Tenure.

So, c’mon kids! This is a humor blog, and we’ve got a good fight to fight!

Letttt’s goooo! [image of Belushi in Animal House psyching the gang up to go do some really fun and anarchic action, I'm too lazy at this point to YouTube a link]

I did not ask for one, and I object strenuously to you saying that I did. I explained my thinking on the use of the word. I did not demand that you let me go on it. In fact, I acknowedged your “asshole” epithet as arguably appropriate.

>Just don’t pretend you have the right to determine who can and cannot be considered “the right kind of folk”. Makes you look like a real asshole.

Sheeze. Look who’s talking.

I simply objected to your implied characterization of me (or essentially anyone who uses The Word) as “not a real liberal.” That was irritating. So I rolled my eyes.

I didn’t say you weren’t allowed to call me a bitch, a skank, an asshole, whatever, or to judge me as “not your kind of people.” You can say what you like, pass what judgments you feel justified. That’s everyone’s privilege.

But I am also allowed to object to what you say about me. Speak up for myself, and perhaps for others who were similarly irritated by your “determination of who was or wasn’t” a proper liberal.

I will own to “asshole,” because I AM a rude and and judgmental bitch. That’s just a fact. But I will not let someone publicly call me “not a liberal” because I make use of a word THEY think isn’t properly used by liberals. That’s when I feel a need NOT to “own” your judgment. Sorry. You can still judge me to be a non-liberal or a “bad” liberal or whatever the hell you were trying to say, you just can’t expect that I will quietly accept that judgment or Mend My Ways.

Ms. Nicky’s interesting question was a side issue, but I thank her for the stimulus to my thinking on the matter.

Thanks to you, too, for the excellent discussion, but I’m burnt out now. I think I’ll let you have the last word about the horror that is me. Cheers!

Especially since it was all in your head. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you wanna use dehumanizing language to bash people, go for it. Just own that shit, goddamnit, and quit trying to get a free pass. You’re an asshole, might as well indulge. I have no power over anyone, and thus, can’t police jack shit, okay? Calm down, I wear tennis shoes, not jackboots.

And to use your complaint about the tranny business, yes, that’s just as bad and folks who use “transexual” as an insult against women they don’t like are just as big assholes as people who use “skank” as a way of keeping uppity bitches with overused and filthy vaginas in their place. And “Hey, it’s just a joke” is a pathetic defense. Here’s a hint: to use humor as a shield, one must actually be funny. Being on a humor site – and I really can’t stress this enough – doesn’t give one carte blanche to just toss around dehumanizing, hateful language and then brush it off as just yuks. Seriously, if you’re gonna be an asshole – and you seem intent on being just that – go for it. Just don’t pretend you have the right to determine who can and cannot be considered “the right kind of folk”. Makes you look like a real asshole.

What? I’m not sure I understand you (although I’ll cop to being a jerk/asshole/bitch last week when I was laughing along. Who’s with me?).

I wasn’t condemning that. I kind of enjoyed it, even with its frisson of liberal guilt. It WAS jerky, but that bitch deserved to be kicked around a little. I just remarked that if it’s evidence of the sexism of our society to refer to men as pussies, it’s also sexist to refer to Ann Couter as Mann Coulter and suchlike, and if knuckles are going to be rapped for using ugly, sexist words/tropes, everyone who laughed last week deserves a whack.

>And what planet did you say you hail from?

You don’t think it’s HIGHLY insulting for a woman to be mocked as a “trannie”? As in, not being a “real woman” because her appearance or behavior is “too masculine”? Terms like “bulldyke” when aimed at women are pretty much equivalent to “pussy” aimed at men, aren’t they?

I understand that your question was meant rhetorically. I chose to look at it literally because it revealed an interesting irony.

This is a humor site. As such it has -or should have- more license than a site/tv show/column that expects to be taken seriously as meaningful political discourse. That’s why I objected to what I saw as an attempt to “police” our language here.

And what planet did you say you hail from?

How times change: now YOU’RE the jerk! What a crazy world.

The particular usage is the issue. I used “skank” at Roy’s new digs.

IMO the non-ironic use of the word always says more about the user than about the target.

I posed the question: “What could possibly be worse for a man to be compared to than a woman?”

Turn it around, as I suggested above. It’s just as “bad” to compare women to men, is it not? Calling them trannies, etc. Mocking them for having insufficiently “feminine” attributes?

As people were doing on this blog last week.

I often find it an amusing enough term, simply for the image it conjures up.

And of course I accept that you disapprove of my behavior enough to call me an asshole. Although I’d much prefer to be called a bitch, just on aesthetic grounds.

LOL, booger posted a pumapac link!
Dude, shouldn’t you be weaving baskets or making picnic tables or something?

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(*looks up & down thread for SowellFan, makes sad face, puts down sledgehammer*)

I posed the question: “What could possibly be worse for a man to be compared to than a woman?” The question of whether the particular word “skank” is misogynist is a separate issue.

Your point that there are indeed “bitches” and “pricks” in the world is not in dispute. I agree with others here, however, that “skank” refers to female sexuality in a pejorative sense — a category that includes a multitude of colorful descriptions for women but, as far as I know, none for men.

If you’re setting yourself up as the Judge of Appropriate Sexual Relations, sure. Some of those judges think the skanks are girls who’ll fuck anybody, or girls who fuck too many people, or girls who fuck someone other than their husbands, or girls who fuck at all, or girls who won’t fuck them. I don’t know that the liberal lexicon has settled on an agreed standard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5qOSQZg6Dw

Fine. I can see that. Just as it is sexist to apply the term “bitch” to women whose behaviors would be considered unremarkable in a man.

But I was concened that the reproach was more comprehensive. To remove the word “bitch” from the approved vocabulary, even when it APPLIES, is excessive word policing, just as much as removing the word “prick” when it applies.

I’m sorry, but there ARE bitches and pricks in this world and I think we should be able to call them what they are. There are also, sad to say, skanks.

Also pretty much used on women.

To the extent that you’re saying it’s sexist to apply the term INAPPROPRIATELY to Sarah Palin, you might have an argument. (As far as I know she is merely interpersonally vicious.)

As far as I can see that was the extent of the argument when you took issue.

To the extent you want to remove a descriptive word from the liberal lexicon, you don’t.

Yes, “lower class slut” should remain part of the liberal lexicon.