Posts Tagged ‘prejudice’

New ways to be offended by the Internet

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Thanks to the Internet, (relatively) new terms have been entering the vernacular of the web. There's texting and blogging and Twitter and Facebook and Woopra and iPhones and email, just to name a few. And these new terms in turn created new terms. Blogger friends might be called "bliends". People who follow you on Twitter can be called "tweeps". Et cetera ad nauseam.

With all of this new vocabulary, it's only a matter of time until we start seeing offensive terms crop up. In order to head off the stereotypers and hatemongers at the pass, I thought I'd just go ahead and create all of these new offensive terms first. That takes away the word's power. Right?

Here's my list of new offensive, bigoted, racist, sexist terms for new media usage:

Twigger: (n) A person who uses Twitter to sound like an urban African American, whether or not this person actually is African American and/or from an urban setting.

Wopra: (adj) The situation when one's search engine stats show high traffic from keywords such as "cooking pasta", "gold chains on men", "where to buy velour", or "working in sanitation."

E-tard: (n) Electronic correspondence sent in which the sender seems to quite obviously have severe mental deficiency, whether through incorrect spelling, improper grammar, or overall failure to use sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization.

Paki-mail: (n) Electronic correspondence received in response to any customer service query made through a corporation's website, especially when the correspondence was written or copied and pasted by someone who did not read the original query and does not have more than a basic understanding of English.

Blymie: (n) An internet journal or blog dedicated to finding examples of Anti-Semitism, no matter how far-fetched or ludicrous. Typically owned and written by someone in the jewelry, finance, or entertainment industry.

Firefags: (n) A group of individuals who are gay for Firefox.

Chinkipedia: (n) An instance where a Wikipedia page is constantly edited and censored as if subject to the whims of a communist censorship-happy government.

Cunting: (v) The act of sending a text message that dredges up past arguments between the sender and the recipient even if said arguments had already been resolved.

iHun: (n) A multimedia device that is used primarily for looking at pornography and more specifically pornography involving defecation or urination.

Blogpollack: (n) A list of blogs in the sidebar of one's blog that one doesn't actually read but lists because everyone else lists them.

Cyberspic: (n) The corner of the Internet reserved for people to post pictures of and discuss their vehicles outfitted with spoilers, sound systems, and racing gear worth many hundreds the times the value of the actual car.

Now, lest any of you think that I'm racist or prejudiced (unless you're ugly, that is), let me assure you that my goal here is to take the power of these words away by creating them before some bad person could. I'm kind of a hero.


******

In other Avita-news, thanks to those of you who listened to last night's episode of "Clearly, You're Retarded." Britt and I talked about the military and whether or not they are still fighting for our right to live the American way or if their mission has been co-opted by the military leaders to pursue a more imperialist agenda.

If you missed it, you can go here to listen to it, along with all of our archived shows. You can also download the mp3 or find us on iTunes by searching the podcasts for "retarded".

If you're new to the horrors of Avitable.com, don't miss out. Subscribe to my RSS feed!

Nigger

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

"Adam, you wouldn't seriously want a black guy to be our President, would you?"

That's an actual quote from one of my uncles a few weeks ago. The thing is, I didn't grow up in an explicitly racist household. My parents had an interracial couple as some of their best friends, and my mother worked quite closely with plenty of black employees, both at her level and below her on the chain of command. But there was an undercurrent of prejudice that was constant and unwavering.

I never heard the word "nigger" from my parents. I was, however, told to be careful when driving in bad neighborhoods because "they" like to drive into you in a beat-up car and then sue the insurance company. "They" was never explained, but merely understood.

My first girlfriend, Vickie, had olive skin that I thought was gorgeous. Over at my friend Randy's house, showing her picture to his grandfather proudly, I was mortified when he and his son started mocking me for dating a "sand nigger". I didn't even know what that was, but I knew it wasn't something nice.

As a teen, I spent my summers and vacations working for a business owned by family members other than my parents. It was there that I heard "nigger" bandied about regularly, even from relatives who worked closely with many black friends. "You can't trust them." "You have to watch them like a hawk or they'll rip you off." "They're lazy and will do the work half-assed if you're not careful." I was taught these "lessons", along with phrases like "nigger-rig" and "nigger rich".

Yet, with all of this subtle and overt prejudice affecting my perspective, education, and growth, I still managed to be objective and come to my own conclusions. I'll never forget Nicole, with her great smile and gorgeous chocolate skin, holding hands as we walked down the beach that summer. And Angela, with that beautiful curly hair and intoxicating laugh. And friends who were African and Indian and Asian and Filipino and black and Jewish and Hispanic and the only thing that mattered to me was whether or not we got along.

I'm not writing this post to pat myself on the back – yay me for not being racist! No, my goal is to give a bit of hope. My parents' generation grew up with the civil rights movement. They had to change their perspective on race and prejudice during their formative years. I can't blame them for being affected by their environment and upbringing just as I was affected. However, I, and my generation, and the generation after mine, and even the one before mine, grew up with an integrated society. And maybe, just maybe, it's possible for us to become increasingly color-blind, even if raised in a color-aware environment.

If Obama gets this nomination, and I'm sure that he will, I hope that there are enough of us out there – generations of young adults who grew up in an integrated society and know that racism doesn't even make sense. I hope that we are legion enough to make a difference in November. To show my uncle and those like him that yes, we seriously want a black guy to be our President, because we want a "smart" guy to be our President, and it doesn't actually matter if he's black, white, yellow, brown, or not even a guy at all.

Misogyny

Monday, April 30th, 2007

Over on the "Save PPP Before They Go Out of Business Awards", someone named Cassytrue left a comment for me saying, "Misogyny does not equal humor." My initial response was to leave a smart-ass comment, which said "Cassytrue, where on my blog can you find one example of misogyny? Answer me, bitch!" This comment was censored by PPP and completely removed. Because they're stupid fuckers like that, of course.

But then it got me thinking. Am I a misogynist? I don't think I am. Maybe I don't understand the definition.

misogyny: mi·sog·y·ny [mi-soj-uh-nee]
–noun
Hatred of women.

Okay, now looking at the clear-cut definition of misogyny, I know I'm not a misogynist. I don't hate women. I love women. Calling me a misogynist is actually a pretty harsh thing to do. It's like calling me a racist, or an Italian. Yet, this anonymous person found something in my blog that has given her the confidence to state that I am a misogynist and that I clearly hate women. And I don't know what that is.

Now, some people might suggest that misogyny comes from objectification (which seems to go against the definition, but okay), and that I objectify women by talking about porn or always suggesting that my beautiful commenters show me their breasts or by posting some of the videos that I do. I completely reject that suggestion. I don't post or say these things to distance myself from the personal nature of it. I do it because I love women. Clothed, naked, fat, skinny, blonde, brunette, redhead, sitting, standing, writhing – whatever. I love them all. (Well. . . except uggos. I have an unnatural prejudice against ugly people of all sexes. Not homely people or plain people – they're okay. But the ones that are so supremely ugly that you stare at them out of the corner of your eye – like Meryl Streep or Glenn Close – I can't bear to be near them and I wish them all a horribly painful death.) If you can accept the fact that I celebrate the naked female body not to objectify it, but to put it on a pedestal and sacrifice small animals and babies to it, then we are back at square one.

But then, after searching for this person's blog so I could find out a bit more about her, I realized that the dense cunt actually voted for me for Best Humor Blog! So, you know what? Misogyny this, you dumb twat. Go suck a cock – having your mouth full will keep you from saying anything else stupid.