Never assumed this person was a bigot. The point being made is that “female” is now a dog whistle word for the alt-right. Dog whistles by themselves aren’t proof that someone is a bigot, but they are still words associated with bigotry.
You can’t control what words become dog-whistles (Jean-Paul Sartre quote “But they(anti-semites) are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words”) but you can acknowledge that they ARE dog whistles without it being some moral failing to point it out.
I am talking more generally, not just you in this instance.
We shouldn’t keep seeding ground to fascists over which words are “theirs” a simple and inconsequential example is Pepe the frog, there is nothing inherently racist about it and there are hordes of wholesome pepe memes, but someone decided that because it also gets coopted by fascists and racists that now pepe is actually a symbol for racism.
This is idiotic that we are HANDING bad actors the right to own words and ideas by self policing.
I don’t disagree, but I don’t see how you can do that. Well, I kind of do, that’s by “taking the word back”, poisoning the meaning of the word or its association so that hateful people won’t want to be associated with it. I know it’s definitely not shaming people for calling out that it’s a dog whistle. Because, again, that puts the moral failing on the person calling it out rather than the people who gave it the negative association to begin with.
That quickly becomes “ugh, these fucking SJWs policing everyone’s speech” instead of “ugh, these fucking losers ruining perfectly good words with their hatred”, which it should be.
I agree there isn’t an easy answer, I just don’t think giving them power over the words is actually helping anyone, because it does turn into the SJW situation like you pointed out.
Humungus Wut intensifies
It devolved into people MAKING problems were there wasn’t actually one by assuming negative intent.
Never assumed this person was a bigot. The point being made is that “female” is now a dog whistle word for the alt-right. Dog whistles by themselves aren’t proof that someone is a bigot, but they are still words associated with bigotry.
You can’t control what words become dog-whistles (Jean-Paul Sartre quote “But they(anti-semites) are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words”) but you can acknowledge that they ARE dog whistles without it being some moral failing to point it out.
I am talking more generally, not just you in this instance.
We shouldn’t keep seeding ground to fascists over which words are “theirs” a simple and inconsequential example is Pepe the frog, there is nothing inherently racist about it and there are hordes of wholesome pepe memes, but someone decided that because it also gets coopted by fascists and racists that now pepe is actually a symbol for racism.
This is idiotic that we are HANDING bad actors the right to own words and ideas by self policing.
I don’t disagree, but I don’t see how you can do that. Well, I kind of do, that’s by “taking the word back”, poisoning the meaning of the word or its association so that hateful people won’t want to be associated with it. I know it’s definitely not shaming people for calling out that it’s a dog whistle. Because, again, that puts the moral failing on the person calling it out rather than the people who gave it the negative association to begin with.
That quickly becomes “ugh, these fucking SJWs policing everyone’s speech” instead of “ugh, these fucking losers ruining perfectly good words with their hatred”, which it should be.
I agree there isn’t an easy answer, I just don’t think giving them power over the words is actually helping anyone, because it does turn into the SJW situation like you pointed out.
Humungus Wut intensifies
It devolved into people MAKING problems were there wasn’t actually one by assuming negative intent.