I'll start: "Shoving x down our throats"
the amount of people who have told me i'm one of the good ones because "at least you don't shove gayness down our throats," or "i'm fine with it if they dont shove it down our throats" has made me cringe whenever i hear that phrase used in any context, even harmlessly. how about you guys?
88
I'm Chinese and we fucking love 8 since it rhymes with fortune in Mandarin. I'm also born roughly around 1988 so a lot of people in my generational cohort have 88 in their screen names.
Every time I see username_88 I gotta try to figure out if they're Chinese, my age, or a Nazi.
I graduated in 2014 and for awhile my email address was "lastname14@whatever.com". My partner insists 14 isn't tainted enough that I needed to worry about it, and possibly he's right. Still, I did get a new email address, because I'd feel just awful if I'm giving my email to someone and they see the 14 and have to wonder if I mean it in the 14 words sense or not. Fucking internet nazis, ruining perfectly good numbers for the rest of us!
When I was young I had a random username generator give me 4994 as the suffix to my username to avoid duping, I got so lucky that when I forgot my passwords I'd shift the outer numbers going 5995 rather than the inner going 4884.
Expatriate/expat
Maybe it is not a popular opinion. And perhaps calling it "bigotry" is too far. But I work in a different country from where I was born, and I consider myself an immigrant. I have however seen this trend of referring to educated professionals as "expats" to distinguish us from people who immigrate to escape conflicts and/or poverty. I don't agree that this distinction is necessary or valuable, and I feel uncomfortable when I am described with that term. If I am called that, I usually chuckle and let people know that I'm an immigrant!!
In addition to
, there is also an element of 
Japanese and South Korean PMCs working abroad are also called "expats" rather than immigrants, while someone from, say, Indonesia or Thailand would be called an immigrant
Expat emphasises where they came from (wealthy, 'first world') rather than where they've moved to. It's a way of keeping themselves seperate and unsullied with oblique reference to where they previously lived.
To me am "expat" is a person who's dispatched by their company or organization to work overseas and often has all their housing and expenses paid for. Almost always they'll be PMCs or PMC adjacent. The term used to imply a certain degree of prestige and wealth (imagine a PMC salary but you didn't have to pay for housing or transportation) so other people also latched onto it.
In Asia, where I'm from and live, it's mostly white western English "teacher" types who insist on being called Expats. For that reason, I make it a point to call them "migrant workers". Though if anything that's an insult to migrant workers since they work hard and perform socially valuable tasks, unlike most English "teachers" I know.
this for sure! this kind of bigotry doesn't apply to me as a
but this does always bother meI always just thought that "expat" meant a person dispatched by a company or organization to do work in another country and with an expectation that the worker in question moves back to their country of origin when their contract is over. Whereas an immigrant tends to be a person who moves permanently / with an idea to settle in another country. Though i will agree with the other commenters here that my definition of "expat" is essentially a whites-only word for "migrant worker".
POC. Idk if this counts exactly since it started with bigotry then was reclaimed/euphemized
The part that bothers me is that it feels a little like I'm still being called a "colored person" just in a different phrasing, and later on, in abbreviation. I still call myself brown, white people as white, etc. without issue.
So I think it's more that brown people have always known ourselves to be brown, but not "colored" — that is a slur used by white people against us. Like in our native languages we have a concept of skin shade. But not "coloredness"
Also "POC" sounds a little weird to me, like how saying "people of brownness" or POB feels artificial and awkward.
Not really against "POC" though since people use it broadly already.
irl I usually see POC or BIPOC used in three ways:
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Someone is pissed and wants to weaponize their or someone else's identity and not think any deeper than "you just did a racism becauss that person you criticized? Yeah they're BIPOC". That someone is almost always a liberal and the person in question is usually being validly criticized.
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HR types talking about their DEI program.
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The nicest and most empathetic lefty on the planet is trying their very best to be inclusive while organizing.
I also try to just say brown or black etc it's just so much less awkward.
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yeah, when POC started becoming more mainstream i did feel a little weird saying it.
I'm back to saying black and brown folx. If there's a group that refers to themselves as BIPoC I use that, but not really as a means to describe people. It's very vague as an acronym.
Speaking of, it's always been odd to me that race is a totally made up construct and yet black and brown are okay and yellow and red are racist.
I appreciate it tried to come from a supportive place, but I feel like any term that groups an entire range of people as being a single label is going to be inherently problematic. As opposed to just using an adjective to describe a human, it turns people into something else. It's an important but subtle lingual distinction between describing one part of you, and ascribing your entire existence as beholden to that one part of you.
If I'm a person who likes beans, I'm still a human being with many other complex dimensions to learn about. If I'm a "Beanlover" then people suddenly assume they know everything about me, and I can be separately thought of and judged from the rest of the population.
I mean I am a bean lover, but that's beside the point.
Logic and Reason are dogwhistles for "I'm a massive shithead, don't listen to me".
"You're being too emotional/idealistic!" in reference to my beliefs regarding concepts like nature vs nurture, competition vs cooperation etc. Even though me, as an ecology undergrad, just used my scientific knowledge of ecosystems to justify my position.
And funny that this is always said to me by someone who has never studied anything to do with biology. But they have been taught to believe that anything that isn't vicious cruelty and domination is unrealistic and emotional.
There is also something to be said about emotion itself not necessarily being devoid of reason and logic too. But its something people just assume is unreasonable because of how "emotion vs logic" as two opposites is ingrained in our culture.
Sorry, I rambled a bit there.
Ironically "idealism" is almost always an accurate way to describe the chuddier position on an issue.
Yeah, to chuds and libs, idealism is just when you think maybe cruelty is bad
But they have been taught to believe that anything that isn't vicious cruelty and domination is unrealistic and emotional.
That perfectly captures the mindset of the "facts and logic" crowd. Believing that cruelty is good actually is the mature smart adult in the room position. It doesn't matter whether they've studied anything or not, believing in cruelty makes tgem smart. You could have every credential and relevent degree imaginable, but if your position is anything approaching "maybe cruelty is not good" you're a bleeding heart, emotional, idealist, childish, untealistic, etc.
If I throw something at your head and it hits you in the face, was it because you did something irrational?
No. Maybe the throw was too hard. Maybe you weren't paying attention. Maybe you can't see, or maybe your arms don't work the way other people's do. Maybe you felt something coming and didn't know what to do and panicked. Maybe you like getting hit in the face. Maybe I threw it really softly, and you were paying attention, but you've never practiced or tried to block/dodge a moving object and it hits you on the nose.
None of those situations are irrational. The only thing irrational that could occur is thinking it happened because of something that couldn't be explained, or by maybe trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
They haven't ever glanced at formal logic aside from a list of fallacies either. They tske the stsr trek Vulcan approach and just kinda say their moral philosophy is logical without really getting into the fact that there are different schools of logic and they aren't doing any of them aside from vibes
The fascists that say "logic and reason" tend to be the most unreasonable, illogical and emotionally charged shitheads out there.
Spook, because it's actually a slur.
It used to be an innocent word when I was a kid or a phrase for people working in intelligence, now I can't say or see it without racism coming to mind thanks to chuds.
I still don't think this one is used enough as a slur to retire. Using it as a slur would make me think you're literally a boomer, it's not common. Using it to refer to feds is more common, and using it to mean "scare" is even more common than that, so it's basically just a normal word
Using it as a slur would make me think you're literally a boomer
I am old and I've heard it used as a slur in person, but I have seen it used innocently enough by most normal people that it's been like reclaimed.
less reclaimed and more "the non-slur use is and maybe always has been primary"
I am fairly old but I've never heard it used anywhere outside of Back to the Future. I'm also not from the south, though.
Is it a south thing? I'm from the north and that's where I heard it used as a slur.
its definitely kind of a boomer-y slur here in texas, i've heard it more for that than the online fed thing until relatively (2010s) recently
Have you had the pleasure of watching The Spook Who Sat by the Door yet? CW: Lots of N Words. But they get what's coming to them.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
"Shoving down our throats" just makes me think about foie gras. 🤷♀️
Just a PSA if anyone is curious to try it:
Like, I'll try anything once. I have a passion for culinary arts and food culture. But this was way over sold. I remember reading a description of it from Anthony Bordain where he basically said it would be his death row last meal. So my partner and I were out for a fine dining anniversary dinner at a celebrity chef's restaurant (it's hard to come by in the US, so I figure if I'm going to try it, do it right), and I ordered it. All that hype, all the abuse of the animals to produce it...
CW: gross animal product
It's like thick meaty snot.
The flavor was different from anything I've tried, but it was relatively bland. And that texture... Why would anyone want this?
Anthony Bourdain is my Nemesis even from beyond the grave. He had made working as a line cook fucking insufferable with all this romanticized foodie bullshit. The Menu would have never been written if it weren't for him. 'Authentic experience' hipster bullshit that is now just status quo pretention. Have a charcuterie board with your imperial stout and talk about the finer qualities of one prosciutto or granary padano here compared to other places even though our town has a single meat and cheese supplier thst isn't Sisco.
Surprised I haven't seen "Gamer" yet. There was a time when I'd call myself that, now I actively avoid the label at all costs and if someone asks what I do for fun I list every hobby I have except gaming unless they bring it up first.
"Piece of cake!" "Wow this is a cake walk!" or just the term "Cake Walk".
"Cake Walk".
TIL this has a racist af history, whew
Goober. Not even joking.
I really enjoy language. Doesn't matter which one, doesn't matter what aspect of it. I just thoroughly enjoy learning about language. So it's not uncommon for me to encounter a word and ponder its etymology or whether it's related to another word, that sort of thing, and I'll be preoccupied with figuring out this little linguistic riddle that I have happened to encounter somewhere in my life. And of course this is exactly happens when I encounter the word "goober" one time.
I mean, wtf kind of a word is goober anyway? Seems like there's nothing like it in English. So I look up the etymology of the word.
Turns out that goober likely comes from the central & south African word for peanut - nguba. So immediately "goober" is associated with slavery. Very cool. What a start!
The word nguba makes it over to the US and then it develops racist and classist undertones because "goober" begins to refer to people, specifically backwards, uncultured, and largely black people. It's the uncultured and uncivilised people who call peanuts nguba, thus they themselves become goobers.
For such a seemingly benign word that's about as mild an insult as you could imagine, it carries the weight of slavery, the white man's burden, and largely institutionalised classism on its shoulders.
I think this one has gotten so far from its roots as to be unrecognizable - people call their own kids goober. language is wild
Just recently I learned square dancing has roots in slavery. Not that I ever really enjoyed square dancing,
Don't forget that square dancing had a major revival when Henry Ford started a campaign to promote it in order to counter the growing popularity of Jazz, which of course he saw as a Jewish plot to corrupt the youth with Black culture
Ch*g when used to describe finishing a drink quickly
I'm not sure if it's a slur everywhere but here it's a slur for indigenous people
i didn't even know this was a slur! definitely not gonna use that again
that seems excessive unless your
here
is the same as his
i don't lose anything by not saying that, and i avoid potentially being offensive to someone. not really excessive in my eyes.
i disagree. it's quite some effort to police yourself for uncommon words that aren't slurs in your own dialect compared to the odds of perpetuating harm.
or maybe i have an undiagnosed language processing difficulty.
fair enough. i don't use that word anyway. i wouldn't expect anyone else to do that, but personally i am just going to, not do that
I looked it up, it's a slur for an aboriginal group in Pacific Canada. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chugach
So for anyone in North America they are not very far away.
Edit: They also had a settlement in modern Alaska that was destroyed by a hurricane in 1964, and US Chugach National Forest and Alaska's Chugach State Park are named after them.
i submit that alaska/pacific canada is very far away from most of north america. anything north of vancouver might as well be the moon.
"chug" is an onomatopoeia for the noise a mechanical engine makes, which is what chugging a drink from a bottle often sounds like. it has nothing etymologically to do with the Chugach people. "nip [that] in the bud" contains an anti-asian slur... except it doesn't because that's not how words work. Those potatoes are removed potatoes for perfectly appropriate reasons even if the too-longstanding football team name still makes my eye twitch occasionally.
that's not carte blanche to be a 13 year old who found a certain synonym for greedy in a thesaurus, but neither is that what Roger Miller sang about, or what the single-serving milk brand was doing, or what anyone outside of a tiny geographic area means.
I square pegged so many slurs into that before it became clear what they meant.
Colloquially we occasionally use the word "scull/skull" here as a verb to mean the same thing. The etymology is disputed but it likely traces its roots in the Scandinavian/Viking word skål (of approximately the same pronunciation), which means "cheers". I think this term is ripe for a bit of the good ol' cultural appropriation if you're up for it.
Fucking Chigs.
Yes I'm still salty about Space Above and Beyond getting cancelled.
Take a chance
Fuck that is a deep cut. I should go find that show, loved it when it came out. Probably hasn't aged well tho.
I remember 4 years ago when lefty sorta people would use "woke" unironically as a compliment.
I do whenever my annoying coworker begins complaining about "the woke", just as my way of fucking with him.
the potato variety, because i heard about the racist football team more often than i shopped for non-local potatoes
I was raised by two white supremacists and was surrounded by racism as a kid. Certain common names like Jesus or Latisha have been used in so many horrible racist ‘jokes’ around me growing up that I wince when I hear them.
They are fine names btw :)
