Faggots and Niggers - Page 2

Hate em' both, what's it to you dago?

I'm not entirely sure 'nigger' is something that should be used in casual conversation, especially if you're white. I used to use it, in the modern 'homeboy' sense, and people I know used to use it. Not so much anymore. If you're afraid to use it when when you're in a large crowd of black people, you shouldn't use it at all. It's definitely not apropos where I live.

Could you say 'faggot' in a large group of gay people?

Ethnic group
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An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, [1] and who are regarded as distinctive by those outside the group, turning the group into a "people." [2] Ethnic groups are united by common cultural, behavioural, linguistic, ritualistic, or religious traits, usually but not always on the basis of a common genealogy or ancestry. [1] Processes that result in the emergence of such a community are summarized as ethnogenesis.

The term is used in contrast to "race," which refers to physical and genetic traits perceived as common to certain groups. [2]

It means that by themselves the words are harmless. Much like a gun sitting on a nightstand is harmless. It takes a person pointing and aiming, with the intent to hurt someone, for the gun to become dangerous. It's like if I assigned a negative connotation to calling someone "Rutger Hauer". Most people would just think I'm calling them a kickass blind swordsman when in reality I'm inferring that they are a chronic masturbater*. I just fired a "Rutger Hauer bullet" at them. It's the intent.

*Not that I think Mr. Hauer is a chronic mastubater. I could have just as easily assigned a "Broderick abusing daywolf" meaning to the name. It's just a name or word that can be infused with a negative meaning just as easily as a positive meaning. Some words unfortunately drew the short straw.**


**Yes, I used a footnote in my post, sue me.

Which has no relation to my initial comment, as far as I can tell. [Edit: that was a bad first sentence. What I meant was that it doesn't help clarify his stance as it relates to my initial comment, as my initial comment was about intent.] I commented that I thought Devin was not comfortable, himself, using gay (and I should have said faggot) as an insult. He said that he hadn't said that, but since he'd said it was intent that mattered (and insult is, to me, an intent), that's where I got confused. Is he comfortable with insult as an intent for using those words, or not? I have since asked him to clarify. Mr. Thompson's post reiterated the remark but did not clarify it.

I'm familiar with Italians.

Define "sometimes." You're stretching it a bit thin here, Faraci.

We are better than that, we all know the French drink pee and eat babies.

Get some new friends. Move off the plantation.

I had a shocking run in with the ‘N’ about five or six years ago, just before my younger brother was getting ready to graduate from high school. My parents planned to throw him a huge graduation party- since my Dad’s a high school teacher, a big chunk of the faculty were going to show up, and that’s already on top of the various hordes of friends and neighbors that were coming.

Our family trend was to wait until the day of a party to begin the massive task of cleaning the house and yard, and this event was to be no exception. The 1.5-acre lawn needed to be mowed and edged, the leaves raked, the pool cleaned, the floors mopped, the furniture dusted, and so forth. Since the house would end up filthy after the party anyway, it was a zero sum game. We were rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and we knew it.

The ‘incident’ began innocently enough. I remember cleaning the pool and hearing my Dad yelling at my brother in the front yard: “What are you doing? You haven’t raked anything! There aren’t even any piles! What, are you just shuffling the leaves around?” Knowing my brother, this was likely. A half-hour later, I remember being in the living room, and watching my Dad explode into the house, his arms flailing, exasperated, turning to my Mom: “Fuck, Jesus, Fuck! I found him leaning on a tree and playing his Game Boy! I don’t know how to get this kid moving! We only have a few hours until people start showing up, and he won’t rake the goddamn leaves!” After a few minutes, I walked out into the front lawn and found my brother, rake in hand, staring at something in the trees above. “Dad is gonna destroy you if you don’t rake these leaves,” I said. He shrugged, and we began a ten minute conversation about Killer Instinct on the N64.

Our Dad eventually walked out onto the front porch and came toward us, quickly at first, then, as the realization that no raking had been done washed over him, slowly and deliberately. His lips pursed and fists clenched. For a moment, I thought I would finally get to see a beating. He stepped onto the bed of leaves, gesturing at them with outstretched hands the way one would gesture toward a dead baby or something, and, pointing at my brother, screamed with all of his power:

“NIIIGGERRR!”

The booming sound of temporary hatred for one’s son pierced the clouds above and engulfed the neighborhood. My brother dropped the rake, and we stood silently, mouths wide open, shocked at hearing him say what we’ve never heard him say before that, and what we’ve never heard him say since. I think it was the absolute worst possible word he could imagine at that given time, so in a way, it makes him kind of un-racist. Oh yeah, my brother’s white. I forgot to mention that everybody’s white in this story.

Sometimes you won't grace us with an actual answer to a question. I'm not sure if honestly attempting to engage you in a serious discussion makes me a bigger ass even than yourself, who seems to want to have a discussion but would rather make remarks like the above than actually do so.

I believe you could have answered the question yourself. Jason's post farther up explains it all perfectly.

I'm sorry, Devin. I didn't realize that positions on the topic at hand were not up for discussion or clarification. I'll remember, in the future, not to question your opinion or attempt to actually understand your stance on an issue. Perhaps it would be best if we simply didn't discuss anyone's position and simply let the article stand for itself, for our separate consideration.

I've seen a couple of stories on television and on the net where they edited the word Faggot especially during the Grey's Anatomy thing.

But the quote in the original post does bring up an interesting point. Why are some slurs approached with caution and others not?

It could boil down to political power or who would raise the most ruckus.

If you attempted to actually understand his stance on the issue you would have found it already.

It basically boils down to history I believe. We have yet to enslave homosexuals and treat them as less than human. (Well, we have treated them as less than human, especially when the AIDS epidemic first broke out.) In that way "nigger" has a lot more history and has led to a lot more hatred and fighting and misunderstanding out in the open. Homosexuality in general is considered hush-hush and still not openly talked about by family.

There is no difference. But no one has really raised a public ruckus about "faggot" up until now, whereas the hideousness of "nigger" has been debated and aired in the open for decades now. I would be willing to bet that a lot of people covering the Isaiah Washington story had to be walked through the incident by someone who knows it's not cool to call a gay man a "faggot."

The truth of the matter is that it has nothing to do with "politically correct" this or semantics that. People have been victimized and killed for the biases, judgments and fears those words express -- words meant to separate "them" from "us," and therefore demean "them" in comparison to "us." They inform psychographics that overlap with hate crimes. I would add the word "retard" to this string. I have to explain to my son over and over again how mean it is because virtually all of his friends at school use it.

And Y3K bug, Stern isn't a racist or a homophobe. The closest parallel to his humor and satire is Borat.

I prefer using more elegant, refined terms. Like fuzzie-wuzzie.

On a similar note (and it may have already been said), but has anyone noticed on some channels you can say God, you can say 'damn', but you can't seem to say them both at the same time. Even more surprising, they bleep out the 'God'.

I've been wondering for the longest time and cannot come up with any answer.

Just something I noticed is all.

"Goddamn" is considered more blasphemous and thus inappropriate than just "God" or "damn." It basically means "I want God to damn this whatever to hell," which is bad, obviously. It's considered a more potent curse, like "Jesus Christ!"

I just want to clarify that I personally don't see a difference between the two words, but I know society does.

Any word, no matter what its definition, can be used to express hatred. And there are no degrees of true hatred.

Yeah, like maybe half of this particular society had made "niggers" slaves for hundreds of years, whereas they had much more casually biggoted "faggots" with the occasional hate crime. If you weren't such a dumb guinnea you would have factored that in.

In other words, French != race. My original point.
It's a nationality.

I think this whole mess could've been avoided if Isaiah Washington had the common sense to call T.R. Knight a cocksucker like any decent human being.

I think culture and nationality are different things. I'm Canadian, but also French. It's my heritage.

F- and N-words aside, it's still ok to openly make fun of fat people, right? Even though over half of Americans are overweight (though you'd never know it from the eugenics program they use to select people portrayed in media), they're still a minority and deserve to be laughed at, right? Because, you know, it's a lifestyle choice.

Further complicating the issue are recent studies on how class and income affect obesity. Basically, poor people tend to be more obese due to cheaper food being less healthy and the fact that periods of having no money/little food are followed by periods in which payment is received and bingeing occurs. So, depending on circumstances, making fun of fat people might = making fun of the poor. But there's still generally a bit more individual choice inherent in eating habits than in being gay or black. Or being French, for that matter.

What, are we no longer allowed to make fun of the poor? Fucking politically correct fascists.

I don't understand why it's funny to make fun of fat people.
I don't have a problem with making fun of them, I am a very thin person.

...but I just don't think it's ha-ha funny.