@Mearl:
Faggot is not a curse word now? :blink:
In modern colloquallism, at least from my experiences, it isn't; just like the words "nigga" and "gay" are considered to be (somewhat) socially acceptable, since individuals who are black or homosexual have asked that they be identified as such.
Cursing is subjective, anyhow. I've found that most of what I deem to be curses relate to misogyny.
@Mearl:
To address the nigger/nigga issue quickly: Just as some black people have made an effort to reclaim "nigger," some have argued that the effort is instead putting back efforts towards equality. However, nigger is still hardly acceptable to casually throw about for non-blacks, and this is after years of "nigga" in popular culture. Similarly, "fag" and similar words, although occasionally bandied about as a term of affection within gay culture, have predominantly been used in degrading situations, often with the excuse "Well, the fags use it." I feel that efforts to reclaim "faggot" and "nigger" are misguided at best, counter-productive at worst, but I generally try to stay out of that fight. Of course, "faggot" in some countries as a word for cigarettes, meatballs or other innocent items does not apply here, as it is obvious that was not the intention.
Firstly, "equality" is impossibe; what people are striving for is equity, where people are treated "fairly" or "equally", not that they are equal. On an additional note, the individuals who consider the rise of "faggot" and "nigger" in popular usage to be a retraction toward more divisive times are the silent majority, the preservers of the status quo. Political correction has become integrated into modern culture and is thus considered the "norm"; as seen in the counter-cultural movement during the 1960's, the status quo is difficult to uproot, so chances are this 'retardation' will not be long widthstanding.
@Mearl:
However, if you truly have addressed this topic before, surely you realize the irony in saying you have no problem with gays, then going on to explain why homosexuality is the perfect example of all that's wrong with Usopp.
As I said earlier, the idea that everything has a context, from which you extracted my statement; in some situations, what people consider "courage" is more aking to "stupidity". At the Battle of Little Big horn, was General George Custer a brave man, or a stupid man? Considering the context of the time from a skewed perspective of Americans, he was brave; taking into account a 'deeper' view, especially regarding the plight of Native Americans, not to mention Custer's tactical situation, he was an idiot.
More pertinent to this discussion, right before that comment I made a simmlar comparison of Usopp to a woman, with the additive "no personal offense meant to any women on this board"; I was using traits that are strongly stereotyped in women and applied it to Usopp. Such is part of the context; since I had already estalished that I meant no personal offense to individuals by taking an idea that is believed to be (but not necessarily) common in a certain group and applied it to a fictional character, I did not believe I had to repeat myself.
@Mearl:
You cannot use a word as an insult and claim it is not insulting to the persons it references at the same time. If you had used the word "fag" in a friendly sense, I likely would have just rolled my eyes and stepped along
You take offense to even the mere mention of the word?
@Mearl:
…but this was clearly a use of "faggotry" to describe someone (or rather, something) you disliked, and to insult him through comparing him to a group of people who were, by implication, equally undesirable because they share and even 'embody' the same traits.
And I am not in the wrong for that. There are various traits people associate with certain groups of individuals, namely, "aristocrats", that by context could be viewed as negative or positive depending on the paint colour of the words; "elitist" and "cultured" are the respective heads and tails of the same kind of penny, whereby both essentially describe the same aspect of a certain idea but highlight an implied trait deemed, by context, to be to be 'good' or 'bad'.
Your inference that, "all homosexuals are undesirable through this comparison with Usopp" is incorrect thinking, since as anyone who has grown up in the politically-correct nation would recognize, 'sterotyping' is considered a great sin, either for better or worse, which is exactly what you are doing. I took care to emphasize that I was putting 'faggotry' into context without having to write out an extremely lengthy response that would likely lack the same emotional impact as in that single word.
Much of what was omitted in that post (namely, context) has been said hundreds of times over in this forum, wherby the people I was addresing are the same audience who followed the dissertations during the bloody Usopp debates all throughout this year. Whether or not you were in attendance is not pertinent to the idea that you should know where people are coming from, as well as what they've expressed and their views on certain issues, especially if said people are regulars to this board. I have no responsibility to address any calls on my writing, but I do so because I want to.
@Mearl:
I'm sure you're a perfectly eloquent fellow, but I consider this more of a moral argument than a logical one. I believe you may hold similar feelings about other issues, since you must have some reason for refusing to 'curse' by your definition. At the risk of being over-sensitive, please try to consider that feeling when reading my reply.
No, I do not hold any social issues like that close to heart at all; even the employment of curse-words, which was originally a response by myself when i was really young to please the overbearing evangelical Christian mothers who were appaled by a "young child" using bad language, has lost nearly all of it's meaning. As of right now, the fake cursing is a meaningless tradition, but simply because it is meaningless does not mean I should actively go and try to start using serious curse words in my language.
@Mearl:
There are ways to add negativity without resorting to slurs, in my opinion the lowest form of cursing–I'm embarrassed when I let a curse word loose in front of my mother, but I think it would change her view of me forever if I used a slur. Perhaps descriptive words such as 'disgustingly,' 'exaggerated,' 'pathetic' or 'useless' could be applied to 'sensitive and soft' to give the negative connotation you wanted. These are only suggestions; it could also be something much better. Or... you could fall back on a curse word. Which, as far as I can tell, "faggot" certainly is. A brief phrase, meant to be shocking, not to be used in polite company, strongly negative connotation.
Judging by the numer of warnings I have accumulated on this forum, I fully agree with you; there are many other ways of negatively describing somebody. However, the reservation of "buzz words" for someone who normally does not employ them makes the impact of said words all the more stronger; I rarely say something 'offensive' along those lines, in part because of tradition and in another part because of self reservation.
Additionally, you also have to consider the tendancies of posters; typically, people will be appaled by lengthy discussions of negativity, which is why the Usopp debates were so violent; people did not acknowledge arguments or evidence and merely restated the same, tired-old mantra with fresh posts, since "tl ; dr" was applied so frequently. This is especially true for posts authored by myself, since my posts are among the largest on this board, especially in the VIZ Discussion; frankly, if people know I'm going to rant about something and I spend pages upon pages of doing such, people tend to not read my posts in full or only address something.
Sometimes this phenomenon is a factor of my long-windedness, other times by sheer volume of material and evidence; in cases of the latter, there's virtually nothing I can do to summarize the problems at hand.
@Mearl:
And, as a side comment, you must have heard the phrase 'faggotry' in different situations than I have… I've usually heard it referring to ditziness, physical weakness, or foolishness. I wouldn't have even considered it as meaning "sensitive" out of context.
The key note, though, was that the word itself was negative; a negative word in a neutral context, as opposed to a neutral word in a negative context.
@Mearl:
Frankly, I'm sure you want to argue more about this, because all of your gay friends say you're right, and it's physically impossible for you to say or do something bigoted.
No, I've very elitist, stubborn and prideful, but I'm not beyond admitting I'm wrong/mistaken, ignorant or apologizing. In cases of a calculated offensive, like in this topic, though, I am prepared to defend my actions since I took said action with the knowledge that it would be controversial.
@Mearl:
When I was in high school, I heard 'faggot' a lot, mostly directed at friends, occasionally directed at me from the particularly confused people who didn't know the word dyke, and a couple of times preceeding actual physical attacks. It is a remarkably hateful word. The choice to use this instead of something like "shit" or "fuck," which do not attack a particular group of people, is repulsive to me on a visceral level.
As mentioned earlier, you are associating the word 'faggot' with a negative context, in this case your personal negative experience. There was a word I objected to probably as strongly as you do for 'faggot', and I used to hate whenever the word was used; however, I forced myself to break away from my negative personal context to be able to use or hear the word without it being painful; perhaps in the back of my mind I still cringe when I hear it, but in normal daily life one wouldn't have known I once took offense to said word.
Unlike you, though, I lack the willpower to even identify it.
I understand that individuals can take offense to certain words, but it can only be expected that people transcend their personal beliefs on an international, or at least public stage. I personally expect most people to do such, and I have had a great deal of patience with individuals who do not meet that expectation; however, through sheer attrition I have been worn down to this state of pure rage, primarily because despite my best efforts people do not acknowlege the pages and pages of material I have written. As such, in a case where people don't understand my language, I should use diction they should understand.
@Mearl:
But this is nothing like an argument about a comic book character, to me. The fact that people still go around calling each other 'faggot' or their actions 'faggotry' as an insult is always depressing to face.
Sigh, why did you take that personally? Was it not enough that I poured out whole topics of talk with dozens and dozens of hours worth of meticulous persuasion to emphasize something that people understood better with but a single word? I sincerely apologize for any personal offense that you might have taken, since none was intended; we're talking about a controversial, fictional character on a semi-popular manga forum in the armpit of the internet; why on Earth would you bring that to argument? I don't know who you are, nor do I know your experiences; aside from your screename, you're relatively anonymous, and whether or not you choose to express offence at a term is something to be done at your disgression. You could just as easily hide the fact that you take offense to the word as voice protest.
In this, I recognize my error; I assumed that people on this forum were too familiar with my arguments and thus did not put enough context, that is, my general reservation of terms as well as the summarization of all my thoughts into a single term or word. It is for this that I duly apologise, and provided the opportunity I would have written more to firmly establish for individuals who might have taken personal offense that none was meant, and that I was trying to depict Usopp, not individuals, as negative through a context in which said individuals have been typically seen as negative. Other routes of negativity have historically been rather useless in this regard, so I should have been more careful when using said "buzz word".
@Mearl:
I also realize that saying "I'm leaving forever" is the super-dramatic internet l00zer statement, but I figure you should know why I'm certainly not going to answer you. All I want to say at last is this. If you pick your words with care, although care for emphasis is helpful, care for the impact on other people and the discussion itself may also be useful. I can't say I've always followed that rule myself, in fact I broke it pretty horribly (or rather, didn't know it) as a teen on the Internet. Still, I've learned (even if I occasionally still forget… especially under 'certain influences') that my actions and statements, even on the 'hilarious internetz where nothing is real ever,' can impact other real people.
Understood.
@Mearl:
I've been in arguments like this so often that I'm not really mad anymore, just sad. I tried typing up a classic wrathful and sarcastic internet reply, but it just wouldn't come out properly, so I typed what I actually felt instead. Even if you're still angry and indignant, and disagree with everything I've said, I ask you to think it over a little. Thanks.
Again, I deeply apologize. I read your post in sections, not as a whole, so from the beginning the responses should be more antagonsitic with a slow evolution toward sadnes and empathy. Thanks for spending the time to elaborate; your words were not only cathartic, but educational as well.