OnPoint: On Freedom of Speech
326 Responses
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I blame the malign influence of the PAS Women's XV who can swear to make a sailor blush, but still suggest you still think a little about gendered insults.
I do try really hard to stay away from gendered insults, and I reserve the c-word for when I am really angry.(despite, um, the cunt links story.) I even try (and mostly fail) not to use dick and cock. As insults.
My rule of thumb of offensiveness is not so much the word itself, but how I would feel if it ere directed at me. Which is why it always annoyed me that slut never made it into the BSA's top 20 most offensive words. (It is in the newest iteration (PDF link), but still lower down the list than I'd like.)
I feel like the C-Bomb, and cock, or cocksucker, lose something of what they mean when they're being used as an insult, but slut, whore, that kind of thing - that's real ladyhate.
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They're good, sharp, short, percussive words, with good hard consonants in them at the right place, like most good swearwords are. To a certain extent, what they refer to is incidental to their, um, 'mouth-feel', as it were.
So's "gay" -- but my BH's grandnephew (who is a sweetie pie and doesn't have a homophobic cell in his body) has been on the receiving end of *cough* a free, frank and one-sided reading of the riot act the last time he used that as a term of disapprobation within my hearing. If he drops the n-bomb, I'll just slap the little cracker upside the head until his ears ring like a cathedral bell.
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So's "gay" -- but my BH's grandnephew (who is a sweetie pie and doesn't have a homophobic cell in his body) has been on the receiving end of *cough* a free, frank and one-sided reading of the riot act the last time he used that as a term of disapprobation within my hearing.
I maintain a similar campaign with a swarm of 11 year old boys .. she's a hard row to plough.
I thought the usage of 'gay' in this way was quite a recent thing, but it gets bandied around in David Mitchell's novel Black Swan Green which is set in 1982 England. -
The use of the word "gay" as a new way of saying "tame" is happening everywhere. Gay is a great sounding word, passive, aggressive.
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That's why the kids love these words. They sound great, the mouthfeel....but not being gay I have no idea how much that would fuck a gay person off just hearing that word used negatively in the street.
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I'll just slap the little cracker upside the head until his ears ring like a cathedral bell.
At a glance, this sentence seems far more borderline wrt NZ FOS limitations than any of the expletives being bandied about. God blessed you Craig.
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That's why the kids love these words. They sound great, the mouthfeel....but not being gay I have no idea how much that would fuck a gay person off just hearing that word used negatively in the street.
I really don't think it requires that big a stretch of the imagination. At all.
We told you! Didn't we tell you? When I said 'twat' in passing in that class discussion, lord, the horrified silence...
(My FB status updates often include variants of 'goddammit' just to fuck with my American relatives. I am kind of an evil person.)
I keep having conversations wherein people apologise for swearing because they said "shit" once, which usually runs so beneath my radar I don't even ping it as swearing until they start apologising. One day I'm going to, I don't know, drop a rack of nearly-boiling test tubes on my foot and then they're all going to get a terrible shock.
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I blame the malign influence of the PAS Women's XV who can swear to make a sailor blush, but still suggest you still think a little about gendered insults.
Yeah. Gosh, with the list of ladybit- and non-heteronormative-derived taboo words we're cataloguing on this thread, you might think that New Zealanders, as a group of language users, have a bit of a problem with female and non-hetero sexuality. Who would have thought?
Oddly enough, while reading this, I was also leafing through a memoir by, well, Muriel Box, and came across this quote, which seemed apposite:
Even now I find it a little difficult to stomach epithets smacking of derision and contempt for sex in its various manifestations. D H Lawrence's gallant attempt in Lady Chatterly's Lover to regenerate certain four-letter Anglo-Saxon words in our language ended in failure. I rather wish it had not. I've often thought it would be amusing to invent some highly-coloured expletives to replace the traditional ones smacking of human excreta, sodomy, buggery, or copulation. Obviously strong, racy language is needed at times to relieve unbearable tensions but children listening to the currently fashionable brand are unfortunately liable to conclude that sex is the epitome of filth, and certain human functions degrading. ("Odd Woman Out," 22)
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Kids definitely use gay a lot to mean "soft, weak, pathetic, etc". But they don't use other more pejorative terms for gay much, which makes me wonder if it's just the connotation of that exact word. In some ways I think it's a very poor word for homosexual. Not all homosexuals display the qualities that it hints at, many are rough as guts, not particularly happy, very strong etc. But I can't think of too many other words that are better. Queer, fag, poof, queen, etc, all are loaded with imagery of difference, oppression, softness, effeminacy, etc.
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This reminds me of Piergiorgio Paterlini's argument that the hatred for gay men is a subset of the hatred for women - although it's easier to prove using the Italian swear word reportoire.
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blame the malign influence of the PAS Women's XV who can swear to make a sailor blush, but still suggest you still think a little about gendered insults.
We try our best to please. I just love the word fuck. My father was a great proponent of it. And on a side note, I was never punished for saying any swear word, and we all swore alot but had my mouth washed out for telling my mum to get stuffed. That's just how we Clarks' roll.
I do try really hard to stay away from gendered insults, and I reserve the c-word for when I am really angry.(despite, um, the cunt links story.) I even try (and mostly fail) not to use dick and cock. As insults.
The only gendered insults I ever use are cunt, and prick - and I haven't called anyone a cunt to their face for a long time. And never a woman. But if I really hate someone, that is what they are to me. But only if they're a man. It's a hard word, and so apparently sacrosanct that it's the most hateful thing I can say about someone.
slut, whore, that kind of thing - that's real ladyhate.
I would never, never, never call someone those names. I have never hated a woman enough to use those words on them. I have, however, called myself a slut. Proudly, really.
So's "gay" -- but my BH's grandnephew (who is a sweetie pie and doesn't have a homophobic cell in his body) has been on the receiving end of *cough* a free, frank and one-sided reading of the riot act the last time he used that as a term of disapprobation within my hearing.
Oh, yes, Craig. I just hate the way that kids bandy "gay" around as an insult. Lazy, lazy insult this one. Like calling someone fat. And so potentially damaging.
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That's why the kids love these words. They sound great, the mouthfeel....but not being gay I have no idea how much that would fuck a gay person off just hearing that word used negatively in the street.
In its pejorative sense, gay is the only word banned in my house. That's the only time I'll have a polite word with one of my son's friends about what comes out of their mouths when they're playing LAN combat games. "Would you call your troops niggers? Then don't call them gay. Same principle."
Lately I've been reading a lot of vintage detective fiction - Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, etc. I love the language, but it can be jolly confusing occasionally when words have changed meaning. I did finally work out that the wife who had "turned gay" had taken a male lover...
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I would never, never, never call someone those names. I have never hated a woman enough to use those words on them. I have, however, called myself a slut. Proudly, really.
One thing I have noticed here, largely due to the whole California governer race dust-up, is that "whore" can be used as a very specific gendered insult for women with no actual reference to sexual promiscuity - i.e., when Jerry Brown's aide called Meg Whitman a whore, he didn't seem to be implying anything about her actual sex life, whereas in New Zealand usage it seemed to be restricted to an actual accusation of sluttitude, if it was used at all - if someone wanted to say that, they'd generally just say slut.
I find that deeply disturbing, the use of "whore" as a general gendered insult, and I'm not sure why.
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I am not sure whether this would be considered a freedom of speech issue but this Finnish newsreader did get the sack...;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8tgRIaw2Ac
(Sorry for being such a klutz but I don't seem able to embed Youtube vids here--even my whiz-kid daughter can't figure it out.)
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Lately I've been reading a lot of vintage detective fiction - Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, etc. I love the language, but it can be jolly confusing occasionally when words have changed meaning. I did finally work out that the wife who had "turned gay" had taken a male lover...
I certainly have to put up an industrial strength context filter when "Jewish" (with or without the qualifiers "pushy" and/or vulgar) is used casually to denigrate the awfully rich (but stingy), socially inept arriviste whose money was earned in trade or even worse... Even more peculiar and tin-eared flowing from the pens of writers -- and so often women with very low tolerances for man-tronising publishers -- whose own social and professional circles were full of persons of the *cough* Hebraic persuasion. It's as if these often awesomely intelligent people just couldn't quite close the mental circuit that would make that kind of casual Jew-hating unacceptable.
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"whore" can be used as a very specific gendered insult for women with no actual reference to sexual promiscuity
Hmm.That word can be used for men too, and have heard it many times, in reference to their selling themselves/their ideas/principles for a buck. That's probably beside the point you're making, so apologies if that's so.
I was bemused when I asked an eight year-old to tell me which words in one of my stories she didn't know, she said "gay" - which I had used to describe high spirits.
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Ngaio Marsh
She was such a terrible snob.
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Geoff, you just paste the raw link here - without all the square brackets rigmarole - and the system does the rest. You do need to include the whole link including the 'http' at the beginning.
Like this:
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Geoff, you just paste the raw link here - without all the square brackets rigmarole - and the system does the rest
What always got me thinking it didn't work, was that it didn't show up when I previewed my post. Now I hope for the best anyway and it usually is correct.
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I'm thinking Keith is wrong saying "cunt" because its always loaded to ladies ,it means vagina, let's not beat around the bush.
and "gay" isn't ready to be given up by the samesexers because it isn't a word they've finished with......but the highschools are dropping these words everywhere.
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I keep having conversations wherein people apologise for swearing because they said "shit" once, which usually runs so beneath my radar I don't even ping it as swearing until they start apologising.
Same thing here. I'm wondering if it's even going to be regarded as a swear word for much longer.
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slut, whore, that kind of thing - that's real ladyhate.
I would never, never, never call someone those names. I have never hated a woman enough to use those words on them. I have, however, called myself a slut. Proudly, really.
My Media7 laydeez use "slut" as a term of affection with each other all the time.
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But then, Americans are just weird about swearing. ...
I keep having conversations wherein people apologise for swearing because they said "shit" once, which usually runs so beneath my radar I don't even ping it as swearing until they start apologising. One day I'm going to, I don't know, drop a rack of nearly-boiling test tubes on my foot and then they're all going to get a terrible shock.
Seems a job at a comic shop might be the place for you:
I had my 1-year-old son in a comics shop a couple months ago... The retailer was loudly holding court with a couple of fanboys. It was fucking this and fucking that and what the fuck and fuckity fucking fuck.
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My Media7 laydeez use "slut" as a term of affection with each other all the time.
I believe they have may have even used it on me, recently. Which was, you know, fine.
When I say I think about how I feel were it directed at me, I mean...said seriously, in context, and meant with hate.
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