply ****ed up gender structure and a whole lot of poison swirling around that structure. Nobody's immune, certainly not me. I'm not trying to say you're (for any value of 'you') a bad person. This isn't an accusation.

You'll need to read more closely if you want to participate in big threads like this.

I want to discuss the argument that came up earlier that people can 'earn' slurs through their own appalling behavior. I mentioned that you can take this apart with game theory, but more abstractly, I just want to point out why it doesn't work. The reason words like '*****' or 'kike' have power is because they target groups. They activate two sets of associations - prevailing cultural knowledge about how these groups are (servile, stupid, shrill, rapeable; numerous, disposable, treacherous, etc), and the targeted group's knowledge of the kind of threats they face if they overstep their place in the power structure.

When, say, a black man does something terrible, he can never earn a racial slur because - at least according to the definition some have proposed in this thread - the purpose of our condemnation is to target his terrible actions and his consequently terrible moral standing. Racial slurs can't do this effectively. They don't chain from the information we have about his moral standing. Rather, they indiscriminately activate all the group-specific information I delineated above. It's like running into Hitler and saying 'you're a MESS, Hitler - you just can't get it together!' The attempted condemnation is both orthogonal to the crime in question and salient to a separate and irrelevant domain.

Terrible people earn condemnation for being terrible people. Their group identity (black, woman, gay, whatever) is irrelevant to their terribleness. When we condemn them, we can't activate that identity without suggesting that we have somehow coupled it with 'terrible'.

[General Battuta]

Because it keeps getting deleted, which is odd, as that's against standing HLP policy.

It's possible someone's making the mistake of splitting the posts and sticking them in the other thread, which is quite peculiar all in all since the discussion belongs here - afaict the other thread was split out for some ridiculous derail about smilies. Whatever the case, it'd be a sad irony if this misstep here was left unflagged in an article about the need to flag a writer's awful misstep.

[redsniper]

I'd like to nominate "****lord" as a choice neutral insult. It's like, you're not just calling them a ****ty person, you're saying they're a LORD of ****ty people, they own at being ****ty.

[Lorric]

"You'll need to read more closely if you want to participate in big threads like this."

Oooh, here's problem number two! Your superiority complex! It is you who need to read better, my issue was with your very first post. All after is irrelevant. Speaking of superiority, I noticed in your first post, using of all words "son" like you're the parent scolding an impudent child.

I'd like to nominate "****lord" as a choice neutral insult. It's like, you're not just calling them a ****ty person, you're saying they're a LORD of ****ty people, they own at being ****ty.

ummmm... Lords and Ladies?

[General Battuta]

I've put a couple complaints in myself already. Hopefully someone picks this up and puts some real pressure on.

[General Battuta]

I understand your issue with my very first post. I don't think it's particularly salient, but luckily for you, you had an entire thread to watch me clarify it.

Since you've brought up the parent/child metaphor I'm happy to admit I felt the same way Apollo did when I was his age, and I can definitely empathize with being in that position looking back. I'm not uncomfortable with the knowledge that I understand this issue better than most people - I better, considering the amount of research invested in it in my field.

Let's focus on the discussion.

[Luis Dias]

"Fire the ****lord!"

Nah. Doesn't work.

Since you've brought up the parent/child metaphor I'm happy to admit I felt the same way Apollo did when I was his age, and I can definitely empathize with being in that position looking back.

I love how Tutta subtly trolls people into accepting their inferior status. Perhaps it's a testosterone driven abuse, I should know since I've been there too in some less gently times of my life. But let's focus on the discussion.

[General Battuta]

"Fire the ****lord!"

Nah. Doesn't work.

Totally does.

[StarSlayer]

"Depose the ****lord!"

better?

[Luis Dias]

Better!

[Lorric]

Because it keeps getting deleted, which is odd, as that's against standing HLP policy.

It's possible someone's making the mistake of splitting the posts and sticking them in the other thread, which is quite peculiar all in all since the discussion belongs here - afaict the other thread was split out for some ridiculous derail about smilies. Whatever the case, it'd be a sad irony if this misstep here was left unflagged in an article about the need to flag a writer's awful misstep.

It is the top post in the split thread. The original "c'mon son" post, that is, not this new one. That must be why it is being deleted.