He/she and N****r As insults

[Jannabear]

I saw tj kirk bring up a point that I found to be pretty accurate.
When someone calls someone who's transgender a tranny, or he/she, or she/him, or some other stupid shit like that, it's as bad as calling a black person a nigger, or a mexican a wetback, or a white person a stupid american redneck sisterfucker, etc.
It's attacking someone for something they  don't have control over, and making it out to be a negative part of them.
Thoughts?

[Munch]

This is one of those things where context just applies and how its used. A friend of a transexual person calling them a tranny isn't done as insult but for tongue in cheek, a black person or close friend to a black person calling his black friend "hey my nigger" isn't done as insult. But a black hating person yelling out "HEY NIGGER, GONNA SHOOT U!" and someone who hates transexuals calling for all trannies to be flogged is then a percieved negative.

The words themselves are an open door, the person using them is how they are used is what matters.

[Hydra009]

I saw tj kirk bring up a point that I found to be pretty accurate.
When someone calls someone who's transgender a tranny, or he/she, or she/him, or some other stupid shit like that, it's as bad as calling a black person a nigger, or a mexican a wetback, or a white person a stupid american redneck sisterfucker, etc.
It's attacking someone for something they  don't have control over, and making it out to be a negative part of them.
Thoughts?

Are you talking about Tommy Sotomayor, that guy on the Drunken Peasants who keep misgendering a transsexual who had committed suicide, saying he/she/it in a pretty insulting way?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Hey everyone,  guess what?  Human language has a lot of derogatory terms for just about every single demographic out there and most everyone will use them from time to time, some more than others. I've been called just about every name you can think of over time and just stopped caring. I know who and what I am so if someone else wants to show their ignorance more power to them because there really isn't a damned thing I can do about it except feel secure in who I am.
Case closed.
Of course I could run around trying to beat up anyone who so much as thinks of slighting me, but then I wouldn't have time to have my morning coffee..

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Out of interest, is there an 'acceptable' pronoun for a transgender person?  If you don't know them or their circumstance, it would be so easy to get it wrong.  I'm out of the loop on this one?

[stromboli]

We keep saying that context is what matters, and mostly I agree. I once got into an argument with a black Vietnam vet when I said "you guys" and he took it as speaking about black people when I was referring to his veteran status. The problem with racial stereotypes and/or gender stereotypes is that they have become essentially trigger words. If I were to use "nigger" as an explanatory; i. e. nigger is a slang word derived from negro, which is Latin/ Spanish for black, I could still be accused of being racist depending on who is listening. Nigger is/was originally a mispronunciation of negro. Saying negro, black, is a trigger word regardless of the context because it is made one.

This is on of those arguments that will never really be resolved because there will always be people that inject meaning into words, spoken or written. In that sense, context no longer applies. If I use trans or tranny in a slang sense to shorten a sentence-rather than transgender- it can be interpreted as biased speech by the listener, same as my black coworker. It is a sort of "rock and a hard place" argument in that respect.

[widdershins]

I saw tj kirk bring up a point that I found to be pretty accurate.
When someone calls someone who's transgender a tranny, or he/she, or she/him, or some other stupid shit like that, it's as bad as calling a black person a nigger, or a mexican a wetback, or a white person a stupid american redneck sisterfucker, etc.
It's attacking someone for something they  don't have control over, and making it out to be a negative part of them.
Thoughts?

I don't think that's always the case.  I read about this case a few months ago where a father was suing to stop his transsexual daughter from getting the operation to make it official.  The father kept referring to her as "him" and the judge ordered him to stop.  He did try to comply, but kept slipping.  I don't think he was trying to hurt or insult his kid.  I think he legitimately thought his kid was confused, influenced by "evil".  Conservatives have been telling us for years how the liberal gays are trying to make us all gay, so that's probably what happened.

The problem is, he didn't understand.  He remembers hearing "It's a boy!".  He remembers raising a son.  In his mind, this is still his son and always will be because he simply doesn't have the life experience to comprehend what is happening or why.  So he wasn't trying to insult her, it's just strange for him to see his "son" as now being his daughter.  Not that he wasn't an ignorant buffoon, mind you, but I don't think malice was intended.

[PickelledEggs]

sisterfucker.... hmm I gotta start using that one. lol

[Jannabear]

This is one of those things where context just applies and how its used. A friend of a transexual person calling them a tranny isn't done as insult but for tongue in cheek, a black person or close friend to a black person calling his black friend "hey my nigger" isn't done as insult. But a black hating person yelling out "HEY NIGGER, GONNA SHOOT U!" and someone who hates transexuals calling for all trannies to be flogged is then a percieved negative.

The words themselves are an open door, the person using them is how they are used is what matters.

I should clarify by saying I meant when they're used as insults.

[Jannabear]

Out of interest, is there an 'acceptable' pronoun for a transgender person?  If you don't know them or their circumstance, it would be so easy to get it wrong.  I'm out of the loop on this one?

imo if someone tells you they're trans just ask what do you prefer to be called.
I don't think any of that stupid tumblr zir shit makes any sense though.

[Jannabear]

I don't think that's always the case.  I read about this case a few months ago where a father was suing to stop his transsexual daughter from getting the operation to make it official.  The father kept referring to her as "him" and the judge ordered him to stop.  He did try to comply, but kept slipping.  I don't think he was trying to hurt or insult his kid.  I think he legitimately thought his kid was confused, influenced by "evil".  Conservatives have been telling us for years how the liberal gays are trying to make us all gay, so that's probably what happened.

The problem is, he didn't understand.  He remembers hearing "It's a boy!".  He remembers raising a son.  In his mind, this is still his son and always will be because he simply doesn't have the life experience to comprehend what is happening or why.  So he wasn't trying to insult her, it's just strange for him to see his "son" as now being his daughter.  Not that he wasn't an ignorant buffoon, mind you, but I don't think malice was intended.

In my opinion if someone isn't welling to listen to the facts then they're irresponsible.
I don't think that father truly loves her as much as he's made out to.
Love isn't just how you feel about someone, love is caring enough to hear the facts so you can make the best decisions in favor of that person.

[stromboli]

In my opinion if someone isn't welling to listen to the facts then they're irresponsible.
I don't think that father truly loves her as much as he's made out to.
Love isn't just how you feel about someone, love is caring enough to hear the facts so you can make the best decisions in favor of that person.

It is about stereotyped attitudes of men and women and their roles in society. I have two sons and a daughter. I would have, I think, a harder time dealing with my sons becoming women as the reverse, simply because men stereotypically are seen as dominant and for them to adopt a female persona is accepting (again, the stereotype) of what many would think of as a more submissive persona. I think society has an easier time accepting a Chastity/Chaz Bono as opposed to a Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. A smallish man versus a 6 foot two woman. Every time I see Jenner my mind goes to the John Lithgow character in "The World According To Garp" which to me is a cartoonish portrayal. 

[mauricio]

The thing about the topic of slurs/insults, in the context of the internet, that bothers me are this:

People seem to separate words like faggot, nigger, cunt, tranny, etc. from other insults and refer to them as slurs with the implication that using those words is much worse than other insults because they are homophobic/racist/mysoginist/transphobic. They think that the person who uses those slurs holds or is spousing those attitudes by using them and therefore is deserving of serious moral condemnation because those attitudes are inmoral/wrong. I do not think that is necessarily the case, it can be but it does not neccesarily follow. I also think that in the context in which i have experienced the usage of this words as insults, internet chats and forums, most of the time it does not follow because there is a much more obvious explanation for people choosing this words to insult.

I think there is a disconnect there between the action the person is actually doing and the perception of that action by the people morally condeming them. This marks the difference between an asshole and a bigot. The asshole is making an strategic choice of words. He is personalizing the insult, tailoring it with whatever little information he has of the victim to prey on their self conciousness to inflict maximium distress possible with words. This is why if they know or think you are male they will call you a cuck or a virgin and doubly so if they know you are a nerd or introverted, they will also use sexual insults towards your mother, sister or girlfriend all of this preys on your self conciousness surrounding your male identity and your gender role. ( note also the selective morality of how this ways to insult males  are not part of the prohibit slur list for certain individuals) they will call a women a cunt and if she is a rabid feminist doubly so because they know how much they hate gendered insults. They will call muslims sand niggers, they will call black people niggers, etc. This strategic choice of words is in my opinion pretty standard insults 101 and is done automatically with all sorts of traits a person can have. The slur list is just a selection of some of this terms that with selective morality born out of hyperbolic progressive rhetoric become anathema. The way i see it, racism is not calling someone a nigger even if you are using it as an insult. To me racism is the irrationally dogmatic believe that a person MUST be a certain way based solely on their race. For example the racist is the one that strongly believes, without sufficient evidence, whites are inherently superior and other races are inherently inferior. This is the bigot. The guy who called you nigger/faggot/cunt/ (insert slur here) because you disagreed with him on the internet or beat him in a game is just being an asshole.

This also applies to threats of violence through the internet by random pseudonymous or anonymous people. The people who are not internet noobs should be familiar with the phenomena known as the internet though guy. This is why when someone threatens you on the internet you just laugh, because the lack of motive and material impediments and the fact that the person is most likely simply using words to try to cause you distress means you are basically completely safe and hes just a butthurt internet though guy.

With my experiences using the internet for more than a decade now engaging in many a shitfliging contests on the cesspools of the interwebs i cannot take seriously this pseudoslacktivists like anita shekelisian and her cohorts parading around "research" that are just basically people counting slurs and insults in videogame chatlogs as evidence of "widespread sexism and cyberviolence against women" on the internet and videogames community. This people are either purposfully disengenous or complete internet noobs oblivious to the art of trolling and shitposting.

BTW i see the term troll has been distorted. A troll is not just a random shithead but someone purposefully trying to get your goat using any means neccesary. In practice you can never tell one from the other that's Poe's law.

[Baruch]

Quantifying everything, like you mention regarding Internet bad behavior, is an example of using Pythagoras as a prophylactic against critics.  Look, I have statistics on a made up category ... it is science, and you can't argue with that!  This is in the same category as calling economics a science (given the made up econometrics).

[Mermaid]

Everyone has a different idea of what's offensive. Instead of judging it and telling people they are wrong because you don't think it's offensive, maybe it's a good idea to listen to each other.