400 replies to this topic

[ROLF]

I dunno...maybe you guys were right before.  Maybe some people do think it's ok to be racist towards people Asian folk.  I'm fucking baffled and I'm at the point where I no longer feel like wasting breath with these two idiots.  I'm putting them both in the idiot racist box and leaving them there.

[str8 outta Old Town]

Typical Woman, on 11 March 2012 - 05:49 PM, said:

Sure, since you are apparently unable to defend adequately your word choice in this thread, it would be rude of us to continue to rub that in your face.

Let's move on to a different word.

Do you call black people "niggers"? It's a fundamentally American word, after all, popularized in its offensiveness in American culture. Do you reject that linguistic imperialism, as well? When you see your dark-skinned friends in Northern England, do you call them that word? When you run across a black-skinned stranger, do you address them using that word? When you talk to internet people who self-identify as black or African-American or African, do you refer to them using that word? If not, why not? Why accept one form of linguistic imperialism, and reject another? Or do you demand that they justify why they find that word offensive to you first, before you think about whether curb your language to subject yourself to American linguistic imperialism?

Right. Next time you have a dig about this I will respond. But I'd just like it recorded here that when the next wave of "why don't you just drop it man?" posts come in, it is Typical Woman, and nobody else who wants this topic to continually revist the validity of "oriental" as an adjective to describe people.

Edited by str8 outta Old Town, 12 March 2012 - 12:18 AM.

[Minaku]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:06 AM, said:

Right. Next time you have a dig about this I will respond. But I'd just like it recorded here that when the next wave of "why don't you just drop it man?" posts come in, it is Typical Woman, and nobody else who wants this phrase to continually revist the validity of "oriental" as an adjective to describe people.

I do not understand what you are saying.

But, if I'm interpreting this correctly, Terra is not the only person who has an issue with the word Oriental.  I do.  Dante does.  And I'm sure plenty of other Asians do as well.  I'm a person, not a thing; I'm from the Occident, not the Orient.  So please fucking stop telling all of us where we are REALLY from.

[str8 outta Old Town]

Minaku, on 12 March 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I do not understand what you are saying.

But, if I'm interpreting this correctly, Terra is not the only person who has an issue with the word Oriental.  I do.  Dante does.  And I'm sure plenty of other Asians do as well.  I'm a person, not a thing; I'm from the Occident, not the Orient.  So please fucking stop telling all of us where we are REALLY from.

So you are from Asia but not the oriental part of it?

[TrueMetis]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

So you are from Asia but not the oriental part of it?

You do know you don't have to be from Asia to be Asian right? Though this could explain a lot about why you think the way you do.

[str8 outta Old Town]

TrueMetis, on 12 March 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

You do know you don't have to be from Asia to be Asian right? Though this could explain a lot about why you think the way you do.

That was my point.

[TrueMetis]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:31 AM, said:

That was my point.

Then you made it badly.

[Minaku]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:24 AM, said:

So you are from Asia but not the oriental part of it?

The Oriental part of it is all of it, but if we want to get super technical, it's the Middle East that's the Orient.  Your move.

[Tyrellius]

Almost nothing to do with this thread but there wasn't one of our bi-yearly yellow fever threads up yet. (Can't wait to read your replies in that one str 8! )

Asian/white  > all

(BTW TP - you're the top google search result for Daikon of Asian Beauty)

[Triskele]

Tyrellius, on 12 March 2012 - 12:37 AM, said:

Almost nothing to do with this thread but there wasn't one of our bi-yearly yellow fever threads up yet. (Can't wait to read your replies in that one str 8! )

Asian/white  > all

(BTW TP - you're the top google search result for Daikon of Asian Beauty)

Dear Gods, Ty, what have you done?

[str8 outta Old Town]

Minaku, on 12 March 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

The Oriental part of it is all of it, but if we want to get super technical, it's the Middle East that's the Orient.  Your move.

Not in modern British usage, but fair point.

What I was saying was that most probably you are not from the Orient, but you most probably aren't from Asia either, so attacking the term oriental because you were born and brought up in Vancouver/Missouri/whatever, doesn't make sense if you still say Asian.

[Minaku]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:40 AM, said:

Not in modern British usage, but fair point.

What I was saying was that most probably you are not from the Orient, but you most probably aren't from Asia either, so attacking the term oriental because you were born and brought up in Vancouver/Missouri/whatever, doesn't make sense if you still say Asian.

My phenotype is most commonly expressed in East Asian countries, leading many to believe I was born there.  Oriental carries with it the nasty connotations of imperialism and colonialism.  See also: Edward Said's Orientalism.

Asian lacks those associations, so we use Asian instead.  Because we are not curios, rugs, or any other object from the Orient.  We are not mysterious and inscrutable.  Stop using words that bring up images of smoky opium dens and wispy beards.

This CANNOT be the first time this has been explained to you.  Frankly, given your history in this thread, I don't even know why I bothered.

[Triskele]

Minaku, on 12 March 2012 - 12:47 AM, said:

This CANNOT be the first time this has been explained to you.  Frankly, given your history in this thread, I don't even know why I bothered.

I don't either, but it looks like there may be hope w/ the last post.


The whole "orientals" thing is kinda jaw-dropping.  The people that say it are so secure in thinking that they didn't mean anything by it, but it's usually an indication of how little they care about offending people.

[str8 outta Old Town]

Minaku, on 12 March 2012 - 12:47 AM, said:

My phenotype is most commonly expressed in East Asian countries, leading many to believe I was born there.  Oriental carries with it the nasty connotations of imperialism and colonialism.  See also: Edward Said's Orientalism.

Asian lacks those associations, so we use Asian instead.  Because we are not curios, rugs, or any other object from the Orient.  We are not mysterious and inscrutable.  Stop using words that bring up images of smoky opium dens and wispy beards.

This CANNOT be the first time this has been explained to you.  Frankly, given your history in this thread, I don't even know why I bothered.

Glad you brought up Said, I've got Orientalism sitting on a bookshelf about 4 metres from the head of me. He focuses more on the Muslim world, and his thesis of otherness and inferiority in European perceptions of other cultures is about 75% correct. I think he over supposes a unified European mindset, and underestimates the differences in how various regions existed in the European imagination, and doesn't quite nail how that evolved over time, and the influences which caused those changes. Still, a very good book.

I'd say that the argument you just made is more relevant, but when I hear the word Orient, I don't get images of opium dens or incscrutability. The British experience and understanding of East Asia is different, given our more intimate connection to it, through the modern colony at Hong Kong and the occupation of Malaya which lasted up to the '60s. Not that colonialism was a good thing, but I think that "the Orient" in America was always a much more unreal place which was imagined rather than directly experienced, whereas for us it was a real place with lots of interesting people to be exploited.

Edited by str8 outta Old Town, 12 March 2012 - 01:17 AM.

[Galactus]

Quote

My phenotype is most commonly expressed in East Asian countries, leading many to believe I was born there. Oriental carries with it the nasty connotations of imperialism and colonialism. See also: Edward Said's

Orientalism

.

... Which rather underlines the point: Said's book is entirely concerned with the middle-east, and mostly arabs at that. East Asia just isn't a part of his discussion. The kind of orientalistics that Said describes just didn't happen in East Asia, it was largely a middle-eastern and to a lesser extent south-asian thing.

[DanteGabriel]

str8 outta Old Town, on 12 March 2012 - 12:40 AM, said:

Not in modern British usage, but fair point.

What I was saying was that most probably you are not from the Orient, but you most probably aren't from Asia either, so attacking the term oriental because you were born and brought up in Vancouver/Missouri/whatever, doesn't make sense if you still say Asian.

The whole modern British useage thing is something you may not want to get into, since we have had to take it at your word that "Oriental" is still an acceptable term for East Asians in whatever part of Britain you're from, and in fact earlier in this thread you were contradicted in that by another British person.  In fact, I just don't buy that "Oriental" is accepted parlance where you are -- I'm going to just chalk this up to ignorance, and I do not believe that there is some backwards region of Britain where this musty colonialist word is still accepted.

Oh, and I'm an Asian who was born in Asia.  So just let me know, according to whatever horseshit metric you're using at the moment, whether or not I get to have an opinion on the appropriateness of the term.

Edited by DanteGabriel, 12 March 2012 - 02:40 AM.

[Balefont]

The Sinister Kid, on 12 March 2012 - 12:55 AM, said:

The whole "orientals" thing is kinda jaw-dropping.  The people that say it are so secure in thinking that they didn't mean anything by it, but it's usually an indication of how little they care about offending people.

My experience is that many people who use the term are ignorant of the true meaning and essence of the word.  They know the "N" word is a big no-no but perhaps Asians are the minority of the minority.

< shrug >

[MinDonner]

DanteGabriel, on 12 March 2012 - 02:39 AM, said:

In fact, I just don't buy that "Oriental" is accepted parlance where you are -- I'm going to just chalk this up to ignorance, and I do not believe that there is some backwards region of Britain where this musty colonialist word is still accepted.

Now that's unfair, and also untrue. It's one thing to suggest that terms considered offensive here should be avoided here, but there's no need to go imposing American English linguistic norms on countries where the words genuinely do have different connotations. "Oriental" is not in particularly common use, but not once have I heard it considered racist here.

[Paddy]

Nukelavee, str8 and co:

Here's two scenarios. I hope you can see that the difference in the response to the correction is what the "overly-offended" people have a problem with:

"there's a lot of oriental people in here"
"umm, that's a racially-loaded term that a lot of people find quite offensive. Could you stop using it?"
"Really? Wow, people where I am from use it all the time without, as far as I know, negative connotations. I am sorry. I didn't mean to offend. I'll refrain from using it in this location in the future."



"there's a lot of oriental people in here"
"umm, that's a racially-loaded term that a lot of people find quite offensive. Could you stop using it?"
"What? I am not a racist. I can't believe you could call me that. Where I am from there is nothing racist about it at all. It's just a word to describe people and things from the East. Get over yourself. I can't believe you are so sensitive. You really ought to be able to see past my words and somehow figure out that I wasn't using it in an offensive way. That's the problem with the world today, all the PC idiots who just call people racist at the drop of a hat. You know, by using the word so much, you are diminishing it. Because you are calling me a racist and I am not a racist. How could you not know I am not a racist?"



Sadly, I have been guilty of the latter kind behaviour in the past (on this board, even, but on different topics). I hope to fuck that I've grown up enough to not be such a fucking dick ever again.

Edited by Paddy, 12 March 2012 - 07:19 AM.

[Greywolf2375]

Minaku, on 11 March 2012 - 07:21 PM, said:

Sorry, I think I'm being oversensitive.

Typical woman...



Basically what I've seen this thread boil down to is that one group of people when communicating thinks of the other person they are speaking to (or speaking near even) and another doesn't think that is important because internally the words are acceptable.regardless of external meaning.