Alright, quit being such a bunch of fucking complainers when it comes to namecalling. I don't know if you guys know this but people need to be able to insult each other or nothing is going to get done except for wars. Most of the innocuous terms we use to tease each other today were vicious insults or medical and legal terms from bygone eras. The names that offend people, with the except of a precious few, change so frequently that it is stupid to complain about the terms being bandied about and the fact it represents a devaluation of a particular character traits social worth. On a related note, in the 1990's women in my age group flew into a rage when called a bitch. Nowadays, they call each other bitches and smile. The plural term, "bitches," is nearly interchangeable with the word, "guys," in an informal setting. As in, "what's up, bitches?" or, "I am just hanging out and then I am getting my hair cut with my bitches, and then we are going dancing." So I know that a large part of whether or not people care what name you call them is whether or not everyone else around them acts like it's a meaningful insult. Just say the word so often that it turns into nothing and people get sick of it, or they just forget the original context, like the word "imbecile." Now women don't like being called cunts, and they act like it's some ancient goddamn curse that dates back to Atlantis and forces them to hulk out and hit you with their purse. But let's be honest, you learned the word from watching English movies. People hardly even used the word cunt until about fifteen years ago. They would always go with bitch. You could toss the word cunt around at school and it didn't mean a goddamn thing. But now, because getting sickeningly angry is always in style, and the word cunt is the latest trend, girls get mad when you call them that. But you and I know that the real reason is because the word sounds great when it is said by English lowlifes in suspenseful and gritty crime dramedies like Snatch, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, and Nanny McPhee. Cunt is just a word somebody made up to describe a lady's vagina. You don't hit people for saying you're a body part. Only maniacs do that. You know you're not a just a body part, you're a whole person. You might be acting like a body part, but that doesn't define you. As for the idea that men can be raped by women, I understand the concept, in theory, but I am a man, and just as I do not minimize or joke about the trauma of women being raped because I am not a woman and I could not imagine it happening to me; I am a man and whenever I hear a man tell his story of a woman forcing him to have sex with her I always choke up a little because it has to be the most awesome thing I can imagine. I mean, I can imagine Falkor from the Neverending Story shitting money in my yard, so compare the two and you know what I mean. If a woman wants to have sex with you badly enough that she is willing to risk going to prison, just do it. You really should just do it. Who made you so special? That you should be just waltzing around breaking all these girls hearts and making them go to prison for sneaking into your apartment and blowing you at knifepoint? It's just your penis. Let her use your penis. Make her promise to get help tomorrow, because chloroforming men and duct taping them to the back of a rented flatbed truck is no way for a self respecting woman to live. You can throw your back out like that. Back injuries can really mess you up for a really long time. It costs thirty thousand dollars to incarcerate your average criminal, per year. If a woman is convicted of a violent rape, she could expect to get maybe, seven to ten years the first time she is caught. Do you really think the rest of us think that it is worth 250,000 of our tax dollars to cage a woman whose only crime is loving someone two much? Ok, one of her only crimes.
You're posting on a forum where a guy has talked about being raped by women as a boy and how much it's fucked him up and how hard it's been talk about it, and you think *this* is a good post to make?
.................... Flowers, you're entitled to your opinion and I don't want to take that away from you, but that part about just accepting the sex has seriously set me off and I am not someone who gets easily offended by things people say on this forum. What you seem to be implying, by saying "Just do it" is basically telling any rape victim to just accept it because it'll go faster that way. It's better to just suck it up and take the sex than to complain because hello, free sex! Everyone wants free sex! It's not like the person may be in a situation where they're not comfortable, or it's a complete fucking stranger, or, you know, they are forcing themselves on you, actively ignoring what it is you want and basically, on the whole, taking away your right to choose and refuse things you do not want to have. This isn't about women raping men. This is about someone forcing themselves on you when you do not want it. Do you want a total stranger to randomly come and hug you in the streets when you're late for work or are tired and want to go home and sleep or you're just minding your own business and suddenly this person you don't know comes out of nowhere, hugs you and doesn't let go? No, probably not. Now multiply that by a really fucking large number I can't be fucking bothered to measure, and you're down the right path towards getting a small idea of what it's liked to be raped. Maybe. I wouldn't know, nor do I want to experience it to know, but Jesus Christ man I have never been this fucking angry since I've joined this site and holy fuck. Holy. Fuck. I just can't. I'm sorry, I think I'm going to go take a small fucking break for a while and come back and try to express myself more calmly and properly but I just. Fuck.
It's a mixture of culture and context that's difficult to unpick without crass generalisations, much of it down to the former. In the UK 'wanker' is tantamount to a declaration of war, and limited experience of Australasians tells me that 'arsehole' is a sign that they particularly dislike a person. Taking the cultural aspect as given it's a matter of context as you stated ("Silly xxxx" vs "Stupid xxxx" being one example). Usage of that specific word against women is still verboten as is any pejorative specifically aimed at a 'less powerful' or minority group. It's really about the angle of attack- as with comedy, 'punching up' is good but 'punching down' is contemptible, so I don't think there's a double standard as such. At least not notably, except possibly when cultural streams cross. In that case it's fairly simple to take a lead from the general tone and set your own limit within their bounds, I think. As to why it is that way, I couldn't tell you without going further out of my depth than I have risked already. The above is close to how I see it. Possibly just statement of the obvious.
Don't worry, if he doesn't get a good response, he'll just come in here and tell you you don't have a sense of humor. Lighten up, it's just rape! He's pushing the envelope comedy-wise and if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't be in a thread that's making light of a serious subject, guys. It's not like people have been in here sharing their stories about how they've been shamed into thinking rape was their fault before or looking for support or anything. Did you hear the one about Flowers coming into a thread and being an asshole? I BET YOU JUST DID.
Wow. So, taking the two halves of that in order: * If women are reclaiming "bitch" in the same way black people have reclaimed the N-word, then that's for women to do and them only. It doesn't mean everyone gets to say it regardless of context. It's true that the British say "cunt" much more freely than Americans seem to, but it is still Bad Word #1, very much post-watershed-only instant-15-certificate-minimum territory, and none of that makes it any less misogynistic. The supposedly-idyllic concept that everyone should just be able to say whatever they want so "that it turns into nothing" is a justificatory bromide used almost exclusively by raging assholes, and has no bearing on how people actually communicate. * Yeah, uh... men can totally be raped, by women. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen and jokey speeches about how amazing an experience that much be are incredibly insensitive at best. I get that you have an "edgy" in-character thing that you do here, Flowers , but you are straight-up being a big purple-veined dick here.
Rape isn't about somebody wanting to "have sex with you so badly they are willing to risk prison". It's an almost murder, someone turning you from human to an object they can use. The person you were could be dead for all they care. It's not about men or women, it's about domination, control and destruction.
It's the combination of the strong flavour of hatred with the gendered reference that really does it for me. It was most strongly brought into context for me when a colleague introduced me to his friends' latest pub game, which was to pick someone you know and ask the group, "Is he a twat or is he a cunt?" That made me think of the connotations, contexts and deliveries of those two insults; after some reflection I decided that the latter was clearly steeped in misogyny. There is certainly no penis-based reference that has the same background - regardless of the higher/lower social status metric, the key component (to my mind) is the element of hatred commonly associated with it. "Twat" is dismissive, but "cunt" is definitely aggressive. This thread's certainly taken a few turns.
Mmm, while I agree with a lot of the first half of of Flower's post, I probably would have picked a different venue to work out my material for the Chuckle Hut's open mic night. Like a PM to "comedian" Jon Rowe for instance.
I'm going back to code words. If someone calls me a tapir, I'm not going to physically assault them. I know (usually from the delivery) what it means to them, exactly how it is supposed to insult me, by the references it makes and the implications about my place in the group. But I don't share the implications of the connotations; it's like a kid calling me gay. In point of fact it's not correct, but so what? Might as well have called me black. Oh wait, you thought that was rude too? Too bad. I'm hurt that this someone thinks so badly about me that they'd bring up the most hurtful word they know to hit me with, and I'm sad that they've lazily fallen into classic misogynist social tropes, but as far as I'm concerned, their argument has undone itself; their character now lies revealed to me as the worthless shell it truly is. Someone calls a female colleague a cunt, though, and I'm glassing the fucker.
Well, while it is typically only used for dudes, a little examination of the etymology there will show that that one is bound up in womanly whatnot as well, so probably not a good example.
I just wanna say that I'm glad I was not the only one to react to that with a "What the flying fuck?"
Material of that quality is supposed to come out of the mouth of a ventriloquist dummy or a fake redneck, Flowers.
NO NOT THE BOILING WATER FROG NONSENSE ARGH!!!!! Sorry, pet peeve. Rest assured, if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and then kick up the heat, the frog will definitely jump out.
Normally when you shit up a thread with your dancing bear routine it's just annoying; people kind of accept it's just what you do and that you're occasionally funny about it so there's that. But here you're crossing a line into outright offensiveness and some major tone deafness. Do yourself a favor and fuck off out of this thread, it's not for the likes of you.
I respect your right to hold that opinion but I don't believe that it is. Flowers' shtick is and always has been a stream of consciousness combination of the funny and squirm-inducing, dressed up in highfalutin' words overlaying a bed of insult and offensiveness. At the very minimum, the absolute lack of sensitiivity demonstrated in this thread can be of no surprise to anyone. The fact that people have enabled him by treating him as some sort of comic genius isn't his fault nor is it to his credit. In. My. Opinion.
Flowers is like that old and loved comedian who has run out of any energy for life and mistakes people defensively tittering at the awkwardness of a forgotten and past-it once beloved hero spewing hateful bile as though it's funny as amusement at his "comedy."
Flowers has always struck me as that racist, misogynist uncle/grandfather/brother in the family that likes to put his offensive ideas out there, but is aware enough that when people react badly he can just say "I WAS KIDDING!" as if that somehow makes it okay. It doesn't. I'd venture in fact that it strikes at the very heart of this thread where, especially as a woman on the internet, if you disagree with someone you're just a humorless bitch.
It's just like marketing. Even if the entire world is outraged at your ad they're still talking about how sad and pathetic Flowers is.
Okay, finally time to put Flowers on ignore. The way he's acted in the depression thread had me thinking about it already, but this? This is too fucking much.
Never go full Tosh, man. Half-Tosh, quarter-Tosh, sure. Put some Chris Rock or Louis CK in there, keep it relateable, but never go full Tosh. Flowers, you went full Tosh.
I've always thought it was a hallmark of the cheapest, laziest, most worthless comedians that they looked at a situation in society where the strong oppressed the weak, and instead of having the courage to attack the strong, they instead decide to put a grin and a chuckle on the bigotry and join in with the crowd already beating on the weak.You know, Jeff Dunham or Tosh.0 kind of schtick. Making a room full of bigots feel good about their group identification, and how much better they are then the queers and blacks and bitches. The lowest grade comedy of the laziest hacks, who have to explicitly appeal to prejudice to win over an audience of assholes. I used to think you were better than that, Flowers.
That's a good tip. Know your audience Flowers. Listen out for some "wooping," make sure the audience has at least 15% confederate flag penetration and if there's a corpse clutching onto a rifle in the corner you've found your crowd.
I fully embrace the use of douchebag as an insult for shitty men. Douching is incredibly bad for women and is marketed through shame. Seems damned appropriate to use against men who try to shame women for being women.
So it's not ok to think men being raped by women is funny? Is everything sacred? Do any of you actually know a man who has been raped by a woman? Be honest. Because I think you guys might be standing up to defend people you can't even prove exist. I am talking about grown men, not victims of childhood sexual assault.
In an additional attempt to Take Back The Thread (I mean, Flowers, dude): I've been bothered by the lack of strong non-feminizing-for-males insults for a while. I do wish "douchebag" was one -- especially Jon Stewart's variation, "writ of douchebaggery". It has that inherently funny "ooo" sound to make it clear you think the target is a remarkably dismissable person. And since "douche" and "bag" alone can be acceptable in certain contexts, you get to feel cleverer than thou for putting them together. (Incidentally, one thing that strikes me about "bitch" is how it's used for women who exhibit stereotypically male traits. Like, standing up for themselves, or calling others out on what they say. It's kind of gratifying that, to a certain extent, the term has been "taken back".) There's "shitstain" or "fuckwad", but those seem too juvenile. Like the guy has succeeded in making you so apoplectic with fury that your brain is reduced to that of a teenager. I think I'll use "doo-doo head", spoken quietly and casually. ("Oh, by the way, you're a doo-doo head.") The individual words are acceptable in nearly every locale. It's got the waste product metaphor, with the added bonus of being waste products from a childish, underdeveloped person. It sounds a bit like "dunderhead", so you've got the British Empire behind you. And it makes it clear to the target that he and his opinion matters so little to you that you're not even going to bother using strong words. Edit: Although now that Angie says it's OK, maybe I'll switch back to "douchebag"...
I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say apology accepted. Anyone can say something that they regret. I'm sure everyone here understands and no one holds anyth-- Oh, wait, no. You went the other way with that. Like the exact opposite way. So. Great.
