Saetha said:
RoonMian said:
Saetha said:
No, I'm not saying that any member of the majority who do find it offensive are a-okay. I say that any member of the majority does not have the right to decide himself FOR the minority. That actually goes in both directions. Being offended on behalf of someone else is usually called "White Knighting".
Also, members of the minority who are fine with it do not make offensive terms okay. If you find a black person who has no problem with you calling them "******", that does not make it okay for you to call any black person that.
Yes, that IS a roundabout way of shutting down dissension. Dissension of people who have no business in speaking up in a discussion inside a minority they are not part of. The people who are offended are not the only ones who are right. But determining if they are right or not is none of the business of the majority but is solely a matter of that minority defining their own cultural identity. Which is their fundamental human right as a group.
But see, my problem with this is that, it doesn't happen in a vaccuum. When the minority decides something is offensive, it effects everyone. And when between two groups that are roughly similar in size - men and women, for instance - who gets to decide what's offensive and what isn't? Neither is truly a minority. And often someone finds something progressive, only for another to find it offensive and insulting - see the "Strong Female Character" trope, where they make the female character an infallible bad-ass because they're afraid to give her flaws.
It's just such a giant mess, and what is or isn't offensive changes from person to person. You can't reasonably expect someone to make accommodations for every opinion, especially when those opinions are in conflict.
Not to mention there are far too many who are willing to speak for another minority member's experience, without even getting that experience in the first place. I don't agree with YesAllWomen, yet they still thought it fine to slap my name on there, by dint of naming
all women in the title. Furthermore, as a demonstration of my earlier point - I felt rather offended that YesAllWomen claimed to be giving me a voice by... erasing my experiences and insisting they knew what I'd been through without bothering to get my feelings on the matter. Nonetheless, the whole thing was obviously hailed as progressive, despite the offense I took at it.
How would you resolve such a situation?
I never said that all problems were easy to deal with, all questions easy to answer. You ask how I would resolve those situations? I gotta tell you, I'm a white, male, heterosexual guy in central Europe. I have no clue what it's like to belong to a minority. So my first step to resolving issues with minorities is shutting up and listening. Which is all I advocated for in this thread.
First of all, I'd doubt that there was no minority or majority between men and women as you put it. This isn't about numbers. With the exception of a handful of tiny pockets here and there on the globe there is a significant power gap between male and female everywhere. Your example of that "Strong Female Character" trope pretty much already shows that. Women have to fight for better representation.
Women don't have a consensus yet on how they want to be represented in video games? I let them figure it out. I have no idea what it's like for them so I keep my mouth shut, listen to them and try to be empathic.
You didn't like how that YesAllWomen thing included you? Then discuss that with those women who did that. All I am saying is that I, as a guy, do not have the right to swoop in and tell all those women who were sharing their experiences: "Halt stop! Saetha doesn't agree with you, what you say is invalid!" How women want to be seen in society in general (coming back to my first sentence, I'm generalising here. It's all not that easy, we're still all individuals at some point) needs to be figured out by women. Without interference by men. Men can support, encourage, whatever. But they cannot take over.
Let me give you an example from my country. I live in Germany and for like 100 years we have eaten a "Zigeunerschnitzel". It's a pork chop with a pepper sauce. "Zigeuner" is an ugly word though. It's the German pejorative against Roma and Sinti, in English it would be "Gypsy". It is not the word those cultural and ethnic groups chose for themselves, it'S foreign to them and it has an awful load of negative connotations, especially since a lot of people think it comes from "ziehende Gauner" which literally means "travelling criminals". That isn't true but still because so many people think it is the word "Zigeuner" marks them automatically as criminals. So naturally, a lot of Roma and Sinti find it offensive and would like to see it go.
My point is: A shitload of Germans say "but we always called it Zigeunerschnitzel, so it's not offensive". That is their literal reasoning. The majority thinks it can decide for the minority what the minority is supposed to find offensive or not. Or they simply don't care, same difference. Same thing for "Negerkuss" ("a Negro's kiss"), something like a marshmellow covered in chocolate with a wafer on the bottom. And that is what I am criticising and wanted to criticise with my first post in this thread. Denying a minority the right to speak out against things like that that are offensive for them, that they speak up against in their struggle to establish their own cultural identity or simply rolling over them with all the power and privilege the majority has is a subtle but insidious kind of racism (or sexism, homophobia, they all come from the same place).
And in the case of the "Zigeunerschnitzel"... Those people who cry the loudest when the "Zigeunerschnitzel" gets called out are the people who would throw the biggest fit if all the Turkish diners in Germany conspired one day to name the most typical German snack, the "Currywurst" the "Naziwurst" instead. Because of a total lack of empathy. Because of a total inability to see beyond their inherent advantage that they do not have to deal with this kind of shit on a daily basis. You know what I mean?
Dessembrae said:
RoonMian said:
The "N-Word" became offensive? From the get go it was a word meant to separate people with white and black skin colour. With help of religiously biased and racist "race theory" the word "******" was meant to dehumanise from the very first time it was ever used. I'm not black but I am pretty sure the vast majority of black people found being treated as cattle not very nice even when it was the norm.
Yes it indeed "became" offensive. Negro comes from the Latin word niger, witch means black and was used to describe their appearance and was not considered offensive at the time even when they started to use it as a description of race.
The equivalent no-use word of the current day ****** at the time was, black...and around the wheel spins
The expression
nègre or
negro was first used in 16th century Spanish/Portuguese slave trade. Dehumanisingly. It was already offensive then because being a
negro meant you could be a slave. That word and what it meant was the deciding factor, the artificial barrier based on religious bias, racism and later pseudo-science that decided if you were a human being or a beast of burden. It was already offensive then. Saying it was just a description is wrong at best and willful revisionism at worst. I give you the benefit of the doubt.
