Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

first lex came for weird al, and i did nothing

I could list a whole shitload of odious people lex is totally cool with, but Weird Al is a bridge too far for him because a) he is a comedian and b) he used the term "spastic"; priorities seem a little misaligned to me but what do I know

Shakes I'm American, in case you had a tough time figuring it out

I dunno man, do you really need a reason other than that you're here part of a community where there are people who don't like that word being used

And that it would be cool and nice to acknowledge that

Do you really need more of a reason

I don't understand why you feel so upset about this

Here's a tip

When you step away from the computer

You can go to your basement

Or your stoop

You can shout out this word for everybody to hear

You can shout out other words too that it makes you feel good and righteous to say

Then you can come back and turn on the computer again

Hopefully you will feel more calm and at peace

Namaste

missed that "spastic" didn't come up until lex, and that la lechera's (totally valid! if irrespective of weird's intent) bum-out that "word crimes" was too mean to be used in an educational context hinged around "mouth-breathers."

though i understand why lex drives people to mutually assured clusterfuck, i still think it's just poor form to go around speaking for your continent about what derogatorily-intended terms are cool or not cool

lol

I'm at peace dude don't worry

xp

lex's selective use of moral outrage is truly a wonder to behold, enjoy your company

xp

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 18, 2014 3:21 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

says the guy who finds queen fascist and morrissey idiosyncratic

touche

'Spastic' was an acceptable term in the UK when this charity was founded in 1951:

http://mediastore2.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/8/8/c/5/LON97201.jpg

It re-branded as SCOPE in 1994 because, over time, 'spastic' became offensive to the people it was used to describe. When I moved to London a few years before that, I was flabbergasted to see this word in use because in America it is a mild playground insult, albeit one you'd never use in the presence of someone with cerebral palsy or similar. In the UK, it is too, but kids adapted after the name change and have called each other 'scopers' in place of the former ever since.

Not very hilarious Suzy, desperate fucking lolz.

fwiw I think the ubiquity of 'scoper' as replacement playground slang might have got a wee bit exaggerated anecdotally. never heard it when I was growing up

Excuse me, xelab, could you refine your communication skills ever so slightly to clear up what you're talking about? No 'hilarity' intended whatsofuckingever by my post.

Sorry for being rude but people need to catch up on the fact that disablist slurs are no different to racist slurs, it needs to be wiped out and it isn't something warranting a bit of a laugh. That Tyranny of Humour thread is definitely the place for this.

yeah i don't think most ppl in the us would think of 'spastic' as a term for ppl w/ cerebral palsy but i also don't doubt that someone w/ cp has been described as 'spastic' in the us (tbf ppl w/ cp can be pretty fucking spastic). acting offended at the idea of not using anymore or someone else's taking offense is a bit 'why?' but acting offended at someone using this term when they clearly didn't mean this fairly obscure meaning and pretending that in fact they meant precisely that is disingenuous. still waiting to find out what 'mouth breather' means in the uk. what strikes me as likely now w/ increased culture flow between the us and the uk thanks to the internet is that you might (and probably already do in more cosmopolitan contexts) have more americans shunning the term but i am guessing you will have many more americans now using it specifically to refer to ppl w/ cp a la mental and ginger before it. "words are fluid".

skeptical that slurs are ever wiped out, would guess they're merely replaced, w/ the replacement having the advantage of not having a preexisting taboo to deter it and novelty to increase its spread, similar to a virus, adaptation, etc. information generally doesn't behave the way you're describing xelab.

i'm more of a skeptic of 'the power of language' of late though. ten years ago i might've said different and i can see the argument for attacking behavioral symptoms instead of behavioral causes.

Some columnist in a US local paper used 'spastic' and I was amazed.
There are plenty of things that the US gets enraged about that don't have an equivalent background here yet I'd like to think we have the decency to take that on board and stop using it. One example from ILX: "uppity" having racial connotations. Never knew that, but no longer say it.

Sorry Suzy I have just read your post again minus red mist. My first read was you were trying to be funny and ironic. I got it wrong.

official/medical terminology seems like it has to run to escape the pall of insult on some kind of generational cycle, esp with mental illness and disability - "idiot" and "moron" were both doctorspeak of gilded age vintage, right?

interestingly it seems like the same thing occurs in language use for all "managed" populations: my mom remembers working in geriatrics in the 70s when patients were called "inmates" (?!) and the shift to referring to them as "residents" esp in long-term care situations. i wonder if there was a concomitant shift in corrections (lol now there's a euphemism for you) from the term "prisoner" to "inmate"

not to mention my favorite one: the humanist innovation of the "penitentiary" (a place where you learn to be sorry) rather than a mere prison where we lock you up for punishment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary

Sanitarium is another good one

my boss sends her kids to a fancy UWS school and got a letter home about her daughter using the "s-word" (stupid)

Don't know if this helps or not, but just for another view, in Denmark, 'spastic' (spastiker) is the farthest thing from a slur, it's just what it's called. The society for people with CP is called 'spastikerforeningen'. However, growing up, 'spasser' (spaz) was one of the most used playground taunts I knew. In von Trier's film The Idiots, they pretend to be spaz's and to 'spaz' out. Though they act more like people with Down's Syndrome. Which, growing up, was still always called 'mongolism', so we probably weren't as sensitive as we should be...

The ESP is a pretty cool place - only a few blocks away from my high school, but didn't actually get around to visiting it until a few years ago xp

Some columnist in a US local paper used 'spastic' and I was amazed.
There are plenty of things that the US gets enraged about that don't have an equivalent background here yet I'd like to think we have the decency to take that on board and stop using it. One example from ILX: "uppity" having racial connotations. Never knew that, but no longer say it.

OTM across the board

is it fair to defend one's right to obliviously offend people in strange corners of the world

to be clear I'm not really defending Weird Al's right to be offensive, it's more that balls is correct that pretending that he deliberately meant the offensive meaning when he did not is ludicrous.

this is like UK ilx's "revenge" for the bottle opener thread, isn't it?

no

imo while said word is considered much less offensive in the usa than in the uk, it *is* considered childish. adults aren't flinging it about, it's more for rude children mocking their ungainly (but not disabled) fellows. and iirc its ironic use would be right up weird al's alley for those reasons.

Some of the belligerent USA disablist apologist arseholes on this thread need to seriously fuck off and die.

it *is* considered childish - well yeah. it's funny cuz when i first heard it was titled 'word crimes' i though it was gonna be about trigger warnings, pc, etc and i was like 'whoo boy - good luck al'. and then of course cuz he's not the s-word and he's not right wing it turned out to be about grammar. damn near every english teacher i knew couldn't post that thing on facebook fast enough and al knew that would happen.

xelab 'fuck off and die' is offensive in the us, use other words plz. maybe take a walk around the block (very sincere apologies if you cannot walk), catch yr breath, think about whether violence is the solution. also (in the belligerent USA at least) you should probably say 'ablist apologist'.

why are a bunch of dudes discussing the offensiveness of another dude's word choice re disabled people on the feminism and wymen's thread?

also in the us an affectation like 'arseholes' has classist connotations i'm guessing you'd want to avoid. you're kinda giving off a rick santelli vibe. is that yr intention?

Stay classy, balls

why are a bunch of dudes discussing the offensiveness of another dude's word choice re disabled people on the feminism and wymen's thread?

Won't argue with that and unreservedly apologise for that. But fuck the rest of these arseholes.

be the change you want to see in the world xelab.

i think it's only fair that we now fill the weird al thread with 150 posts about feminism

ugh, i really did not intend to drag the whole weird al discussion here. i had a tangential thought that there is a gendered dynamic to the downward-punching, derisive sense of humor. while i dont think men are the exclusive practitioners of this style of humor, it is male-dominated.

and up here there is a style of "he couldnt be ____ist because he is a decent guy, its just a joke lighten up" reputation defense that...i dont know if its a male thing especially, but i see it used more for men in male-dominated spaces.

That's like if one country decided to use the word "orange" as a slur for some minority and then insisted that everywhere and anywhere all uses of the word to refer to the fruit or the color were actually derogatory slurs.

hi

decent discussion IMO I find myself in the unfamiliar but not unwelcome position of agreeing with my mayne dayo to a large extent but maybe only cos spastic is p obviously a word not to use, being derogatorily descriptive of certain physical failings by comparing them to ppl with shit medical conditions.

but I would be interested to hear what, exactly,yanks think it means. if that's been explained elsewhere in all this soz I'm a lil drunk

It's not just 'spastic', iirc there's a US series called 'the mentalist'

jesus , the monsters

#accidentalpartridge

I was in local place called YPAT earlier, it is a local authority clubhouse for young people with a wide range of disabilities. For many of them that attend it is the only social interaction they experience other than school and family. I'd imagine even some of the hard-headed zingy types on here would be humbled and revising their attitude towards disablist words if they even spent 10 minutes there.

Sorry about the thread hijacking, last post.

why are a bunch of dudes discussing the offensiveness of another dude's word choice re disabled people on the feminism and wymen's thread?

― sarahell, Friday, July 18, 2014 11:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

intersectionALity

HAHAHAHAHAH!

perfect

all this has convinced me to stop insulting people with words that refer to different physical / mental conditions fwiw

including 'idiot', 'stupid' and 'dumb'. still think it's ok to say someone is dull or thick-headed, thank god.