This is not something I see here on lemmygrad. In fact, lemmygrad does an excellent job of this and challenges ableist language I sometimes use.
However, this is the only place I know that is willing to stay tough on problematic language and terminology.
As I’m sure you know, the 90’s and 00’s was a time when the “F” slur was common. You heard or said “thats gay” 95 times a minute. The “R” slur was about as common.
Then, somewhat suddenly, this language began to die down. Over the years it became more and more rare to hear. I think this is because people wanted to be more respectful, or, at least that’s why I also decided to be more intentional about these matters.
But this is changing. The last few years I’ve seen people double down on the R slur. I am somewhat unsurprised, afterall, the R word was not rejected as aggressively as the F slur or the “thats gay” comment. I am convinced most people around me are closeted eugenicists emboldened by the extreme ableism baked into their emerging fascist identities.
But now I am seeing people defend how they use gay as an insult as well. I find this to be terrifying. I don’t understand how any conscientious person could shamelessly use such language.
For those of you that have decided its ok to use such language. Thank you. I am working overtime trying to find out who exactly will be comfortable killing disabled people and queer people. You make my life easier. I will trust my gut about you in these times and treat you as the enemy you are.
A surge in problematic language will tend to coincide with a surge in fascism.
A lot of queer people I know will sometimes say the f-slur with each other. Hell, I know someone who has it tattooed loud and proud. I don’t think there’s any reclaiming the r-slur though. Someone who is SXI and can’t talk can’t have a say in it so I think it needs to stay in the realm of music and automotive timing.
Personally i reclaim the “R-slur”. I don’t really see how another person who is also affected, but can’t communicate their disdain for it should have any effect on me saying it. Unless it is towards them directly or their group of course.
Would love to hear your thoughts on that, actually :)
I only “reclaim” it by using to make ableism more obvious. “Just call me a r-word” Or to express that someone I trust has betrayed me in particular ways that exasperate the effects of disability. “That makes me feel r-word”.
There can only be discomfort and severity when it is used in my opinion. It’s meant to be shocking because I am referring to the specific ableist violences that can only be understood if you believe the word is a slur.
This being said, I do not endorse the word at all. It’s the nuclear option for getting people around me to know I’m being deadly serious about very real dangers I am being subjected to. I would never actually defend it’s use even if I was pushed to use it for reasons stated above.
I mean, I really don’t like it. I’ve worked with a lot of severely disabled people and it just really grates on me. But also, I’m more in the camp of the people who it effects the most decide. But with the r-word, there’s a whole subset of people who don’t have the capacity to decide that’s not present in the other communities, so I think we should err on the side of not using it.
Black folks can say the n-word as they please and I don’t have a right to say otherwise. If a black person doesn’t want too use that language that’s their right. So basically if you’re not black, you don’t get a pass - ever. If you are black you get to decide.
Same sort of rules for other slurs… Except Cracker, snow roach, white devil, honkey, bleach demon, etc. Racism doesn’t exist against white people. Prejudice, sure, but not racism.
“Cracker” is also a slur used by wealthy whites to refer to poor whites that they viewed as dangerously close to “going native.”
White people should not refer to other whites as crackers unless they desire to insult whites based on colonial bourgeoisie sensibilities. Or maybe if they want to do digital black face.
Interesting… I can see what you’re saying. My personal use of it has been to punch up and infer the white person that I call a slur as having a broken morality.
So if we get into the bourgeoisie foundations of our day to day used language I think others, like me, keep learning new ways they’ve influenced our language and in turn ways of thinking. That said, common use of language is what defines it over time (e.g. new language is created all the time), so we can reclaim and recreate the meanings of words and phrases. But in light of what you’re pointing out, should we?
I can see where digital blackface could be what someone sees in my language too… If I call them “white devil”, I’m of course invoking language popularized by the Black Panthers, and I do mean to do so. My purpose behind that is to convey that I’m not a friend of the concept of “whiteness” and it’s hegemonic power. Again, should I not? My thoughts when it comes to this is that I align with my class and that the language of the BPP come from class and not race. But I’m white, so I know I’m liable to have shitty blind spots. I’m trans so my focus tends to be trying to find my queer phobic blind spots first, and naturally through a white lens.
The unintellectual lizard brain side of me also just wants something to call ruling class and their toadies something that pisses them off.
Mhh okay interesting. Thanks for giving me your thoughts on it!
I’ve seen a lot of people say this and while I’m someone with probably one of the most severe cases of ADHD I know of, and who has been personally the target of the term a lot my entire life I tend to fall in the camp of something I personally dislike the use of, but i don’t feel as intensely about it as I do derogatory uses of like gay or the f word.
I’m autistic, don’t use the R-slur myself, but don’t really have a problem with people characterizing stuff as “autistic” and it kinda makes me laugh
I’d rather people just use the slur.
Huh why lol
Deeply unserious people are dangerous to me and I’m not going to allow that. I’m not going to disrespect myself by silencing my gut. I’ve been trained my entire life to sense ableism because it is the only way to ever be safe. Make yourself clear and known. If you are going to use autism in that way, what choice do I have than to see you as an unserious agitator? No games. I don’t care what you think is “autistic” only that you know autistic people aren’t going to tolerate being in danger. Either admit you don’t have any respect for autistic people or their experiences so we can all draw lines and hash out what happens next. Or, move and speak with serious intentions and make known that eugenicists and ableists are your sworn enemies and that the cause of destroying ableism is a cause you are deeply enfranchised in.
Yeah i know what you mean, haha. That usually isn’t used in a hateful way though in my experience
I’ve never not heard it used in an ableist way.
This seems exhausting and pointless at best and sheer bigotry otherwise.
How did Hades II turn out? I didn’t enjoy the gameplay in Hades I as much as most of the public, but I kept playing for the character development alone. Now I wonder if I should put Hades II in my backlog. Next year I’ll have time to play games again, hopefully :)
I think it’s incredible, but I am not exactly the most unbiased reviewer given my stats:
I think it’s overall tuned a little easier than Hades 1. There are a lot of extremely busted god and weapon combos that are easy to set up, and practically melt bosses. For example, Zeus on the torches’ primary attack with Hestia as a second god, you can create a one-button feedback loop where Zeus’ Blitz keeps triggering itself, and stacking Hestia’s Scorch every time it happens. Then you can stack up some other boons where it starts chaining around to other baddies, and it gets pretty nuts pretty fast.
Damn that’s a lot of playtime, the only roguelike I have this much time in is Isaac. Your description sounds super cool tho, I really want to get Hades 2, but I got a few things left to do in Hades 1 that I want to do first. The only negative thing I heard about Hades 2 is the ending, is it actually bad or are people overreacting? I didn’t see exactly what is the issue since I don’t want to spoil myself, but it’s a recurrent complain I have been seeing.
The only negative thing I heard about Hades 2 is the ending, is it actually bad or are people overreacting? I didn’t see exactly what is the issue since I don’t want to spoil myself, but it’s a recurrent complain I have been seeing.
It’s not a grand slam like Hades’ ending, but it’s fine. In both cases, the journey was better than the destination, anyway.
I’ve seen people claim that they’re reclaiming the r-slur because they’re disabled. They remind me of that black white supremacist from the movie Django Unchained. He used the n-word in a racist context that’s totally different from how black people normally use it and identically to how racists use it.
I agree. I never want to hear it and more than anything I definitely don’t want to hear it as a joke. There is no safety with someone whose ontology can hold the meaning of that word.
But likewise I resent those who would refrain from saying the r-word but would express and enforce ableism regardless. If I ever use that word it would be in private to make their ableism more clear and ironically shock such people out of their ableist stupor. But even this is just a discursive risk that I would never advocate for such a tactic in good conscience.
Reclaiming slurs is an entirely different phenomenon from the self-hating usage of slurs.
I agree with you. I think the r-word is used in the latter context.
Felix on Chapo is bad about this. His “Dominican” jokes every episode also wore thin like three months ago
Glad this nets you an instant ban on hexbear still
Good thing none of us ever listened to anything but Hexbear’s Official Podcast: Pod Save America.
Is that the “Dominican ray” joke? Hasan does that a lot too. Personally I’m sick of the new guy saying the r-slur more than anything.
Please report usages of ppl using those words also, so we can remove them.
We may also temp ban repeat offenders, and if they dig in on use of these slurs, then permaban them.
I agree.
Yeah it’s the same here in Brasil too. A couple of years ago it was harder to come by our version of the F-word, and even the R-word was being used less from what I saw, but it’s like it is now just super common place for everyone to use these now, and it fucking sucks and hurts.
To give a lil bit more context. Our version of the F word have been reclaimed by the LGBT community here, but it never left the average person vocabulary, in fact it is even a commonly used figure of speech that just means “bro, dude, etc.” for people in Rio for example, it’s common for people there to use the word a shit ton, and therefore have a completely different meaning. It’s a complicated thing, but I’m 100% behind the reclaimed use at least. Seeing other queer people use it feels right, while the only thing I feel when straight people use it is disgust, unless it’s cariocas (people from Rio basically) using it, that I think it’s fine too.
For the R-word, I don’t think there have been an effort to reclaim in here, but I might be wrong. To me it just hurts and it’s not a word I want to reclaim. I wish I was more in tune with the neurodivergent community here to now better about it, but my understanding is that given the history of mental illness “treatment” here, it is very harmful language.
In german there are very few insults that work well and since the material conditions are worsening FAST the people (myself included) need words to describe those who fuck them over or who wont listen when presented with facts, etc.
Also, the worst language is used inside of the working class and the majority of leftists in germany is petit bourgeoisie white privileged students, etc.
It is also a thing that migrant low income people use and I myself sometimes am not willing to let go of these words as they represent my material conditions in my youth and again today. There is a saying, you can get a person out the gutter but not the gutter out of them.
This leads to me using very foul, ableist, sometimes mysoginist language when I’m very angry. This also happens with the huge migrant population who are not highly educated and its part of the (eg. rap) culture. Imho, we need better, very brutal language which isnt ableist or mysoginist.
Words that I use frequently when very angry and which need an equally deranged but not ableist, mysoginist reolacement are:
- Son of a w***re - which in german means you’re worthless, scourge of the earth
- Something that has no direct translation but means something like “born wrong” - which in german (especially rap) is used to convey how morally deranged and worthless someone is. Its one of the most vile things you can say to someone and in “better circles” it works to silence a whole room.
In general, I appreciate using emotional violence (especially in rap) against oppression and against physical violence when you cant answer in the same way. Especially in germany, where emotional violence against oppressed people is a daily and accepted thing to do, we need more and better weapons, especially for the (formally) uneducated working class (like myself) to fight back.
I find most people are stripped of the “right to react in kind” when I can distance myself from emotionally charged language, even if the situation is emotionally charged. It takes a lot of the strength I can muster to tame my inner beast, sometimes, but it’s easier with practice.
There’s some southern US white lawyer on YT and I’m serious when I say his name is Jefferson something, that has a regular YT on dealing with people who would bait you with emotionally charged language. I don’t recall his last name, or the name of his channel, because he’s not popped up in some while, but he did make good sense and gave me some useful tips.
Privately, if there is such a thing anymore, I guess do what you want. I’m reminded of a literary child vagabond who was adopted by a wealthy lady after his abusive father died, saying he was miserable, because he couldn’t cuss, spit, scratch, or smoke and had to slip up to the attic regularly to do these things (he eventually ran away). But it does get easier with practice.
I dont think I understand what you are trying to say.
What I did catch is “it gets better with practice” which in my mind translates to “you get used to the taste of boot”. Most people trying to police language are privileged whiteys and can go right back to their university.
What I learned with 40 years of practice is that death threats and physical violence work very well if someone is trying to fuck you over repeatedly. Sabotaging or burning down their house also works well for some, or so I heard.
Ah perhaps I misunderstood your post. I do think our replies can be tailored as circumstances change. But I’ve learned to temper myself and enjoy the bewilderment of a conversationally disarmed opponent.
Additionally, I find this https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9164077 to have application far beyond literal warfare.
Yeah, I think we’re talking about wildly different situations. My question was “how to convey emotional violence and shut up privileged people without resorting to class divisionism through misogynism or ableism?” I have gone through the whole “keep cool when others heat up” phase some 20 yrs ago and it does have its uses. What I’m looking for now is emotional warfare if you will.
Yeah, I think we’re talking about wildly different situations.
Perhaps. Perhaps we’re at different places along the road we share, but we can still walk each other home.
