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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3626 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Wait, 'Trump is retarded' would be OK? That seems inconsistent with recent moderation around 'tranny'?

I'd treat "Trump is retarded" the same way I'd treat "Trump is an idiot." If you're making an effortful post with a real argument (the thesis of which is Trump's idiocy), I probably wouldn't mod it because you called him "retarded." If you're just dropping a "Trump is retarded" comment because you don't like Trump, I'd ding it for low effort, but I'd do the same for "Trump is an idiot."

That makes sense -- but what I mean is that this seems inconsistent with "Contrapoints is a tranny" being a problem -- even though "tranny" doesn't particularly imply anything bad about Contrapoints ! (unlike, say, "Contrapoints is retarded")

I observe a 100% correlation between those who call someone a tranny (besides themselves in jest) and those who imply something bad about that person and about them being trans.

You might as well try to argue that "retarded" doesn't imply anything bad because arrested intelligence isn't necessarily bad.

I'm not going to argue either of those things, but the point is that it's not a direct insult like 'retarded' -- it's unlikely that anyone would call me a tranny, but while I recognize the valence, to put this in personal terms: somebody calling me a 'honky' or something seems less bad than calling me retarded? Would you yourself prefer 'sun_the_second is a <insert crass racial slang>', or 'sun_the_second is <insert crass denigration of your intelligence>'?

Even taking the crassness out of it I'd probably prefer to be called a honky to 'not very smart' or something?

The hardest-hitting insults are the ones that are technically (and obviously) correct but add a negative valence to it. They stick. So no, I wouldn't be particularly offended if I was called retarded, I'm nowhere close to sub-90 IQ and don't look like it either. It's like when back in childhood some kid called me a fatso (I've never been above regular BMI). I was just confused and wondering if that kid couldn't see very well.

So no, I wouldn't be particularly offended if I was called retarded

More, or less so than calling you a honky? (or wop or spic or pack or jock or whatever, as the case may be)

I don't even know what a honky is.

Roughly like 'nigger' for white people.

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