XaiJu
storieswithstyle
storieswithstyle

patreon


[Patreon Exclusive] Answering Your Comments #4

Bit late, sorry. Also, don't forget to voice your critical opinions, that is exactly what I like to think about stuff. Also, if you disagree, alsways tell me! =) All the best to you! =)

[Patreon Exclusive] Answering Your Comments #4

Comments

Great video. Definitely informative, just like all the comments here under the video. Glad everyone is discussing this topic politely. I've seen other things in such discussions. Hope it stays that way in the future when difficult topics come up.

Nameless

Yes, though even if it "seems" like a majority as long as it is not, I think you "just" have to take down the troll farms. :D

M U

1:15:00 kinda depends on context too, for example letting putin talk just reveals him to be an idiot but russian trollfarms create an illusion of majority/consens opinion/fact that is off

HAL

I think he overlooked the "load all comments" bar under 3x09

HAL

I just realised that I left question maybe after you recorded it - do you plan to watch OVA lost girls part 3 - usually people watch it after episode 11 in season 3 or after season 3 before season 4. Maybe you can create poll? From my POV this episode is important/good, but somebody could decide that it is not

puremetalcore

also, of course, in germany we have the added complexity of grammatical gender and adding it to technically neutral words and even intuitively assigning it to newly invented neutral terms based on stereotypes which is an incredibly werid and interesting neiche bit of linguistics but adds complexity to the whole matter of gendered insults words and stereotypes like really weird really edgecase tangent tangent tangent some jetfighters are male and some are female I mean technically they're all objects it makes no sense whatsoever but in german colloquial speach you're intuitively going to use male pronouns for some of them and female for others for the weirdest reasons I know that almost sounds like a joke on par with the stupid old attack helicopter joke but its really just an incredibly weird and interesting littel quirk of german language that gives us a bit of insight into how different languages interact with stereotypes and gendred concepts also, of course, in german, tables are male, windows are neutral, doors are female, chairs are male, beds are neutral, keyboards are female... but thats all relatively old terms that don't get newly invented and for weird reasons "newly gendered" every day which is a rather questionable but interesting topic

HAL

with gender I think its areally complicated language barrier and socia ldevelopment triple issue but thats just a limited perspective from someone standing outside a very complex and developing topic but as we started understanding the complexity of gender better and better our old assumption that sex and gender are the same thing got corrected, then we started seeing htem as just two separate but still inherently simple things and now we start to understand the complexities of both in even more detail so even the simple split into two separate but inherently simple properties is also outdated and well, english, having those two different words had an easy time adaptign that first step and a harder time moving on to the third while in german we never had those two words to work with making it harder to catch up to hte first step but easier to go wit hthe second that all combined with only having an outside perspective on a complicated, developing and highly individual topic pluis the complications added by transphobes trying to poison the discourse, trying to do the rigth thing but not always knowing what that is and trying to do so in two separate languages makes the whole thing rather complicated we're kinda in the exact same situation there though I don't think that has much of an impact o ngendered insults swearing is something relatively simple and emotional people use swaerwords when they feel right, regardless of the exact details

HAL

Im gonna remove this statement because i realise i do sound alot more like an asshole than what id like to think i am. And i am genuinelly interested in discussing this topic

Lloyd

Every culture shuns certain concepts no matter what, and it is ALWAYS possible for social mechanisms of shunning speech to be used as repression as you describe. There have been apartheid regimes where entire *languages* of a repressed population have been made illegal to use. However, I’m firmly of the belief that to maintain a tolerant society, one must paradoxically refuse to tolerate intolerance, and that specifically those who call for the *genocide* and systematic repression of others based on race, gender, religion or homelessness should not be allowed to spread their message: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wk53fgoox3nl6qpkd8wnv/KarlPopperTolerateIntolerance2.JPG?rlkey=26k1nqqpc9a8xvta19k6cxz4j&raw=1 The best two sources I have available to me to cite that go into detail on why (1) shaming racist, sexist, and genocidal ideas is crucially important to keeping those ideas from taking hold in the mainstream of society, especially when their roots *already* have some hold there, and (2) the fact that marginalized groups like homosexuals, etc have almost ALWAYS been shamed and shunned at first even in “free” societies and had to “mainstream” their identities into acceptable parlance, but the process of “mainstreaming” is a morally neutral phenomenon that can be used for good or ill, and has been systematically undoing many of my country’s societal speech taboos against racist, sexist and anti-Semitic ideas for the worse, are an article on #1 by A.R Moxon and a short video or two on #2 by Innuendo Studios. Note that both of these people are U.S. LEFTIST POLITICAL ACTIVISTS making VERY POLITICAL WORK, further left than our left-wing political party, so you don’t have to engage with that if it’s a really uncomfortable perspective for you: A.R. Moxon: “The Case for Shunning” https://open.substack.com/pub/armoxon/p/the-case-for-shunning?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Innuendo Studios: “The Alt-Right Playbook: Mainstreaming” https://youtu.be/Gq0ZHgKT2tc?si=Nf7L61QpvdE0oMqg Innuendo Studios: “The Death of a Euphemism” https://youtu.be/0dBJIkp7qIg?si=6FH3uvWWfK6CxhAH

BlastYoBoots

Wow! 1,5h! Im going to listen to it as a poccast🫡

puremetalcore

English is not my first language, so I apologize if it turns out that I phrased any thought rudely or disrespectfully 😅 I'm a bit worried about the idea of tabooing the right to say some words or ideas out loud. It seems to me, but I could be wrong, but people with bad intentions can convince people with good intentions that punishing words is a good mechanism to reduce bad things like racism or sexism. However, when such mechanisms become mandatory, it becomes possible to manipulate definitions of what words or ideas are "bad", and thus use the state or society to destroy free speech or dissent. SWS, thank you for your detailed responses to the comments!

Aidos Smagulov

Commenting here while you're still editing your response longer, in solidarity-- I'm glad I'm not going to be the only one with a lengthy gender discourse comment (XD), and would have been disappointed if we didn't hear from a trans perspective! Also for 'Cow' when you said "in our culture" which country/region's culture did you mean specifically? I don't recognize that particular meaning of the insult from my area of the southern US.

BlastYoBoots

oops, there's more to the discussion... Oh, god.. This is going to be a post from me XD Firstly, Wow, interesting to learn that Cow is not gendered in Germany, I honestly think that's really cool! I learn something new every day. Cow is problematic in our culture because what it is meant to indicate in it's crudest form is you are referring to an older woman who can be "milked", as in, you're saying they're just a tool for getting milk, and they should shut up and know their place which is breastfeeding your kids. Or worse, you call them an "old cow" which is, a woman who is now useless because she can't have kids and breastfeed them. (side note, I wouldn't call asshole gendered, because everyone has one, but men are treated as the default socially so it is often treated as male directed) Regarding Gender: Hi, I'm Anna, I'm a trans woman. Allow me a moment on my soap box. I would say that the most useful way to define gender is as a social construct used to categorize people into specified roles and presentations to allow for a management of expectations. Think of this as a societal blueprint of a person and how they fit into society. There have been very different genders throughout history, like two spirits in Native American cultures, which do not adhere to a strict "male/female" expectation set for example. Given that definition of gender you have people like me who want people to give me the roles, expectations, and expect the presentation that is normally associated with the female sex. This is different from being specifically transexual (which I also am to some degree) which is someone who specifically wants to as much as possible change their body to match the typical biological features associated with a sex other than that which they were assigned. There are people who are gender non-conforming which means then that they do not want to be bound to the expectations of presentation, roles, and behaviors expected of either normative gender exclusively and wish to pick from both, or create their own set. Then you have agender people who don't want any expectations placed on them and be able to find their own place in society without those expectations. Speaking only for myself I would say that my gender is not strictly constructed from the "woman" gender or "man" gender within American society, but my identity as a person and the gender I wish to have in society is much much closer to the "woman" gender, and I know I will feel more comfortable (not to mention safer) if I can get people to see me as a woman, and if I have the sexual characteristics associated with "woman". Equating gender and personality is I think placing both at the wrong level. A person has an identity, and their identity includes their interior gender and their personality. They then have to negotiate a social gender presentation with others so that is where things get difficult. This is why many (but not all) transgender folk will say that they were always their gender, because the outward change in presentation is them trying to more authentically match their societal presentation to their inner self. Happy to answer any good faith questions ^_^

Anna Kyruin

Glad to respond to your response to my comment on gendered insults! Someone quickly clarified that 'cow' is a much more common and much less female-specific insult in Germany than it is in English, and I could also tell you were absolutely **OVERWHELMED** by negative emotion at Historia's mother (justifiably so!) and words were spilling out automatically, in a second language no less. So your use of the word is much more understandable in that context. And I really appreciate you commenting at SUCH length on the topic, I love how much you care about your commentary and making yourself understood. Hopefully I can bring some clarity myself on some of the questions you raised! First of all, I'm in agreement with you that swearing isn't bad in general, especially in the context of an 18+ crowd that won't misinterpret it. Assholes ought to be called out as assholes, IMO. Next, to jump forward a bit and come back to my main topic later-- at the very end of my comment you disagree with race-based insults being "taboo" -- saying that they are inherently stupid/moronic, and those that use them publicly OUT themselves as stupid/moronic for believing in racism, which is a good thing. And I believe there's a slight misunderstanding between us in nuance here. What I meant by "taboo" doesn't mean that the words are completely forbidden or *illegal* or the like-- what I meant by "taboo" is the more dictionary definition of "prohibited by *social custom*"-- in other words, people who use racial insults are ostracized and ridiculed by SOCIETY ITSELF, which is exactly the phenomenon you were describing by people "outing themselves as idiots" for ridicule! Race-based insults are considered *unacceptable* by society and their use is *shamed*, and that's part of what keeps them and the toxic ideas behind them so suppressed. There is unfortunately however a sociopolitical process known as "mainstreaming" where something that was previously regarded as unacceptable by society is slowly brought back into the public discourse, and distributed so widely that suddenly something reprehensible and racist is being repeated by talking-heads on news channels and candidates for elected office, and from there half the country are saying it. I am from the United States, and over the past decade or so we've been facing a crisis of that sort of phenomenon, and even though both our home countries are facing media crises and I'm not that informed about yours, the crisis OUR media is facing might have a different shape: one where in part, talking heads are afraid to call out reprehensible statements and concepts as being as clearly reprehensible as they are, or constantly needing to hear from "both sides" of the topic which means one is racist and one is not (or one is anti-climate-change and one is not), but they're both elevated to the same "reasonable" platform of debate (despite say, 99.9% of all published climate science having found results in favor of human-caused climate change, despite every business and monetary incentive to say otherwise for a cushy Oil Company cheque). And when a racist says something racist and stupid and instead of being shouted down or laughed at, everyone gathers around him at a podium and says "wait, let's hear him out", eventually that racist statement is so widely received that it isn't going to be viewed as stupid by enough people anymore... and then we have a HUGE PROBLEM. Oh my effing GOD do we have a massive problem. Gee farking whiz! We are so farked. Sorry, sometimes I am beside myself at how doomed my country feels sometimes. :C (And I'm sure if you're US right-wing and reading this, you would at least agree with me that bad toxic concepts are currently being "mainstreamed"-- just from the other side, in your opinion.) On why I used the term "gendered insults", that's sort of a multi-part answer. First, the I sort of reflexively used it because the term "gendered language" is a well-understood term in sociology in English that encompasses a larger umbrella than "sexist language". Gendered only means that it's typically used with people who appear a specific gender, whether positive or negative. "Sexist language" might have been clearer and more specific, here. Second, I understand that the differences between "gender" and "sex" are confusing, especially perhaps across the language barrier. Your guess at their meaning was mostly right: "Gender" is a societal construct that describes how we socially refer to and view people as "women" or "men" or now better-understood middle grounds that have existed for millenia across different cultures like "non-binary", "genderfluid" et cetera. Nowadays, in English, the word "sex" that was a part of "sexist" is better understood as referring to, well, what's inside one's pants-- which doesn't necessarily match someone's outward gender appearance/expression, and gets more complicated when you consider 1.7% of the population are born with intersex physical traits! When someone refers to a woman as a "b####" -- ((which as an aside, I agree, is one of the worst and most common insults directed primarily at women, and even if English circles are using the word against men more commonly it still carries some inherited toxicity in the idea of "I'm saying you're bad because you're like a woman", like when someone refers to a man with the word "pu###" for cowardice)) -- they're referring to someone who is *perceived* as a woman, to the fact that "woman" is the concept society is describing them as, and the use of that societal construct is why "gender" is what is being referred to, not "sex". If a misogynist sees a scantily-clad woman walking down the street and calls her a "wh###" because of it, that woman could be transgender and that man wouldn't know it-- it was the fact that she fit society's *construct* of "woman" in outward presentation that triggered the man's misogyny, not her "sex", not whatever happened to be in her pants! I probably could have used the term "sexist insults" and have been just as correct, but I'm glad to potentially help your understanding of the difference between "gender" and "sex" because it's a pretty fascinating topic. Especially if you think about some of the comments you made in this very video when you were referring to your insults as having been directed at "Historia's mother's *role as a mother*", a mother specifically rather than just a "parent" -- mothers and fathers are absolutely different and go through different and well-documented biological changes when having children both during pregnancy and after birth, but there are also a lot of societal stereotypes about the differences between motherhood and fatherhood, between the "duties" of a mother and a father, that are perceived as cultural fact but historians have shown to have changed radically over time because they are largely societal constructs, and some of the adjectives we closely associate with "mothers" weren't even part of mothers' cultural identity in Western culture even as recently back as 200 years ago. All fascinating things to study! But nobody has time to study everything. Third, I used the term "gendered insults", alluding to "gendered language", is because there is a wide area of discourse that alleges that gendered language ITSELF can often be sexist even when the words aren't positive OR negative! And from your commentary up until now, I think you'd likely regard that statement as a bit ridiculous. In fact, I'd say most people think it's ridiculous! But for an AMAZING counterargument, I would very highly recommend this INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE article, a brilliant work of vicious satire written in 1985 by Douglas R. Hofstadter: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html In that article, by transposing gendered language with *racial* language, he reveals the intense bias of what might seem like completely *neutral* gendered conventions in English language, in an article written to mock anti-feminists who at the time were arguing that replacing words like "fireman" and "policeman" with "fireperson" and "policeperson", or doing away with the difference between "waiter" and "waitress", was ridiculous. When transposed into racial language instead as this writer does, the effect is *nuclear* and instantateously recognizable. It's one of the most devastating and uncomfortable acts of satire I've ever read since A Modest Proposal. Lastly we come around to "cow", and I specifically went back and tried to do some research on the word's usage to try and figure out why I had such a problem with it, because "cow" isn't that common a United States insult (where I live). I think the one place where it is CLEARLY predominantly used against women in a misogynist way is the UK / England, and I picked up the discomfort from watching too much UK television/media. There "cow" is primarily used to refer to women as fat or lazy or dimwitted, where the only word for a male bovine is "bull" and female bovine is "cow", and it's most often used in tandem with those words too like "fat cow" or "stupid cow", all 90%+ directed at women, especially to insult or imply insult against their weight as well in a bit of anti-fat bigotry. All in all, given the localized nature (to the UK) of that being a particularly misogynist insult, and that I don't even *live* there, I was probably being oversensitive. Although, here's a radically interesting off-topic aside: There's a chance you may be inclined to believe some anti-fat language and using social ridicule as encouragement for healthy amounts of weight loss might be acceptable for a healthy society, even if there are some consequences in the form of body-image obsession, especially among women but among men as well for certain. HOWEVER, were you aware that the social perception itself of "fat" as "ugly" has inherently racist roots?? Historically in European society, only the rich and royalty had enough money and access to sugar and spices and richer foods to easily BECOME fat, and so fat was viewed as beautiful and a privilege of the rich, and especially as a signal of female beauty and the ideal female form. But when black slaves were first brought over, who often displayed weight and curves sometimes moreso than rich Europeans despite being nowhere *near* the upper class, that upper class reversed its position and instead stigmatized fat as "unhealthy" and "greedy" and as primitive people unable to control their "animal appetites", right alongside all their other stigmatization of blackness to justify their own superiority over the race, and introduced a culture of women watching their food intake and wearing restrictive corsets. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-racist-roots-of-fighting-obesity2/ It's shocking and seriously eye-opening just HOW MUCH of our culture and language has been shaped by past racism, especially in the United States where slavery persisted for so long.

BlastYoBoots

Thanks for taking the time to respond to our comments!

Russell Gambardella


More Creators