Someone wrote in [community profile] dekedangle_rpfanon 2017-05-25 03:26 am (UTC)

Re: Discussion Thread

I think you have some really good points here. You're right that homophobic slurs and gendered slurs are the same in the terms of the logic that fuels the use of the word as an insult, which like you said, is devaluing a group of people based on perceived lacking of "maleness." But that doesn't give all slurs the same power and violence, even the ones that work according to the same logic, so I wouldn't agree with you that it's "complete" double standard. I think it's quite clear that some slurs are worse than others, because of each particular word's history and connotation of violence. I don't think it's crazy to contemplate that particular homophobic slurs do carry more violence with them than particular gendered slurs (not because misogyny isn't as bad or isn't as violent, but because that violence might manifest itself most strongly through a different avenue).

The flip side is that people won't universally agree on the power and violence that each particular slur has, so maybe we can have a conversation like this on meme, but when it comes to evaluating (and potentially disciplining) slur use by hockey players, we shouldn't be using a "sliding scale" of acceptability (just like people were saying about Getzlaf and Shaw). I'm kind of resistant to the thought that every use of "bitch" by a woman is internalized misogyny (which is sort of what I'm gathering from your comment?), especially having seen lots white women accusing WOC who have called them "bitches" of sexism in a pretty obvious deflection of a conversation about their racism (I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about why WOC might deliberately choose to use gendered insults for reasons that aren't misogyny and lack of enlightenment). But at the end of the day that doesn't have anything to do with male hockey players using these words, so maybe our conversation about the particular power the these words have (for us as individuals and in our communities) should be separate from what should be done about straight men using these words.

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