Azrael the cat
Arcane
Dny said:
- Firstly 'relevance to what you wrote' - I wasn't just referring to your comments, but to the general idea being expressed by several posters that it is political correctness bullshit to avoid calling folk names that they find insulting (I'm presuming they also think it is political correctness bullshit to phone their mothers on their birthday, since apparently giving a shit about other peoples' feelings is bullshit these days).
- re: free speech - I'm not taking your right to free speech away. Criticising someone on a forum does not equate to denial of free speech. Neither does banning someone from a privately run forum, so long as it is sufficiently minor. If you were criminalised for your comments, then yes that is a denial of free speech and for that reason I'm not a fan of racial defamation laws.
And given the ease of not causing serious emotional hurt to some folk, then yes, I would judge some as lacking in basic empathy and humanity if they repeatedly went around calling people fag or nigger in an insulting context. That doesn't mean that I want to see those people locked up or fined. It just means I'd choose not to associate with them, just like I'd choose not to associate with someone who laughs at his own farts, or who repeatedly calls the new guy at work nicknames that the guy clearly isn't comfortable with.
- re: your confusion about the 1st 2 paragraphs: the relevance of the first couple of paragraphs that you quote was simply that you don't need to put 'not calling people faggots if they don't like it' in the context of political correctness. Anyone with empathy for other humans doesn't go around calling people something they don't want to be called, period. Whether that's nigger or Gazza. Thing is, most folk have no problem understanding why it might be douchery to keep calling someone Gazza when they've told you repeatedly they really don't like that name and would prefer you to call them Gary. You wouldn't ask 'is my free speech being impinged?' or 'is this political correctness gone mad?'. Most folk would just go 'alright, he prefers Gary. So we'll call him Gary. End of story'.
Why is refraining from calling someone faggot so much harder than refraining from calling someone Gazza? If someone doesn't like to be called something, then it doesn't take much effort to call them by their preferred label/name.
- re: use of **** : as for my ***** out words, you'll notice that I often do it for ordinary swear words as well. It's purely for my own tastes - unless I'm drunk or riled or tired, I usually feel uncomfortable typing swear words and obvious insults in full. I don't expect that anyone would be any less offended by them. I also didn't expect anyone would be so f*****g petty as to make an issue out of it.
And no shit there's worse forms that oppression can take than name-calling. I'd consider myself to have got off ultra-lightly as a bi guy growing up, but the reason I was in the closet til 16, when folk start to mature a bit, wasn't because of fear of name-calling. It was because of fear of serious violence. But that's a completely different issue to the one that was being talked about, i.e. whether it is political correctness shite to avoid calling folks by names they'd prefer not to be called.
tl;dr - If you're a-ok with calling folks niggers and faggots then, hey, I'm not saying the law should criminalise you for it. But be a fucking man about it and walk down the street calling it to black folks' faces, rather than scrapping for e-thug cred.
