No, Soma, I perceived you as tone policing. That’s all it takes, right?
And you keep missing the point. I think we are done here.
Which is the trouble with universal subjectivity, nobody can ever really agree with you.
I find the terms “mainspreading” and “mansplaining” profoundly sexist and offensive. And yet no one here objected to them.
Just to make it clear: I think all men should be mindful of people around them and should always be kind enough not to inconvenience them, even if that means having less comfort for their “little boys”. And I think that being condescending to a woman because of her gender is also wrong. So, I am actually against the behavior that both of those terms propose to describe. But I find the terms themselves extremely condescending and sexist, and I personally think that, instead of accurately describing those behaviors, they actually function as insults and more often than not will make things worse.
Hey new people, Welcome to Quarter to Three!
Yeah, if you want to make a quarter to three a more welcoming place, you’re going to need more welcoming members.
You are quite right. Let me know if those terms become prolific on this forum.
You can’t tell by just glancing at me, but when the surgeon put my hip back together, he made it so that one of my legs is angled outward. It’s painful for me to keep my legs together. It’s bad enough dealing with all the people who take up too much space for no good reason, but now that “manspreading” is a thing, I have to worry that others are going to decide I’m a manspreader and pick a fight with me. So sometimes I end up just standing, even though I know that’s going to mean pain too.
I get why we should be trying to make the world a more welcoming place for everyone, but I worry that in cases like “manspreading”, being confrontational can cause more harm than good.
I’ve never used this term before, and I’ve only seen it used here. So to be clear,according to google, we’re talking about a term that is literally referring to a guy sitting in a seat with his legs spread like really wide, presumably on public tran or a public seat?
Yeah. I’ve only heard it used on the internet, so it’s probably not rational for me to worry too much about it coming up in real life.
I never realized I was supposed to be offended at the term. So many (like zero) missed opportunities for justified triggering.
I see it all the time, because I live in NYC. It is certainly a gendered term because you generally don’t see women with their knees splayed open on the train, but isn’t offensive in any way.
So using slurs is OK as long as each individual slur is used sparingly? That seems wrong.
(“Mansplaining” was used earlier in this thread to just casually dismiss an argument.)
One might, if one subscribes to notions like power and privilege, consider that it’s essentially meaningless to sling a slur at white cismales, because they are immune to genuine prejudice due to their position in western society.
But that’s a whole new can of worms :)
Yeah that’s kinda bullshit, I’m glad we’re not actually having that discussion.
*shrugs*
It’s also widely accepted within certain academic movements, civil rights organizations, etc.
If the issue with slurs also has something to do with dehumanizing already disadvantaged groups, rather than just being maximally unpleasant against people for reasons beyond their control, then presumably, there are people who are more or less functionally immune to that, by bent of not really being disadvantaged at all.
My feelings still get hurt. :(
But I would be more hurt by being called, say, ‘asshole’ than ‘whitey.’
Is ‘asshole’ a slur, or just an insult?
Let’s assume, for purposes of ongoing discussion, that slur is a term I’m using to mean “insult targeted based on someone’s immutable traits” rather than one targeted toward their subjective behavior. Unless someone is literally just an asshole, it’s probably just an insult. Unless you’re talking to someone who lost their asshole in a tragic sewing accident, at which point it might join slur territory.
edit: and for what it’s worth, I also think it’s pretty un-cool to make assumptions, pleasant or otherwise, about anyone based on their immutable traits. I also, however, understand how traditionally disadvantaged groups tend to get the worst of that behavior, and are more badly affected by it.
That is, the nasty after-effects of stereotypes against, say, women, blacks, or gay people in America are fundamentally and objectively worse than anything suffered by, say, straight white men (based purely on mentioned characteristics). Doesn’t mean no white dude has ever had a bad encounter cuz of his skin color gender, but it doesn’t exactly rise to the level of society-wide institutional biases that language can reinforce and elevate.
No, we should totally talk about how terrible it is to accuse someone here of mansplaining something. Let me know if you find any examples of it to go off of.
Now in my search, the term came up a couple of times, but it never seemed to be used against anyone here at the forum, unlike the term shrill, or ‘grow thick skin’ so let’s focus on reality, and not the delusional ramblings.
🙋🏼♂️