[Insert "ironic" use of offensive term to illustrate edgy-ness]

A tad behind the times on this, but there’s been so much idiocy going about these days one has had trouble keeping up – not to mention that The Christmas is fast approaching.

First things first:  Long story short, Paul Henry added to his incredibly long list of infractions against basic tact/class/decency/empathy by referring to Susan Boyle as “retarded”.

Second thing second:  The bloggers at The Hand Mirror have a post up with some ideas about how to actually do something more than ignore Paul Henry in the vain hope he’ll go away.

Third thing third:  I could go on (and on and on and on) about Paul Henry, but that gets a little dull after a while, and why bother when there’s a much higher calibre of stupidity on the menu?

I speak of an instalment of Moata’s Blog Idle on *shudder* Stuff.

Specifically, a post entitled (because she’s so clever!) Let’s get retarded.

I’m sure we’re all breathless with antici…pation to see where she’s going to go with this one, right?

Well, she’s straight into it with an innovative twist on the old “I’m not racist but …”:

Let me just start by stating quite clearly that I am no great fan, or any sized fan, of Paul Henry.

It’s not just that you can see the apologism bearing down on you from miles away, it’s that there’s also something of an attempt to invoke QoT’s Law Of Strange Bedfellows:  why, if adorable “thirtysomething”* quirky girl-blogger Moata is actually going to agree with crotchety wankstain Paul Henry, surely there must be something in it, right?

And after some meandering through the classic Stuff blogger’s “what I ate for breakfast today” opening paragraphs we’re into the meat of it, the delicious steak of oblivious privilege upon which all future paragraphs will be but an array of experience-enhancing sauces:

But let’s have a little discussion about the use of the word “retard”, shall we, since it seems to be very much a topic of conversation at the moment?  In the past I’ve been taken to task for my use of this word, and I’ve accepted that it’s not to everyone’s liking but I am relatively unapologetic about it.  I’m very much a fan of words and I’m not going to facetiously claim that a word is just a word and it can’t hurt you.  Certainly words do have power, but sometimes only as much power as you are willing to give them.

Talking to readers like they’re schoolchildren and having to type out this post is a chore? Check.

Martyr complex because ZOMG someone has previously expressed displeasure at your use of offensive words? Check.

Brash declaration of refusal to give in to The Soldiers of Political Correctness, buttressed with sanctimonious I LOVE LANGUAGE bullshit? Check.

Statement about not downplaying something’s offensiveness immediately succeeded by downplaying its offensiveness? Check.

Smug implication that it’s actually your fault for feeling offended, you hypersensitive snowflake? Check.

With AMAZING BONUS “oh but I said sometimes I didn’t mean you” weasel-clause? Ladies, gentlemen, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, we have a winner!

This is a princely piece of work, this.  The word “retarded”, you see, is simply not to everyone’s liking. It’s a matter of personal taste, an aesthetic choice, much like those stimulating “whence” vs. “from whence” debates one might have over a cup of wanker tea.  Nothing serious.

Nothing, for example, like a word with strong negative connotations used as a blanket term for both all mental illness and a lack of intellect, forethought, reason, or rational capabilities.

Nothing that could possibly give any kind of message, like “mentally ill people are all stupid”, certainly nothing that could be used to dehumanize an entire group of people, nothing that could be a part of common usage as a putdown because we view people with mental illness as being lesser beings,  because we [being of course the neurotypical majority who get to decide these things] consider it a bad, awful, horrible thing to be thought of as a retard.

If you’re having a hard time drawing the comparison, consider “throwing like a girl”, which I’ll come back to in a moment – because first, Moata has to let us know just how unwilling she is to acknowledge reality.

My take on the use of the word “retarded” is that it falls into two distinct categories.  You can use it derogatively or jocularly to refer to someone or something that is judged to be stupid or behave stupidly.  For instance, “trying to flirt with a woman by telling her you’re going to kidnap her (I overheard a guy yell this at an attractive female as she walked past a couple of weeks ago) is retarded”.  This is probably the way that the word is used by most people, most of the time (though not on television).

The second use of the term is to refer to someone who has some kind of deficiency of intellect that can accurately be described as a kind of mental retardation.  As best as I can tell this is the origin of the word “retard” which has since acquired a broader usage by being applied to things (or people) who are not, in fact, mentally deficient.

Like an episode of The Simpsons, we’re working on multiple levels here.  So, the first “distinct category” – retarded = stupid (oh but remember, it can be used jocularly!).

The second, retarded = mentally deficient.

First, the junior circuit stupid.  Moata apparently wants us to believe that when people call someone retarded, we just mean “stupid”.  Nothing more.  It’s just a synonym, with no implications or assumptions. No one, hearing a person say “That guy is retarded” (jocularly!), could possibly understand it to mean “that person is mentally deficient the way a generic person with mental illness (but let’s face it, probably someone with visible illness/condition/disability, and let’s face it further, almost certainly down’s syndrome) is mentally deficient”.

No no no, they hear “that guy is retarded” and it magically has no associations with the second “distinct category” at all. Fuck me, I think Moata’s a psychic and hasn’t figured out the rest of us aren’t.

Senior stupid:  if we look very closely in the thick undergrowth of the bloggy rainforest, we may be able to make out some fan-fucking-tastic normative language.

some kind of deficiency of intellect

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?  The way Moata, and a lot of her readers, and certainly all the other people who hit on this particular defence of the word, make nice big bold statements about how there’s obviously a normal level of intellect, and some people just don’t have it, and so they’re deficient.  Not like us normal people who have normal intellects.

And it’s obviously totes cool to refer to these deficient people as retards, because they’re backwards.  You know, like referring to indigenous peoples as primitive or barbaric because they haven’t discovered the joys of urban disease and nuclear warfare.  I mean, it’s a thoroughly objective thing to do, because we’re normal.  Right?  I mean, we must be, because everyone knows that not being normal would be a terrible thing.

But don’t let me get carried away.  Moata continues to impress by finding new and astounding ways to make my jaw drop:

So the irony with regards to the current Paul Henry debacle (there’ll be another one next week) is that he’s got himself into trouble for using the word, not in the derogatory way that it is often used by people like me, but by actually applying it to someone who apparently is a little retarded.

Now, the fact that “Paul smooth-as-a-gravy-sandwich Henry” took a gleeful delight in reading about Susan Boyle’s misfortune in life is an entirely different issue.  He could have used any word to describe her mental condition; what’s really upsetting is the silly, schoolboy laughter that accompanied it.

(emphasis hers)

I mean, shit on a brick.  The irony is that Paul Henry was actually calling a person retarded who IS retarded!  Isn’t life funny that way?  I mean, obviously he went too far with the laughing, the implication in his laughter that being retarded is a bad thing.  Because we all know that it can just be an accurate term for someone who’s mentally deficient.  Right?

And Susan Boyle obviously is retarded, I mean, Moata’s a physician psychic so she knows, it’s not like she, just like Paul Henry, is making assumptions about people based on their appearances or lives or attitudes or anything.

It’s certainly not like she, like Paul Henry, like many other people, feel quite comfortable saying “this woman looks a bit dim and is single and old and sings songs from Les Mis so she must have been brain damaged because no normal person could be dim/single/old/a Les Mis fan”.  It’s not like the continuing casual use of the word retard in any way supports these assumptions.  That would be wrong.

It’s par for the course that, naturally, Moata doesn’t really take these ideas any further.  That would involve her having ideas.  Instead, it’s back to the Stuff blogger’s grab-bag of tricks and making it all about her:

Personally, I’m going to continue to call myself or my nearest and dearest “retarded” when I or they do something stupid.  I’m going to continue to prefer the original version of the Black Eyed Peas song otherwise sanitised-for-our-safety as “Let’s get it started”.  I’m going to continue to think Paul Henry’s a dick, because he kind of is one. What I’m not going to do is taunt someone with an intellectual handicap with the word “retard” or laugh at their misfortune because the thing that I am most grateful for in life is my good mind.

LOOK OUT, WORLD!  We’re dealing with a FREE SPIRIT here who will NOT BE DENIED her right to be a fucking insensitive douchebag of the highest order.

Christ, Moata. Just tattoo “I don’t know anybody with visible disability and I lack the capacity for basic empathy unless something personally affects me” on your forehead while you’re at it.  They can take your original-edit Black Eyed Peas from your cold, dead hands, right?  Because the word “retarded” is just so essential to the subtext of that song, it loses its meaning without it.

And oh good Lords and Ladies, that last sentence.  Let’s see it again for the audience at home:

What I’m not going to do is taunt someone with an intellectual handicap with the word “retard” or laugh at their misfortune because the thing that I am most grateful for in life is my good mind.

So apparently, even though “retarded” is a totally appropriate word to use (jocularly!) to describe people who are “mentally deficient”, Moata … has reservations about using it to a person’s mentally-deficient face.  I guess that’s back to not to everyone’s liking, or maybe it’s just taunting people with it.  Context, tone, these things are all so important when you’re not just taking half a fucking neuron to not be an offensive wanker.

And remember, kiddies, Moata’s most important message: even though there are no bad connotations to a neurotypical person being called a “retard”, because it’s fucking jocular, we should still be mindful of the MISFORTUNES of people with intellectual disabilities.  THOSE POOR FUCKING SOULS, DON’T WE JUST WEEP FOR THEM, THEY’RE LIKE PINOCCHIO ONLY RETARDS INSTEAD OF PUPPETS.  Fucking misfortune, Moata?  You’re going to play the “words only have the power you give them” AND the “it’s technically accurate” cards and then you are going to fucking pity people who have mental disabilities or illness.

Good thing you’ve got a “good mind”, Moata.  That should make up for your complete lack of basic fucking soul.

–

*Personal gripe: OWN YOUR FUCKING AGE, WOMAN.

Minor breakouts of major gripes

I’d long ago realised that part of the reason I post cussy rants about things that seem like just small issues, not a huge deal, isn’t there something more important to worry about – is because those “small issues” just tap into much bigger problems.

Today, two such small issues reared their annoying heads.

The continuing saga of Oh Noes The Brown Man Said A Mean Word broke out on Red Alert, with Hon Trevor insert-duck-to-water-metaphor-here Mallard chipping in to the debate:

If a Pakeha used the term brown mofos it would be racist.  That standard should apply both ways.

Which actually hits several big Pisses Me Right The Fuck Off buttons.  But to summarise:  using the argument of “the same standard” is so close to “one law for all” they couldn’t legally marry in all 50 states of the US.  It’s “special rights”, it’s “level playing field”, and it’s bullshit.

There isn’t a fucking level playing field when one group of people has been historically shat on by another from orbit.  There isn’t a tabula rasa of race relations where such lovely “can’t we all just be equals and ignore skin colour and historical disenfranchisement and oh we tried to destroy your language and culture” ideas can be writ large.

There is a basic reason why a person of Maori descent can refer to “white motherfuckers stealing our land” which does not hold true for a person of European descent saying “brown motherfuckers stealing our car”.  That reason is privilege.  Learn you some.

Second small issue:  in the continuing if-they-wrote-this-for-TV-no-one-would-believe-it tale of Doug Schmuck and some possibly-dodgy legislative drafting, one quote nicely put its thumb directly on my White Middle Class Bastards Who Just Love Law And Order Until It Applies To Them button.

The 15-year fight for the Opua boat ramp had taken “a hell of a lot of time” and cost Mr Schmuck close to $200,000. “A few objectors can run the costs up so high that it makes things like the Resource Management Act untenable,” he said.

Ah, yes.  You can always spot a WMCBWJLL&OUIATT, by the way they seem completely oblivious of the fact that the law still counts even when it might stop them from doing something they want to do.

The classic example is provided every time there’s a Police crackdown on speeding, possibly by, oh the horrors, using hidden speed cameras.  Now, you might think “well if people don’t want to get speeding tickets they could try not speeding”, but such thoughts do not pass through the brains of White Middle-Class Bastards. No no no, this is just a revenue gathering exercise.

It’s not like their own speeding could cause accidents or cost people their lives or anything.  We all know that speed only kills when it’s those bloody Asian homestay students whose rich daddies send them thirty grand a month to buy Ferraris and meth with, obviously.  The laws of physics are very specific on this.

The other classic, of course, is the killing of Pihema Cameron – where the Your Sensible Is Not Like Our Earth Sensible Sentencing Trust decided that actually, that whole “tough punishment for violent crims is the way to save society” line didn’t so much count when the stabber was a rich white guy and the victim was [insert stereotype about Maori teenage boys here].

And so we have (oh Gods it makes me giggle every time) Doug Schmuck.  Who has been nearly bankrupted, dear readers, by busybodies and that bane of the WMCB, the Resource Management Act.  All because he built a private fucking boat ramp on a fucking public reserve.

It’s almost like some people expect Good Hardworking [White Male] Businessmen to obey the law or something.  Don’t they understand the law is for the little people?

NZ has unresolved race issues! OMG WHO KNEW?

Soooooooooo Hone Harawira.  Here’s a Stuff link which vaguely outlines the situation for any non-Kiwi readers, as I can’t imagine there’s a New Zealander with access to the Internet who hasn’t heard about this.

First recommendation: rocky’s two excellent posts at The Standard on the wider foreshore/seabed issue, and ta, rocky, for the link to NZ History Online’s map showing Maori land loss to the present day.  That was a nice sobering hit for a Wednesday evening.

First thought: gee, I wonder if that’s the kind of thing a person, whose ethnic group remains at the bottom of the socio-economic heap, and whose language is apparently so terrifying to the ear that non-Maori will just die if they’re forced to find the mute button hear it, might just be a little pissed off about?  (And see Zetetic’s comment below – of course not!  Nothing to be angry about here!  Just a little diversion from that thing Harawira was totally unapologetic about!)

Second recommendation: the sprout’s post, also at The Standard, on why no, Harawira didn’t actually advocate violence and why yes, this is all just a bunch of privileged white wankers* summoning the spectre of Scary Brown People Who Will Climb In The Windows Of Other New Zealanders At Night**.

Third recommendation: Play bingo with any discussion of this story against the classic Wite-Magik Attax.  It may help, but probably not.

And now, my own little bugbear.

It’s sex, Jim, but not as we know it

Hoyden About Town has another post up in their depressingly-long-running series entitled “It’s not sex, it’s rape” – reporting the nigh-countless occurrences of sexual assaults being described as “having sex”.  Lauredhel includes a link to the fairly comprehensive and highly-recommended Pulling the Plug on Rape Culture One Word at a Time post at The Curvature:

What incorrectly using the word “sex” in cases of rape does is cast a shadow of doubt over the accusation.  The phrase “the defendant had sex with the woman” does indeed assume innocence for the defendant, but does not afford the alleged victim the same courtesy.  Her version of the events is entirely erased – and it also presents the “sex” as an objective fact, though the victim certainly might not view it as such. As far too many people don’t get, rape is not merely sex, but an act of violence – and this wording erases that as well.

Cara talks about how referring to things as “sex” and not “rape” implies consensuality, it implies that what occurred was just sex, not an act of violence – but on reflection, I realised there was a whole other, fairly grotesque, narrative in play.

To wit, that “had sex with a woman” may as well read as “had sex with a mobile vacuum tube“.

SpongeBob Tarau Porowhaa says mean things about you in another language

It’s Maori Language Week, or Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori.  Please excuse my lack of macrons, I do not wish to tempt fate and/or the fragility of WordPress.

First things first: serious, serious kudos to Nickelodeon. (Warning: auto-play)

Next:  As soon as I saw Kelvin Davis had posted on Red Alert, in Maori, without providing a translation, I knew whinging trolls could not be far off.  Call it instinct, call it seeing the same damn thing happen every time a university magazine publishes a Maori Language Week issue:

The porn argument and how not to have it

Caroline Ferguson has a guest post on the continuing and fascinating porn debate happening at The Hand Mirror.  And boy oh boy do I have two big throbbing issues with it.

Following this battle, I was extremely dismayed to find this pro-porn post on THM…. I thought post-”Female Chauvinist Pigs”, sex-positive ‘liberating’ ’stripping-is-empowering type feminism had been pretty clearly debunked – pornography has not ‘benefited’ women, and is no triumph of feminism (as Hugh Hefner argues). How is it that this argument is still continuing among feminists? It leaves us open to being viewed as an incoherent, vitriolic movement, undeserving of respect.

First issue – “has been pretty clearly debunked”.  Either Caroline Ferguson is completely ignorant of the number of feminists and non-feminist-identified women* who are anything but done with the porn/prostitution/BDSM debate, or she knows they exist, but doesn’t give a fuck about their opinions and doesn’t rate their voices.  Talk about a quick-and-easy silencing tool – if you think stripping can be a liberating experience, well, aren’t you a little moron?  That’s been debunked, precious, now go play with your toys until the growed-up feminists finish talking.

ETA: Second issue:  And as noted by Psycho Milt in the first comment at THM, you know what’s really fucking offensive?  Acting like the real problem here is that, oh noes, feminists might be seen to disagree with each other,** which gives us a Bad Image – and that the fucking solution is, “so the other side needs to shut up already because they’re making us look bad”.

Then the thing that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise after that intro:

When we look at the issue of pornography, why not accept the distinction made by Dworkin and MacKinnon between porn and erotica.

Um … because it’s a tad one-sided?

I mean, as we approach a referendum hugely decried for using the circular-logical phrase, “a smack as part of good parental correction“, it shouldn’t need explaining that it’s frankly bullshit to insist your opponents (when you acknowledge they exist) only operate within parameters entirely designed to prove your point.***

That is,

“the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words, that also includes women presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or women presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or women presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest or other sexual assault; or women are presented as sexual objects tied up, cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or women presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or women’s body parts — including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks — exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or women presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or women presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.” (Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 176.)

What about women presented as people who get off on pain?  What about women presented as people who are tied up?  Or women’s body parts presented as part of a woman who is a sexual person?

There’s a whole other argument to be had about BDSM, but my point is this:  if I walked up to Caroline Ferguson and said,

Hey, what’s wrong with taking the distinction:

“the graphic, sexually explicit depiction of women perceived through a female gaze enjoying themselves sexually in a liberated and enthusiastically-consenting manner possibly including sex toys which leave both hands free to give a double thumbs-up to the camera”

I would not be playing fair.  And neither is she.  Personally, I’m not sure about thedifference, semantic or otherwise, between “porn” and “erotica” – probably because I’ve most often seen it used in situations like this, where “porn” gets defined as Sexy Stuff What Is Bad For Women, and “erotica” is Sexy Stuff What Is Good.  Now when those are your starting assumptions, who can blame you for assume the argument’s already over and done?

*And while we’re on the point, it might pay for people to consider why these women refuse to associate themselves with the word “feminism”, and it ain’t because they’re patriarchy-pleasing Slaves to the Man.
**And nothing screams “I need a privilege check” like saying “We need to have a coherent, unified voice which will just probably happen to be middle-class and white.”
***And no, this argument doesn’t work for creation scientists, because they claim to be able to work within a scientific framework anyway.

Offensive pronoun choice: not just for the media

At Questioning Transphobia (hattip: Feministe), we find it isn’t just inept journalists who like to un-gender transfolk to fit their own versions of events, in the story of a Seattle transwoman attacked by a group of teens (oh, only after she solicited them for sex, trufax, all transwomen are hookers obvs).*

And while you may be thinking, “Oh, it’s yet another case of the media using “he” instead of “she” and “was born a male” and “birth name was xyz”", you’d be wrong.

This time it’s the police report.

The victim, in her 30s, told police “that as soon as the suspects got to him [sic], they started hitting and kicking him [sic] …” according to a police report.

…

“He [sic] also stated that he [sic] sometimes wears a skirt and he [sic] stated that he [sic] believes he [sic] was attacked because of this,” according to the heavily redacted report.

There are no convenient, condescending, harassment-minimizing narratives being imposed here at all.

*Which raises a somewhat obvious question, under what other circumstances would it be appropriate to violently gang up on someone who comes on to you?  Because I’ve been hit on by any number of people I’ve found offensive and repulsive, and I sure didn’t get to punish them with a beating.

Oh, *now* we can use the r-word

In case there were lingering doubt in anyone’s mind about the deliberate downplaying of sexual assault that occurs in media reports that commonly use phrases like “began having a sexual relationship with the nine-year-old”, and in case anyone still thinks the “not legally proven to be rape” argument holds water:

Horrified onlookers see daylight sex attack

A woman was abducted from a New Plymouth street and raped in broad daylight yesterday as horrified members of the public looked on.*

The 48-year-old was walking along Breakwater Rd … when she was grabbed by a man who forced her on to a nearby grass area where he sexually violated her in full view of the busy road.

…[Police] were able to arrest the alleged offender, a 29-year-old Taranaki man, soon after.

Look at that! Accurate use of the word “rape” while maintaining legally-mandated presumption of innocence! Who’d'a thunk it?

Unless of course there’s some reason this counts as “real” rape in some mystical way all those other cases don’t.

*In the interests of not confusing the point I am not even going to start on the phrase “looked on”.

Oh, they’re not even TRYING

Word to the clearly un-wise: writing up and distributing a list of phrases people aren’t allowed to use is the easiest way imaginable to expose what fraudulent wanks you are.

Standing in the middle of Lambton Quay, stark naked, with the words “I WANT TO FUCK THE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM IN A VERY UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE” would have been a subtler approach.

But actually spelling out, “don’t say advocacy. Don’t say inequalities. Do say value-for-money health” is pre-school-level stuff.

Who the hell does this? Yes, you want to rebrand things. Yes, you want a clear message and uniform tone across your organisation or Ministry’s communications. But the kind of moronic comms advisor who actually says “let’s tell people they can’t use the phrase “public health” any more” SHOULD BE TAKEN BEHIND THE CHEMICAL SHEDS AND SHOT AT DAWN.

What’s depressing is that this is just par for the fucking course with this Government.

Hat tip: The Standard.

Invisible Hookers

I feel I should have known that this story, discussed in DUFC-featured post Words fail me at The Hand Mirror, was a breeding ground for wank.

Because I would have been so right.

The case:  immigration officials went on a raid on a brothel accompanied by a reality-TV film crew.  One patron of said brothel leapt to his death out a window, presumably out of fear of being identified.

Anna at THM saw this from the angles of 1) potentially safety concerns if sex workers don’t consider brothels safe, and 2) the fuckwittery of Tuariki Delamere acting like the real problem is that suspected trafficking victims might have, oh no, broken immigration law.

Karl du Fresne (whose blog’s title, “Curmudgeon”, should prepare us for some Aren’t I A Practical Old Bastard, Those Yoof Don’t Understand The Realities of Life bollocks from the get-go) thinks this is terrible, too.  You see, it’s a matter of privacy, and how … certain people’s privacy is threatened when reality TV cameras go into brothels.

Go on, guess who Karl’s worried about.