"You Should Only Talk to People on the Internet if You're Being Culturally Insensitive"

This is an argument that got thrown at me today, and I wanted to get some opinions on it, because it seems fundamentally flawed
To give it short, a person was arguing to a friend of mine that he's incredibly sexist and the like because he uses the word "****" (the c word if this gets censored)
the rub is... he's Australian. Where he lives the word a mild at best insult. But this person argued to me that he shouldn't be talking to people on the internet unless he knows enough about them to be culturally sensitive
I don't really get it, isn't that basically impossible on the internet? What's more, this person came to him because they liked his youtube videos and found his twitter... is it now his responsibility to make sure he knows he won't offend the thousand or so people who watch his stuff?
like I get the core motive, insulting people isn't really a good thing, but isn't this also kinda washing away a person's cultural identity just to make it fit the standards of some place else? And also a little bit of censorship?

 

The thing that a lot of people seem to misunderstand about "freedom of speech" is that, while you are allowed to talk about whatever you want, you are not free from the consequences of what you say. People may react poorly to what you say, call you out on it, and in cases of websites, refuse to facilitate what you're saying. We do that here, and pretty much all websites do (aside from something like 4chan which is advertised for its lack of content moderation) -- if something is deemed hateful or objectionable we will delete it. In that case we're not depriving you of your right to say things, we're depriving you of your right to say them on this particular website, which we have every right to do.

The thing about the c-word or other slurs is that -- if you are not part of the group of people who can use the word, there probably isn't a reason for you to be using them and it's fairly easy to work them out of your speech. In America at least (dunno about the rest of the English-speaking world), 'retarded' became synonymous with something or someone we found silly or awful or distasteful or what have you. I fully admit that I used it as such -- it was part of popular slang, all my friends said it, and so on. I was never called out on it personally like it seems your friend was with the c-word, but when I heard people's (rightful) objections to it, I knew it was my responsibility to work it out of my speech. It is a process that requires conscious effort and I'm sure I slip up sometimes but there are plenty of other, non-offensive and non-oppressive words to use in its place to the same effect. It's okay for your friend to feel a bit attacked but the best way to handle the situation would simply be to apologize for his usage of the word and work it out of his speech.

I'm not familiar with Australian slang but the argument being levied against him, which I am inclined to agree with, is that just because a word is acceptable in Australia doesn't mean he can use it on the Internet, where he almost surely isn't being heard by just Australians.

 

well to help give more context about the australia thing, it seems to basically be a casual insult used by friends, like it's not used in a specifically derogatory way (like this person tends to call his (male) friends "ya ****" or something
See, I don't think freedom of speech means you're free from criticism, but the context should be able to tell you what the intent was. If he was aggressively using the word to describe women, for example, that's a pretty big dick move, but since he's Australian he uses the word in a very different way
additionally, there was no reference made to it being about the internet, but it being sensitive to ALL cultures, and again, this just seems incredibly impractical. It also strikes me as good, surely understanding that another culture finds a word less insulting is PART of being culturally sensitive?
But even then... I'm not sure I agree with the notion that apologizing and stopping is an inherently good thing. Smacks too much of either cultural homogenization, censorship, or worse (what are the implications of justifying "you aren't allowed to speak a certain way"?)

 

I believe this falls into the same category as these similar things, yes?

• Black people calling each other the N word isn't as big a deal as white people calling other white people or black people that word. In both cases, though, it's being used to call someone your friend, not to insult, but some people still have a problem with it.
  
• Gay people making gay jokes with their gay friends (e.g., that's so gay) is "okay," so to speak, but it's not okay for straight people to make gay jokes.

 

There are words that are okay for some people to use and not others, though there is debate on the subject. I think this tumblr post is pretty succinct about the discussion:

http://pocproblems.tumblr.com/post/46300394678/reclaiming-slurs
(leaving the opening to discussion in there because it's a very broad subject and isn't limited to these two viewpoints)

Because white people are not oppressed by the n-word, they have absolutely no right to use, reclaim, reappropriate it. The only other usage for them would be to oppress black people, which is obviously unacceptable. Therefore, it really is not acceptable for a white person to the use the n-word (or anyone, depending on which camp you sit in).

Another example of this would be the b-word. Your example about gay jokes of course applies to gay jokes rather than words but is the same idea.

 

Your title says the opposite of what you mean.

There is a saying that goes, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' If the c word is a serious offense in Rome, don't use it in Rome.

The internet is a place where all people of all cultures come together. No one can claim that everyone else should do as they do. That leaves two options:

• Everyone accepts everyone else's affronts as a product of cultural dissonance. e.g. Let everyone say whatever word they like and desensitize yourself to the insult.
• Everyone makes an effort to avoid affronting others. e.g. No one uses the c word so that no one is offended.

Or offend people and not care about whether or not we get along.

What do we know?

We know that it's impossible for the speaker to control how other people feel. Offenses are knee-jerk reactions. We would have to disclaim our habits to each person before offending them and come to an agreement. The time it takes to convince each person is unpredictable.

We know that we reach the same result instantaneously if we filter ourselves. We can convince ourselves to abstain instead of spending time convincing everyone that we meet to accept our mannerisms. Time and energy are saved.

We know that if everyone tried the first option at the same time, we would be spending the majority of our conversations explaining and disclaiming instead of having conversations. Every person must convince every other person to accept them. The workload grows exponentially every time the group gains a member. Imagine an 'everyone shakes hands with everyone else; how many handshakes take place?' problem.

We know that everyone would be able to carry on a conversation immediately if they tried the second option.

Which is better?

 

I'll counter this with "you don't need to be a chef to criticize a bad meal"
the idea that a person being born with a certain colour of skin makes them irrelevant is kinda ridiculous coming from groups that are arguing their points BECAUSE of that exact same thing. I am perfectly capable of coming to the conclusion that if offensive words were appropriated and made positive, it would overall make a lot of people happier. You're not really leaving a word in the past if you insist that it retain the exact same offensive meaning it did in the past. That's not letting go, that's the opposite. It's preserving a status quo of offensiveness.

it used to say sensitive instead of insensitive, too, overall I should have spent more than the second I did on it :P

 

Right. I totally understand and agree. I've never used it, though if my friends used it, it didn't really bother me as long as it was only talking about two people being good friends. It's not any less bad, as you said, but still.

Yeah, though. That's what I was trying to say. It's "okay," so to speak (which means it's not okay), but it seems like if two black people use it in the friend sense, it's not made as big a deal as a white person calling their white friend or black friend the word.

Also, which B word? Male or female?

 

I obviously didn't write the tumblr post but I think the idea behind it is simply that it's not for white people to say whether they approve of black people reclaiming the n-word or not because it's not their word and it's not their business. That said, I think the issue of reappropriation is open to discussion for everyone because there are words that can be used to oppress anyone. But I am also white and I could very well be wrong here.

I was referring to 'bitch'.

 

your skin colour doesn't determine whether you're right or wrong
it determines how your skin reacts to sunlight

anyways, as much as it might seem morally right for a group to 'own' a word, it's not really how things work out. Every word is just... a word. You can give or take meaning, but it's a concept, not property. Sorry for bringing up this old point but
gay used to mean happy, then sexually promiscuous people, then sexually promiscuous men, then homosexuals, and now it's leaning towards a generic term for "bad"
thing change, and nobody can really fight the waves of change. People still hold on to the negative connotation of the word ******, but a lot of youth have adapted it as a general term for a good friend, or someone you agree with. That's the wya the wind is blowing now, and it will probably blow another a few years down the line. Nobody has control of it, it's a collective thing

 

The history of oppression by white people of black people has something to say about that. The racism against PoC that still exists today has something to say. They say that it's an insult of the highest degree to compare making light of the brutal annuls of white on black violence to art critique.

There is not a history of oppression of chefs by customers or existing prejudice towards chefs by customers. We're not talking about critiquing food.

When white people use the n word, it adds insult to injury. It reminds PoC of the centuries of violence their ancestors went through. It reminds them of the racism and violence they face every day. For those who are trying to reclaim the n word as a symbol to the oppressor, the oppressor using the n word as flippantly is just another way for the oppressor to take that power away from PoC.

Make no mistake. You are a part of the oppressor because of your skin color. The scales are not even. PoC still face racism inside and outside of the system. By not being a PoC, you are inherently more likely to be one of the people who actively oppress them. Even if you do not actively oppress them, those of your skin color who do will not oppress you because of your skin color. That makes you privileged. When you, who is not oppressed, takes away the symbol of the oppressed, that is also oppression.

 

http://whiteseducatingwhites.tumblr...e-101-colorblindness-and-the-privilege-of-not

Language doesn't exist in a vacuum -- nothing does. The words we say, and what we say, are informed by who we are, whether it be personally, racially, sexually, etc. We likewise cannot remove words from their context or connotation. Your example of the word 'gay' is an example of how a word can be reclaimed and reappropriated, and thus enter public usage again.

By your objection, you would seem to support yourself using the n-word. Do you?

 

Be prebeared to be smacked in the face for saying anything and everything at all times no matter what forever.

 

Great link. Thanks for sharing.

 

so it's not oppressive to be judged for your skin colour because other people of the same skin colour did bad things? I'm sorry, but I'm not of the belief that I am responsible for the crimes of people who were born or originate from the same geographic climate as me

I wouldn't use the word, outside of using it as an example, but I certainly don't bat an eye when, say @Ars Wumbo uses it on occasion. Words don't exist in a vacuum, and that's why context is important. I am not an advocate of using words as symbols of things, it has a way of reducing huge concepts into easy sound bites. I think oppression is something that should be covered extensively in schools, in history classes... I don't think clinging to a word is healthy. I don't like thinking of groups as collectives based on similarities, either, I find it dehumanizing. It's out and out wrong, as far as I'm concerned, to say white people can't experience oppression in this day and age, when a key argument of this is "you can't do/say/feel x because you're white" it's not as bad as to be even comparable to the horrible things of the past, and certainly there are others that experience far worse things than the average white person but... so what? Are we going to start organizing people by how much misery they have versus their potential misery? It's not a contest, denying small problems because bigger ones exist is a horrible thing to do
We've got all of these articles and such saying what white people, or men, or whatever are a certain way because of certain things. I have a very simple test for this. If you took these things, and said it about a minority, would it be considered a HORRIBLY racist or sexist thing? Then it's STILL horrible to say, no matter what. You can defend it by saying "it's not sexism, it's the truth" or whatever, but the fact is it's just justification for negative actions.
I'm in favour of teaching the accurate history, and supporting the people who were wronged. I'm never going to be okay with justifying treating someone differently based on things they can't control. I'm also in favour of progress, building things. I'd rather talk about how things can be improved than make a list of things that can't be said or done

 

Not really. Oppression is a lot larger than being judged every once in a while. It has to be pervasive and overwhelming to the point that you can't just shrug it off. It has to have real world consequences.

You missed the point of what I said and the link she posted. Misty's link says this far better than I can so please read it carefully.

Right now, in the present, there are white people who actively oppress others. That's racism. But there's another side to that. They don't oppress you. Like it or not, you are being treated with racial prejudice. The difference is that it's in your favor. You don't recognize that you are being treated differently based on your race, but you are. You are profiting from it.

You don't realize how good you have it. You are able to believe that race doesn't matter because you only experience positive effects from anti-PoC racism. If you were actually in a position where you knew you were at a decided disadvantage in employment, housing, legal issues and so on, you wouldn't be able to say that race doesn't matter. You would see that you don't have a choice in that. Just because you don't care about race doesn't mean you'll get that job, that apartment, that you'll be let off with a warning, that you won't be stopped and frisked on the street for no reason. Because others of your color do care about race, PoC are forced to care. They forced an us-them divide.

Here comes you. It's important to realize that you are privileged. Even though you do not care about race, you are not subjected to the same restrictions PoC are. You are given a bump up in social status purely because of your skin color. You are forced to be in a better position than them because you are afforded more options than they are by the same racial prejudices at play that put them down.

How can they not blame you for not giving enough of a shit about what happens to them to filter your language? How can you blame them for resenting how much you take your life for granted when they can't have it?

You aren't responsible for the history. You may not be responsible for the oppression they face right now.

You are responsible to recognize how good you have it and give up your smug attitude toward the problems they face. You are not oppressed. You don't know what oppressed means. You have never been offended or insulted in the way they have.

This goes way, way beyond language. The language is just a reminder of the oppression. What would happen if all people stopped using the n word wholesale, including PoC? Nothing. They wouldn't be more free than they were before. What would happen if people used the n word, regardless of race? PoC would still be oppressed but they would then hear the very people who profit from it make light of it.

Their race is the basis of that suffering. Your race is the basis of your lack of it. Race shouldn't matter, but that doesn't matter because it does. It created very real social divides that you ended up on the good side of. What you're saying is, "Why can't I just profit from it without feeling bad?"

 

This is something I was going to bring up myself. While it's important to remember things that happened in the past because it is our history, it's also important not to dwell in the past (something Misty mentioned here, though it was about something less serious than this, but all the same).

Let's use a lighter example: technology. "Back in my day, we didn't have email or cell phones to text with, so if we wanted to write to people, we sent them a letter in an envelope via an actual human being and not an electronic signal. Email and cell phones, quite honestly, are stupid." That person is dwelling in the past and not accepting the fact that times have changed since, say, 1950 and technology has advanced drastically.

So putting that into what we're discussing here, as Hatok said, a word like gay, while it still stems from the word homosexual and is used for homosexual males, is starting to become just another word for something stupid, idiotic, etc. I mean, think of it this way: the words stupid and idiot used to be insults, and now they're not. They can still be used to insult people, of course, but they no longer carry the taboo connotations that words like the C word do -- just for reference, I do not like the word and will never use it, but I am just making an example.

Just for the record, employers cannot discriminate and therefore consider not hiring you based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

 

oh, I was born a way, so they can't help bu resent me
that sounds very reasonable
I should count my lucky stars, I suppose, I was born white, no more problems for me. hooray.
I look at this, and all I see is depression. This is a cycle of depression, on a massive scale, focusing, obsessing, lionizing misery. Justifying your actions that only make things worse. I'm never going to be convinced to be ashamed of the fact that I have friends of different races and don't care about that race. I am me, if people want to stick me with the sins of other people and resent me for it, that's their problem.
It doesn't affect us? My sister was denied a job because on the grounds that she wouldn't give first nations special treatment. I was told I wouldn't be considered for the job I applied for at the Toys R Us baby department, because they only accept women. Do other cultures have their own problems with this? Of course. Are their problems worse? There's a good chance. Does that justify judging a person based on the colour of their skin? I certainly hope not.
I'd prefer it if people just... didn't make judgements based on superficial things. Obviously that won't happen, but justifying hatefulness is't going to make it any better

 

Your skin color isn't why they resent you. (Generally speaking.) The fact that you don't take stock of how much better you have it than them because of your race, is. Your lack of outrage, is. Your taking it lightly, is.

You don't want to be judged for superficial things? Too bad. You already are. When someone doesn't automatically suspect you of being up to no good and they do suspect someone who is a PoC, they're judging you for a superficial thing just like the other person. Like I said already, you only notice it when the judgments against you are negative. That's your sin. Only speaking out against racial prejudice when it hurts you personally. Boo hoo.