"regime" always just a weasel word for "administration" but only used for scary non-white 3rd world countries that nato doesn't like
"expat" basically is verbal segregation because whites don't like using the word "immigrant" to describe themselves
'Expat' originally was intended to mean someone who intends to move back after a while, and not immigrate. But this implies they're not integrating, and eventually became "Brits and Americans living in other countries".
Think of all of the British pensioners on the Spanish coast who never considered learning Spanish and will never consider themselves Spanish, even if they live there 30 years.
Ugh, I am doing all the paperwork to become French right now, and the number of British pensioners who don't speak French trying to get permanent residence here because of Brexit is astonishing. I mean, they've been here 20 years and speak elementary French, so they fulfill the requirements but imagine living ANYWHERE for 20 years and not having a real conversation with the locals in the local language.
I feel like there's a difference between American and British use of "expat". British expat seems like it can apply to anyone of any background, but American usage seems applied to the upper crust.
Is this just me?
American usage seems applied to the upper crust.
I think this might be a coincidence based on only upper crust Americans being able or willing to live for any time in another country?
Also there's the term "sexpats" for certain Anglophone men who move to SE Asia for fetishist reasons. Definitely doesn't have the "upper crust" connotations.
I can remember arguing about that shit in 2002. Everything old is new again.
"Freedom of Speech" hasn't been used as anything but a cudgel to beat back left wing ideas for like a century.
Not so much to beat back left ideas as to create a safe space for bigotry.
"Homogenous" - I've seen this used a lot as an explanation as for why social democracy works in nordic nations. Low key, "They're all white, of course it works"
Hello there every white nationalist’s take on Japan and China. We get it, those pesky Asians don’t have brown or black people and you don’t know enough to tell internal divisions since they all look the same am I right? But because of their racial purity they can do things like functional city planning which your being held back by some poor girl getting food stamps who’s great grandmother you literally owned.
I'm conflicted on this. I think there are real considerations to be had about the social effects of drastically different cultures living together. In Sweden after the 2015 refugee crisis, a significant part of the lower classes turned to fascist racism. Not to mention the cultural shock of refugees being forced to contend with suddenly living in godless Sweden. This is why immigrants historically form ghettos, so that they don't have to integrate as quickly. Americans form rich ghettos in foreign countries too, so they only have to interact with Americans, because it's just easier. You don't have to rely on this new language as much, you can see people who share your values, you are part of a community that more likely has your back.
This does in no way excuse anti-refugee stances though, because the entire west is complicit in the conditions that created refugees, and either way the "integration" issue is the better alternative to letting people fucking die. Hot take, the better alternative for Sweden would have been to go against NATO in the 00s and to not sell bombs.
This isn't even related to your comment anymore lol, I agree when someone says homogenous it's 99% showing some white supremacy. Also social democracy doesn't work because of homogeneity, it works because A. they had a huge communist movement that forced concessions and B. they're rich as fuck.
This becomes immediately obvious when discussing Japan and South Korea and if they are “western” countries. For most people they don’t really think far enough for the implication to be a dog whistle.
It pisses me off when ppl try to distinguish "Western chauvinism" with just straight up racism. Its just racism with extra steps
Western chauvinism absolutely a subset of racism, but it's not quite the same, from the way I view it. Western chauvinists would never call me a removed, or tell me to go back to my country. However, they think their English only pasty white ass that has never stepped in China understands more about that country than I do, who has visited there (admittedly only for a short few vacations), who speaks passable Chinese, and who has family members living in China passing news over to me directly
Gonna spitball a few off the top of my head:
"Spirit animal" - It's a form of cultural appropriation and can actually be really accidentally insensitive.
"Binging" being used to refer to how much Netflix you watched on your day off is bad because it's a trigger word for people who suffer(ed) from eating disorders.
Talking about being "grandfathered in" (e.g. to a good price on a mobile plan) has horribly disturbing origins - it was originally a way of denying votes to black people; if your grandfather was a slave then you couldn't vote. I think this might be one where the modern meaning is well known enough that it isn't going to cause offense, but it's potentially something to stop using.
"Sold down the river" also originates from slavery. There's other ways of saying that someone betrayed you without conjuring up that image.
That said, I do think that the vast majority of people wouldn't be offended by these, but it's interesting how language evolves.
if your grandfather was a slave then you couldn’t vote
It's the opposite. They instituted poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent black people from voting. But those would also have stopped some white people from voting, so the exception was "if your grandfather could vote, you can vote".
Ah thanks for the correction! Was off the top of my head so I'm not surprised I got something wrong.
What's a good sub for spirit animal? Patronus is out and I dunno if familiar is offensive or not.
There's always daemon. I'm a goshawk or nightingale depending on the quiz/site thank you for asking
"Soul animal" comes from a Finnish word that no longer has religious or spiritual meaning so it can be used by anyone (a Finnish person online told me this so it might not be the most accurate. It was linked to paganism so I believe it's lost meaning though)
I always call my cat my familiar and it's never offended anyone as far as I could tell?
It's a Wiccan thing, no? Someone else replied daemon so that may be less problematic.
That's true, but I'm pretty sure the concept of animal familiars has been a part of folklore since long before the birth of neopaganism. I see it as both of us borrowing terms from the same sources, though if a Wiccan wants to correct me then I'm happy to hear them out!
For example, I had a conversation with a friend who didn’t know the ‘ok’ hand sign is sometimes used to symbolize ‘white power’.
This is highly contextual.
I got banned from r/fuckthealtright for pointing this out after that Nicholas Sandmann staredown story at the Lincoln Memorial made headlines last year when people started posting pics like this about the high school basketball team, and I was all, "Whoa there folks, these kids are probably racist little shits, but this isn't evidence of it, unless all NBA players are culpable (like this is literally the sign everyone on the team throws up after making a three), which is super different from something like this." Those utter morons banned me for "supporting hate speech."
But it's what sparked me to seek out and eventually find communities like r/cth, so all a blessing.
this just sounds like more sportsball nonsense to me sweaty. did they field goal a home run too?
Forreal though, it's not like it's hard to find a pic of them being racist little shits without deliberately misunderstanding a standard basketball celebration. Is Melo's 3 to the dome cancelled now? What about JR's 3-rex?
the alt right tried to meme the ok sign into a wp symbol specifically to confuse id pol libs in exactly that way. it's a ubiquitous, non-offensive hand sign in the vast majority of the contexts in which it's used, and you need to be pretty fucking online to immediately think of it as a wp symbol
but if you see a bunch of proud boys (or those oinkers in your pic) throwing it up, you know exactly why they're doing that
IIRC, the phrase "What a gip!"/"I've been gipped!" was originally a slur against Romani (gypsies) who were erroneously believed to come from Egypt. You see more Romani hate in Europe, but it's everywhere to some degree.
Hysteria/hysterical - These are misogynist terms. Basically, the origin was that husbands who were annoyed with their wives would take them to the doctor who would diagnose them with Hysteria and the cures were often sexual assault or putting them in asylums.
Female as a noun - Don’t call women females. It’s dehumanizing, especially when you see “men and females.” It’s also not inclusive since woman is associated with gender and female is more associated with sex.
Articulate/well-spoken - Mostly when used to describe Black people. It’s the default compliment White people use for “one of the good ones” and implies that it’s exceptional for a black person to be articulate while also enforcing biases against AAVE.
I've always heard "men and women" or "male and female"; it makes sense to use these terms rather than "men and females" or "males and women" which just sounds weird.
And I'm a bit confused. I get the female and women argument, which implies that male and men are defaults. But your argument is different - female is associated with sex and not gender, thus being not-inclusive, but that would equally apply to men and male? Should we just stop using both, male and female, except when talking explicitly about sex?
"Female" is used to describe the sex of animals in addition to humans, whereas "woman" refers to a female human. So "female" is quite literally dehumanizing. This is my take on it anyway.
There is an acceptable double standard when it comes to this topic but fwiw I also find male a little weird and clinical
Should we stop using both, male and female, except when talking explicitly about sex?
I say yes. Outside of medical studies, there’s really no reason to refer to people as males and females. I didn’t talk about it for men/males because I don’t think I’ve ever seen people refer to men as “males” the way I see it on a regular basis for women.
When it comes to male/female as an adjective, we don’t really have a replacement yet although some people have started saying stuff like woman president or woman pilot. Like I would still say female doctor if I was referring to a trans woman who was a doctor, but I guess ideally we’d have a better word.
maybe a little off topic but here's some things I've noticed about politispeak:
"good for small businesses" mean helping corporations
"good for the middle class" means good for the bourgeoisie (literally what bourgeoisie means). This one is particularly effective because everyone considers themselves middle class, since there are no metrics offered and no one wants to think of themselves as in the "lower" of the implied three classes.
"the economy" means the profits of the bourgeoisie.
"police reform" means more money for pigs, ditto for army reform (i.e. "greening the military")
"authoritarian" and "regime" both mean non-nato allies
"treating climate change as a national security threat" means doing eco-fascism
"urban" means black
"detention center" means concentration camp
"military contractor" means mercenary
"conspiracy theorist" means anyone who questions establishment narratives. More specific usage is in the form of "russian/chinese asset," "assadist," "X apologist," etc. These are all essentially synonyms.
There's a lot more. Find and replace these tropes with their true definitions and you'll have a much better idea of what politicians/pundits are actually talking about.
“good for the middle class” means good for the bourgeoisie (literally what bourgeoisie means). This one is particularly effective because everyone considers themselves middle class, since there are no metrics offered and no one wants to think of themselves as in the “lower” of the implied three classes.
Personally I would add that when white folks talk about the "middle class", they are often on some level - so maybe not even consciously - referring to other white people exclusively.
No doubt, white people definitely think of the "lower" class as black people and immigrants while they're middle class themselves
I saw a chud on TD.W say he wasn't being racist but was rather "critiquing ethnic groups." Language was a mistake
Something I've noticed recently is that if someone says "CCP" instead of "CPC" then they're almost always a chud. For some reason "Chinese Communist Party" is way scarier than "Communist Party of China" to their dessicated brains so they'll always go with the former.
i sometimes call it ccp but it is because english is not my native language and i forget which is the right order in english
Comparing people to "normal" people. Autistic people and normal people. Trans people and normal people. Gay people and normal people.
You can see why it's a problem if you try comparing it to "black people and normal people".
Cakewalk - this was a dance that originated in enslaved American communities and was meant to imitate the rigid decorum/dance of white slaveowners. It would later be appropriated by white Americans in the early 20th century.
