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What's Wrong With Our Youth?


Cantabile

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I monitor, without imposing or breaching her privacy, her interactions with friends. I listen to how they communicate when they think no one is listening* (*again, not by hovering and eavesdropping - simply paying attention here and there and moving along.
I love the rationalizations. If you're going to eavesdrop, eavesdrop proudly!
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I love the rationalizations. If you're going to eavesdrop, eavesdrop proudly!

I will take that as tongue in cheek as anyone on the Board who knows me closely can attest about the two-way street of respect between my daughter and I. :)

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1. You're right. Its an idiotic thing to say, offensive, and has no place in an educated vocabulary.

2. Kids are stupid and don't really think about what they say.

3. They gain it from some sort of example. Perhaps the older generations treatment of homosexuals has somehow contributed to the idea that gay=bad.

4. Perhaps seek to address the attitude that make homosexuality mean "bad" rather than try to address the symptom of a semantic shift in language.

5. As a term it has gained a life of its own. Most who use it likely don't even make the connection anymore. Fighting against changing language is almost always a losing battle.

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3. They gain it from some sort of example. Perhaps the older generations treatment of homosexuals has somehow contributed to the idea that gay=bad.

Well, obviously. P.C. is all well and good, but kids aren't stupid. Gay people aren't always treated all that well by pundits and the government, and rape is often treated as a joke -- just try and have a conversation about it that doesn't instantly begin to revolve around false accusations and the whole "what if they're both drunk? are they raping each other? huh?!? huh!?!?" thing. Why shouldn't kids take it as a joke?

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The idea behind this thread is so retarded, that I feel like I have been mind-raped by stupidity.

Id call this thread gay, but frankly I only call really cool and intelligent people that.

YW

Dub, we need you and Lodey back in the NFL thread. The NFL is funner when the Raiders are good!

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I'm getting a weird error message trying to go back and respond to Cantabile's post about "that what's HR is for".

Thank you - I agree. I think that sometimes, the best thing to do (when a group within an organization is accepting the use of words that the larger organization does not accept, but that the group leader condones) is to go to HR and just say what's happening without naming names. "Some people in our group use this word occasionally, without thinking. However, I understand that doesn't fit in with our corporate policy on respect. Would you be able to fit that in, please, at the next R.E.S.P.E.C.T training next week, along with the other words that we don't allow? Thanks."

HR would rather hear about it sooner than face some complaint about the work environment from someone down the road. And sometimes the dynamics of the group aren't right to just be able to say, "Angela [direct supervisor], that word really upsets me. Would you mind not using it?", if Angela hates your guts. And if Angela's boss is the type that says "fuck" in corporate accounting meetings, he's not going to be all too keen to talk to Angela...he's going to say "lighten up."

Thank god for HR.

I'm with him. Lighten up.

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Thank god for HR.

I don't believe in passing the buck to others. I don't think I would report anything to HR, I'd talk to the person myself. Not point a finger at her and call her a bigot in public, but have a discreet chat with her.

I can relate to this situation a bit. I was bullied in middle school. Nothing happened when I reported it to the higher authorities. When I had enough and punched the piece-of-shit bully, there was a fight and both of us got the same punishment. But at least he never picked on me again.

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ETA Of course in Canadian law rape isn't actually the word used anyway. It's also very rarely used in media reporting to.

What does the law and media refer to rape as in Canada?

4. Perhaps seek to address the attitude that make homosexuality mean "bad" rather than try to address the symptom of a semantic shift in language.

How does one go about doing that, though? In my mind the continued use of "gay" to mean "bad" is reinforcing that attitude, and spreading it, so to me targeting the usage is targeting the attitude as well.

The idea behind this thread is so retarded, that I feel like I have been mind-raped by stupidity.

Id call this thread gay, but frankly I only call really cool and intelligent people that.

Thanks for your contribution :rolleyes:

The bottom line is that if these groups weren't minorities facing discrimination, then this usage wouldn't even exist. If there weren't social issues behind the scenes, I wouldn't give a damn. But the problem is that inequality between gays, as well as blacks, is still a critical social problem, and these words are symptoms of that.

The reason "cock" is less offensive than "pussy" as a negative word is because men, especially Caucasian men, are not the ones facing discrimination. "Cock" as an insult is not reflecting any social issues, whereas "pussy" is, due to the sexism that is still rampant in contemporary culture.

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Normally I'm all in favour of the evolution of language, but this leaves a sour taste. "Hey, marginalised group, wider society has co-opted your name to use as an insult, so you either have to rename yourselves or try to proactively get it back. And then we'll bitch about any overly-PC language that is used to replace it." Hear my tiny violin playing for all those poor folk who are being asked to slightly modify their vocabularies.

I don't think it's something that should just accepted. And frankly, as I said, it isn't. Calling something "gay" when you think it's bad isn't something that really flies, from my experience, in company that's like over the age of 25 or whatever.

Language, however, is hilariously inconsistent in these kind of matters, so who the fuck knows where it's going.

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How does one go about doing that, though? In my mind the continued use of "gay" to mean "bad" is reinforcing that attitude, and spreading it, so to me targeting the usage is targeting the attitude as well.

In the same way its been done for a good while. The fight won't be won in a day, or even a year. Probably not even a decade. But sometime in the next century... maybe.

The normalization of homosexuality has been amazingly effective when one stops to think about it. You only need to look at the sheer contrast in beliefs across the generations. How many young people may simply consider gay as bad as opposed to older people who consider it an outright abomination? And how many children of the current younglings will look at it in a neutral manner as opposed to bad?

So my answer is to stay out and stay proud. The fight is being won, just slowly, ever so slowly.

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In the same way its been done for a good while. The fight won't be won in a day, or even a year. Probably not even a decade. But sometime in the next century... maybe.

The normalization of homosexuality has been amazingly effective when one stops to think about it. You only need to look at the sheer contrast in beliefs across the generations. How many young people may simply consider gay as bad as opposed to older people who consider it an outright abomination? And how many children of the current younglings will look at it in a neutral manner as opposed to bad?

So my answer is to stay out and stay proud. The fight is being won, just slowly, ever so slowly.

Just a quick anecdote on that,in my law 12 class last year I had heard every single student (including myself) call something gay at least once. When we got to marriage law the teacher mentioned that there was the possibility that the government would try to make gay marriage illegal again. The vast majority reaction (I would say 90+%) was essentially "wtf? why?" There is a huge disconnect from gay as a generic term for bad and gay meaning homosexual. When people say it meaning one of them they don't even seem to remember that it also means the other. So for most people it seems gay = bad gay = homosexual but homosexual =/ bad.

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I'm a 22 year old who generally tries to avoid using the word "gay" as a catchall pejorative but does use "retarded" quite a lot. I've noticed that there is some relation between homophobia and use of the word "gay" but in the end, the word is used so commonly that it's more often just young people not paying attention to what they say. I've also noticed that even homophobic youths will often support gay rights.

What's wrong with our youth? Well we tend to use the word "gay" offensively but we also support gay marriage more across the board than our elders. We may say things that offend GLBT's more often, but we weren't the ones who took their rights away.

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And I hear people casually use terms of sexual violation for sentences like, "Man, the Yankees ass-raped the Giants in that game last night."

One of the announcers said that during the Michigan/Mississippi State game yesterday... This is just a good ol' SEC take 'em back behind the woodshed & drop the pants..

Both my husband and I looked at each other, "Oh my gawd, I can't believe he just said that!" Wasn't expecting an announcer to couple Deliverance with a college football game. Or to characterize the SEC as ass raping hillbillies, for that matter.

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It's interesting: every sociologist, cultural anthropologist, and person whose field of study is the affect culture upon shaping human beings that I know, is highly against people using the words for identities derogatorily. It tends to only be the people who are completely blind to how they're puppets to both agents of socialization, and their peripheral culture, that manage to defend their actions with, "Well, I don't mean any offense!"

Really? I would love to be referred to writing about this and to see their arguments, what research they have done, what evidence they can offer.

So far the only evidence in this thread has been anecdotal evidence against the idea of 'gay' as a corrosive force. Anecdotal evidence may suck, but its better than nothing at all.

EDIT: Please don't interpret this as me just hounding you. If you can refer me to a good paper or book about this subject, I would absolutely be interested in checking it out.

Also Min is right, this has turned into a bit of a dogpile :P

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It's interesting: every sociologist, cultural anthropologist, and person whose field of study is the affect culture upon shaping human beings that I know, is highly against people using the words for identities derogatorily. It tends to only be the people who are completely blind to how they're puppets to both agents of socialization, and their peripheral culture, that manage to defend their actions with, "Well, I don't mean any offense!"

I am a sociologist and in my post on page 4 I explained why I'm not exactly highly against such use of language.

With that said, I propose a new topic name: What's Wrong With Our Sociologists? :P

Edit: my post's on page 4, not on the previous one ...

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One of the announcers said that during the Michigan/Mississippi State game yesterday... This is just a good ol' SEC take 'em back behind the woodshed & drop the pants..

Both my husband and I looked at each other, "Oh my gawd, I can't believe he just said that!" Wasn't expecting an announcer to couple Deliverance with a college football game. Or to characterize the SEC as ass raping hillbillies, for that matter.

:huh: I am shocked that a professional announcer would ever say something like that. I truly hope that phrase isn't becoming more popular than I thought.

EDIT: Please don't interpret this as me just hounding you. If you can refer me to a good paper or book about this subject, I would absolutely be interested in checking it out.

Also Min is right, this has turned into a bit of a dogpile :P

I'd have to research the topic pretty intensively to find studies. Conclusively proving how aspects of culture shape the individuals of a society is pretty difficult, if not impossible for researchers. The best that can usually be done is to make detailed explanations for why X piece of culture produces Y result, which to me is good enough with something as cause and effect as human beings.

Seems like all of my threads turn into dogpiles. Starting to think I should change my profile picture to an old guy in football gear :P

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