Racist - The Bear and Badger

Paul the sparky

I think the word master is fine, it's fucked once you use it in that context though. Like I say it's incredible that it ever became a term really, surely it would have raised an eyebrow even at the time?

dynamiteReady

The word pussy is fine too.

Minnesänger

dynamiteReady wrote:

The word pussy is fine too.

Tell that to Chalice.

dynamiteReady

Does he have a pet?

Gremill

Paul the sparky wrote:

Can I still masterbate?

RedDave2 wrote:

What word could we use instead (as in master documents, master a skill etc)

And Might I suggest you "badger" a skill. I am a "Badger" at SF2. I want to "badger" the guitar. It is ok to "badger"bate. In fact I am a Grand "Badger" at "Badger"bating.

So you can go ahead and Badgerbait Sparky, it's a North East tradition so you'll be fine.

cockbeard

I don't know if you all recall but badger was cunt, and I for one can never see badger without substituting the words back again and enjoying especially when it's it of context

Unlikely

I remember taking a photo of a pub in London which my then girlfriend, now wife, could not understand why I found amusing. It was called "The Fat Badger".

Paul the sparky

Gremill wrote:

Paul the sparky wrote:

Can I still masterbate?

RedDave2 wrote:

What word could we use instead (as in master documents, master a skill etc)

And Might I suggest you "badger" a skill. I am a "Badger" at SF2. I want to "badger" the guitar. It is ok to "badger"bate. In fact I am a Grand "Badger" at "Badger"bating.

So you can go ahead and Badgerbait Sparky, it's a North East tradition so you'll be fine.

All that shit is even more confusing. I just want to know if it's still ok to wring its neck now and then

Diluted Dante

Best get someone else to do it for you just to be safe. Dave appears qualified.

RedDave2

Oh, gripping a badger is tight!

Gremill

cockbeard wrote:

I don't know if you all recall but badger was cunt, and I for one can never see badger without substituting the words back again and enjoying especially when it's it of context

Yes, it was and always will be the c-bomb.

GurtTractor

@Minnesänger @Funkstain

Just because terrible people making terrible arguments about terrible things that they want to say, might use intent as a bad-faith get-out clause, does not render the concept of using intent as part of the process to determine acceptible language to be totally suspect. If you start throwing away ideas just because awful people also have had them and sometimes use them, you'll end up with a pretty limited set of cognitive tools.

Words are just collections of syllables and symbols, it's context that gives them an effect, and intent is just part of that context that we all use to infer meaning in everyday communication.

If you want to talk about specific examples that would probably help. It sounds like you're thinking about something pretty extreme, I'm talking more about the previous page.

Mal0wner

Unlikely wrote:

I remember taking a photo of a pub in London which my then girlfriend, now wife, could not understand why I found amusing. It was called "The Fat Badger".

About half an hour after reading this I was searching on Google maps for places to eat near to Weymouth where I'm currently on holiday. Had a bit of a double take/wtf moment when it popped up with another "The Fat Badger" a mere 8 minutes away. There must be more fat badgers out there than you would think.

Lord_Griff

Especially after lockdown

g.man

b0r1s

Lord_Griff wrote:

Especially after lockdown

Hellooo!

Minnesänger

GurtTractor wrote:

@Minnesänger @Funkstain

Just because terrible people making terrible arguments about terrible things that they want to say, might use intent as a bad-faith get-out clause, does not render the concept of using intent as part of the process to determine acceptible language to be totally suspect. If you start throwing away ideas just because awful people also have had them and sometimes use them, you'll end up with a pretty limited set of cognitive tools.

Words are just collections of syllables and symbols, it's context that gives them an effect, and intent is just part of that context that we all use to infer meaning in everyday communication.

If you want to talk about specific examples that would probably help. It sounds like you're thinking about something pretty extreme, I'm talking more about the previous page.

Our examples were more specific than yours in this post, and we never mentioned people who use intent as a metric as terrible people. We just argued that intent isn’t that important.

If you argue otherwise and want to give specific, real world examples where a sorry, that word is easy to change and I’ll stop using it isn’t the best course of action then by all means do so.

Minnesänger

Also, I don’t speak for Funk here - it’s possible he disagrees.

Minnesänger

We never even mentioned bad faith.

Minnesänger

Maybe go back and read what we wrote without being defensive.

And by we I mean, I still don’t speak for Funk.

Unlikely

I remember saying to some friends at Uni one day that "we could get a chinky" for dinner. Bless Reb for calling me out on it (she was Chinese) and I have never used that word again.

Minnesänger

Unlikely wrote:

I remember saying to some friends at Uni one day that "we could get a chinky" for dinner. Bless Reb for calling me out on it (she was Chinese) and I have never used that word again.

Yup, absolutely used that same term when I was much younger. Was common where I grew up and I never associated it as racist. There certainly wasn’t racist intent. But…it’s a shit word, something I feel ashamed to have used, and my intent certainly isn’t important there.

RedDave2

Did you really need to be called out on chinky? It's not quite n word but not far off.

Minnesänger

Guess it depends where you were. For me, I was a literal child and that term was used to describe a food more than a people. And, would have been used by people who would have taken offence to offence that anyone else took until I started meeting people outside my village bubble.

I’m more curious by the inference that Reb was Chinese.

Unlikely

Well I assume she still is, but I haven't seen her for more than twenty years so I'm not going to judge.

Unlikely

Minnesänger wrote:

that term was used to describe a food

This.

Paul the sparky

Minnesänger wrote:

Guess it depends where you were. For me, I was a literal child and that term was used to describe a food more than a people. And, would have been used by people who would have taken offence to offence that anyone else took until I started meeting people outside my village bubble.

I’m more curious by the inference that Reb was Chinese.

My Dad's got a good story about my Mam chatting to the guy they got regular takeaways from, knew him by name and that. She'd had a few shandies and was in a great mood, telling the fella how much she looks forward to getting in with her chinkies on a Saturday night. She was mortified obviously, couldn't apologize enough, he just laughed it off

nick_md

Alanpartridgemichael.gif

nick_md

Obscure but someone will know the reference, I hope.

GurtTractor

Minnesänger wrote:

We never even mentioned bad faith.

I think we were both talking about somewhat different but related things. The bad faith bit was relating to "But it’s telling their first defense is to try and say what their intent was, rather than just say “oh, shit, I said something hurtful to you, I’ll change that from now on”." and some of what Funk wrote, but I think I did infer a little too much so apologies there.

"we never mentioned people who use intent as a metric as terrible people" -

Intent as a defense is used by people who have not historically had to live with the effects of slurs and racial discrimination to excuse themselves from the fact that their language and actions can hurt others

You did go on to clarify a little, and yeah you weren't using it to define them as terrible necessarily so apologies again. But you were using that to dismiss my argument somewhat which is a bit of a straw man.

I was really talking about things like terminology guidelines in tech etc, not about whether certain slurs etc are acceptable in some circumstances. That's usually more cut and dried. As a general rule I would I tend to disagree with deliberate disuse of language unless there's a reasonable case for causal links to social harm, i.e actual offense/othering/etc, not just hypothetical reckons from a non-affected party.

On a deontological - utilitarian axis I tend towards the utilitarian, so people may disagree on this. And to clarify I'm talking about wider use of language not aimed at any specific person, if someone has a good reason why they'd prefer not to have a particular word used around them then I've got no problem going along with that, I'm not a dick.

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