It’s very funny but there’s definitely a lot of genre whiplash. Drama to comedy to absurdism… sometimes it’s kid-friendly and sometimes it definitely isn’t… You never really know what to expect. I used to read it, but I guess with those wild swings in tone, combined with there not being much of an overarching storyline, it’s one that easily slips through the cracks.
Max
One of the reasons I read it is to see people freaking out in the comments when a strip is questionable. So many people saying they’ve read it for years but now they’re done. Sometimes the comments are funnier than the comic.
Wizard
Pretty sure Novil feeds on the wailing of butt-hurt commenters. He certainly trolls them harder than anybody else I regularly read.
tbh that just sounds dangerous but i never heard of it happening to ppl outside of pop culture (i mean depending on how young you are i’d assume it’d make most kids gag and throw up [tho given scented soaps and handmade ones these days i woudln’t be surprised if some kids took a bite outta soap on purpose])
I had my Southern Baptist grandmother do this to me, when I wouldn’t stop “talking back” to her.
I have first hand experience of having my mouth washed out with soap, in real life, and it is indeed as unpleasant as you think although it does not make you puke.
Frieza isn’t a real person and doesn’t live in a world where that word is loaded with a particular context. He’s not even talking to humans when he says it.
ReverendJ
Somewhere between Frieza calling everyone monkey and Trunks saying not to shoot Goku because he’s not black…and just all of Popo…Dragon Ball gets a little…uncomfy
fireprincesslily
You know that Frieza uses it exactly in a racist way right? Like legitimately the same way that bigots use it for black people. That’s not a good I don’t know what point you were making.
LiamKav
He does use it against people who actually transform in to giant monkeys so I guess the metaphor breaks down slightly?
But yeah, I’m not sure “but Space Hitler says it” is the best argument.
Dedlok
That does not change the fact that he is saying it to members of a particular group of people in a purposefully derogatory and insulting way.
One that I will add that he personally ordered to be wiped out because he was afraid of a particular legend of that could potentially remove him from his seat of power.
Jon Rich
Also, Frieza is *explicitly* evil. That’s the entire point. It makes sense that he’s racist as all hell, his day job is running an organization that uses child soldiers to commit xenocide so he can sell their planets to other species that want Lebensraum.
That’s what the Frieza Force is doing when they aren’t going to some backwater planet to get their leader immortality. That’s the basis of every mission that Vegeta and crew were sent on. The plot of Z kicks off because he and his buddies need to go “cleanse” a planet where the inhabitants are too strong for the three of them to handle by themselves, so they need a fourth.
So, yeah, Frieza using horrifically racist slurs makes absolute sense.
People in the real world have no such excuse. Also, you know, real people have real feelings and trauma, fictional characters do not.
LuminousLead
It’s also racist in Dragonball. Not that Son Goku is likely to understand it.
Jon Rich
I think he understands, but mostly doesn’t care. Son Goku has never been the kind to let personal insults affect him in any way. He only really cares when someone strong is using that strength to hurt innocent people, especially innocent people he’s emotionally attached to.
If I may ask though, do any of you think there’s hope to reclaim the insult from bigots?
Nova
I think if you’re not a black person then it’s not your place to discuss reclaiming racist terminology aimed at black people.
If you are a black person, then I think what you reclaim is entirely up to you. It’s not going to be something you can necessarily get others to accept, and this isn’t really the best place to discuss all the many nuances about it.
It’s definitely something you can fall down a google rabbithole for if you want more specific information and context <3
As for my host body’s exact racial make-up, I am not so comfortable disclosing many specific details, but suffice it to say it is multi-racial with some African American and other non-white heritage.
? Again, my most extreme apologies, regardless of what I meant to express. Are there any other primates I should not wish to envoke the name of, for the sake of avoiding this kind of trouble in the future?
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
I needed the link to get the reference, but it’s a good reference! I knew you didn’t mean it as a slur, but I also agree with the comments about that racial slur still being in use, unfortunately. Trying to find “okay” primates or animals to use as insults seems like a dangerous approach, too; maybe just don’t make insults that imply people aren’t human if you don’t want to dehumanize.
Agemegos
Yep. Dehumanising people is bad.
APersonAmI
I do not. The insult is still in racist use. I’ve seen biggots photoshop black womens heads onto the bodies of apes in order to dehumanize and humiliate, recently.
Ron
This coming from a place where racism as being referred to here is much less an issue, my thought process went a little like this: “wow, calling anyone a Monkey is racist now?” “it’s still in use as racial slur, well that’s really sad” “people photoshop what onto what now”
And now I’m mostly sad that we have to censor our language because of the abuse by a few but I understand. I use little monkey (translated) as an endearing term. I encourage you all to do the same. Turn a bad word into a sweet one.
cbwroses
Calling black people monkeys has been racist almost from jump, specifically “porch monkey”.
As for using monkey as a term of endearment, what you say to your loved ones is more or less your business, but it’s not like what you suggest wasn’t tried (and failed) before.
Famously, there was a sports announcer who said something to the fact of “look at that monkey run” about a black player during a football game, and he got in trouble for it. He said he didn’t mean anything racist by it as he said (with home movie evidence to prove it) that he called his kids monkeys, but it didn’t negate the trouble he got in.
Also, the movie Clerks II has a minor plot point where one of the (white) characters said his grandma used to call his family porch monkeys and that he was going to try and bring the word back, even going so far as to write the word on his shirt.
SillyGoose
Seeing as Ron added “translated” after “little monkey”, I suppose in their language just doesn’t have the same overtones. In mine (French), you’d call a child by basically any “pet name”, literally any pet or animal – no one would bat an eyelid at “Viens là mon petit singe” (“Come here little monkey”) and it would be a completely normal thing to say to a child doing any sort of climbing activity. But then children imitate animals all the time, and well, context, right? And you wouldn’t say that to an adult though.
I think our most common would be lapin, chaton and canard / rabbit, kitty and ducky – and I’ve heard ducky used in English too.
But then “female dog” is as bad as in English, with the exact same connotations.
Question: Joyce is white. So, what does it matter if someone calls her “monkey”?
Wizard
The Language Police rarely stop to consider context or intent before they rush to condemn or at least huffily correct. Personally, I wouldn’t refer to any black person as a monkey or ape, precisely because I’m aware of the history. But in this context, I don’t see anything terribly offensive. Avoiding deliberate racial slurs is a good thing, but avoiding any word or usage that’s ever been used this way is going to shut down vast swaths of language to little purpose.
Arillius
It will not shut down vast swaths of language and it does not have ‘little purpose’. Some people are still affected today by those words. Germany’s doing fine while banning some words, not sure why other countries can’t realize it’s okay to make racism literally illegal.
Okay, so we need to have this chat. I’m half Irish, half Cherokee, but you will note that I cannot have this conversation in either Gaelic or Tsalagi, only English, since they made a pattern of beating our speech out of us on both sides of the family. Heck, I only know the *word* for the Cherokee language because I was with a dance team in high school.
Do you want racist terminologies to go away? Stop calling them out. No, I’m not kidding. The reason people throwing around Mick as a slur was because it stopped coming up. Same with how Redskin and other racist terms for Native Americans did.
This is starting to become the issue of the D.A.R.E. program from school. Rather than help children stay away from drugs with education, it instead had the effect of *introducing* children to drugs, as well as how and where to get them, as well as what the effects were.
Yes, slurs need to go away, racism is horrible, but fighting it this way is like fighting a forest fire with Kerosene. It’s not gonna go away like you think it will, and you may be spreading it wider.
BBCC
Both of those are still thrown around regularly. And while, sure, I can see telling someone totally unsolicited spreading it to an unknowing audience, telling someone already using it is not. That person clearly ALREADY knows about it as a slur and knows to use it as one. Telling them that it isn’t acceptable is the only way to get them to stop it. Not saying anything gives them no incentive to drop it.
Arillius
Redskin was literally a Football team name until it got called out enough. Not sure you know what you’re talking about if you think Racism goes away by ignoring it. America’s been ignoring it for 50 years and it’s still racists as f.
Sorry fellas, looks like imma need a break from all this.
Out of all the neurodivergent stripes I have, perhaps one of the most egregious is severe rejection sensitivity, which I am now experiencing a lot of.
There’s an extra layer of pure OOF here because I literally spent 4 hours obsessing over how to best format my comment, only to have the message fall flat on its face because I overlooked a single detail. ?
A lot of emotions are going on right now. I don’t feel so good.
Mate, take all the time you need, but if it helps then all you needed was “whoops, sorry, didn’t realise, I’ll avoid using that word in the future” and I’m sure most people’s response would have been “cool, no problem”. But you do what’s best for you.
Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Using words accidentally that have unfortunate implications is no-where near as bad as refusing to learn from those mistakes.
It’s a bummer how some words get loaded like that – in some Asian cultures, calling a child a monkey would imply being clever and mischievous (like the Monkey King) but then it’s problematic in certain situations.
It can be exhausting trying to adjust the things you say because of terrible people (often people from the past), but I guess that’s the world we live in.
Oh yeah, as a fellow neurodivergent person, I really feel that…
I don’t think anybody’s upset with you, though, since it’s clear you didn’t mean it offensively (esp. because Joyce isn’t African-American!). Try not to stress out too much.
I suppose the idea must be that if people use those words as insults, even without the racial component, they might accidentally use it in an apparently offensive context, or give the wrong message about the usage being “okay” to use when it can be very hurtful when there’s any possibility of a racial component? I dunno, society is complicated. But at any rate, I’m pretty sure the comment was supposed to be informational, not an admonition. So yeah, you’re okay! 🙂
I hope this was some comfort to you, idk i’m never quite sure if saying something will make things better or worse
Were you deliberately trying to be offensive? Based on your comments, I’m sure you weren’t. So don’t sweat it. I’m all in favor of not being deliberately or even negligently offensive, but I refuse to censor myself to satisfy the most hyper-sensitive people. Some of them may actually mean well, but still take things to ridiculous extremes. And many of them seem to just be eagerly searching for things to take offense to. Either way, my advice is not to let them get under your skin. (I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge that might be a lot easier said than done, but still, don’t beat yourself up any more than you can help.)
FaerwenOfValenwood
next to no one is “eagerly searching” for things to take offense to, homeslice. offensive things, by definition, hurt—and social pain is one of the most actively avoided kinds of pain there is.
Literally all Dina has done here was state that her parents have never struck her after coming to Joyce out of concern for Becky, someone they both deeply care about, how was she an asshole?
She sat on Joyce, which is pretty rude and definitely wasn’t asked for. Degrading their entire interaction to a binary “asshole/worse asshole” dichotomy does feel a bit silly, though.
Joyce said something inappropriate, but I don’t think Dina gets a free pass here. She woke Joyce up and asked a rather personal question and once she got her answer rephrased it to something worse than Joyce intended, which instigated this whole, muddy, interaction. You don’t just get to say Joyce is an asshole here, when both Dina and Sarah are partially responsible for this as well. But like Delicious Taffy said, it’s actually pretty silly to try to simplify these kinds of conversations into *Well someone’s an asshole* That’s not how adult interactions should work. They’re all big girls and this ended very immaturely from all sides.
Alanari
Dina is most likely autistic, so she most likely has problems with social etiquette. In a bid to do it right, she tried to replicate Joyce’s “waking up people” routine as good as possible, in the basic assumption that this is how waking up works with Joyce. This most likely was an attempt to be as accommodating as possible. It went wrong (for starters, Joyce’s routine is bad to begin with), but I wouldn’t count it as an asshole move.
And this was the direct response to jocye saying Dina was a robot, effectively denying her any humanity, and telling her she doesn’t matter. Yes, you get to say someone is an asshole when they insult and degrade you.
Sirksome
The waking up part isn’t the issue even though a lot of comments are stating that. Dina asked Joyce a personal question and then rephrased her answer in a way Joyce didn’t like. Specifically saying Joyce’s spankings were “beatings” and “hitting” something Joyce immediately corrected her on while stating it was step too far. Dina didn’t apologize or correct this, when it’s a subject that’s clearly sensitive to Joyce, and Sarah essentially just added fuel to the flame by validating Dina with her own opinion and thinly veiled sarcasm instead of backing off the conversation. And what happened? Joyce lashed out, which is common when a person is agitated purposefully or not. So yes they were all assholes here. Joyce was cruel and degrading in her retaliation, but Dina doesn’t get a pass, just because maybe she couldn’t read the cues of Joyce’s discomfort. And Sarah really has no justification here, she was just being a bit obnoxious. So yeah you can call Joyce an asshole, but you also have to call Dina an asshole, and Sarah an asshole, or better yet no one’s an asshole, and they’re just three dumb teens that suck at communicating. That happens.
Meagan
I’m on a computer so I don’t have emojis, so *clap clap clap*
Alanari
A spanking IS a beating. Or a hitting.
My parents are like Joyce. They also talk about spanking. They were beaten into obedience. It’s a self defense mechanism to make an assault smaller than it actually is. Most victims of domestic violence diminish the attacks. Comes with loving the person that is hurting you. As a person who was on both sides of that, with my parents having been hit and me being assaulted by my first boyfriend, never feed into that narrative. It perpetuates the situation.
There’s a difference between trying to help a victim in domestic violence see though the patterns and purposefully degrading a person (hence following the very same pattern the parents showed her, just with different means).
Z
Spanking generally implies open palm slap -which I’m okay with leaving open for debate.
Even according to the “rule of thumb”, a wooden spoon isn’t okay. Where’s the line for you? Is it okay to call it spanking with a baseball bat, crowbar, or pipe iron?
(“Rule of thumb” as in the rule that a man can beat his wife with any stock narrower than his thumb. I can’t recall if it’s an urban legend or a literal law that was on the books somewhere. The end of a wooden spoon is larger than a thumb so is *not okay*)
If someone says “yeah I that person was resistant but I just had to hold them down a little and then they let me fuck them” it’s reasonable to describe that as rape *because it is*.
Reframing “spanking” with a wooden spoon as hitting/beating is not an asshole move either.
FlamestAndLight
Honestly, in terms of psychological damage that corporal punishment causes to children, the difference between open hand spanking and wooden spoon spanking is not that significant. Studies have shown that they both have negative impacts on children’s mental health for years afterwards regardless of whether the child even realizes the instances were traumatic years later.
As it turns out, punishment is both often traumatizing to children AND less effective for behavior modification than positive and negative reinforcement.
Frankly just because open palm spanking is considered socially acceptable doesn’t make it *not* abusive. You’re literally taking a small human with a developing brain and you’re committing intentional violence against them as punishment.
Jflb96
The intent is ‘make them associate bad behaviour with pain,’ but really what they associate with pain is ‘getting caught’ and ‘their parents’.
Our dad used to smack us on the back of the hand if we were naughty, and then he stopped when I was about seven because he saw we were flinching whenever he called us over, even if we hadn’t done anything. I’m the eldest, so my siblings probably don’t even remember; that being said, he did keep using the handle of his knife to remind my brother to cut his food before it left the plate.
Jflb96
From what I remember, when it was suggested in the UK the judge that didn’t so was ridiculed in the public press as ‘Judge Thumb, purveyor of wife-beating sticks’
Sirksome
See this is the problem too. It’s not actually about whether Joyce was abused. We all know by now she and Becky both were, just because they were raised in a home that valued obedience over everything else. Becky wasn’t allowed to discover her sexuality, they both are horribly repressed and traumatized, ect.
The problem is they’re trying to redefine Joyce’s experience. You can’t do that. Joyce said “beating” was too harsh a word for what she felt. They didn’t listen, that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if “hitting” or “beating” are correct terms, It doesn’t matter if Joyce was abused. She felt uncomfortable using those terms, and they should’ve respected that and didn’t and that upset Joyce.
If I were to make some educated assumptions, I’d guess Becky might also be pissed if someone started saying her parents punishments were abuse or “beatings” even though we’ve seen first hand the corporal punishment Ross was more than comfortable with. Because children have complicated relationships with their parents, and it would also imply Bonnie was at least complicit in it. Even if that’s true Becky is incredibly protective of her mom’s memory. This is why you respect people’s boundaries when having these conversations. That was just a hypothetical though. I have no idea how Becky feels about her family’s discipline of her.
685 thoughts on “Not weird at all”
Ana Chronistic
…
What’s the correlation between “mouth washed out with soap” and “asshole”? bc I have a theory
(I never had soap or swat tbh)
Ana Chronistic
methinks there is something being filtered in this reply I’m trying to post
https://tinyurl.com/bp9e3dza
Josh Spicer
Wow I haven’t heard of Sandra and Woo in YEARS.
Djer
It’s surprisingly still around
The Wellerman
CAN WE SEE
666
COMMENTS?!?!?!
?
Mr D
I’m doing my part
Kazuma Taichi
I still have it amongst the webcomics that I check when they update
Now Xiaolin Showdown, that is something I haven’t heard of in years
Josh Spicer
One of the many reasons I continue repping the Spice.
Z
I read a handful of pages from that strip.
What the hell is the author on?
a/snow/mous/e
It’s very funny but there’s definitely a lot of genre whiplash. Drama to comedy to absurdism… sometimes it’s kid-friendly and sometimes it definitely isn’t… You never really know what to expect. I used to read it, but I guess with those wild swings in tone, combined with there not being much of an overarching storyline, it’s one that easily slips through the cracks.
Max
One of the reasons I read it is to see people freaking out in the comments when a strip is questionable. So many people saying they’ve read it for years but now they’re done. Sometimes the comments are funnier than the comic.
Wizard
Pretty sure Novil feeds on the wailing of butt-hurt commenters. He certainly trolls them harder than anybody else I regularly read.
anon
tbh that just sounds dangerous but i never heard of it happening to ppl outside of pop culture (i mean depending on how young you are i’d assume it’d make most kids gag and throw up [tho given scented soaps and handmade ones these days i woudln’t be surprised if some kids took a bite outta soap on purpose])
Ana Chronistic
mostly I ask bc a certain IRL British mum did this to the asshole child
lynneb
I had my Southern Baptist grandmother do this to me, when I wouldn’t stop “talking back” to her.
I have first hand experience of having my mouth washed out with soap, in real life, and it is indeed as unpleasant as you think although it does not make you puke.
The Wellerman
“You don’t count”?
“YOU DON’T COUNT”?!?!?!?!?
? ??? ?
? ? ?
JOYCE YOU INSOLENT IGNORANT MONKEY!!!
Nova
Please don’t call people “monkey” as an insult since it has a LOT of racist, white-supremacist baggage along with it.
Appreciated.
brasca1
Well it’s Frieza’s favorite slur.
Nova
Frieza isn’t a real person and doesn’t live in a world where that word is loaded with a particular context. He’s not even talking to humans when he says it.
ReverendJ
Somewhere between Frieza calling everyone monkey and Trunks saying not to shoot Goku because he’s not black…and just all of Popo…Dragon Ball gets a little…uncomfy
fireprincesslily
You know that Frieza uses it exactly in a racist way right? Like legitimately the same way that bigots use it for black people. That’s not a good I don’t know what point you were making.
LiamKav
He does use it against people who actually transform in to giant monkeys so I guess the metaphor breaks down slightly?
But yeah, I’m not sure “but Space Hitler says it” is the best argument.
Dedlok
That does not change the fact that he is saying it to members of a particular group of people in a purposefully derogatory and insulting way.
One that I will add that he personally ordered to be wiped out because he was afraid of a particular legend of that could potentially remove him from his seat of power.
Jon Rich
Also, Frieza is *explicitly* evil. That’s the entire point. It makes sense that he’s racist as all hell, his day job is running an organization that uses child soldiers to commit xenocide so he can sell their planets to other species that want Lebensraum.
That’s what the Frieza Force is doing when they aren’t going to some backwater planet to get their leader immortality. That’s the basis of every mission that Vegeta and crew were sent on. The plot of Z kicks off because he and his buddies need to go “cleanse” a planet where the inhabitants are too strong for the three of them to handle by themselves, so they need a fourth.
So, yeah, Frieza using horrifically racist slurs makes absolute sense.
People in the real world have no such excuse. Also, you know, real people have real feelings and trauma, fictional characters do not.
LuminousLead
It’s also racist in Dragonball. Not that Son Goku is likely to understand it.
Jon Rich
I think he understands, but mostly doesn’t care. Son Goku has never been the kind to let personal insults affect him in any way. He only really cares when someone strong is using that strength to hurt innocent people, especially innocent people he’s emotionally attached to.
The Wellerman
? Oh I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, and I’m SUPER sorry if I caused you any stress!
I was hoping to reference Joyce calling herself a monkey while working on her evolution project with Joe:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/unlearning/
Once again, my attempt at subtly fails. Neurodivergence! ?
The Wellerman
If I may ask though, do any of you think there’s hope to reclaim the insult from bigots?
Nova
I think if you’re not a black person then it’s not your place to discuss reclaiming racist terminology aimed at black people.
If you are a black person, then I think what you reclaim is entirely up to you. It’s not going to be something you can necessarily get others to accept, and this isn’t really the best place to discuss all the many nuances about it.
It’s definitely something you can fall down a google rabbithole for if you want more specific information and context <3
The Wellerman
As for my host body’s exact racial make-up, I am not so comfortable disclosing many specific details, but suffice it to say it is multi-racial with some African American and other non-white heritage.
? Again, my most extreme apologies, regardless of what I meant to express. Are there any other primates I should not wish to envoke the name of, for the sake of avoiding this kind of trouble in the future?
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
I needed the link to get the reference, but it’s a good reference! I knew you didn’t mean it as a slur, but I also agree with the comments about that racial slur still being in use, unfortunately. Trying to find “okay” primates or animals to use as insults seems like a dangerous approach, too; maybe just don’t make insults that imply people aren’t human if you don’t want to dehumanize.
Agemegos
Yep. Dehumanising people is bad.
APersonAmI
I do not. The insult is still in racist use. I’ve seen biggots photoshop black womens heads onto the bodies of apes in order to dehumanize and humiliate, recently.
Ron
This coming from a place where racism as being referred to here is much less an issue, my thought process went a little like this: “wow, calling anyone a Monkey is racist now?” “it’s still in use as racial slur, well that’s really sad” “people photoshop what onto what now”
And now I’m mostly sad that we have to censor our language because of the abuse by a few but I understand. I use little monkey (translated) as an endearing term. I encourage you all to do the same. Turn a bad word into a sweet one.
cbwroses
Calling black people monkeys has been racist almost from jump, specifically “porch monkey”.
As for using monkey as a term of endearment, what you say to your loved ones is more or less your business, but it’s not like what you suggest wasn’t tried (and failed) before.
Famously, there was a sports announcer who said something to the fact of “look at that monkey run” about a black player during a football game, and he got in trouble for it. He said he didn’t mean anything racist by it as he said (with home movie evidence to prove it) that he called his kids monkeys, but it didn’t negate the trouble he got in.
Also, the movie Clerks II has a minor plot point where one of the (white) characters said his grandma used to call his family porch monkeys and that he was going to try and bring the word back, even going so far as to write the word on his shirt.
SillyGoose
Seeing as Ron added “translated” after “little monkey”, I suppose in their language just doesn’t have the same overtones. In mine (French), you’d call a child by basically any “pet name”, literally any pet or animal – no one would bat an eyelid at “Viens là mon petit singe” (“Come here little monkey”) and it would be a completely normal thing to say to a child doing any sort of climbing activity. But then children imitate animals all the time, and well, context, right? And you wouldn’t say that to an adult though.
I think our most common would be lapin, chaton and canard / rabbit, kitty and ducky – and I’ve heard ducky used in English too.
But then “female dog” is as bad as in English, with the exact same connotations.
Meagan
That’s actually a really good callback.
Thag Simmons
It has some nasty baggage, that’s true of most of the english language. I fail to see the harm in calling a white person a monkey
Acher4
Question: Joyce is white. So, what does it matter if someone calls her “monkey”?
Wizard
The Language Police rarely stop to consider context or intent before they rush to condemn or at least huffily correct. Personally, I wouldn’t refer to any black person as a monkey or ape, precisely because I’m aware of the history. But in this context, I don’t see anything terribly offensive. Avoiding deliberate racial slurs is a good thing, but avoiding any word or usage that’s ever been used this way is going to shut down vast swaths of language to little purpose.
Arillius
It will not shut down vast swaths of language and it does not have ‘little purpose’. Some people are still affected today by those words. Germany’s doing fine while banning some words, not sure why other countries can’t realize it’s okay to make racism literally illegal.
DragonStryk72
Okay, so we need to have this chat. I’m half Irish, half Cherokee, but you will note that I cannot have this conversation in either Gaelic or Tsalagi, only English, since they made a pattern of beating our speech out of us on both sides of the family. Heck, I only know the *word* for the Cherokee language because I was with a dance team in high school.
Do you want racist terminologies to go away? Stop calling them out. No, I’m not kidding. The reason people throwing around Mick as a slur was because it stopped coming up. Same with how Redskin and other racist terms for Native Americans did.
This is starting to become the issue of the D.A.R.E. program from school. Rather than help children stay away from drugs with education, it instead had the effect of *introducing* children to drugs, as well as how and where to get them, as well as what the effects were.
Yes, slurs need to go away, racism is horrible, but fighting it this way is like fighting a forest fire with Kerosene. It’s not gonna go away like you think it will, and you may be spreading it wider.
BBCC
Both of those are still thrown around regularly. And while, sure, I can see telling someone totally unsolicited spreading it to an unknowing audience, telling someone already using it is not. That person clearly ALREADY knows about it as a slur and knows to use it as one. Telling them that it isn’t acceptable is the only way to get them to stop it. Not saying anything gives them no incentive to drop it.
Arillius
Redskin was literally a Football team name until it got called out enough. Not sure you know what you’re talking about if you think Racism goes away by ignoring it. America’s been ignoring it for 50 years and it’s still racists as f.
The Wellerman
Sorry fellas, looks like imma need a break from all this.
Out of all the neurodivergent stripes I have, perhaps one of the most egregious is severe rejection sensitivity, which I am now experiencing a lot of.
There’s an extra layer of pure OOF here because I literally spent 4 hours obsessing over how to best format my comment, only to have the message fall flat on its face because I overlooked a single detail. ?
A lot of emotions are going on right now. I don’t feel so good.
???????
LiamKav
Mate, take all the time you need, but if it helps then all you needed was “whoops, sorry, didn’t realise, I’ll avoid using that word in the future” and I’m sure most people’s response would have been “cool, no problem”. But you do what’s best for you.
Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Using words accidentally that have unfortunate implications is no-where near as bad as refusing to learn from those mistakes.
Shadowsnail
It’s a bummer how some words get loaded like that – in some Asian cultures, calling a child a monkey would imply being clever and mischievous (like the Monkey King) but then it’s problematic in certain situations.
It can be exhausting trying to adjust the things you say because of terrible people (often people from the past), but I guess that’s the world we live in.
a/snow/mous/e
Oh yeah, as a fellow neurodivergent person, I really feel that…
I don’t think anybody’s upset with you, though, since it’s clear you didn’t mean it offensively (esp. because Joyce isn’t African-American!). Try not to stress out too much.
I suppose the idea must be that if people use those words as insults, even without the racial component, they might accidentally use it in an apparently offensive context, or give the wrong message about the usage being “okay” to use when it can be very hurtful when there’s any possibility of a racial component? I dunno, society is complicated. But at any rate, I’m pretty sure the comment was supposed to be informational, not an admonition. So yeah, you’re okay! 🙂
I hope this was some comfort to you, idk i’m never quite sure if saying something will make things better or worse
Wizard
Were you deliberately trying to be offensive? Based on your comments, I’m sure you weren’t. So don’t sweat it. I’m all in favor of not being deliberately or even negligently offensive, but I refuse to censor myself to satisfy the most hyper-sensitive people. Some of them may actually mean well, but still take things to ridiculous extremes. And many of them seem to just be eagerly searching for things to take offense to. Either way, my advice is not to let them get under your skin. (I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge that might be a lot easier said than done, but still, don’t beat yourself up any more than you can help.)
FaerwenOfValenwood
next to no one is “eagerly searching” for things to take offense to, homeslice. offensive things, by definition, hurt—and social pain is one of the most actively avoided kinds of pain there is.
annarchy
I don’t count, because I cant even.
Kaiyalai
How odd.
Freddie!
That’s natural.
TomHCinMI
Good for Dina standing up for herself!
(And for Aspies everywhere, maybe.)
OTOH I can’t blame Joyce too much.
Her upbringing was not the most informative.
Doctor_Who
How I used to see Dina.
How I currently see Dina.
For those who can’t tell, this is an upgrade.
TrueVCU
Daria is ALWAYS an upgrade
Illithid
Jane would be a lateral move, but otherwise agreed.
zee
Actually Jane is a little better than Daria. Slightly less judgemental, slightly less of a dick. Slightly.
vlademir1
Those are both good landmarks for Dina.
Throwatron
Frankly, I’m just relieved there’s a chat out there where a ton of the people are roughly the same age as I am.
Sirksome
Eh, you were both kind of assholes here, maybe all 3 of you. Joyce was the bigger one though.
Shitbird
Literally all Dina has done here was state that her parents have never struck her after coming to Joyce out of concern for Becky, someone they both deeply care about, how was she an asshole?
Delicious Taffy
She sat on Joyce, which is pretty rude and definitely wasn’t asked for. Degrading their entire interaction to a binary “asshole/worse asshole” dichotomy does feel a bit silly, though.
Sirksome
Joyce said something inappropriate, but I don’t think Dina gets a free pass here. She woke Joyce up and asked a rather personal question and once she got her answer rephrased it to something worse than Joyce intended, which instigated this whole, muddy, interaction. You don’t just get to say Joyce is an asshole here, when both Dina and Sarah are partially responsible for this as well. But like Delicious Taffy said, it’s actually pretty silly to try to simplify these kinds of conversations into *Well someone’s an asshole* That’s not how adult interactions should work. They’re all big girls and this ended very immaturely from all sides.
Alanari
Dina is most likely autistic, so she most likely has problems with social etiquette. In a bid to do it right, she tried to replicate Joyce’s “waking up people” routine as good as possible, in the basic assumption that this is how waking up works with Joyce. This most likely was an attempt to be as accommodating as possible. It went wrong (for starters, Joyce’s routine is bad to begin with), but I wouldn’t count it as an asshole move.
And this was the direct response to jocye saying Dina was a robot, effectively denying her any humanity, and telling her she doesn’t matter. Yes, you get to say someone is an asshole when they insult and degrade you.
Sirksome
The waking up part isn’t the issue even though a lot of comments are stating that. Dina asked Joyce a personal question and then rephrased her answer in a way Joyce didn’t like. Specifically saying Joyce’s spankings were “beatings” and “hitting” something Joyce immediately corrected her on while stating it was step too far. Dina didn’t apologize or correct this, when it’s a subject that’s clearly sensitive to Joyce, and Sarah essentially just added fuel to the flame by validating Dina with her own opinion and thinly veiled sarcasm instead of backing off the conversation. And what happened? Joyce lashed out, which is common when a person is agitated purposefully or not. So yes they were all assholes here. Joyce was cruel and degrading in her retaliation, but Dina doesn’t get a pass, just because maybe she couldn’t read the cues of Joyce’s discomfort. And Sarah really has no justification here, she was just being a bit obnoxious. So yeah you can call Joyce an asshole, but you also have to call Dina an asshole, and Sarah an asshole, or better yet no one’s an asshole, and they’re just three dumb teens that suck at communicating. That happens.
Meagan
I’m on a computer so I don’t have emojis, so *clap clap clap*
Alanari
A spanking IS a beating. Or a hitting.
My parents are like Joyce. They also talk about spanking. They were beaten into obedience. It’s a self defense mechanism to make an assault smaller than it actually is. Most victims of domestic violence diminish the attacks. Comes with loving the person that is hurting you. As a person who was on both sides of that, with my parents having been hit and me being assaulted by my first boyfriend, never feed into that narrative. It perpetuates the situation.
There’s a difference between trying to help a victim in domestic violence see though the patterns and purposefully degrading a person (hence following the very same pattern the parents showed her, just with different means).
Z
Spanking generally implies open palm slap -which I’m okay with leaving open for debate.
Even according to the “rule of thumb”, a wooden spoon isn’t okay. Where’s the line for you? Is it okay to call it spanking with a baseball bat, crowbar, or pipe iron?
(“Rule of thumb” as in the rule that a man can beat his wife with any stock narrower than his thumb. I can’t recall if it’s an urban legend or a literal law that was on the books somewhere. The end of a wooden spoon is larger than a thumb so is *not okay*)
If someone says “yeah I that person was resistant but I just had to hold them down a little and then they let me fuck them” it’s reasonable to describe that as rape *because it is*.
Reframing “spanking” with a wooden spoon as hitting/beating is not an asshole move either.
FlamestAndLight
Honestly, in terms of psychological damage that corporal punishment causes to children, the difference between open hand spanking and wooden spoon spanking is not that significant. Studies have shown that they both have negative impacts on children’s mental health for years afterwards regardless of whether the child even realizes the instances were traumatic years later.
As it turns out, punishment is both often traumatizing to children AND less effective for behavior modification than positive and negative reinforcement.
Frankly just because open palm spanking is considered socially acceptable doesn’t make it *not* abusive. You’re literally taking a small human with a developing brain and you’re committing intentional violence against them as punishment.
Jflb96
The intent is ‘make them associate bad behaviour with pain,’ but really what they associate with pain is ‘getting caught’ and ‘their parents’.
Our dad used to smack us on the back of the hand if we were naughty, and then he stopped when I was about seven because he saw we were flinching whenever he called us over, even if we hadn’t done anything. I’m the eldest, so my siblings probably don’t even remember; that being said, he did keep using the handle of his knife to remind my brother to cut his food before it left the plate.
Jflb96
From what I remember, when it was suggested in the UK the judge that didn’t so was ridiculed in the public press as ‘Judge Thumb, purveyor of wife-beating sticks’
Sirksome
See this is the problem too. It’s not actually about whether Joyce was abused. We all know by now she and Becky both were, just because they were raised in a home that valued obedience over everything else. Becky wasn’t allowed to discover her sexuality, they both are horribly repressed and traumatized, ect.
The problem is they’re trying to redefine Joyce’s experience. You can’t do that. Joyce said “beating” was too harsh a word for what she felt. They didn’t listen, that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if “hitting” or “beating” are correct terms, It doesn’t matter if Joyce was abused. She felt uncomfortable using those terms, and they should’ve respected that and didn’t and that upset Joyce.
If I were to make some educated assumptions, I’d guess Becky might also be pissed if someone started saying her parents punishments were abuse or “beatings” even though we’ve seen first hand the corporal punishment Ross was more than comfortable with. Because children have complicated relationships with their parents, and it would also imply Bonnie was at least complicit in it. Even if that’s true Becky is incredibly protective of her mom’s memory. This is why you respect people’s boundaries when having these conversations. That was just a hypothetical though. I have no idea how Becky feels about her family’s discipline of her.