Aelinsaar said:
You know, I just saw a GamerGameter argue that "Neckbeard" had become a slur on part with "******" and "******." I wasn't really impressed there either. Language is a vehicle for meaning and context, and if that context is, "Some anonymous shmucks make a meme online, and because it's online it's forever."... then who cares? That's true for (at this point) EVERYTHING.
By comparison, the context for "******" is... "We burn people like you." "******" had literally hundreds of years of brutal treatment to charge it.
I quite agree that it is not equivalent in harmfulness to those other slurs. It's approximately as mundane as "retard" in which it's offensive but doesn't dredge up decades or centuries of mistreatment and oppression. Hopefully I haven't made it sound like that kind of "AAA" slur. Instead, it's more on par with something like "KKK member" if that was used as an insult. A term that is used to categorize us a hateful and bigoted by default.
"Cis" has... what? The online outrage of a minority of a tiny minority who sometimes add "Scum" or "Die" to it? You'll note that "Die ****** Scum" and "******" are equally offensive... because the word "******" is a slur. Cis is simply objective descriptive unless you act to change that.
You do realize that the term "******" not only started as an objective description but also still is one in the rest of the world, right? Same with "Negro". This fact is brought up frequently on the BBC in order to make sure the speakers don't use the terms and hurt American's poor innocent ears.
So it's only in the American context that it's a slur.
As for the tiny minority. I don't think transpeople are necessarily the biggest offenders of using the term that way. We certainly have documentation of some that used it that way including the initiator but my own anecdotal experience would place the majority of the blame on the shoulders of people who think they're doing good for the cause when they're really just making asses of themselves, or, in some cases, correctly applying the slur to an individual that deserves it. I could be wrong but many of the people I see using the term in that way just seem like they want to score points in some unknown internet system that keeps score. It really just ends up alienating non-transgendered individuals from the conversation and if normalization of the condition is the desired impact then this is quite harmful to the cause.
Nothing you've said in PAGES of direct challenges on this point has even come close to dealing with that reality. Each time you're challenged on this point, you pivot to a moral equivalency , or your own personal perception of offense.
Are you saying that you don't believe the term to be offensive? Interestingly enough, did you know it's even offensive to some transgendered people in that they believe it perpetuates binary gender constructs? From researching this response to you I just learned that non-transgendered was replaced by Cisgender because they believed it was normative. So I'm not sure what I'd even replace the term with now. Though it is incorrect to believe that calling something non-anything is normative against the thing which they're "non". Like a Non-White indicates that White is the norm and non-whites are not. So it actually goes the opposite way. But I'm not in charge of how people view terms.
Here's a few mainstream articles on the topic of it being insulting to some:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-new-c-word_b_5617913.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/cisgenders-linguistic-uphill-battle/380342/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-nelson-aviance/i-am-not-cisgendered_b_5598113.html
However, please note that I'm not against labels in general. I do believe in their use so I'm not one of the people stating that the reason this is insulting is because of the imposition of a label.
Regardless, if it wasn't insulting to a significant number of people then what would be the purpose of these articles?
1.) (and this is what I believe) You're just bored and lonely. The rest is noise and justifications, maybe around a core belief, or maybe not. It hardly matters, because you're just in this to hear your own voice and reassure yourself of something you're not getting offline. In my experience, people who produce walls of text where less would do are essentially masturbating.
The only thing you're right about is boredom. But boredom is why anyone is here, on the internet. It's an opportunity to learn and be entertained in so very many ways. So I'm bored and saw someone commenting on a topic I do have an opinion on. Time to voice that opinion and see how it stacks up to reality. So far in researching information to bring into this topic it seems like it's a pretty common sentiment.
I'm sorry if you feel like this abusive ad hominem is appropriate. It isn't and it doesn't disprove my position no matter how diligently you try to employ it. I'd appreciate it if you'd return the same courtesy I'm giving you by not pretending to know my motivations.
Why here? Well, if you don't care about this really, but find it intellectually stimulating, then it would be very easy for you to keep a discussion like this going forever. People with a vested personal interest, and history of abuse (i.e. trans people) will naturally be easy for you to bait back into it whenever you want. Other topics are not necessarily so easy to manipulate.
I am here because this is where the thread was created and a place in which enough transgendered individuals are part of the community as to ensure that I can learn the most from this discussion here. Were it not created and was this place not populated with Transgendered individuals then I would not be here.
2.) You're just dancing around your real objections, which are painfully pedestrian and amount to personal offense and an intellectual incapacity to own that offense. I think that's how you come off to some of the more well-meaning trans people here, although to his credit I can actually see PaulH losing all patience and interest with you. I think this option is much less likely, but I do tend to see ill intent where simple incompetence will do.
Or, and this is a novel concept, maybe you're just wrong? Maybe people do see the term offensively and you're just defending a newly bigoted term for whatever your personal reasons are? Consider that you could be the equivalent of one of those people defending the term "retard" by exclaiming about the fact that it means delayed or obstructed progress and how much sense that makes when discussing someone who is delayed developmentally. Your not wrong, the definition does work. But that's not really relevant. Gender Identity Disorder also worked fine and we saw fit to change it for the exact same reasons and I supported that. But you can't seem to consider supporting this? Why? Who benefits?
