This is what I don’t get about the manosphere movement.
Young guys watch these influencers being abrasive macho dorks, talking exactly like this. They somehow combine that “dorky, petty semantic minutia” argument style with being aggressively condescending and being a macho jerk, all at once. I’m a pretty isolated guy, yet it’s amazing how grating it is to me.
And men watching these influencers conclude that… other people will appreciate that?
And men watching these influencers conclude that… other people will appreciate that?
Nah, they think other people should appreciate that. Because that would make their lives easier, not having to challenge their own privileges.
Because the other side tells you that you suck and your problems are not real.
If you are a boy and you look around one side blaming you for all of societies ills and the other simply is not what aide are you going to gravitate to?
they also watch those “pickup artists” how to “science behind tricking women into dating you”, they picked alot of thier terminology to, which is the alpha/beta crap, shit tests,etc. so they are probably also dissecting womans behaviour, “if they dont like me they automatically a bitch or a slut that is looking for someone more attractive”
Things are already equal. Toxic masculinity comes from toxic femininity. Toxic femininity comes from toxic masculinity. It’s been like that forever, but we raised the living standard enough so now we can argue about this with our excess spare time.
Also, it is another way of divide and conquer to make sure that we keep fighting each other and not the billionaire class who needs to be defeated if you want to have a world in 20 years from now.
The quantum head fuck Is that men and women have always been equal in a weird way and at the same time equality can never be achieved because giving birth was given to one of the two sexes and not the other.
When it comes to class warfare, equality can be achieved.
Because while intelligence and skill and talent may not be equally distributed, the right to live is.
Things are already equal
My friend, go outside.
My friend
Oh great, at least one gets it
go outside.
Sigh.
The only reason someone says my friend is cause they think your an idiot. It’s like saying bless your heart.
And considering what you said… Yeah… Oof
I’ve been saying it like
My friend…
I am not trying to rob you. I’m trying to help you.
The problems with deciding things are “equal-ish” have already been well addressed, so I just want to point out - just because the billionaire class might use a topic as a wedge issue against us doesn’t excuse us from working to fix it.
They might be setting fire to houses as a distraction, but the houses are still on fire. The people inside can’t wait for us to find and deal with whoever hired the arsonists.
I completely agree with you, and that’s a great analogy.
Cartoons like this post aren’t helping the firemen and women though. And if it isn’t helping them, who is it helping?
To continue the analogy: He asks her why she fights fires, and in response to her explanation, talks about the benefits of fire-retardant foam over water. She then realizes he smells of gasoline.
The comic is pointing out needlessly divisive behavior on his part - she’s already working on one aspect of the class division, and he’s pushing for her to spread out and weaken her efforts.
Removed by mod
Feminism isn’t just about women.
Toxic masculinity isn’t caused just by men.
Black Lives Matter isn’t just about black lives.
“Believe women” isn’t about blindly believing what women say. “Christian charity” is the least charitable thing in the world.
“Defund the police” and “abolish the police” aren’t about eliminating police forces and letting crime run rampant.
AI is anything but intelligent.
“Global Warming” sounds tame for what’s actually happening: “climate disruption” and “climate catastrophe”. A bunch of countries with “communist” or “democratic” in their names are anything but.Words are stupid. Slogans are lazy. People lie.
Which is why I like the lyrics of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ so much.
Every single line item in your comment became ammunition for foreign agents to get into our culture over the last 20 years and just escalate the FUCK out of both sides of each idea there.
It was directly from the KGB handbook written over 50 years ago, that if you infiltrate a nation’s culture and just amplify the most radical takes of both sides of every issue, it will create so much chaos and completely destabilize a culture so that people tune out and stop trusting each other or any news story they read. This has the effect of making the population just default to whatever state media they see and stop caring about social issues entirely. It’s been shocking seeing how effectively it’s played out in the US.
I watched it happen, I was on the frontlines, managing a few social sites and moderating a huge subreddit about relationships. It was a creeping infection at first, but eventually it was like Helm’s Deep, but instead of orcs outside, it was astroturfers, crybullies, sea lions, and the entire goddamn ZOO of bad-actors and subversive chuds. For every horrible, shit-mouthed incel ranting about how women need to be put in cages, there was also some delusional, insane “feminist” screaming about how all men are rapists and men should never be left alone with children.
I gave up the fight, reddit banned me for being an involved human, but it continues to this day, getting worse by the day.
I watched it happen because I saw it happening and read the (too few) news reports that pointed out that it was indeed happening.
But it’s like climate change. It seems to go in one ear and out the other for the vast majority of the population.
The fact that our species has a glaring weakness in identifying abstract threats, while at the same time we’re developing tools capable of performing the most abstract possible attacks on our free-will and agency, makes me feel a tad uncomfy about the near term future.
Well as long as you’ve correctly identified the KGB and Russia Russia Russia, your job is done.
You don’t have to be Russia to use KGB handbooks anymore
i’d dissapoint you, but the thing the prevous commenter listed are not unique to America nor the western world. It’s not the KGB necessarily, it’s just how the manipulations work. You don’t have to read KGB books to apply them
I didn’t even say it was the KGB doing it entirely, just that it was first documented as a “thing” in their manual from decades ago, and we still didn’t do anything to protect our society broadly from it.
I know well that we’ve been under assault from an absolute charcuterie board of forces both foreign and domestic. Twitter alone is like the Ukraine war, in that it re-wrote how we thought modern tactics are going to unfold, people are going to writing manuals about how to do what Musk has done with that platform.
The craziest part here is that the primary goal of these movements isn’t to actually achieve their objectives, but to virtue signal. If all it took to get a huge chunk of the population on your side was to change your messaging a bit, then any reasonable movement would jump at such a low hanging fruit of an opportunity to advance their cause… but they don’t. These movements would really rather sacrifice optics and stall their movements than accept some criticism and adapt.
Mottes aren’t actually baileys
Hippy, politically correct, feminist, SJW, woke…
It doesn’t matter how many times you rebrand ~not being an awful person~ people will always make goodness the enemy
SJWs were incredibly awful people.
Somehow whenever people bemoaned “social justice warriors”, I always pictured Lex Luthor slandering Superman.
Except Superman is the role model that SJWs imagine themselves to be, while holding not a single one of Superman’s qualities.
Any examples? I mostly remember the term being applied to the Greta Thunbergs of the day.
If your idea of the “Greta Thunberg” is someone who walks into a restaurant and starts to Karen about them serving onions (on behalf of those allergic to onions. They weren’t allergic themselves), then, uh… Sure.
I have honestly never heard the term SJW applied to a Karen.
Then consider yourself fortunate. Most SJWs go out of their way for these sorts of things for some sort of perceived status. Kinda like an “ethically sourced” label on a product, but as a social thing.
Man, you don’t seem to know anything about hippies, political correctness, feminists OR “woke”.
Politically correct just means whatever it takes to get elected which makes defending women the opposite of politically correct these days.
Well, tbf, Hippies were better known for free-love-ism, illicit substances, and fake gurus than the other groups. The free love and illicit substances probably contributed to the spread of a lot of disease, which might be why it died out.
Also world peace, anti-capitalism, conscientious objection, anti-authoritarianism, and nuclear disarmament. But don’t let that ruin your narrative.
I was listing how they were different from the other groups.
A lot of them weren’t even anti-capitalist, tbh. Look up what a Yuppie is.
A Yuppie is a “Young Urban Professional”, it refers to young adults in the hyper-capitalistic 80s, not Hippies who were young adults in the 60s.
Please stop commenting about things you clearly don’t know anything about.
yuppie, term used most frequently in the 1980s and ’90s to describe college-educated young professionals. Yuppie is short for “young urban professional” or “young upwardly mobile professional.” These individuals were typically of the American baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) and worked high-paying jobs in cities. Yuppie started as a fairly neutral expression, but its connotations shifted toward the negative, especially as it began to be associated with social issues regarded as problematic, such as gentrification. Since its peak in the early 1990s, yuppie has largely been phased out as a descriptor, though the term remains familiar to a large number of Americans.
The neologism yuppie was likely used and spread colloquially by word of mouth before appearing in print, probably for the first time in a 1980 issue of Chicago Magazine. Journalist Dan Rottenberg, who did not take credit for coining the term, used it in his article about a growing trend of individuals moving into fashionable neighborhoods in Chicago. Indeed, at the time, much of the media was hyping a reversal of so-called white flight, suggesting that baby boomers, characterized as a generation of former hippies who were then entering their 30s, were shifting away from the suburbanized notion of the American dream of their parents and toward a new idealized urban lifestyle.
My parents are Hippies. They don’t believe in free love, substance abuse, or the fake gurus. They are earthy crunchy people. According to them two factors caused the hippie movement to fail.
\1) The hippies were a TINY counterculture movement. I’m aware that they are talked about so much that it seems like 1/4 to 1/3 of the generation were hippies, but in reality it was more like 1/1000 to 1/100. No critical mass was achieved.
)2 More than half of the hippies sold out to capitalism and became yuppies.
There are tons of hippies. You just don’t realize it till they put on patchwork pants and wire-wraps before heading to a festival.
How to get the point across a bit better while also pointing out the guy actually doesn’t care.
These types of guys are split between contrarians, guys that take any criticism of “men” as a personal attack against them, and misogynists who just don’t want equality. In any case, it’s why we can’t have nice things in our society.
I am on the feminist side, firmly. But at the same time I think it’s extremely necessary to update terminology.
The feminist side is really good at reckognizing the power of words and demanding that actually accurate wording is used… when they are on the receiving end of bad wording.
At the same time that side seems to be totally oblivious to bad wording when it affects their opponents.
Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic. But that’s not at all what the concept is about. It’s about a misguided understanding of masculinity which is problematic. Why not just use “machismo”, or maybe “toxic machismo”? Suddenly the word is not an attack against all men, but against a subset defined by specific behavior. Done.
Or “mansplaining”. Woman can and do exhibit that behavior too. Just try being a young father and bring your toddler to a circle of older women. The correct word would be “overexplaining”, and suddenly it clearly describes the problem without unnecessarily tieing it to a gender.
Fighting rhethoric like that is great if you want to get into a fight and make sure that you alienate the other, but it’s utterly useless to further your cause.
Or “mansplaining”. Woman can and do exhibit that behavior too. Just try being a young father and bring your toddler to a circle of older women. The correct word would be “overexplaining”, and suddenly it clearly describes the problem without unnecessarily tieing it to a gender.
“Overexplaining” already has an established unrelated definition, though. I’ve ‘coined’ “splaining” as slang for the behavior, which is not only perpetrated by both sexes, but is also perpetrated for reasons other than sex. It’s kind of a subcategory of condescension, I’d say.
When someone assumes another is ignorant on a subject, because of any characteristic that does not actually have a relationship with knowledge of that subject, and as a result, condescendingly explains something to them, that’s ‘splaining’. Also of note is that EVEN IF the ‘receipient’ actually happens to be ignorant of that subject, and of the information being given to them, it’s STILL ‘splaining’. What defines it is the combination of the unfair assumption, and the action taken based on said assumption. Assuming you know more about X than someone because they’re younger than you, is a non-sex example of the exact same behavior.
Yeah, that’s fair. Tbh, I’m not solid on which terms to use and I’m totally open to better suggestions. “splaining” does make sense. It fits the categories we talked about and I think it’s still quite intuitive to grasp what’s the difference between “explaining” and “splaining”.
One thing that’s kinda difficult to avoid though is people misusing these words to defend against situations where no defence is necessary.
I’ve seen the same thing happen with “mansplaining” before, where a new female hire would tell an experienced manager to not “mansplain” an important concept to her, so he stops explaining and she runs head-first into the problem he tried to warn her of.
In certain contexts (especially safety-related or other critical stuff) it’s better to err on the side of explaining things the recipient might already know instead on the side of missing important things. For example, telling a flight attendant on a plane that they don’t need to “splain” where the exits are would be kinda stupid.
To stay with the aviation example: Pilots are trained to call out and confirm everything they do. It would be quite bad if one pilot told the other one to shut up because obviously they already noticed that the other one changed the flap settings or something like that.
(But obviously all of that is besides the point which was: We need better words, and “splaining” is a totally valid replacement for “mansplaining”)
Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic.
Does “hawaiian pizza” imply that all pizza is from Hawaii, or just that this one particular pizza here is from Hawaii?
“Ugh, gross pizza!”
Does that imply that the issue is that you find pizza gross or does this statement only refer to this one specific slice because you don’t like the specific topping on it?
If it was hawaiian I’d assume the latter
You’re not being honest here
I am, I hate pineapple on pizza that much
Orange Soda must imply that all sodas taste like orange
Fun fact: Hawaiian Pizza has nothing to do with Hawaii. It was created by a Greek guy in Ontario after he was inspired by the Chinese-Canadian dishes that he worked on making. He chose the name Hawaiian because he got his canned pineapples from the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. The dish itself is a Canadian abomination.
Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic.
Well, no. Taking “rotten apples” literally doesn’t mean apples are inherently rotten, it’s just a descriptor.
What I have more of a problem with is that the exact same thing exists within stereotypes of femininity, but “toxic femininity” never gained any steam as a concept/term at all. That does more to imply ‘it’s all the males’ fault’, I think.
I’m reminded of someone once mocking the notion of a fanny pack being marketed to men with a camo pattern, calling it an example of “fragile masculinity” that was inherently misogynistic. I asked them if a tool set with pink handles being marketed to women was an example of “fragile femininity”, and response I got was no, that that was also misogynistic, somehow.
Also, “manspreading” is supposedly a misogynistic, aggressive act by men denying women space in public settings, and yet, (primarily) women taking up entire extra seats by putting their purses/bags on them never ‘went viral’ in the same way, again no colloquialism for it, despite being an act that’s significantly more common, and deprives others of more space than a guy whose knees are spread out.
Ideologues won’t see the obvious flaws in their logic no matter how blatant you make them.
There’s different types of qualifiers that you can put before words. Gramatically they work the same, but they are different.
“Rotten apples” talks about a subset of apples because being rotten is an obvious, clearly defined state and it’s clear to everyone that not all apples are rotten.
When I see someone ordering chopped liver and I say “Uhg, gross liver”, that’s something different. It’s totally possible that a person thinks liver as food in general is gross. Now it’s a statement that describes all instances of liver and not just this specific plate of liver.
Toxic masculinity is originally meant as the first category: a qualifier for a subcategory of masculinity. But it’s easily understood as the second category: A general description.
That issue is not helped by the fact that the definition is so loose that it’s almost inexistent, plus it’s frequently used as a general complaint/offense towards literally everything a man might do that this specific woman doesn’t like.
And to tie this back to the beginning: it’s a fighting term used to attack and divide and not to actually improve things.
I do agree with you about the “one-genderedness” of these terms. To be fair, the opposite does exist too (e.g. “hysteria”), but these terms are mostly outdated, are falling out of use and aren’t actively pushed by a current ideology.
(And in regards to “manspreading”: the actual issue at hand is that public spaces and especially public transport aren’t designed with male proportions in mind. It’s rather unsurprising that a petit woman fits into a tiny public transport seat while a large man doesn’t. The actual outrage should be with public transport companies not desigining their seats wide enough to fit people, but instead we see fatshaming and terms like “manspreading” to shame people with bigger bodies.)
Ideologues won’t see the obvious flaws in their logic no matter how blatant you make them.
That is certainly true, especially for people who are in fighting mode, and nowadays that seems to be everyone constantly.
Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic.
Literally taken, that phrase means a variety of Masculinity that is toxic. That you would assert using toxic as an adjective implies that all masculinity is toxic is bizarre. When I say Tomato Sauce, that doesn’t mean that all sauces contain tomatoes. That means that tomato sauces contain tomatoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective
Or “mansplaining”
I will admit this gets over alleged but you’re off base on what this means as well. Mansplaining is a pop culture term first off, not a Feminist one. And it specifically describes men who explain things to women that women have first hand knowledge that men lack (such as having a period) or offering an unsolicited explanation to a woman because they either assume the woman is ignorant or unintelligent on account of her gender. Often the recipient of mansplaining has equal or greater knowledge of what is being “mansplained”
Well some people literally just don’t realize that other people have problems they don’t have, and don’t look into it further or are actively told it’s not a problem. Source: me from 13 to 16 until I watched a lot of speeches on it and talked to friends irl about it.
We really need a way to publicly name and shame these people.
Don’t they usually end up doing it themselves?
abused becomes the abusers.
I think people like this are unable to see structural inequality. If you take away structural inequality and squint, it can almost look like women have it better than men.
Tragically, this means they are unable to mentally critique the system they exist in, and therefore will remain slaves to it.
It’s two different arguments. Individually there are many people who see women having it better then themselves and of course they will be upset when society is saying they don’t. Empathy here is understanding both sides have some valid points. Men do have a lot of problems in society. An entire generation left behind because many social programs focused only on boosting women while forgetting men. Telling those men to suck it up or that they’re wrong isn’t the answer. It’s only going to radicalize sides. Both sides should be addressed.
An entire generation left behind
Where is the source for this?
Well I wouldn’t say an entire generation, but apparently in the urbanite Western Gen Z population, the wage gap has reversed with women earning more than men due to how modern education and gender roles interact.
So if you were to be born in this millennium, the “most privileged” demographic is Western urbanite women.
In any case, I think it would just be a nicer thing if we were nicer to all people that are disadvantaged, or just people in general. Tearing others down doesn’t lift you up.
I’m reminded of how outraged feminists were about the inequality when men possessed a significant majority of college degrees[1], but in the present day, after the myriad of programs/grants/scholarships exclusive to women got it to the point where women are now significantly more than half of college graduates, and men are in the minority, suddenly feminists aren’t concerned with that inequality anymore.
One of the many reasons the claims that feminism was for everyone and that there was no need for male-focused advocacy (and that, in fact, such advocacy was inherently misogynistic) because feminists ‘had it covered’, always rang hollow.
One more quick example, an anecdote from my own personal life: a feminist friend was complaining about required reading materials for high school classes not being 50/50 re the sex of the author, but being majority male authors, which was disadvantaging the girls. When I pointed out that girls already are objectively significantly ‘ahead’ of boys in those subjects, so why was she pushing for the gap to grow even wider, her only response was to get angry.
An actual egalitarian would care about a significant imbalance in either direction that’s caused by bigotry/prejudice, regardless of who’s got the short end of the stick.
In any case, I think it would just be a nicer thing if we were nicer to all people that are disadvantaged, or just people in general. Tearing others down doesn’t lift you up.
Yes, this is actual egalitarian thinking. Special interests who don’t care about inequalities that benefit ‘their group’, or stop caring when an inequality that affected ‘their group’ now favors ‘their group’, are not forces for equality/fairness.
And this difference only became significant when the GI Bill became a thing, allowing men in the military to get a college education for free, which imo is the least the government could do for men after conscripting them, something women never had to deal with. In 1940, the difference in the college graduation rate between men and women was negligible, a measly 1.7% (5.5% male and 3.8% female). ↩︎
Well I wouldn’t say an entire generation, but apparently in the urbanite Western Gen Z population, the wage gap has reversed with women earning more than men due to how modern education and gender roles interact.
"for those working full-time between the ages of 16 and 24, the gender pay gap has reversed. This means that for much of Gen Z – including those who have recently left university – women on average are slightly higher paid than men. In later life, this is expected to reverse and widen in favour of men, a gap that is usually attributed to greater male participation in higher-paying fields and the “motherhood penalty”, which reflects the disproportionate share of childcare undertaken by women. "
The trends of children do not reflect the reality of adulthood employment and social constructs. This has been the case for a while now.
The problem I see with this line of reasoning is, among other things, is that just telling these young men to suck it up won’t cut it.
The current layoff tsunami is hurting men more than women since male-dominated fields are more affected. We live in “unprecedented times”, promises are kinda worthless.
These men are expected to marry and father children today, and find mates in a society that ties their value to their salary. According to data from dating apps, that isn’t happening, women are still marrying up, to older men, and this cohort of men is just getting shut out.
But what they can do and will do in the next few years is vote for people who present a solution to them for today, instead of marginalizing their problem.
Today, that’s fuckheads like Trump and Tate.
So yeah, we can argue with them or listen to them. My point is if we as a society make an effort to listen to the ones that try to speak to us, we can get them out of this hole.
Or if we just go and argue that their problems don’t matter as much, there will just be more of them in crisis and they will eventually start murdering people that argue with them today if they get told that’s their way out.
Garbage article confusing classism with sexism. Ultimately DEI only helped a small percentage of women access jobs they would not be considered for in the past. It is called competition, but this guy wants to try and create a narrative that doesn’t exist except in his head.
Whether it is another male or a well qualified woman it doesn’t change you were not in the right spot at the right time. Blaming a competitive employment space on DEI is just stupid. There are hundreds if not thousands of candidates that all want that job.
The statistics don’t lie as well ~45 percent low level managers are women. So men still have an advantage, but it gets worse with seniors management only about ~35 percent. Even worse CEO ~10 percent. Doesn’t look like DEI was an advantage after all.
Absolutely top tier failure to read the article.
I read all the way through it to the end, a sappy father son epic of victim blaming. Garbage.
Google champ
Do people actually believe something like this?
The comments in this post certainly justify a lot of things.
But isn’t this mentality just flawed in general? Comment sections aren’t representative of society since they tend to attract the loudest, angriest voices. They’re usually not a balanced sample of public opinion. Using them as proof creates a circular argument where hostility toward feminism is treated as both the cause and the evidence of its necessity. It also mistakes correlation for causation and can shut down nuanced discussion by treating all criticism as misogyny.
Maybe it doesn’t represent the public opinion, but it still does show that there are plenty of dickheads out there somewhere. And sometimes those dickheads find their way into governments and positions where they turn more people into dickheads.
But this could be said about anything. Dickheads exist in literally every group and they participate in all levels of society like everybody else. There are dickhead misogynists and dickhead feminists. The existence of dickheads in of itself doesn’t mean anything.
Ok, what you’re apparently missing is that any talk about Feminism draws misogynists like moths to a flame PLUS the usual assortment of dickheads in every comments section.
But again, that’s just circular reasoning. What you’re saying here doesn’t invalidate the points I’ve made earlier.
I definitely agree with you. I’m shaking my head at the comments and tagging which accounts to be wary of.
Found one
All lives matter~
Once upon a time I objected to the Black Lives Matter moniker. I didn’t disagree with the message that black people need to be counted more than they were. I have always thought that I counted black people as equals to everyone, so I just subconsciously completed the sentence by adding the word “more” in my head. Thinking to myself “oh, they have a terrible branding issue because everyone who reads the phrase Black Lives Matter will automatically just think they mean Black Lives Matter More”. But ultimately that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the phrase that was the issue.
What was the real problem was the inherent racism that had be ingrained into my consciousness by untold years of media and politics that continually make black people out to be lazy selfish useless people who only want a handout. (See Ronald Reagan’s speech about the “welfare queen”. Hint, he wasn’t talking about a white woman.)
In the end the problem I had with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” wasn’t their fault for picking a bad phrase. It was, in fact, me and my own preconceived notions of what a black person is and should be. All based on how society has portrayed them my entire life.
So now I very loudly say “BLACK LIVES MATTER”. And more people need to embrace this instead of trying to logic it out of existence with the pointless platitude “well ackchually all lives matter” like some snivelling little child with an inferiority complex. Because yes all lives should matter but in our fucked up society black lives usually don’t.
I mean, the phrase wasn’t good either, hence why you also ended up thinking that.
Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better, as it alludes that there is enough prejudice that society must be reminded, and the acronym is BLAM, which could be used as onomatopoeia invoking gun shots, which directly ties to the causes original protests against the police. It also sounds more of a plea for help than it does an aggressive simple statement - which considering the movement aimed to be peaceful, is the kind of sound you’d want.
The truth is these kinds of things heavily rely on optics, and BLM was a very bad choice of slogan. People forget even the whole Rosa Parks thing was carefully orchestrated for a reason - you need good causes, good figures, and good slogans for rallying support.
BLM is so bad I wonder if the push to use it was some kind of counter psy-op to then push things like All Lives Matter to help discredit it, because I swear I heard the BLAM acronym being used as well in the beginning. I would imagine such authorities would have learned well how to discredit such movements ever since the days and success of the Civil Rights era.
I like Black Lives Matter because on its face it is a “no duh” statement (for most…)
To me, it is pointing out the absurd disconnect between what (almost) everybody believes without question and the actual state of society and policing in particular. There’s something stronger to “we matter” vs “we matter too”, but I’m struggling to put it into words. For some reason, I feel like BLAM or something similar loses some impact.
But that’s just in my head; as far as the success of a movement, you’re probably right. Also, if it was BLAM from the start, maybe I wouldn’t dislike it.
The reason why “we matter” is stronger than “we matter too” is because it doesn’t reference the other and thus is a purely one-sided thing, which can totally be read as “we matter more”.
I’m not sure though if that’s a good thing, depending on what’s the goal.
Any minority movement always has to keep in mind that it’s the majority that decides. Suffragettes did not take voting rights by force. They got voting rights because they managed to find enough allies in the male population that they were given voting rights.
Black slaves didn’t end slavery themselves. They managed to find enough allies that would be willing to fight and die in a civil war to give them their freedom.
And a group consisting of roughly 12% of a country’s population will not take the country by force and change laws by themselves.
“Black lives matter” is an incredibly polarizing statement that causes opposition (as evidenced e.g. by “Blue lives matter”, which totally has the implied “more” attached). It’s comparatively easy to say “No, the life of a black suspect does not matter more than the life of a police officer”, if you already lean in that direction. It’s a good slogan if you want to polarize and divide.
“Black lives matter too” is a statement that’s really hard to disagree with, because of course black lives matter too, unless you are a hard-core white supremacist.
So if the goal is to get the majority on your side and actually cause change, I think “Black lives matter too” would have been the better slogan.
Agree.
But “Black Lives Matter Too” abbreviates to BLMT which kinda sound like a sandwich 😅
BLAM conveys the same meaning but the acronym does double duty.
“Black lives also matter” works just as well, that’s right, no contest there.
And you are right, BLAM sounds way better than both BLM and BLMT.
(as evidenced e.g. by “Blue lives matter”, which totally has the implied “more” attached)
Truth. Also, here is no such thing as “blue lives” because a cop can quit their job, a black person cannot quit being black.
Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better
Better, but still not optimal, since the whole thing is about police brutality, and that slogan says nothing about that. Even with the “also”, in general it comes off as an accusation of racism toward whoever you say it to (especially since it was said mostly to other ‘random’ citizens, not cops).
If I walked up to a random person and said “hey, women’s lives matter”, I should expect to get one or more of these responses:
- Uh, duh? Who said otherwise?
- Why are you saying that to me? Do you think I don’t think they do?
Because those are the implications that kind of phrase carries.
It’s the responsibility of the movement to be aware of the cultural connotations of the terms and slogans they choose to advertise themselves with. Movements have to adapt to fit their societies, expecting things to go the other way around is just entitlement and arrogance.
Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself. Optics matter.
Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself.
As a mater of fact I can. If they had used such an inoffensive moniker for their movement it would have been shoved to the back page of every newspaper and barely mentioned in any news program. The conservative assholes would have made fun of the acronyms and there would have been literally no conversation about the topic and no one would have had to come to terms with their own unaddressed racism that had been planted by 100 years of racist American ideology.
You and everyone who has commented with this exact “fix” for the Black Lives Matter movement should search within yourselves and try to determine why it really offends you so much. I saw someone mention the suffragette movement in relation to BLM and the comparison is apt. Suffragettes didn’t have any problem with disrupting the comfort of the people who’s opinion they were trying to alter. They knew very well that you cannot bring change by meekly asking for permission to get equal rights and standing in society. You have to get in their face and tell them YOU MUST BE COUNTED.
BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER
Your analysis is simply wrong. Nobody find finds the Black Lives Matter slogan offensive. It’s criticized because it’s it’s too vague, not because it’s provocative. The reason why conservatives latched on to the slogan specifically is precisely because the underlying point is valid and true. Regardless of how you personally see it, there are a lot of people out there who came to different conclusions as to what this slogan means. Many saw it to mean that black lives matter more or that other lives matter less. This different interpretation led a lot of people who would otherwise agree with the core cause to disassociate with the movement. This difference in support is key to any social movement as it defines a movement gaining enough support to achieve real change vs not. Optics matter.
You brought up the point that movements need to be offensive to get anywhere, but that’s not true. Social movements like this don’t need a “shock” factor in their optics. The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place. The civil rights movement already demonstrates that this strategy is not effective or necessary. The same goes for the suffragette movement actually, and the LGBT movement as well.
This idea that social movements can get anywhere by simply demanding stuff is nonsense. All social movements require the support of the public to achieve anything. The suffragette movement campaigned to gain the favor of men, the civil rights did the same with white people, and so did the LGBT movement with straight people. Without the support of these demographics, their rights would’ve never been voted into place. All these movements were deliberate about their messaging, slogans, and optics. They didn’t try to shock people with their slogans, they wanted to convince people that they deserved their rights and they did so that appealed to everyone.
The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place.
You are fantastically naive. There have been literally thousands of videos of police brutality towards black people. All of which were 100% unnecessary. Rodney King was beaten almost to death by police officers on video in 1991. And black people had to riot to get any real attention to how completely fucked up our system is because every cop who beat him got off completely scott free. And still 30 years later another black man was murdered on camera in broad daylight by a cop who did not give one shit because he and his cohorts assumed they would see no consequences for what they were doing. And without BLM and the absolute shitstorm of protest that every black person and their allies threw up, he would have been given a free pass too. BLM is the reckoning that white America has to contend with because they continue to support racist ideologies. And, quite frankly, if nothing is done to curb the racist bullshit being enacted against non-whites right now there is an even bigger shitstorm on the horizon.
Also, you should actually read some of the things that suffragettes had to do to get the attention of the public for over a century.. It was not polite or inoffensive.
Again, you’re arguing against ghosts here. I’m not against protests or people campaigning to get their rights. I’m pointing out that optics matter a lot in social movements, and it’s their responsibility to adapt optics fit for the society they’re in. If people can’t understand or accept your optics then your movement is not going to get any support.
I don’t think you understand the basic fact that no civil rights movement in any democratic society has ever achieved results without the support of the public. Do you seriously think people rioting and being offensive is all it takes to achieve any results? Hell no. The public is THE greatest pressure any movement can apply towards the government, and that pressure is what enacts change.
You seem to think very highly of BLM, but the reality is that it’s not a successful movement. It fizzled out and didn’t achieve anything substantial. The movement, like you, is stubbornly resistant to adapting and changing. This rigidity caused it to fall behind and stagnate as it was never able to overcome the criticisms against it. There’s a reason why BLM’s support has completely tanked since it’s peak during the pandemic.
According to Pew, the movement went from having 67% support (31% oppose) in 2020 to 51% support (46% oppose) in 2023. That’s less than what it was back in 2017 (55% support, 34% oppose). If the trend continued since then, and it likely did, then that means the majority of people now oppose the movement. This isn’t just a white people thing, this decline in support is true for all demographics. Yet the majority of Americans consistently support racial justice and equality. This discrepancy means that the movement is not aligned with the public even though the public supports the community and cause, and that entirely falls on the optics of the movement.
If BLM refuses to adapt, it will continue fade into history like it is now and it will replaced by a new movement that is willing to evolve and optimize optics.
Also, the link you posted is invalid so I can’t see it.
The problems in the organization itself are what led to it losing support. There were a number of characters within the organization that took advantage of several situations in order to enrich themselves. That is completely separate from the concept. Which is still valid.
P.S. I fixed the link
When BLM was a brand-new thing, it was a normal, and very understandable, reaction, for someone who’s hearing it for the first time to say/think something along the lines of:
- Who said they don’t matter? I know I didn’t, why are you saying “black lives matter” to me, as if you’re implying that I don’t believe they do?
- Why specify “black”, aren’t you implying others don’t, then?
It was also badly-named for another reason: the whole foundation of it was in response to police unlawfully killing black citizens. “Black Lives Matter” in no way speaks to anything involving police action. The phrase naturally comes off as an aggressive accusation of deep racism (to the point of believing a certain person’s life is literally worthless, which is a step beyond the inferiority actual racists usually ascribe to their ‘target’) when said to someone.
A /s would go a long way.
I thought the ~ would suffice
Ugh, please be a joke.
Obviously
Sorry, I’ve had some pretty disappointing interactions with Lemmy users these past 2 days. It’s getting hard to tell.
nbd 😄
It’s implied in “black lives matter” that all lives matter. They are merely pointing out that their lives are not being treated as they matter when police officers are choking them out for 20 bucks.
All lives matter people: All houses matter!
Others: But that one is on fire… shouldn’t the firefighters work on it first?
All lives matter people: No! All houses matter and that one is mine!!!
Short comparison that kind of gets the point across. I think it was from some comedy show like John Stewart or John Oliver and the like.
I remember being banned on some subreddit back then for saying that. Apparently it’s racist, lol.
That said, all of these movements on social media are really stupid, and if you interact with a person in real world, it seems that most of the issues disappear, aside from some individuals doing very bad things, but that’s what law is for.
The truth is, capitalists are just trying to divide us, and it’s like most people are really blind, and don’t see that, which is crazy to me.
Well yeah I guess. It’s the same as the point of this comic, disregarding systemic issues for a group with whataboutism of the rest
Ragebait art by someone who wants to seek rage from both sides. Mastered art.
‘Both sides’? No, I assure you only one side would rage over this and if you felt rage, you should work on that.
The only thing the guy said was wrong was that it’s reverse sexism. If he said “so your main concern is improving things for women? That’s not egalitarian unless you believe women have it much worse than men today.” It’s someone misinformed being told he’s an enemy. Ragebait
Women do have it much worse than men today. And I say this as a man, we hold so much privilege compared to any one else it’s not funny.
Not really. There’s many areas that women do have it better. Sociologist have started to label it even. They’re called the lost boys. A generation of boys who for one reason or another have failed to move onto post secondary education. Education in our society is something that increases our chances of success in life. But right now post education is filled with women. They believe the push to get women in schools was successful but nobody put the same effort into the boys. STEM careers and other post secondary streams were advertised to women and the boys were forgotten. Can’t tell me that those boys are not now feeling that pressure with having reduced social and capital mobility as a whole. It’s just one example of how women do not have it “much worse” today then men.
Oh no, be careful, you’re saying unpopular things!
What an incredibly valuable contribution.
Value is what I’m all about.
One supposed generation of boys compared to every generation of women isn’t the flex you think it is. Only 35% of women in STEM careers and that drops to 24% for engineers. Management in STEM field is even worse. Looks like the guys still have a competitive advantage despite all the female hype you claim eliminated their chances.
In the US in particular you see extreme limits on bodily autonomy. A health system that delivers worse results for women. Hell, the states never even ratified an equal rights amendment for women. Things are still very bad for women and that is not even getting into partner abuse or topics like rape.
I can’t help but feel these manosphere fucks pushing the false narratives are filling young men’s heads full of garbage. Blaming others is never a good look, but they can’t help it because it works and they are charlatans.
Things are still very bad for women and that is not even getting into partner abuse
Did you know that in nonreciprocally violent heterosexual relationships (i.e. only one of the two partners is violent), women are the perpetrators over 70% of the time? Yet, domestic violence is most often treated like a thing with only male perpetrators and female victims.
or topics like rape.
The narrative is such that the public consciousness is so skewed that you’re not aware that women rape men as much as men rape women, are you? Successful feminist lobbying (primarily attributed to Mary Koss) to call the rape of a man by a woman something other than “rape” so that female rapists can ‘fly under the radar’ on “rape statistics” is the primary reason this is so uncommonly known.
If you think underreporting and a lack of justice is bad for female victims of male rapists, your head will explode if you objectively look at the respective rates for male victims of female rapists.
It’s bad for both sexes, but it is literally objectively worse for males. Your ignorance of this subject just proves how wide the empathy gap really is.
The Innocence Project is all about getting wrongfully convicted people out of prison. Check out the linked list, filter it for “sex crimes” if you like, look at the years and decades of wrongfully-served prison time, then see if you can find any women.
There are no cases of a man molesting a girl and then successfully gaining both legal custody of the child, and legally-awarded child support - from the child he molested. But reverse the genders, and precisely that has happened.
This constant trivialization/erasure of male suffering just makes it clear how little people like you actually care about equality. Anyone truly seeking equality would be equally outraged about injustices suffered by both sexes.
Men aren’t victims, and women aren’t perpetrators if you can just define it away…
So then he is misinformed, which many people are. I don’t put someone into the “enemy” box for being misinformed or stubborn, that’s pretty much the default state of most humans.
When you combine ignorance with combativeness you are a roadblock that needs to go.
If he was simply uninformed and sough to learn, he wouldn’t trying to make himself to be a victim to ‘win’ an argument in his head. This is reactionary behaviour, and reactionaries are the enemy.
I just don’t know what to say because I was that person before. A lot of people men especially are extremely pigheaded and argumentative, and you can be justifiably upset at them. If your goal is to help women and further feminism though, even a “correct” gotcha like this makes people less receptive to feminism. It’s just making enemies out of people who might be wrong, stubborn, and combative, which unfortunately is basically everyone at some point in their life.
Being confronted and having to think about or explain your bigotry is the only way they can learn.
I wish more people understood this
“being combative” is not a constant character trait, but rather a response behavior.
And everyone can be wrong even in their strongest opinions, including yourself. Would you prefer to be the “roadblock that needs to go” when such occurs, or you’d rather have a chance to correct your opinion?
Unlike the popular belief, people can and do change. Your words here haracterize you just as combative on the matter. What makes you better than any other human being? They too believe their ideas to be the correct ones.
Treating anyone, however wrong in their ways, as nothing more than an obstacle that needs to be removed, you only make yet another person hostile towards you and your ideas, making everything only worse.
What makes me better than a misogynist and I should be nice to them too?
That’s your argument?
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“News flash, women have it faaaaaaaaar better than men.” - Galactose@sopuli.xyz
Going to leave this here for posterity in case you try to edit this comment too.
What makes you think me deleting my post meant anything ?? I want to save server space, but hey thanks for proving how much of a raging rage-baiter you are.
Correction: you are a misandrist, not a rage-baiter
“I deleted my sexist comment because I wanted to save the server 57 bytes!!!1111”
Suuure you did champ.
Coward.
I mean… reverse sexism it is wrong as well, just like reverse racism. Racism is racism it can come from any side, same thing with sexism, but it does not make the term less right, just inaccurate (and legally invalid but this is not a court and we are no judges).
Yeah I never really liked the definition of racism = prejudice + power. People can get caught in the crossfire even if they aren’t the ones in power, same with sexism. I hate ragebait like this because it’s usually divisive for no gain to anyone.
Yeah, it’s definitely not a bad thing to focus on raising women to the same level in society as men.
The problem is, like with any group, the radicals who use the movement to spread hate and tarnish the reputation of everyone involved. Religion has the same issue.
In this case, it’s the ones who think equality means swapping positions of power so men are the ones who are oppressed. They give the whole movement a bad name and lead to associations like this.
Honestly, the well might be so poisoned at this point that rebranding with an umbrella term might not be a terrible choice, although it’s terrible that it’s not a terrible choice. It shouldn’t be this way, but humans suck.
Who are you referencing when you reference, “the ones who think equality means swapping positions of power so men are the ones who are oppressed?” I’m curious to see what an example or two of that would look like.
I’ve have an example of this that happen recently. It was on a post about Spain (iirc, might have been Italy) making killing women because of their gender a hate crime.
People were arguing that men should receive harsher punishments for killing women because of their gender than women killing men because of their gender.
Which isn’t equality since criminal prosecution should be on a case by case basis. It should be a hate crime to kill anyone because of the way they were born. The fact that women are more often victims just means that more men will be prosecuted than women, but the sentences should be the same.
There’s also the crazies who think that any time a woman has sex with a man, the woman is being raped.
What they refer to is for example women using accusations of inappropriate behavior to ruin reputations and promotion chances of men to get ahead.
One that also pops up is how divorce is used as a way to strip mine the wealth of men because “the system” will advantage women always.
That’s some talking points you usually see.
Such people represent such a minority of a minority that their opinion is entirely irrelevant.
As long as men continue to have a kneejerk reaction to the word feminism, I think it holds educational value in agitation.
Their opinion isn’t irrelevant, though, as shown by the comic. It only takes a vocal minority to taint the public image.
It only took 19 Muslims to make people associate them with terrorists.
I disagree about religion, I think the good apples might be the exceptions in any ideology whose core tenants are 1. feelings over thoughts and 2. fear of punishment as basis of morality.
So every Muslim wants to murder the infidels and every Christian wants to bomb abortion clinics?
You’re letting a vocal minority taint your view of an entire demographic.
I didn’t say how bad, exactly, just that they’re almost all a net negative. You know, people who give more to the church than to charity, people who vote for autocrats, people who drill for oil and argue online about climate change. And some of them do indeed bomb abortion clinics and murder infidels, a small minority, but the average evangelical isn’t that far off from that ledge of no return.
The good ones are the ones who set up well regulated mobile soup and bread kitchens to feed the poor. They’re the ones who open shelters and secure the building to take people in during storms. They’re the ones who promote education despite contradictions with their beliefs. Those are few and far between.
What’s fascinating about this argument is that when that radicalism supports patriarchy, whether through the state or religious institutions, it is often unchallenged. At its core, the argument tacitly accepts that institutions get to define right and wrong for us and that we must passively conform.
What do we do when the state or religious institutions are the source of hate and disrepute? Is it “radical” to then challenge them? Because the argument you are making is the same that those who are advantaged by the state or other institutions have been making since time immemorial. The question then becomes, how do we persuade people to start thinking beyond themselves and towards society at large.
The argument youre been making has been employed against those that fought for emancipation, suffragettes, anti segregationalists, MLK Jr, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela etc. When non state sanctioned violence is used then the cause is assumed to be immoral. But even if the approach is nonviolent well then Please temper your language I have a personally beneficial status quo to maintain here with the overall outcome being ongoing injustice for the sake of an often unsustainable peace.
We have not perfected society. No civilization has. There will always be a need for tweaking and tinkering. The least we can do then is listen, so that we don’t simply pass these issues down to our descendants as they have been passed down to us. It’s going to take more than policing language to break that cycle.
Yeah, it’s definitely not a bad thing to focus on raising women to the same level in society as men.
The problem is, Strawman Strawman Strawman
In this case, Strawman Strawman
I don’t think you know what a strawman is.
My argument was the original being discussed; it wasn’t an attempt at refuting anything.
I can’t strawman my own argument.
Counterpoint maybe you should focus on the boys to raise them to be “not stupid” and not to “harm woman”. Ever man has a mother who raised him from a baby take some accountability woman.
If a particular group of people (be it gender wise, race wise or whatever) are being treated unequally, it sounds like a
retardedstupid board game to try to point this out without actually using this group’s name.Love the sentiment, but the R word slur contributes to treating a group unequally.
ok I suppose stupid does not necessarily isolate a group of people as it is a general adjective, otherwise we are a bit out of luck because it is also very hard to describe something strongly unpleasent without using such adjectives
Most of the time, whenever I see folks using the slur, I feel the word “asinine” would work just as well.
Other words that normally fit are: ludicrous, brainless, or downright silly.
sounds like a good one thanks
But sometimes you want to convey the backwardness, or that something is a product of a past that should be let go… is it still a slur if you’re not using it as a slur? Kind of like cracker, if you’re using it to refer to a white person it’s a slur, but nobody is going to stop you from calling a saltine or a cheese-it a cracker because that’s what they are… Or do we have to call them mass produced unleavened bread products?
Antiquated or barbaric (amongst others, language is diverse) are words that may express what you’re feeling. Of course, words have multiple meanings and those meanings change over time. Moron was used to describe a deficient intellectual capacity in a medical sense as well, however while an insult, it hasn’t adopted the slur title (maybe it has in some circles idfk). FR clothing is an example where the word is using the same definition as the insult, but describing a physical property instead of an abstract one.
At the end of the day, I usually try to avoid language and actions that are hurtful. With that being said, you can’t satisfy everyone, thus everyone has their own decisions on what values they wish to uphold.
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Only if you believe that word is referencing one group of people.
People with mental disabilities have flagged the word as harmful. Trust the victims to know what hurts them.
If the word isn’t being used in reference to people with mental disabilities it’s not the problematic context.
So if someone uses the N word slur for black people to refer to non-black people they dislike, it’s okay?
Well, it never was used as a term for “people that are disliked.” Regardless, it depends on intent and context, more often than the alternative, probably not… but etymologically speaking, it should (and needs to) change as a purposeful and intentional way to de-power the current general understanding of the word.
Society as a whole cannot collectively agree on nuance. That’s the problem with a lot of this. Words that started off neutral became harmful over time due to context and etymology. The N word didn’t originally have a racial connotation. It gained one over time and was assigned through racism.
Well, it never was used as a term for “people that are disliked.”
Bullshit. You’ve never heard kids online use it an an insult toward anyone regardless of race? Or Pewdiepie using it as a general insult? It absolutely happens.
Regardless, you don’t get to decide if an insult is offensive to a particular group. You can certainly keep using it after knowing it is, but you’ll be an asshole for doing so.
If you are using a word to refer to a person as belonging to any group with the intent to label that person as lesser or some kind of failure state of being then you are by extention calling anyone being part of that group as being something people wouldn’t want to be. You are implying members of the group are inferior.
Examples :
Calling someone “gay” in a way to mean “uncool”. You are implying that a person should never want to be gay. That being gay - is bad. Inferior to being straight.
“You ____ like a girl!” Your underlying premise is that being female is a failure state. You should be angry at being compared to something who lesser than you. This could apply to looks, ability, mannerisms etc. Hence it implies being a woman is a failure state as opposed to being a man.
Calling someone “the R-slur” when you mean something like “asinine”, “idiotic”, “mean” or “silly” you are implying those groups are failure states of being who those behaviours can be appended to as an expectation. That is a slur This sentiment is the same if you were to change the word you used but the specific history of this specific word as a slur is based on it’s once widespread use in context of being a synonym for “stupid” . Now it is less widespread but as the comic that spurred this conversation shows- it is still being used in the context of being a failure state. Intent makes the slur. If people didn’t use the word to refer to people in a way that was supposed to make them sit up and be indignant they are being compared to a disabled person it never would have become a slur. Since parlance never popularized the other use of the word as a verb “to stop or hinder” and the use of this one as a slur is still active it is far too early to attempt to “reclaim” this one.
You can argue “well a new word will just gain slur status!” and the answer is no. The problem stops when you realize the underlying problem is intent the lesson is understood and society stops creating new slurs by implying inferiority through context. English is vast. Use a word without the connotation of belonging to a specific group and you stop the underlying problem.
I think you have it backwards - calling someone a slur doesn’t make the negative association, society as a whole has already decided those traits are negative, and as a result, we use them as slurs. Stopping people from using hurtful words does not fix the problem, I think it lets some people self-righteously think they’re helping, but it doesn’t really do anything.
We’ve seen that happen with using “gay” as an insult - society has shifted over the years, so that being gay is no longer seen as a bad thing (at least not so much so as it was in the 90s, we still have some room for improvement…) therefore it has lost its power as an insult. Somebody calls me gay today, I don’t really care - it’s inaccurate, but it doesn’t hurt me any. And because it doesn’t hurt me, they’re not going to use it as an insult, because that’s what they’re going for, and it’s not effective.
But certain classes of people will always be looked down on, so those traits will always be used as insults. If society makes it unacceptable to use those words, assholes will continue to use them when they think they can get away with it, or find new words. Think of how many words there are for “mentally deficient”. Many of those words were the clinical term for specific disabilities until they fell out of favor after being used as insults. Stupid is one, as is idiot, moron… The only real difference is recency.
Slurs have a couple of different ways of coming about. Calling someone “gay” in the context of being uncool or unmanly was one whete the attitude shifted but consider that because of underlying attitude of homophobia became more appearant to the average listener in the attempt to use it in context of a slur. Once something reflects the small mindedness of the speaker more than insults the listener it does lose it’s power.
Now consider something you said about the disability community :
But certain classes of people will always be looked down on, so those traits will always be used as insults
There is a very large body of disability advocacy that is involved in fighting for a social attitude where this is not the case. In fact it hasn’t always been the case. Our concept of “normal” is historically more recent than you would think and people with mental disabilities in the English world were not really considered a distinct class. You are taking for granted that the disability community will be considered inferior by the wider population because you cannot imagine a state otherwise. That is ableism my friend and it doesn’t change unless you look it in the face and recognize it for what it is.
A fundamental thing lacking in your understanding of slurs is your insistance that their existence is a full negative for the community that they are levied against. It is more useful to look at the designation of slurs almost more as a form of technology those communities use both as a form of self advocacy to spread awareness of underlying prejudices and to identify individuals and groups who hold them particular opposition or threat. They aren’t just about “getting upset” or giving people an avenue to press buttons.
Consider the “N-slur” in light of it being a technology. Those who use it are either :
-
Identifying themselves as a member of the ‘in’ group and using it as a means of solidarity.
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Identifying themselves as an individual that believes they have “the right” to use the slur companionably thus often identifying themselves as a problem who at best doesn’t quite understand the assignment or at worst believes they can make unilateral decisions as part of a group to which they do not belong presenting a threat
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Identifying themselves as a legitimate threat by using the word with the full weight of it’s oppressive and derogatory context.
This is legitimately words as weapons of war. A technique hit upon by modern civil rights movements as a means of fighting back. The meeting place of sociology and etymology where people started looking at words beyond strict meaning. What you are attempting to do is disarm a community making use of this but in reality you are identifying yourself using this tech as the second form of threat. The one that treats advocacy as a lost cause because the idea of implicit inferiority is so ingrained you can’t see the paternalism.
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We’ve seen that happen with using “gay” as an insult - society has shifted over the years, so that being gay is no longer seen as a bad thing
I don’t remember that “just happening”… I remember prominent members of the homosexual community deciding to reclaim the word “gay”, and then working to bring the more neutral connotations into the mainstream - and that effort is still ongoing.
The people targeted by the slur had to have the resources and ability to change public perception before that could happen, and it took a considerable, concerted effort. It did not just “shift”, and that process is not equally available to every target of a slur.
LMAO, ok so I don’t need a lecture. We’re not talking about using “gay” as a pejorative. That’s not the same word that’s being discussed here. Nor are we talking about using femininity as a negative state.
The “R” word originally meant “to slow” or to hold back progress. That’s what it meant before the medical community misappropriated the term for individuals with intellectual disabilities. At some point after that, the word changed into an informal pejorative and then became taboo. At this point, there’s very viable uses of the word that correlate with politics and perspectives that are counter-progressive.
You appearantly do need the lecture because you are not listening. There are plenty of words you can use without using one that, misappropriated or not, was and still is used to describe the disability community and is now primarily linked to that understanding.
Your statement of “well words are fine if they aren’t used at the people who they are meant for” is inherently incorrect, hence the examples each is an example of using the word in a disrespectful or phobic context. What you are proposing is using a word linked through current pejorative use to the disability community to be expanded to not just be used in the context of “stupid” but to now mean essentially “facist” because… Why? You particularly like the word?
That’s not better.
That’s not how it works. I’m sorry you disagree with English, but people are able to be hurt but words not pointed directly at them.
In typical usage, retard (pronounced /ˈɹiː.tɑːɹd/, REE-tard) is an ableist slur for someone who is considered stupid, slow to understand, or ineffective in some way as a comparison to stereotypical traits perceived in those with intellectual disability. The adjective retarded is used in the same way, for something or someone considered very foolish or stupid. The word is sometimes censored and referred to as the euphemistic “r‑word” or “r‑slur” Retard was previously used as a medical term.
Retard was previously used as a medical term.
As was idiot, cretin, moron, and imbecile, which suffered similar misuse.
Previously? It’s in my medical paper.
It has fallen into disfavor due to its constant misuse as a pejorative. Might want to update the paper.
Why are you telling me, I’m not the one calling patients the R word 😭
So it’s in your medical record. Depending on how old it is, that was very unprofessional of whoever wrote it.
In typical usage
so you agree it is a multifaceted word that requires contextual definition in order to be used properly.
The noun retard is recorded from 1788 in the sense “retardation, delay;” from 1970 in the offensive meaning “retarded person,” originally American English, with accent on first syllable. Other words used for “one who is mentally retarded” include retardate (1956, from Latin retardatus), and U.S. newspapers 1950s-60s often used retardee (1950).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/retarded
It’s unfair to judge a word that has over 500 years of use on the last 70 years of history.
It’s unfair to judge a word that has over 500 years of use on the last 70 years of history.
A bridge that has stood for 500 years can be considered unusable today due to recent developments.
The word clearly isn’t having the effect you say you want. The solution isn’t to bemoan the poor treatment of the word - the solution is to change the word you use.
You have many options - be creative!
more analogies that have no other purpose but to oversimplify and confuse the topic. I can’t fault you though, if this is the best way you can understand language. you tried your best after all.
if the intent of the speaker is misunderstood by the listener it’s the listeners fault for misinterpreting and failing to understand contextual intonation.
simply put, the speaker speaks and the listener listens. intent is conveyed through our words and their meaning. if the listener misinterprets the meaning based on context given, it’s the listeners fault.
have you observed that when listening to the speech of someone who is classically educated that their vocabulary seems to be endlessly descriptive and their intent often lost on the uneducated masses? that those with higher education are often ostracized or mocked because they are perceived as “thinking they’re better”.
that’s because the uneducated masses fail to understand the meaning of the words they speak. the peasants fail to understand the nobility of the spoken word. they simply use common to communicate with their simpleminded friends and neighbors.
I’m sure at this point you have clearly understood my intent of this comment.
if not, read a book.
On the contrary, a skilled orator adjusts the message to suit the audience, and a skilled craftsman chooses the tool best suited to the task.
However, your intent here seems to be primarily to offend, rather than to convince or persuade, as evidenced by both your word choice and the direction of your statements - this is your choice of course, and I will similarly choose to ignore it!
Yea, and from the same wiki article:
The word retard dates as far back as 1426. It stems from the Latin verb retardare, meaning “to hinder” or “make slow”.
Much like today’s socially acceptable terms idiot and moron, which are also defined as some sort of mental disability, when the term retard is being used in its pejorative form, it is usually not being directed at people with intellectual disabilities. Instead, people use the term when teasing their friends or as a general insult.
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this is either the perfect comment that uses the word “ignoramus”, or the worst insult.
I’m still not sure if you actually meant to do it or not.
I chose it for its Latin-ness, if that’s what you’re asking.
No, we’re speaking English. Do you know the definition of etymology?
Do you understand semantic shift?
Yea this is a slippery slope though, you can play this game with every word and easily turn it into a discussion in bad faith. English, not being my mother tongue, when I think of the word “retarded”, I automatically think of the word as related to describing foolish and stupid actions. But I do also know, on a higher level, that it actually is a medical term. So I am not against this correction (I would for instance be more careful at not be using the anologous word in my language in such a sentence).
Retarded is an outdated medical term, we use terminology such as intellectual disability these days because of the stigma behind the R word.
Agreed, in its core the problem lies in people’s inclination to be ableist. Whether or not making people conscious of usage of ableist terminology in sentences is helpful to this problem, I am not really sure. But I am also not against it.
.
Retarded is an outdated medical term
Latin would like a word with you on that.
The etymology of the word is irrelevant in this context, only how it’s currently being used in English.
though I’m disappointed that you believe the history of language is irrelevant, I’m happy you feel that way!
in the original comment, they used it in a way to describe a board game, not against a person or people.
so no issue, right?
This is no way to argue. It’s only pointing with fingers while victimizing yourself.
even worse it is just discussion in bad faith
It’s okay, the strawman can’t hurt you.
Which person in the comic are you referring to? It could go either way.
You are the man in the comic
Not at all. People are more complex. What’s the idea here, everyone who disagrees with this meme is mysoginist (evil)? This is MAGA level of grouping.
My sis had a phase with this style of “discussing” while growing up. That’s why i react to it.
And yeah, the boys argument is dumb too.
You are the man in the comic
Bad bot
Cope
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When cornered though something something excesses of ism.
Trans issues is the big one because the reality is so counterintuitive that even renoun internet celebrity scientists utterly fail to engage with the actual research.
I even feel compelled to stress that yes the science supports the need for unequivocal acceptance of trans people.
ah tumblr
It’s a valid point though. A simple change in terminology and messaging is literally all it would take for these types of criticisms to go away.
No it’s not. The people who make these sort of pathetic criticisms will find a new reason to not support women.
The reason we have individual words is that we can apply labels to issues that only affect certain people.
The criticisms remain valid regardless of your opinion on the people who say them. Ultimately optics do matter in any social movement, and quite a lot. If feminism wants to be perceived as an egalitarian movement, then it has to brand itself as such. It’s slogans, terminology, mentality, and the behavior of its supporters have to adjust to reflect a true adaptation of this principle. Otherwise, it’ll remain a movement that will be perceived as one that is solely focused on the advancement of women in a society irrespective of the status of men.
The current position is just inconsistent from an optics perspective. Either feminism is synonymous with egalitarianism and it adapts to reflect that or it remains as it is and gets viewed as a separate movement. I’m of the opinion that the direction the movement should take should depend on the society its in, but I digress. The point is you can’t have it both ways. As long as that inconsistency exists, it will always be pointed and criticized by people.
I been thinking about this kind thing recently. In Brazil (To be more precise in the state of Bahia which I live) there has been a spike on femicide which bugged me because of the term, "What is the difference between this and homicide of women and the answer i found is: Femicide is the killing of women BECAUSE they are women. It’s an specification of the crime. So I think the same thing can be said about feminism: It is a fight for equality of gender focused ONLY in women. It does not make it less than true equality, but the terminology make it become an idea/movement, just like socialism and capitalism (Cold war for example).
References (Translation is available with your right click)
https://www.ba.gov.br/comunicacao/noticias/2025-03/366428/duas-cada-cinco-mulheres-baianas-mortas-de-forma-violenta-sao-vitimas-de https://www.jusbrasil.com.br/artigos/distincao-juridica-e-social-entre-femicidio-e-feminicidio-no-direito-brasileiro/3820107194
You think misogynists would stop being misogynistic? That’s an interesting take. The history books all disagree with you. So, let’s take a similar issue with race…
Black Lives Matter. That’s about equality. The anti-BLM slogan is All Lives Matter, which is typically used by white nationalists or people supporting cops who kill black guys for nothing. In other words, generalization is a tool to distract from the real problems that persecuted groups really face. Do we need more proof?
Now, maybe you want to say we should fight all kinds of discrimination, became they are connected. That brings up intersectionality. It’s a fascinating topic. Is that what you want to discuss? … Somehow I feel like you won’t, because you don’t want to talk about the problems themselves, but simply to shoot the messenger. But I could be mistaken about your motives. If so, my apologies.
Also, you proposed something easy to address. What if we got rid of “feminism” as a term. What then? Actually, the history books contain the answer. The word was used in current meaning as early as 1872. So, what was it like for women up to 1871? If the word itself were the issue, then life should have been great, right? … And of course it wasn’t… What we saw in the U.S. was that women’s rights shifted a lot in the 1960s and later, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Imagine that! People fought both racism and sexism and good things happened. All while using terminology you would consider ripe for criticism.
If the terminology and messaging change, then the attacks against it will change to keep pace.
This is why we should all just agree to go by Yusuke Urameshi style equality.
Man, women, or baby, if your stupid you should get punched in the face. If your not stupid then you wouldn’t be sexist in the first place and would punch the stupid people.
It’s very simple.
if your stupid
Ah, good old ‘punching down’ hierarchical oppression. That always worked out well historically 😌
Wasn’t expecting a Yu Yu Hakusho analogy on punching sexism but I am here for it
So, eugenics, but only focused on one type of people.
How the fuck is that eugenics? Do you know what that word means?
Ok, fair. They can still reproduce in theory.
But you are doing awful things to people just because they have dumb genes, and you assume they are sexist.
Fucking hell. No. First off, it’s an anime reference. Second, you have it entirely backwards, it’s not saying all stupid people are sexist, it’s saying all sexist people are stupid, stupid.
For instance, I’m not accusing you of being sexist just because you’ve proven yourself to be stupid, but if you had proven yourself to be sexist then I would also 100% know that you’re also stupid.
Edit: That’s also not how intelligence and genes function, stupid, now you’re the one doing a eugenics propaganda.
Genes affect intelligence drasticaly. Rich families all hsve similsr IQ’s, because they top out on theur potential, while it’s less obvious with poor people.
Imagine having all the wealth in the world, but it can’t raise your IQ past a certain point.
So I’m looking into how to, ahem…modify myself (not just geneticaly).
I.Q. Is racist colonial nonsense made up by phrenologists. You’ve eaten a lot of bullshit sandwiches and elitist propaganda. There’s no point in having this conversation if those are the metrics you think are real and take seriously. How fucking childish.
Way to go, stupid.
I’m calling comrade shark fucker.
Goddamn, username checks out.
I love this quote “Feminism is Humanism”.
That’s a so much better response than writing the male off as misogynist. I like that a lot.
True, he could be a contrarian, or a troll.
He could also just be a very literal person, perhaps autistic or uninformed, using terms exactly as they are defined, who wants to support equality but not support philogyny. Either way, clarifying that the feminism is humanism and equality and hardlining that point is the answer.
He could also just be a very literal person, perhaps autistic
Fair enough
