h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suppose using mental illness as an insult is a bit like suggesting someone who is physically weak has aids or summat.

Err, how??

err. not quite sure. it seemed to make sense to me when i thought it.

Fair enough

Kea: "i fell pretty relaxed about using words like queer, dyke, bitch, crazy, cripple etc because i have moved in those cultures enough to know how and when its appropriate to use those words."

Now let's say you use one of those terms in a public forum, or even say it to a friend in a public place where you can be overheard. Someone else chooses to take offense. How do you go about proving that you didn't mean it the way they heard it?

On this same topic I would highly reccomend a book:

'N****r - The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word'
by Randall Kennedy

With enough use, any word can lose it's sting.

"With enough use, any word can lose it's sting."

I was just thinking that, well, earlier on when I was having a fag break at work, but completely forgot about that train of thought by the time I came back in!

Prompted by an earlier post about how words like 'queer' have been reclaimed, if the words don't cause offence, then the twits haven't a leg to stand on! (No offence to Roald Dahl fans )

Q

*fag break*

I assume you know what a double entendre (to North Americans) you posted considering your next paragraph.

"There is such a thing as over-sensitivity. If you thought about it hard enough, you could make any nickname/insult/term of endearment offend some portion of society. Why waste your time trying to be offended??"

That's a totally backwards way of putting it. If you were on the receiving end of racial slurs that everyone recognizes, you'd complain about it. That's not "trying to be offended."

If your brother or child had Down's syndrome, you would be offended if someone said Tony Blair acts like a retard. That wouldn't be "trying to be offended," that would be the obvious result of a craphead slinging insults indiscriminately.

This morning I went to pick up more Geodon for my wife. That's an anti-psychotic medication to treat her Schizo-Affective Disorder. It keeps her from hearing voices. These are not the funny voices like you see in movies or the kind they talk about in Heavy Metal songs. These are random, uncontrollable thoughts bombarding you with audio hallucinations all day and night with your worst fears and insecurities, until you begin harboring delusions about where the voices come from -- maybe it's psychic torture from the neighbor. Wherever it comes from, it doesn't stop, shouting criticism at you about your choices of television shows, about everything you do during the day. Then they don't let up at night, so you get the same kind of sleep deprivation effect as when people attempt brainwashing. You believe anything that might stop the voices and give you peace. You wear winter hats to sleep, hoping they'll block the voices somehow. And eventually you become depressed and maybe suicidal, and you check into a hospital because you don't know what else to do.

You take some medication, the symptoms diminish, maybe go away entirely. After a while, you can stop taking the medication. Things are fine until the another moment of great stress in your life when your next psychotic episode comes, and it starts over again. So even when your mental illness is controlled by medication, you have to wonder if you'll ever be able to complete major projects without break downs. Should you have children? Will the medication mess them up? Will you be an adequate parent when the chances are likely that you will have at least one psychotic episode, possibly several as the child is growing up?

Now am I "wasting my time trying to be offended" when some unthinking, ignorant shmuck calls people "nutters" or says George Bush is "mentally ill"? Am I being overly sensitive? Am I demanding too much to ask that people stop using those terms, or be assured that they have earned my disrespect and confirmed their ignorance, their status as subhuman?

Right, now mice are going to be offended because I said "subhuman." You really can't see a difference between those insults? Because I think most people can. You can try to argue your way out of responsibility for those terms, like a lawyer might do, like Bill Clinton argues that he might not have had sexual relations depending on the variable meanings of the word "IS."

But the rest of us can see pretty clearly what is an insult, which ones are negligible, and which ones are mean. Or, if you get confused, then you wait for someone to tell you "My brother has Down's Syndrome and most people see it as an insult to use the word 'retard' so I'd appreciate if you stop using it." Then you can be respectful, or confirm what an ass you are and keep using it. I guess some people might carry this too far, but I don't think what I've been asking on this message thread is too sensitive. If you can't have a conversation without calling people "nutters" or "mentally ill" as a joke, then you don't need to be having a conversation.

What you're defending here isn't just "free speech," it's everyone's right to act like as big an a**hole as they feel like acting.

"If somebody's so low that they feel the need to insult me, that person simply isn't worth the happy time that would be missing from my life if I chose to take offence and be angry/sad."

You're right about that part. Maybe that's the only effective way to deal with a**holes.

"Then why did Subcom and yourself question 'nutter' and 'pansy' in the first place? Context clearly suggested that nutter didn't mean mentally ill, yet both of you suggested it wasn't an appropriate word to use, despite the fact that to those in the conversation it didn;t mean person with a mental illness."

That's why I asked about what "nutter" meant in the UK as my first post on this thread. I don't agree that "pansy" is as innocent as you think. Did you even read that word in context on the Opinions on Iraq thread, or are you guessing at the context based on what I said?

And if you think "pansy" is innocent, then you're probably just rationalizing British use of the word "nutter" in the same way.

Subhuman: In German, untermensche, the term used to describe anyone who wasn't Aryan, but the Jews in particular. This shows callous disregard for the survivors of the Holocaust, and an anti-Semitic streak in general.

Have I made my point yet?

On the subject of 'reclaiming' words, where a minority are allowed to use a word about each other whilst still taking offence if anyone else uses it (however non-agressively), I was wondering what the rules are for borderline cases.
For example, how black does someone of mixed ancestry have to be before they're allowed to use n****r? Is it an absolute standard, or does it depend how dark the people they're talking to are?

If you're reclaiming a word to remove its stigma, then it shouldn't matter if someone outside the subculture uses that word. It doesn't hurt anymore, right?

That's why I have a big problem with the n-word. It's used by some members of the subculture every third word, and it's all over their media. And yet, it's often those same people who use it all the time who go postal* whenever it's used by an outsider.

They can have it one way or the other. It's either an unstigmatized word, and can be used, or it's taboo. It can't be both.


* - This is not meant to unfairly stigmatize the good, hard-working people who provide such valuable, reliable, and inexpensive service to the nation as an employeed of the US Postal Service.

Yes, I think I almost have it. If a person tries to point out to me that something I've been saying is an insult, maybe an obscure regional insult, and asks me to stop, then instead of following normal rules of civility that a small child would understand, I should demand that my freedom of expression has been threatened by this peer pressure, and continue to use any words I damn well please, because restraining myself in the slightest would mean bowing to Political Correctness.

Part of your straw man through all this thread has been that making one of these perceived insults is unforgivable, even if a person didn't know it was just regional, or if it was misinterpreted by a reader. (Like a Brit in the US saying he's going to "step out for a fag", or a young person stumbling across an archaic insult like "c**n" or "spade".)

I don't think anyone here has made that argument, so we don't need to defend that point. What we've been trying to say is that if someone asks you to stop using a term as an insult, you're not damned for that behavior before the insult. If you really didn't know about it, then no one could hold it against you. After you know what it means to some people, after you've been asked to stop, and after you persist in using it, then you're acting anti-social.

So for example, if someone convinced me that "subhuman" in English was *really* an insult used against a particular racial or ethnic group, then to be civil, I would stop using the word. This would not cover sarcastic claims by people on message boards that "w*nker" is offensive to sexaholics or "a**hole" is offensive to sufferers of hemorrhoids.

I'll concede that you might need convincing. And some people might have really weird ideas of what constitutes impolite or racist behavior. It confounds me how one's political views about real estate in Israel can get you labelled "anti-semitic." Words and meanings will always be debatable, but if you concede that some words are clearly insults (like certain racial epithets), then the slippery slope you have invoked is not that slippery.

It's kind of funny because most children would understand this concept of what's an insult, what's not, when to use certain words and when not, how to show respect to others. [They also know when they can abandon polite behavior around close friends or different situations.] But you act like polite behavior is something that people should try to argue their way out of like lawyers.

"They can have it one way or the other. It's either an unstigmatized word, and can be used, or it's taboo. It can't be both."

Here's another situation that children have little trouble understanding. You call your buddy Joe a "jerk" in a playful situation, but you might not get the same reaction when you call Grandpa a jerk, or the priest, or someone you just met. Different situations call for different behavior, which children understand long before they've been indoctrinated into the dangerous ways of Political Correctness.

No one goes around saying, "The mailman looks at me funny when I call him an a**hole. Why does he do that? I heard his friend call him that, but he acts like I've done something wrong."

(Stand back, he's about to go postal!)

On the main thread subject, whilst I'm not for a PC approach to language, I do think there is a serious difference between using certain words/phrases in a situation where you know the listeners, and using the same terms in a broadcast context. Even on h2g2, there is significant variability in the publicness of postings between those on userspace conversations and those in forums like 'ask h2g2'.

I suppose the upshot of that is that no words should be taboo as such, but some should be used carefully in public where other people may be offended. Equally, in more private communications, people who aren't directly offended on their own behalf, or that of someone close to them, should think before judging people for using language in a context where the meaning is obvious and restricted.

There is also a difference between the 'reclaiming' situation, and one where a word is regarded as generally insulting across the board. In the first, the issue of what *kind* of person is authorised to use the word is significant, whereas for the latter, it's really down to social context.

>> Not all effeminate men are gay, nor are all gay men effeminate. <<

If by 'gay' you mean sexually active homosexuals then I have to agree.
There are many sensitive souls whose gentle nature and asexual relationship to the Universe is seen as effeminate by those who put stock in machismo and bravado.

And even among the sexually active ones wouldn't at least half have to play the butch role or it just isn't 'real'. Or so I would imagine, although my imagination tends not speculate too much in these areas.

A spade is a flat bladed instrument for digging, canya dig it.


~jwf~

>> ...demonizes a perfectly natural and healthy act, reinforces feelings of negativity and worthlessness for those who are alone, and makes it difficult for one who has turned it into an obsessive, addictive behavior to cope and recover. <<

Demonize!? Get thee behind me Satan!
Cope!? Of course I can cope.
Recover!? Yes, fresh linen is essential on a regular basis.


~jwf~

>> ..we don't even need to yikes their ignorant posts, as far as I'm concerned. We just need to give them the respect they've earned: none. <<

Hear, hear!

~jwf~ nutter, w*nker, idjut, injun lover, fatboy, curmudgeonly oldfart and all round recovering psychopath ("Know thyself! Be thyself! Love thyself!")

I am deidzoeb's wife. I am not sure if he wants that top secret or not. He can yell at me when he gets home.

Anyway, I have schizoaffective disorder. I don't think the use of words like nutters and loon is all that horrible anymore. I myself want to say that people are crazy sometimes even though they are not mentally ill.

What does get me mad is when people are inaccurate in their information about mental illness. Like if there is a dramatic movie and they are way off in the information. Like it is lame to see characters with a mental illness play killers or something.

I heard on the radio today a radio play that pokes fun at George Bush. In it the actress playing Condoleeza Rice tells George Bush about how Psychiatric centers are closing in Oregon. The President says that we should round up all the schizophrenics and death row inmates or something and have them do a brawl in an arena. I don't remember excatly how the play was worded. I think I got part of it wrong. Anyway, my point is I think whoever wrote it wasn't trying to make fun of people with mental illness. Whoever wrote that was trying to point out was making a "George Bush is stupid" joke.

I could spend my whole day looking for insults against mentally ill people. I could get real peeved when I read something from a news article talking about "political schizophrenia". I think spending my day trying to change the world culture would be impossible and probably needless.

The real damage is when people think a person with a mental illness is not capable of doing things. Personally, I can't laugh at jokes about people in nuthouses and taking meds no more. It just makes me remember how it was to be sick like that. I am probably too serious about it. Now when I hear jokes about people with mental illness I don't laugh, I analyze it. It is probably a personal problem.

Anyway, I do laugh at some jokes about mental illness when I forget to be a serious old poopyface. I do think most jokes using "crazy people" lingo is the equivalent of fart jokes. My favorite jokes involving mental illness are smart and mostly from people with a mental illness themselves. It does feel good to make fun of your psychiatrist sometimes!

I know I have rambled here. Blame it all on Deidzoeb for making me come back to H2G2.

Melinda =^..^=