There are a lot of things that happen on the internet that I dislike, but I believe the one that bothers me the most is the kind of passive bigotry you see in a lot of comment threads and chat streams. I'm nearly certain it happens just as often in real life, but given the people i surround myself with I'm not exposed to it there as much.
What I'm referring to is when someone says something like "that's gay" and when called out on it claims "it's not about homosexuals", or some other untenable claim regarding it's alleged non-offensiveness. Keep in mind, this sort of scenario occurs with misogynistic, transphobic, racist, classist, and ableist speech just as often and largely with the same sort of justification that boils down to this: "I didn't mean to insult the people that the word specifically refers to, just the people I meant to insult." Given the English lexicon, this is complete and utter horseshit. There are thousands of ways to say "That is bad" or "You are inferior" or whatever message you are trying to convey without resorting to using language meant to dehumanize, otherize, and otherwise demean entire classes of people who are unrelated to the issue at hand. If you cannot take the time to find a different word, then you are simply lazy, and evidently, have no interest in appearing open-minded. There is no justification for using bigoted language, when the available and commonly used vocabulary of the English language, in every single English speaking region, has a large number of alternatives.
Worse yet is the "for the sake of comedy" defense. While fairly common among the general public via "I'm only joking", it's very common among professional and semi-professional comedians and comedic personalities, which is just as, if not more problematic. The problem with this, of course, is that if you are in a situation in which you can speak to a large number of people, then you have a responsibility to uphold. While most of your audience may understand that you are "joking", the fact of the matter is, some (if not most) of them will miss the point of the joke, and laugh because you poked fun at an easy target, rather than your (presumably) intended target, the bigoted people themselves. At that point, you are not being "edgy" or "satirical", you're simply reinforcing negative stereotypes and justifying the views of the people in your audience who are bigots. Positive communication is paramount to advancement, as can easily be seen looking at any equal rights movement in history. Until actual egalitarianism reins, language choice is important.
No comments:
Post a Comment