fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6598 ]

[ SECRET POST #6598 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6598 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #943.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think most people in this thread would say they've never gone out with intent to be a bigot, but have definitely done or said bigoted things either by accident, ignorance, or being misinformed by people they thought they could trust e.g. parents and teachers. The question was about actions, not intent.

I simply don't think you can be a bigot by accident. A bigotry, for me, refers to who you are, what is in your heart. Maybe it was possible at one point to be bigoted out of ignorance by accident, but today? Nah.

Like if someone says "All gay people are child molesters" because they are so ignorant as to ACTUALLY believe it - and I can't understand how that happens to anyone who was born from, say, the 80's onwards - Then they are not being "accidentally" bigoted. That bigotry comes from a place of choosing a STUNNING level of ignorance and a will full lack of empathy.

You grew up with the same TV shows telling you the same things about how people are all fundamentally the same under the skin - like that shit was drummed into us in the 90's, I literally never had a /chance/ to believe anything other than that - and you were like "But my daddy says homos fuck kids, so I guess captain planet was lying to me!"

You show me a whole new breed of person, someone I've never encountered before... fucking blue people from the moon or some such, and you might have the chance to slip some bigoted ignorant beliefs into my head for the first couple of months of me knowing of their existence, but at the point I was born...

Hell, it's like the meme: "Born too late to hate blacks, born too early to hate aliens, born just in time to hate women."

I mean this question is asking about people's entire lives including way back when they were 15, which might have been in the 1990s-2000s.

I don't think people are saying they thought gay people are child molesters last week, they're saying they used to say things like "that's so gay" in the 90s until they learned better.

I used to say "that's so gay" in the 90's. And it never had ANYTHING to do with disliking homosexuals.

I suspect you wont believe this, but even back then there was a disconnect between truley alien idea's like "Gay people are bad" and phrases like "You're acting like a fag".

I get that times change, I get that there may be much older people on this comm who weren't raised by TV and MIGHT have missed out on all the programming... but I was comfortable using these kinds of phrases around gay people back in the... well not the 90's cause I was too young to know many, but by the time the early 2000's rolled around I have a few gay people in my crowd and it really was just a figure of speech and not indicative of any actual hate. And the way I see it, no hate = no bigotry.

You can disagree, I'm familiar with the idea that the presence of the word either confirms or conjures the hate, but I so strongly disagree and I haven't been budged on this by the last 10-15 years of language policing, so I think we might probably have to agree to disagree on that.

You know what, TL;DR: I strongly believe bigotry to be the belief, not the words. The words can sometimes suggest the belief, and the words these days can be used to ASSUME the belief, but the words alone do not automatically MEAN the belief. And I am in the position to KNOW my own belief in a way you wouldn't.

Edited 2025-01-29 00:46 (UTC)

Yeah this proves the point that you just haven't really grown and learned.

If you insist.

I've grown and learned enough that as long as I know myself, as long as I take the time to really examine myself, and hold myself to my own principals, and that I am comfortable that those principals truly represent me, then I really don't need to be concerned with the version of me that exists in the minds of strangers on the internet.

"that's so gay"

What did you think that meant? Why was "gay" a negative? I'm not saying you had conscious bigotry, but this is the kind of bigotry you marinate in and don't even understand what you're saying. How do you think it felt to be gay in the 1990s and 2000s and hear kids using "gay" to mean "terrible"?

But its okay because he had gay friends! And the gay friends didn't mind!

No, I see what you're doing and I probably shouldn't engage but I have to correct one point: This was the early 2000's. My gay friends didn't "Not Mind". They spoke this way too.

It's context sensitive. I view it the same as a homograph. I tell you I'm going to hit you with a bat, you don't genuinely believe I'm going to throw a flying nocturnal mammal at you.

I tell you to stop acting like such a gay for kissing your boyfriend, you know what I mean. But I tell you to stop acting like such a gay for cheating at cards, you CAN assume I'm implying that cheating at cards is a homosexual behaviour... or you can accept that context changes the meaning.

As to how it felt, I can only report what gay people who were teenagers with me said in the 2000's "Why would I care, I'm not a fag" or words to that effect. And I do not believe this was an attempt to re-enter the closet.

Edited 2025-01-29 08:07 (UTC)

please just return to troll Hell where you belong.
you're not fooling anyone with your fake return.

Ok, you gotta let me know what you mean by "fake return"

Like Mercury in retrograde.

I strongly believe bigotry to be the belief, not the words. The words can sometimes suggest the belief, and the words these days can be used to ASSUME the belief, but the words alone do not automatically MEAN the belief. And I am in the position to KNOW my own belief in a way you wouldn't.

Sorry, this just sounds like a roundabout way to say it's cool to make bigoted or hateful remarks, then backpedal going "it was a joke you guys, I don't actually think that, chill out!"

If it walks like a duck, etc. If your words present you as a bigot, then yeah, you'll be perceived as one. If you're not actually a bigot, then... use different words?

I simply do not believe in magic words. Remarks are not themselves hateful. Words can SHOW hatred they can reveal it, but they themselves do not inherently contain hatred. Saying a word does not turn you into a bigot, and acting like the utterance of the forbidden symbol is like the mark of cain, revealing the evil inside seems... Well, it seems down right dogmatic to me.

As to whether you perceive me as a having hate after I explain my meaning in using those words? I wish you wouldn't, but I can't control that. It's important (for me) to remember that what you think of me isn't me.

As to using different words: I do. Have you ever seem me call anyone on this comm a "slur"? Because whatever I believe about myself and my freedom to express myself however I feel, I recognise strangers have no reason to assume the best of me and I don't feel the need to be perceived as hatefully attacking strangers. That doesn't change the way I feel about words and beliefs. Recall this thread is about my own measure of bigotry, not other peoples.

How does this notion fare against the euphemism treadmill?

There are terms that are considered inclusive, or an improvement over previous terms, that later come to be seen as bigoted. A recent example: in the late aughts/early teens, trans* came into use. Since "trans" can describe a diverse range of identities, using the asterisk was viewed as a way to signal understanding of this diversity, and to include everyone. This usage was encouraged by trans people themselves in the LGBTQ community; they were generally the people educating others about it. "Just so you know, trans* is preferred over trans," etc.

A few years ago, trans* began to be seen in a totally different light. I'll confess that I'm still not completely sure why, but the fact is that if you write trans* instead of trans, you may be called out, and told that the asterisk is bigoted. Does this mean that everyone who adopted it during the period when it was the preferred term are actually bigots, and were so the entire time?

Same with just about every mental or physical disability. And mind, this is not a case of classic boomer "ugh you can't say ANYTHING anymore" mentality for when they're not allowed to use the n-word anymore but just the amound of terms for, say, dwarves/little people, certain skin colours, mental disabilities like downs syndrome or just the terms used for mentally or physically disabled/handicapped (see, I'm not even sure which one to use atm) people as a group has changed a lot over the years and often several times, also back and forth, in quick succession so that anyone not currently aware of any recent changes could have been guilty of using a "bigoted" word they sincerely believed was the correct one.
And that's not even touching the whole "reclaimed slurs/well I prefer this term" debate, not just outside but inside the respective communities as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #6598 ]

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!

Re: Purity test time!