A frequent question that arises is difference between profanity and slurs.
When asked the difference
G.I. explains
Such discussions always turn into slugfests as suggestions of how you can avoid discomfort to marginalized groups if you wish to, are often read as do it, or you are a bad person.
Which is unfortunate.
hopefully with the features of "see more" in comments , bumping up of posts, likes and notifications away, such a discussion can be attempted in a more civil manner here, with features such as hyperlinking and quoting , this is a much better place to mitigate flame wars, and preferred for any obviously controversial topics, to those who have already commented on the relevant topic on the group, quote yourself, i will start with my own response.
If words are empty without context ,there are no problems, but words are not empty without context, context decides what a word means,context shapes the word, so does our tone,our speed of speaking and on facebook , sometimes smileys and sometimes using capital letters.
It is true that we do not know the word means without knowing the context, but let us not use the word empty for this, use ambiguous, use incomplete but not empty.
And just so you know I have watched the video, i infact posted that video sometime back but in a different context.
Banning or avoiding certain words simply like fuck ,shit etc. seem stupid,but about bitch and fag, it makes sense to simply not use them and ask people for the same , and no-one is asking for a ban here.
Humbug was offensive because you could not question , now you can, now you can call a hoax a hoax.
About reclaiming, educating, again as i said this many times before the words that should be shunned and the words that should be reclaimed are not black and white but shades of grey ,there can be words that should be more reclaimed rather than shunned and vice-versa
So let us take some examples, nastik , the hindi equivalent but not equal of word atheist, nastik means anyone who does not believe in vedas now why is that offensive word? because one does not simply not believe in vedas when vedas are so divine, if you do , there are moral judgements against you, there are violent resistance against you, but this is not something you should be ashamed of , you should be proud of it, that even when world followed it as sheep ,you chose not to as long as there was any evidence, you call yourself nastik proudly , and the word becomes acceptable, though reclaimation is till on, we still like to wear t shirts, proud to be an atheist (atheist and nastik have similar histories,but now nastik means same as atheist) similar words are kafir ,infidel .Infidel and kafir were like death threats, but this should not be, so what do you do? you call yourself infidel,kafir ,godless,atheist proudly and the words become acceptable,also this stance becomes acceptable.
Gay has similar history, there is nothing wrong in being attracted to same sex, so one should not be ashamed for being gay, but people felt that it was unnatural ,that it was ridicule worthy, gay became synonymous to stupid or extremely emotional ,there was stereotyping, gays wear pink,cry a lot, are sexually desperate and are mostly fashion designers, reclaiming is on here, the same word should not mean two different things , one that you are made to feel guilt for and the other that is wrong (stupid) ,reclaiming is working, it always was worth reclaiming, and atleast in humanist circles it means what it should , a homosexual man, nothing more or less.
slut meant dirty/untidy /woman ,it soon started to mean sexually active woman , this transformation was easy , since sex is dirty ,it was offensive because women were not supposed to be sexually active or independant, but again this is not something you should be embarrased about , you should be proud of being sexually independent in a patriarchal society.
But there is a little difference in above two cases, you don't mind being unbeliever/veda denier but you would mind being called dirty and untidy, using the same word for dirty as well as sexually independant was wrong, but reclaiming worked and former meaning is now obsolete, again even if it was not, being called dirty is not that bad, there were a lot of questions about reclaiming of slut,but let us magnify the differences in reclaim worthy and shun-worthy words
Come bitch , bitch means both a female dog in heat, and a sexually independant woman, it also means professionally independent now, there has been a lot of reclaiming here, infact not even sexually independent , in 1400s it meant any woman who dates? now why the same word for a woman as well as a female dog? because a proper woman does not date, if she does , she was as good as a female dog,with no self control,no self esteem,no morals.
There has been a lot of reclaiming here, but this has not worked well, why because the connotations are hard to go
Ofcourse the word is used liberally now, like life is a bitch (which is not that bad ), but the problem is similar to , man that movie is so gay, why is it gay, why is it not badly directed or too cheezy, the problem is in using the same word for different meanings,
Reclaiming did work for some parts , but it also made the word easy to use anywhere, and this allows usage of a word that means both a sexually independant woman and a female dog (among other things due to reclaiming) , but reclaiming cannot be said to be successful till either of these two become obsolete.
Furthermore, this is not just a negative adjective, it is dehumanising,which makes this slur a class apart from others and highly shun-worthy as compared to others.
In same class(rather much worse IMO) is cunt, it reduces a human to an organ, it is sexual objectification, there is no way to go on reclaiming this.
reclaiming works when something that should not be considered bad is considered bad, in case of fag and cunt there is nothing to be proud of , what is there in being proud of in being a packet of sticks used to burn homosexuals or simply a sexual organ?
but ofcourse english changes, and fag is used differently now but this is >>not because of reclaiming<<, witches and heretics meant fags too, but now it is mostly homosexuals but ofcourse it also means ciggerette , but why use a such a word for cigarrette, why not simply say cigarette ?
A common attribute of slangs is that they can mean a lot of different things, they become slurs when one of this is a negative adjective and one a group of people with a common attribute that has nothing negative about it.
Another common argument is that ,
A similar argument is there is no use in making drug abuse illegal because people who are addict will manage to get drugs some way or the other.
When asked the difference
G.I. explains
Quote:Well, profanity is using words like "fuck", "damn", "shit", etc. They are considered impolite but aren't used as a stigmatizing term for any one particular social group (especially not an oppressed group).
Then there are words like slut, nigger, dyke, kike, bitch, whore, fag, beaner, chinky, tojo, spic, etc. These are words that are/were/will be specifically used to marginalized, dehumanize a group of people (usually historically people who have been oppressed violently, politically, economically).
The former set of words, while "dirty", don't target any said class of people and are "neutral" and don't carry a social stigma. They are also largely context free and any insult where they are employed are localized (i.e you aren't insulting a whole group of people unaffiliated with what is irritating you).
The second set of words otoh, imply that the group associated is what is wrong and hence when you insult someone as being associated with said group (nigger--blacks, kike-Jews, beaners--hispanic, tojo/chink--asians, slut/whore/bitch--female, fag-LGBTI, etc).
So when one says " "You work like a nigger" or "My work is such faggy shit" or "I've been kiked out of my money"--it is implying negative connotation towards these groups that has commonly been used against them .
(Niggers are lazy, bad work is bad like gays, Jews are money stealing manipulators, etc).
There's also a lot of accompanying research data that jokes and insults that are gendered, racialized, homophobic, etc create alienation of these sub-groups in social settings like work, school, peer groups, etc. This has been especially studied recently in detail wrt gender and homophobia. It has also been considered a causal issue in homophobic acts towards students and coworkers in facing hostile environments and increased hostile behavior.
Such discussions always turn into slugfests as suggestions of how you can avoid discomfort to marginalized groups if you wish to, are often read as do it, or you are a bad person.
Which is unfortunate.
hopefully with the features of "see more" in comments , bumping up of posts, likes and notifications away, such a discussion can be attempted in a more civil manner here, with features such as hyperlinking and quoting , this is a much better place to mitigate flame wars, and preferred for any obviously controversial topics, to those who have already commented on the relevant topic on the group, quote yourself, i will start with my own response.
If words are empty without context ,there are no problems, but words are not empty without context, context decides what a word means,context shapes the word, so does our tone,our speed of speaking and on facebook , sometimes smileys and sometimes using capital letters.
It is true that we do not know the word means without knowing the context, but let us not use the word empty for this, use ambiguous, use incomplete but not empty.
And just so you know I have watched the video, i infact posted that video sometime back but in a different context.
Banning or avoiding certain words simply like fuck ,shit etc. seem stupid,but about bitch and fag, it makes sense to simply not use them and ask people for the same , and no-one is asking for a ban here.
Humbug was offensive because you could not question , now you can, now you can call a hoax a hoax.
Quote:"Banning or even avoiding the usage of certain words is not the solution to such issues, education and reclamation of those words"Ok firstly if it is so, should we not be more interested in doing what we think is the solution rather than pointing out what is not ?
About reclaiming, educating, again as i said this many times before the words that should be shunned and the words that should be reclaimed are not black and white but shades of grey ,there can be words that should be more reclaimed rather than shunned and vice-versa
So let us take some examples, nastik , the hindi equivalent but not equal of word atheist, nastik means anyone who does not believe in vedas now why is that offensive word? because one does not simply not believe in vedas when vedas are so divine, if you do , there are moral judgements against you, there are violent resistance against you, but this is not something you should be ashamed of , you should be proud of it, that even when world followed it as sheep ,you chose not to as long as there was any evidence, you call yourself nastik proudly , and the word becomes acceptable, though reclaimation is till on, we still like to wear t shirts, proud to be an atheist (atheist and nastik have similar histories,but now nastik means same as atheist) similar words are kafir ,infidel .Infidel and kafir were like death threats, but this should not be, so what do you do? you call yourself infidel,kafir ,godless,atheist proudly and the words become acceptable,also this stance becomes acceptable.
Gay has similar history, there is nothing wrong in being attracted to same sex, so one should not be ashamed for being gay, but people felt that it was unnatural ,that it was ridicule worthy, gay became synonymous to stupid or extremely emotional ,there was stereotyping, gays wear pink,cry a lot, are sexually desperate and are mostly fashion designers, reclaiming is on here, the same word should not mean two different things , one that you are made to feel guilt for and the other that is wrong (stupid) ,reclaiming is working, it always was worth reclaiming, and atleast in humanist circles it means what it should , a homosexual man, nothing more or less.
slut meant dirty/untidy /woman ,it soon started to mean sexually active woman , this transformation was easy , since sex is dirty ,it was offensive because women were not supposed to be sexually active or independant, but again this is not something you should be embarrased about , you should be proud of being sexually independent in a patriarchal society.
But there is a little difference in above two cases, you don't mind being unbeliever/veda denier but you would mind being called dirty and untidy, using the same word for dirty as well as sexually independant was wrong, but reclaiming worked and former meaning is now obsolete, again even if it was not, being called dirty is not that bad, there were a lot of questions about reclaiming of slut,but let us magnify the differences in reclaim worthy and shun-worthy words
Come bitch , bitch means both a female dog in heat, and a sexually independant woman, it also means professionally independent now, there has been a lot of reclaiming here, infact not even sexually independent , in 1400s it meant any woman who dates? now why the same word for a woman as well as a female dog? because a proper woman does not date, if she does , she was as good as a female dog,with no self control,no self esteem,no morals.
There has been a lot of reclaiming here, but this has not worked well, why because the connotations are hard to go
Ofcourse the word is used liberally now, like life is a bitch (which is not that bad ), but the problem is similar to , man that movie is so gay, why is it gay, why is it not badly directed or too cheezy, the problem is in using the same word for different meanings,
Reclaiming did work for some parts , but it also made the word easy to use anywhere, and this allows usage of a word that means both a sexually independant woman and a female dog (among other things due to reclaiming) , but reclaiming cannot be said to be successful till either of these two become obsolete.
Furthermore, this is not just a negative adjective, it is dehumanising,which makes this slur a class apart from others and highly shun-worthy as compared to others.
In same class(rather much worse IMO) is cunt, it reduces a human to an organ, it is sexual objectification, there is no way to go on reclaiming this.
reclaiming works when something that should not be considered bad is considered bad, in case of fag and cunt there is nothing to be proud of , what is there in being proud of in being a packet of sticks used to burn homosexuals or simply a sexual organ?
but ofcourse english changes, and fag is used differently now but this is >>not because of reclaiming<<, witches and heretics meant fags too, but now it is mostly homosexuals but ofcourse it also means ciggerette , but why use a such a word for cigarrette, why not simply say cigarette ?
A common attribute of slangs is that they can mean a lot of different things, they become slurs when one of this is a negative adjective and one a group of people with a common attribute that has nothing negative about it.
Another common argument is that ,
Quote:asking people not to use certain slurs is useless because there will always be other words.This is the Perfect Solution Fallacy
A similar argument is there is no use in making drug abuse illegal because people who are addict will manage to get drugs some way or the other.
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