Gauss wrote:
Which goes to the whole point I was making in the first "I'm so offended by hate speach" thread...Words are not inherently good or bad...they are not inherently sexist racist or homophobic. The same words can be used in different ways with different intentions...because of this, banning these words as un-acceptable because certain people only want to apply their definition to them is an exercise in the fucking assinine...and automatically being offended without taking into consideration the intent of the speaker is childish reactionary bullshit.
I understand where you are coming from, and from a different angle, I even approve.
I loathe, despise, hate, etc., etc., the movement searching for the "gender neutral pronoun". People who want to use shi, hie, hir, syr, etc., etc., can kiss my snobbish, injun ass.
English HAS a gender-neutral pronoun; that pronoun is "he". In some languages, the gender-neutral pronoun is directly translated to "she". (Some American Indian languages follow that rule) At any rate, the language itself, having evolved over many millenniums, is not in and of itself sexist or non-sexist.
Okay, that rant aside, I still do not use the words "gay", "nigger", "cracker", "spic", "gook", etc., etc. to describe people, places, or things that I find less than ideal, simply BECAUSE of the common-use connotations associated with these words. Mainly because I do not wish to waste too much of my day-to-day time, which is in short supply, attempting to explain to people how I do not intend those words in a prejudiced way...and secondly because too many asshat twatwaffles DO use those words in a prejudiced way and I don't want to be associated with them.
( I *will* use "injun", "blanket-ass", "redskin", "savage", and "heathen" to describe myself because 1) I am. 2) I have earned the right, through prejudiced and bigotry, to call myself any damn thing I please.)
If we are going to go with the "common-usage" argument, such words have been used as personal, derogatory insults for far longer than they have been used to denote something was "lame", and therefore those of us not up on the latest groove in language and slang cannot be expected to understand that the speaker "only wants to apply
their definition" to those words, and really doesn't mean anything bigoted.
Then again, such things may be lost upon a
wasicu. Opps, I meant that term to mean "white"; not "greedy, selfish asshole who always steals the best for himself", even if it HAS meant the latter for the last 250 years.
"There is a time and a place for ruthlessness. You and I and many others on this board were trained by the government to kill, maim and terrorize people and destroy their property. However, we must always keep in mind that the only appropriate time to do so is when it will benefit multi-national corporations."--Yogi Kuddha