Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.
What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn’t take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.
Oh god I’ve got so many.
My latest one is remembering that you can’t really fight fire with fire, unless you’re being extraordinarily strategic about it. Attacking bigotry for instance, simply makes it stronger, as it feeds off strife and fear themselves. Remembering why Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high. Not out of any great preference, but out of a lack of viable alternatives in her situation.
You can’t actually “fight” it. You can exclude it. You can corral it. You can trick it into running itself off a cliff. But you can’t actually destroy it by combating it directly, because it feeds off the combat, just like Trump does. You have to outmaneuver it.
I routinely attack bigots on social media. I enjoy writing and their shitty views are basically writing prompts for me.
At no point have I ever expected to change the bigots mind. They’re not going to read a social media comment and wake up a new person – they’d lose their bigot friends and bigot family.
But I have changed the minds of spectators, and thats important. Which is why assholes should never be left unchallenged when they’re being assholes, especially on the safety of the internet.
Pride started as a riot. Women’s Lib started as a riot. Peaceful demonstrations achieve nothing.
Growing up in the 90s, we would always say things were ‘gay’ even though we had nothing against homosexuals. It was just the thing to say. Yeah, definitely should not have been saying that.
As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases “that’s gay” and “that’s retarded” (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.
While I never once meant “that’s disabled” or “that’s homosexual”… We obviously don’t say that stuff anymore.
I witnessed something at work a few weeks ago, that caught me off guard. One of the managers was asking for a favour off one of the lads in work, it’s a blue collar job so it’s never been PC, “Carl, need a favour, can you do such and such” “Can’t sorry Steve” “Go on lad don’t be gay” “Steve, I’ve been taking cock for the last 25 years and you asking me to stop for an extra hours work won’t stop me”
Everyone around just creased up laughing.
Now THAT sounds like a friendly work environment lol
That’s not funny at all. I would report Steve to HR immediately.
You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole.
Steve is the HR manager
I learned these real quick in the workplace as a young adult, around a coworker with a mentally disabled child, and with a coworker who was gay. The abstraction is what made using such crude language easy. As soon as I knew someone affected by the words, I snapped out of it.
Abstraction, come to think of it, is what permits a lot of bad behavior.
See, this is why we need more diverse representation in the media now. Manchildren always whine about “diversity ruining everything” when it’s really a truer reflection of America’s evolving demographics.
People don’t complain about diversity usually, they complain about bad writing. It needs to be part of a story and not just a checkbox
If hollywood could figure out how to make well-written diverse stories it’d remove the ability for bigots to obfuscate by lumping themselves in with people who just don’t like the writing
On it.
Huh
I still say “That’s pretty gay” but only for things like rainbows or LGBT bumper stickers.
Yep we used to use “that’s gay” all the time. Never meant other than that is stupid.
Something rather cringe and obnoxious in hindsight was the over use of the word “ocd” It was quite common in media and in my circles for somebody to say “I’m so ocd” when referring to some perfectly normal thing they do like tidying bookcases and organising things.
It’s pretty cringy now and I’d never say it now. I feel bad for saying it… but hey personal growth I guess. I was in school/college at the time too so it was a long time ago. There were a lot of things that were common at school that I used to say that are definitely not pc nowadays and I accept that. I don’t pretend to be a perfect and morally righteous invidual. I have flaws as much as the next person
People still throw OCD around like they’re the world’s quirkiest person “oh that’s just my OCD lol”
Holy shit, thank you for bringing this one up. I’m not OCD, but I care a lot about mental health and neurodiversity (two things I deal with a lot). I sometimes rant about the misuse of “OCD” at random. And people still misuse it a lot.
Racism.
While I was never into it myself thankfully, I let it pass a lot in my family. Being in university changed that though, it just feels too uncomfortable to have my family say racist shit in front of me while I have so many people of color as friends. I still struggle to call out their transphobia though but that is due to my own identity issues.
In my early life I was raised in Kansas fundie hell. I graduated to 4chan. To call me racist would have been an understatement; “proud white supremacist”, more like. (LOL I used the term “race nationalist” then)
Perhaps my proudest personal achievement has been unraveling that disgusting tapestry of who I was.
Good on ya.
I never realized how frequently I called things “lame” until I said it in front of a coworker paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. Hopefully he understood, but it just took that one glance telling me he heard it for me to stop. To try to stop.
smoking. growing up in the 80s, everyone was smoking - in bars, restaurants, airplanes, even hospitals.
everyone I knew, their parents smoked tobacco or chewed tobacco. I started smoking myself, around 16 or so, as did all of my friends & even people I didn’t associate with. it was just part of the culture - and yes, I was aware at the time that it was a dangerous activity, but kids are stupid.
and then around 15 years ago or so everyone stopped or switched to vaping. now I really only see homeless people smoking. it’s quite the culture shift.
Grew up in the 80s and 90s. As progressive and openminded as I thought I was then…holy shit there are a lot of words and phrases I won’t touch any more because they sound archaic, racist, mysoginistic, or hateful today. Back then they were perfectly acceptable everyday things no one would bat an eye at. It does make me happy that at least in this small arena we seem to have made progress as a society.
(Should add that this is from a US perspective)
I don’t have any regrets about making dead baby jokes when I was much younger, but definitely won’t be making them now with an 8 month old daughter.
My 17yo thought I was bullshitting him when we were talking about these jokes. He googled it and was speechless. I was kinda young when they were popular but remember vividly my uncle’s telling them often.
I’ve done ny best to shake out ableist, racist, and other harmful speech.
We may be able to speak freely but we are all held accountable for the words we say
I used to use “gay “ or “ retarded “ as negative adjectives, I no longer do because using someone’s being in a negative light is really mean, and I try not to be mean.
I no longer describe anything as ‘lame’ or ‘retarded’ or ‘spaz’ or their variants. It makes me sad ableism is so ingrained in even the most inclusive spaces even though the same argument has removed the use of ‘gay’ for the same reasons.
I also avoid dark or dry humour unless I’m confident the people I am talking to know it’s absurdist and not a serious opinion. I don’t always succeed at this.
I honestly don’t think it’s ableism. Languages evolve and retarded doesn’t mean a mental condition it literally means “dumb”. Most people don’t even know “lame” is related to a movement conditions and if you did a statistical analysis 99% of use cases are not related to the “original meaning”. People are just ignorant of how language works, especially since English is a global language.
Yeah, people made the same arguments about ‘gay’ and ‘fag’.
Retarded was the word of choice medically in the 60’s - 80’s for people with developmental disabilities. It derives from the Latin word Tardus which means slow or late.
Languages evolve, but the euphemistic treadmill is ongoing. The word ‘cretin’ derived from the word ‘Christian’, the person who coined it intended it to mean that people with cognitive impairments were still people worthy of respect. And now it’s just a straight up insult. Similar with ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’.
And these days you can look at wojaks which use physical differences like drooling or missing half a head or being physically unattractive in unconventional ways to indicate ignorance or stupidity.
Every word that people use to try to describe people with disabilities respectfully becomes a slur. That’s because of ableism. It’s just not talked about much.
More on this topic for anyone interested in the euphemism treadmill: https://humanparts.medium.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018
Would you then advocate that no one should ever use the words “idiot”, “moron”, or “cretin” ever again? What about “dumb”, or “stupid”?
(edit) - People are fun. They actually believe that no human should ever want to throw insults at another human ever again. Fascinating.
I try not to use any of those words, but it is hard as they are so prevalent in society, even in my progressive and inclusive circle.
I decided a while ago to substitute all those with the word “Turnip” - as in the vegetable. I doubt anyone could be genuinely offended by that and it sounds good when said - Don’t be a Turnip! try it out, its a fun word to use and people seem to be tickled by it.
Im really trying hard to stop calling shit retarded. im 40 dammit its just what we always said :(
Misogyny in books. I was reading a Morse book. He described the woman of a couple from dyed hair to hammer toes but had no physical description of her husband whatsoever.
People still are like that in most countries and it’s changing far too slowly. Or in the case of Japan, not at all? I don’t live in Japan.
Gay people. When I was much much younger I remember telling a friend that while I didn’t have a problem with people doing their own thing, I still didn’t like gay people. My friend said I hope when you have kids they’re gay. Guess what happened and how I feel about it now. I was such a dumb ass. When my kid came out to me I wept for joy at their bravery. I don’t take hard stances on my opinions now and try to remember that my perspective isn’t ultimate or necessarily right. There’s always a chance that I’m wrong.
You really tempted fate, there!
