Posts made by surreality

@kk <headpat> Sure. In an appropriate place to do so, where it isn't derailing the thread. Because the thread is about dumb shit that pisses the collective 'us' off.

@kk There is no longer any big deal, hence me wondering why in the fuck you're suggesting I'm the one who brought it up, for one, and are trying to stir shit that has settled already with a surprising measure of sensibility in order to sling some shade around in the most spectacularly clueless fashion I've witnessed in a few days, which is saying a lot around here.

@Ghost And the only ammo permitted will be random image macros, monkey poo, movie/television quotes, and 4 sided dice to use as caltrops.

@kk Already been addressed a few pages ago, quite well in fact.

@Kanye-Qwest I'd say accusing someone of doing something constitutes an attack, YMMV.

@kk Stay classy keeping up with the personal attacks and grudgewanky bullshit while everybody else has generally been talking like grownups, I guess. I'm not the one who brought it the fuck up.

P.S. This isn't the a game-related forum, genius. This is the 'RL Anger' thread, where this topic is abso-fucking-lutely appropriate.

Weirdly, I find the fact that any of this argument is happening at all to be a pretty positive sign. As in, in ye olden days of WORA, objecting to being called anything (including any given slur half the time) would just get somebody dogpiled and everyone doubled down on specifically calling them that as much as possible for as long as anyone could be bothered to remember to do it.

If nothing else, it demonstrates a fairly significant difference between MSB and ye olden days of WORA. A good one, I think.

@Meg I am just quietly relieved somebody got that reference. That was the first real horror I have seen on television in years!!!

First show in a while in the genre I quietly noped out of after the pilot for a month or two before I had the courage to revisit it. (Which was worth it, but oh. my. gawd.)

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

The splinters discourage me.

Do not watch Salem, then, that's all I'm gonna say.

@Meg said in RL Anger:

@surreality

I think we must read those things differently. I can kind of see where you are coming from but-- If I said 'don't call people Satan' is a basic enough bit of etiquette, would it have the same implication to you? That I'm saying you have to be offended by being called Satan?

When someone goes on to the academic thing, it doesn't sound like a polite recommendation any more. It's less 'don't call people Satan', and more 'I shouldn't have to haul out the bible to explain to anybody with a brain why they shouldn't call somebody Satan'. There's a definite note of condescension in there, let's be frank about that.

@Roz said in RL Anger:

@Meg I do think there was a sense of disbelief or skepticism expressed by some people that someone could be living in America in 2017 without realizing that cunt is considered a really nasty thing to call someone, which I could see further extrapolated to a point of "you must be offended by this."

^ That. Thank you.

Anyways, I'm still going to land squarely in the camp of "someone objected strongly to being called a cunt and the real problem in that conversation was the people who insisted she shouldn't take issue with the word." Not the people who then had to defend their right to be offended by a word that's considered highly aggressive by a lot of the country.

By the time I hopped in there, 'yes, this really is extremely offensive to some (which I continue to say is absolutely OK)' had, really, been covered. At that point, it was the predictable 'but my buddies say it and I don't mind!' and 'don't you know everyone agrees that's rude!' were browbeating each other.•

But, yeah, etiquette rules in the Hog Pit are kinda... uhm. I've had nasty shit said to and about me in other sections of the forum even if they don't involve specific tense terms and that is not just me, almost all of us are in the same boat about that, having the same experience.

If somebody says, "Hey, that's really over the top to me," it is the decent person thing to do to not do that to them, for sure. It's... not the specific venue where I would expect people to default do so (have concern about offending or not) so far as the board goes. All the other sections? Yeah.

• My sleep schedule's wonky as fuck lately, y'all. Seriously. I'm still testy and unslept and hazy-brained due to the dental surgery and painkillers and lasered gums and la la la oh god why do I taste nothing but sour bacon. My tact is absolutely not working well, and my clarity is worse. This isn't an excuse for anything, just a general advisory in case something doesn't seem to make sense. Just, y'know, ask or something, and I will try to clarify, because I'm not actually trying to offend anybody here today or anything. As it is I'm like 'whoa' on the run-on sentences that cross over like cat's cradle still. (Am not sure if it is making this discussion look better or worse than it is, but wavy wavy text is super trippy.)

@Meg

@kitteh said in Random Bitching:

I think 'don't call people cunts' is, or at least should be, a basic enough bit of etiquette now that it doesn't require detailed academic deconstruction to justify.

This is what I'm talking about.

No individual should have to justify 'I'm offended by that'. That should be enough, and ideally people will respect that and it's certain if they don't after that they're knowingly being offensive and disrespectful.

But when we're trying to make universals? Fuck that. There's no amount of academic browbeating bullshit that is going to force people to be offended or not by something they are offended by or not, and this is not the place for that shit anyway.

ETA: This is the description for that board, specifically:

A place to talk about MU nonsense in the dirt. To participate, join the "Pitcrew" group, but fair warning: It's gonna get messy. No crying.

...not exactly a place where I think Miss Manners would survive without a case of the vapors.

@saosmash Yeah, that was partly what baffled me about that whole thing. You weren't saying 'everyone must' despite it being said to you and you being understandably offended, though some other folks were going there. That's where I sorta went '...uh hold up a minute here'.

ETA: This sums up my take on it, roughly:

Whoever: "I am offended by that."
Whoever: "I am not offended by that."
Me: "OK. I will/won't do that around you." (whichever is appropriate)

Whoever: "You can't be offended by that!"
Whoever: "You must be offended by that!"
Me: "Fuck you and the self-important bullshit you wrote in on." (and, no, I probably won't feel bad about this at all)

@saosmash One of the things I always did before anything sexual would come up in a scene would be to check on language preferences, weirdly enough. It was just sort of a default to ask. Some folks only like flowery purple romance novel terms, others like things crude as possible... I can roll with whatever somebody prefers in terms of the writing style but I always would check, just in case. (It tended to be more 'action content' than language choices that'd ever be any sort of issue if there ever was one, which was super rare.)

There was a person I knew from Akashat, for example, who could not handle profanity. But it was only the 'classic' terms: fuck, piss, shit, damn, goddamn. Those specifically, at the time. She would write the most intensely lurid prose full of pretty vivid language (not flowery, either, full of all the cocks and cunts and so on you can pack in), but would actually disconnect in the face of a 'damn'.

And, really? That's OK. That is absolutely OK. And people should respect her enough to not use those terms around her if they're aware, absolutely, zero question about it.

I would have an issue with her insisting that none of those words are acceptable for anyone ever and everyone must feel the same way she does about them.

@Ganymede Definitely. But the converse -- 'you must be offended' -- which has been thrown around a lot, too, is also headscratch-land to me.

@Roz I am explicitly not defending it. I am saying it is:

@surreality said in RL Anger:

Neither is exactly fantastic <coughs and chokes up some coffee on the understatement>, but between the two, I'll take the latter as the lesser evil, because encouraging the acceptance and spread of shitty things is high on my list of 'things to try to not fucking do if aware of it'. I mean, there's an argument for the whole 'behavior encourages more of the same', sure, but that's still less impactful than someone saying 'this is totes cool and everybody should be on board with it, yay!' and cheering it on.

That sure is a valiant defense. <headscratch>

(Double post 'cause I prefer not to edit and convo is fairly quick moving, so... uh, it may or may not end up as a double post.)

@Pandora has a point, though, that people do consciously, knowingly, and intentionally say nasty and cruel shit about others all the time. All the time. There are personal attacks all over the boards. Not calling out behavior as shitty/stupid/etc., but calling people shitty/stupid/etc.

It doesn't require a slur, it doesn't require body part names, it doesn't require any name-calling at all, it doesn't require any •ism behind it.

The recent focus on name-calling seemed weird to me for precisely that reason. This convo highlights things like 'I hope you die' and similar non-name-calling things, which is actually, IMO, productive and refreshing.

Avoiding personal attacks is a laudable goal but I don't think it's a realistic one, particularly for 'anger' threads or hog pit posts. Plenty of people just don't have the maturity to not attack the poster rather than the idea, and as much as I wish we had a magic 'omg please be a mature adult' pill to hand out, well, yeah, we don't.

There's a whole argument about safe spaces and freedom to be offended or be offensive, but... fuck all of that, frankly. This is not a safe space so far as I know, and that means there's going to be some distinctly smelly shit thrown by the screeching howler monkeys sometimes. There's similarly nothing stopping people from standing up to it -- in the same vein or otherwise, though. If there was, that would be a much bigger problem than the ones already there.

@Roz I keep reading 'I don't care if it offends someone', which is different from 'this behavior is not offensive or potentially offensive'. It's not exactly a great difference, but it is a difference.

One argues for universal acceptance of the behavior being OK, the other is... well, 'I don't give a fuck if people think this is OK or not'.

Neither is exactly fantastic <coughs and chokes up some coffee on the understatement>, but between the two, I'll take the latter as the lesser evil, because encouraging the acceptance and spread of shitty things is high on my list of 'things to try to not fucking do if aware of it'. I mean, there's an argument for the whole 'behavior encourages more of the same', sure, but that's still less impactful than someone saying 'this is totes cool and everybody should be on board with it, yay!' and cheering it on.

@scar The examples should be horrifying, because they are.

That's because (outside of the cigarette thing in the UK) no non-slur usage of those words in modern day.

There are legitimate uses for all the body part names people react to, and have absolutely every right to react to.

In one case, it's the word. There's no acceptable use of the word.

In the other, it's not the word, it's the intent and usage.

Yeah, there is actually a difference. It's offensive to call someone a cunt, for sure. It's also offensive to call them a dick or a pussy or a vajayjay or a pisshole or a cumspout or fuckstick or prick or poon or any number of bizarre and creatively disturbing compound words that prove I have spent wayyyyyyy too long on Shang.

Edit: If you want an example of this, see 'Aquarius' on Netflix. It is not easy to watch. It is set in a time in which this language was in common use, and they absolutely use it. It is jarring as fuck, and rightly so.

@Caryatid Yes, I seriously did just say 'the problem is with reducing a person to a body part as an insult', not what word you use for the body part in question.

How the fuck is that complicated? Because it's not. Calling someone a 'vagina' is not exactly inoffensive, now, is it? Exactly.

@scar I don't think anybody -- including @Pandora -- is saying 'it's fine and dandy and totally cool to say shit like any of that to people', or that people should just sit there and take it and not fight back or cry foul.

The only argument I've seen about this is that it's not the same as using a racial slur, and that it's not considered as a nigh-universal consensus that they're on par.

Bluntly, there is a time and place -- namely, raunchy as hell TS or erotic writing, even the kind published and for sale in Barnes&Noble and so on available to the general public -- in which using the word 'cunt' is entirely valid when referring to the actual body part. Not many people would think twice.

You can argue 'referring to someone as nothing but a body part' is not cool, but in this case, it isn't the fucking word itself.

You can't swap in a racial or sexuality-based slur in the same way. You aren't going to just casually refer to the homosexual male character in a pose as 'the fag goes over to get coffee from the break room counter' or the black character as 'the nigger puts on her jacket and picks up her keys'.

You can, however, write 'she spread her legs and exposed her cunt' and whether you like that writing style or not, there is no insult being slung about whatsoever.