@Auspice yeah that friend of mine considers himself an academic and his apology game is strong
But in a crowd he totally looks like he's a Vladivostok Russian white, which is Asian.
Edit: Also? Charlize Theron is an African American. Wuddup.
What offends me is people creating new and interesting ways of being offended.
I'm on this boat, mostly. I had no idea that someone could be offended because I used the word "tranny." That, apparently, is an offensive word to transsexuals, so I've tried to train myself not to say that when I'm trying to have a reasonable conversation.
"Oriental" as an offensive slur isn't exactly a new thing, though. You sort of point that out in your own post. Yet people still use the term in derogation of others, just like people use the word nigger, a term we all know is just a tiny bit "microaggressive."
The whole "Microaggressions exist within a context of power binary" ... actually fuck off. That kind of stupid shit is what is making academia a toxic, poisonous pool of immature stupidity.
I didn't invent the term "microaggression." In fact, I blatantly asked the entire board what that meant at some point recently. Since then, I've taken the time to actually look into it. While I don't necessarily agree that calling something a "microaggression" makes it so (see my previous comment about your usage), I also understand what the theorists coining and using the term are trying to get at.
I get that this is a point of irritation for you, but you may want to look into why people are concerned about such things before you dismiss them out of hand for an apparent lack of empathy.
Its not lack of empathy ... its the way it has destroyed academic pursuit and freedom of thought. There are healthy ways of discussing these topics (and re: Oriental, I am aware that that term is not new and its history). The way they are talked aboutt is not healthy. And I don't mean on just a "gosh, people get so sensitive and angry about this" ... I mean on a level of professors, teachers and students whose lives are being ruined, jobs lost, careers destroyed, because Sally the Pink-Haired SJW decided that the way you talked about the history of that Oriental rug was just so fucking triggering that they "felt the violence of that microaggression and gosh they just couldn't leave their room for days because they were crying". THESE PEOPLE NEED TO SERIOUSLY FUCK OFF. And they need to be told, not just by academics like me, but by people like you to GET A GRIP.
But, @ataru, being the victim is what draws attention to you! Social media is teaching this new generation how attention feels, and they are learning to garner it in all ways possible, some of those ways are very unhealthy.
When society is calling the recent political stress syndromes up onto the same levels as combat PTSD, there is a huge red flag. Conversations about politics should never cause as much emotional damage as living through actual combat, a shooting, or a rape, or anything else that would cause genuine PTSD. Politics, by their very nature, are conversations about differing opinions. If you are traumatized by conversations with differing opinions, something else is seriously wrong.
Gany used the N Word so now I gotta be like:
I wish we could come up with new terms for different types of PTSD.
I have suffered from two types. Emotional PTSD and something closer to what we think of with combat vets ('physical' PTSD? I don't know; I described the sensations with it to a combat vet once and he said it's almost exactly what he's experienced).
The two aren't the same. But we use the same term. And I think that's part of the problem.
They're no less valid, they are no less difficult to live with, but they are very different.
You are right that /context matters/. Yes, the ability to speak about ideas and thoughts at an academic level freely and openly matters, and should be done in a respectful way. The respectful is the key. But coming in and making sweeping proclamations that all people who talk about microaggressions can fuck right off? That's not taking context into consideration, either.
I'll just end with this for now....
"For at present we all tend to one mistake; we tend to make politics too important. We tend to forget how huge a part of a man's life is the same under a Sultan and a Senate, under Nero or St. Louis. Daybreak is a never-ending glory, getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance; food and friends will be welcomed; work and strangers must be accepted and endured; birds will go bedwards and children won't, to the end of the last evening."
—G.K. Chesterton
@Ataru well done.
And I don't mean on just a "gosh, people get so sensitive and angry about this" ... I mean on a level of professors, teachers and students whose lives are being ruined, jobs lost, careers destroyed, because Sally the Pink-Haired SJW decided that the way you talked about the history of that Oriental rug was just so fucking triggering that they "felt the violence of that microaggression and gosh they just couldn't leave their room for days because they were crying". THESE PEOPLE NEED TO SERIOUSLY FUCK OFF.
See, you won't get dissent from me on this. Academia is supposed to be a place where you can openly discuss offensive terms in context, and where hot-bed issues, like microaggressions, need to be dissected and analyzed. Similarly, I get frustrated when academic institutions do not support and protect dissenting opinions, even ones that are patently offensive.
So, yes. Overly-aggressive SJWs need to shut the fuck up and deal with the fact that world is a dark, dark place, and the only way you can learn protection from the dark arts is to be somewhat instructed in them. I'm with you on that.
I'm not with you on whether I should or should not be offended by an antiquated term leveled against me in a manner that is clearly disparaging. How I deal with being offended is another matter: in this case, I looked to the judge, who threatened the party with contempt of court if he used that term again.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
I'm not with you on whether I should or should not be offended by an antiquated term leveled against me in a manner that is clearly disparaging. How I deal with being offended is another matter: in this case, I looked to the judge, who threatened the party with contempt of court if he used that term again.
You mean the term Oriental? When did I say this wasn't an offensive term? It is, categorically, when describing a person.
If you mean Asian ... that's not an antiquarian term (as in not out of date), nor has a history of being used in a derogatory manner and refers to region not ethnicity. If you, as an Asian, want to be offended by it. Okay. Tell me what you want to be called, if anything. I won't call you Asian, but you're not going to convince me that it is a derogatory term period. You may be offended by it ... great ... I've never had an Asian friend who was.
Also to throw this out there, I've very rarely ever needed to refer to someone by their race. What context are you all (ambiguous term) running into this that it's becoming such a big issue that you can't just /not/ call someone an Asian?
Mostly, they like to be called their names.
#FreeFarfalla
@Meg Your Decepticon privilege is showing.
Decepticon.
Also to throw this out there, I've very rarely ever needed to refer to someone by their race. What context are you all (ambiguous term) running into this that it's becoming such a big issue that you can't just /not/ call someone an Asian?
Mostly, they like to be called their names.
I'm actually with you here ... unfortunately young students today define themselves more by their various identities than their names. That's not hyperbole.
Also to throw this out there, I've very rarely ever needed to refer to someone by their race. What context are you all (ambiguous term) running into this that it's becoming such a big issue that you can't just /not/ call someone an Asian?
Mostly, they like to be called their names.
I'm actually with you here ... unfortunately young students today define themselves more by their various identities than their names. That's not hyperbole.
Gotta get that privilege bingo.
I do feel like the overidentification of a person as these myriad of identities is silly. I don't get to tell them that, but sometimes it is easier to just be who you are. I am Megatron. That's all
Look, we work for the underprivileged. Our whole philosophy was based on the fact that transformer society was too classist!
You mean the term Oriental? When did I say this wasn't an offensive term?
You didn't. But you did say that people need to "fucking chill out and know in context when a term is being used to describe them is being used as an insult or not." And I said, in response, that other people don't get to tell me when something is or is not an insult. That means, to me, that I have the luxury (privilege?) of deeming whether the use of "oriental" in any context is insulting or not.
If you mean Asian ... that's not an antiquarian term (as in not out of date), nor has a history of being used in a derogatory manner and refers to region not ethnicity.
I meant neither. I meant, very specifically, that "whether I should or should be offended by an antiquated term leveled against me" is up to me. This is not always by choice -- sometimes, it occurs via visceral, unconscious feeling -- but it does happen, and I have to admit that it happens to me (rarely).
If you, as an Asian, want to be offended by it. Okay. Tell me what you want to be called, if anything. I won't call you Asian, but you're not going to convince me that it is a derogatory term period.
I'm actually not offended by it, but I know some people that are, genuinely. They are for very specific reasons, which are unique to them (or their small section of the population). The one thing I will say about the word, including "oriental," is something you've alluded to but haven't expressly stated: that whether something is or is not derogatory is both situational and experiential. Your Asian friends may not care if you use it, but some of my friends do, and, again, it is due to their experiences.
That's often my objection to the overuse of the term "microaggression," the white-washing of academia, and the problem with immature kids getting into academia. You and I can sit around and talk about the words "nigger" and "kyke" and "homo," and how these terms can hurt people, in a way that is neither offensive or derogatory to either one of us. That's what academia is about, and why people consciously or unconsciously give a pass when such terms are raised in the context of an academic discussion.
But students these days are, in a way, so fucking self-absorbed at times that they do not understand that they are walking into a literal battleground of ideas where they are going to be subjected to successively-more vicious traumas as they go along. This is, in a way, how education works: learning about the progressively smaller lies in chemistry is no less traumatic, objectively, than being at a lecture where Prof. Said is repeatedly using the word "oriental" when he's talking about his "orientalism" theories.
I just think that things have shifted to a world in America (young America?) where outcry is a goal. People look for something to cry out about, to attract attention onto someone, all in the name of activism and whatever social agenda that they are closest to.
People ignore context. They just cry out: "[He|She] said the word ______, clearly a [racist|sexist|bigot]!" to draw ire and fingers onto someone. They, in turn, gain notoriety in their little agenda-circle.
A common and fundamental understanding of the nature of insult, and communication in general, is that too often the person communicating assumes, usually wrongly, that their intent and context will be interpreted correctly by the person receiving that communication. The process of conveying concepts has long been subjective. It's easy to place fault in the hands of the receiver, because it's easy for the communicator to exist in a self-contained bubble, aka "Well, I know what I meant!" It doesn't work like that.
Eh, I don't think that works, @Cupcake, in the discussion of academia and insult that @Ganymede and @Ataru are having up above.
If a student flails at a singular word being used in proper context of a teaching situation, then that student is either ignoring that the teacher is using said context properly, or they are super-sensitive. The conversation above is talking about the latter.
I think the conversation here is when adequate context and intent is not only given, but supercedes the expectation because the conversation itself is happening in a forum designed and built for exchanging ideas at a higher level. That's, like, the mission statement of a University or College, right?
Someone doesn't get to sit in on a medical lecture about the difficulties encountered by prosthetic-wearing patients, and get all upset and lodge complaints just because the word "disabled" is used when talking about the victim being pinned in a car for seven hours and loosing her leg. It is STILL the word used by governments, signs and non-profit organizations to describe the condition.
@Auspice yeah that friend of mine considers himself an academic and his apology game is strong
But in a crowd he totally looks like he's a Vladivostok Russian white, which is Asian.
Edit: Also? Charlize Theron is an African American. Wuddup.
