Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
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![This actually happened to me.
fyeahpdp:
[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with light shadow and short light hair wearing a suit jacket over a button down shirt and red bow tie. Has a big-toothed smile and is talking with his hands.
Top text: “Times are bad, so we’ll have to start firing people.” Bottom text: “I’m just kidding!”]
My boss made this joke to a client while standing right in front of me. He is very wealthy, but I live paycheck-to-paycheck as I’m working my way through school.
Joking about how casually you can ruin my life isn’t cool, and it just makes me not trust you. Not very healthy for a workplace environment, methinks.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln7xvbWOi01qgy0fio1_250.png)
This actually happened to me.
[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with light shadow and short light hair wearing a suit jacket over a button down shirt and red bow tie. Has a big-toothed smile and is talking with his hands.
Top text: “Times are bad, so we’ll have to start firing people.” Bottom text: “I’m just kidding!”]
My boss made this joke to a client while standing right in front of me. He is very wealthy, but I live paycheck-to-paycheck as I’m working my way through school.
Joking about how casually you can ruin my life isn’t cool, and it just makes me not trust you. Not very healthy for a workplace environment, methinks.
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Every Minority Has a Word
Privilege - you’re doing it.
The author Staks starts out well enough, by explaining the basics of minority slurs.
Recently however I was listening to one of my favorite radio talk show hosts and he (as a gay man) took ownership of the word, “faggot.” He puts this word in the same category as the word, “nigger.” I can see his point of view here. I would never call a gay person a faggot just as I would never call a black person a nigger.
But then he ruins his moral high ground with this zinger:
Then Sarah Palin stepped in to the game and insisted that no one use the word, “retarded.” As a retard herself, I am guessing she wants exclusive rights to that word. That is where I started to get uncomfortable. But since Sarah Palin is… well… retarded.
No, no she isn’t. And it’s not for some third party to decide that, either. What’s more, she has a child with Down’s Syndrome. People with DS frequently are called “retards” as a degrading ableist slur, so I think she is more aware of what she’s talking about than you, Staks.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Why the insistence on using anti-disability slurs for the sake of convenient political jabs? Simple: it’s privilege, and Staks has plenty to spare.
However my disagreements aside, why can’t atheists join in this game too? What word can we own exclusively?
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I want to point out that offense is taken and not given. So in my mind, we choose what words offend us.
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I want a word just for our community that no one else can call us. I want to join in these reindeer games.
Excuse me while I grab a sip of water. I just threw up in my mouth.
Edit: Because Jane Lynch is amazing.
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Straightsplaining
Congratulations, lesbians, it’s a choice! So sez this straight man, anyway, so it must be true, because he’s a man, and he knows things:
I’ve tried extremely hard to trick my mind into being gay, but found it’s impossible for me, however it’s not impossible for everyone and I think it may be easier to become a lesbian than gay (most women are able to judge a woman’s looks, I’m not able to judge a man’s looks, all men are equally as ugly to me). All I’m saying is that, under capitalism and the dominant culture it produces, if a woman wants to avoid being treated as property by her mate then she has a better chance of doing so as a lesbian than straight. If you can do it, do it, if not then I’m glad you exist too because it gives me hope that even if more women do start to wake up to the fact that they are oppressed and rather than internalize that oppression (got to put a ring on “it” etc.. ) they fight back against it, I will still have a chance of finding a mate :)
Also, as my later posts point out, I don’t lump all women into the same boat. What I’ve put forth about the status of women here deals primarily with women who’re under heavy influence of the dominant culture in society, the rich White culture (of selfishness, exploitation, and destruction), and I fully recognize there are conscious women who’ve dedicated themselves to going up against that and bringing about a new culture. Many of these women are lesbians and many have become lesbians because they do not want to play the role that the dominant culture has cast them in (sex objects and breeders of children whose worth is bound up in their looks and usefulness to men…property).There you have it - you’re not a lesbian because of who you’re attracted to. You’re a lesbian because of choice! And capitalism! Yay!
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Privilege-Denial
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Atheism+:
"Is your complaint that you're just now getting to feel as uncomfortable as people of minority genders tend to feel in most other atheist spaces?"
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White Dude:
"Yes, but I'm hardly the one causing that feeling to them, as a pansexual. Besides, two wrongs don't make a right."
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Atheism+:
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
