Is the pronoun issue YOUR issue?

They're already taboo and understood as such by everyone. Anyway, you can say any word in the right context, there's nothing that's wholly taboo. But when it is used as a slur and as a campaign of abuse, then that's something that shouldn't be tolerated.

Put it this way - imagine you run a small business. A black employee tells you a white employee just called her by a racial slur. The white employee doesn't deny it and was 100% aware the black employee would find it offensive. What do you do?

First off, nothing is understood any particular way by everyone. Ideas in that ballpark couldn't be more obviously incorrect.

At any rate, the way to take the force away from these words is by making them not taboo. Promoting the idea of people being offended by words, promoting them being transgressions, and especially legal transgressions, has just the opposite effect.




I couldn't disagree more with this. No speech should be not tolerated, period.



In the present climate, I'd consult my lawyer to see what is required of me to not be sued and possibly lose my business. It completely sucks that that's our present climate. It's completely fucked that we've let culture get to such a point.

In a culture that's not insane, what should be done is nothing. The black employee wouldn't even care what anyone called them.

Good for you. But not everyone feels that way.

Yeah, I couldn't care less what anyone calls me or says about me, either.

And it's not as anyting is true just because someone says it--and that's the case no matter who we're talking about or what context we're talking about, including professors making claims about their professional discipline in an academic context. The idea that anything is true just because someone says it is something else that it's important to hammer in to people's heads. Treating speech as if something might be true just because someone said it is the wrong move to make.

Anyway, I simply realize that people saying some things are ignorant, or not very intelligent, or they have malicious intent or whatever it might be. All of those things are an insult to them, not me.

You seem to be saying the equivalent of "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me" If you're someone who isn't hurt by slurs, fair enough. But others are and understandably so. Should we just tell them to get over it and allow the racist to repeatedly call them by the n-word?

You're not going to legislate or socially pressure people into not being ignorant, unintelligent, mean/vindictive, disrespectul, etc. You're not going to legislate or socially pressure people into liking you.

What would rectify those things, insofar as they can be rectified, are far more complex and nuanced moves (which is why we don't bother with them) that are oriented towards further educating and helping people on their own terms, so to speak, so that they're not defensive towards those things, but so that it helps them meet their desires.

It's still not going to be an ideal world no matter what. Some people are still going to be ignorant and unintelligent and mean/vindictive, etc. But that's the only thing that would help.

I don't care if they like me. I just don't want to work in a hostile environment where people can verbally abuse others as they like.


Such as? Anyway, they seem to work. People in the 50s would have thought nothing about calling black person an N-word or a gay man a faggot. Now people are generally appalled by people doing so.


How would you do that though?

That's a great example, though. If people in your work environment don't like you for whatever reason, so that they might verbally abuse you, they're going to abuse you and give you just the same problems regardless of whether they're allowed to say particular things or not. Prohibiting them from saying certain words or phrases isn't going to change anything in the larger picture. They'll find all sorts of subtle, behavioral (including non-speech) ways to make your working life uncomfortable. (My wife actually deals with those issues all the time--she's a business consultant and sees those sorts of things occurring in many different businesses, in many ways that can't possibly be legislated or regulated.)

It's certainly understandable that someone doesn't want an uncomfortable work environment. But prohibiting particular speech doesn't have anything to do with that. It's like a band-aid solution for a severed limb. The only way to change that situation, if it's changeable--sometimes it won't be and only a job with different people would solve it--is to try to befriend the people who don't like you as much as possible, more or less on their terms, so that they change their feelings about you. That doesn't necessarily have to be genuine--it's political ultimately, but it can still work.



Yeah, now that people are reluctant to say the "N" word, we have no more racial issues.

Er, wait a minute.

I actually think any such behaviour shouldn't be tolerated. I don't think any workplace bullying should be tolerated whether it features slurs or not.


Uncle Tom-ism? Why suffer abuse with good grace? It only encourages it.


We're still better than we were in the 50s.