• shalafi@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Mostly the same for “f@g”. My gay friends called each other that back in the 90’s. LOL, they called me that. It simply wasn’t a big deal, no harm, no foul.

    Same for “retard”. I got a warning from a reddit mod I liked, on a really reasonable sub, for talking about “retarding the action” on a mechanical device. Yeah.

    While we’re at it, I didn’t know “negro” had somehow turned into a pejorative until Oceans 11 came out. I thought it was a polite, though archaic, word. “Colored” had been out for some time, but again, I thought it was just an old word and nobody cared. And “Eskimo”, and “Oriental”, and so on. Never heard those words used in a derogatory context. (Gods please, don’t try to educate me. I truly get it now. Just relating my experiences and thoughts for context.)

    This kinda thing is what conservatives are on about. No, they’re not sad that they can’t throw n****r around any longer. FFS, that word has been anathema since I was a child in the 70s. It’s just that language is changing at an historic rate, and fuck you if you don’t keep up with every nuance. Anyone remember when “African-American” was a big thing, and even black people were laughing at it?

    I have no desire to hurt anyone’s feelings, always trying to learn, but on a single decade’s timeline, language is a minefield. Now do 50-years. (OK, don’t care about conservatives or Russians, but you get my drift.)

    Go ahead, beat me up.

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Same for “retard”. I got a warning from a reddit mod I liked, on a really reasonable sub, for talking about “retarding the action” on a mechanical device. Yeah.

      I had some limited entertainment hassling mods on reddit about their stupid automated bots that couldn’t understand that words like “retard” or “abort” have meanings outside of insults and politics.

    • thantik@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It’s so fucking hilarious that there’s a pink floyd poster on the wall of that gif too…

      But yeah, I’m the same - I have no desire to hurt anyone’s feelings. I support the existence of LGBT people, I’m not exactly going to pride events or anything, but my daughters are somewhere along that spectrum of sexuality and I don’t give them shit for it; I’ve always supported them.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Loved a reddit sub about historical pics. There was a poster constantly uploading “Eskimo” pics, and describing them as such.

        OMFG, the comments. Every time. Funny thing is, the poster claimed they were of Far-Northern-North-American-Descent-Before-Whites-Came-Along. Of course we can’t use “Inuit”, because they’re not all Inuits. Fair enough.