Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
In the 90s, anything bad was “retarded” or “gay”. Those don’t really fly anymore.
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When ever I call something gay or retarded some gay retard steps in and tells me thats not okay
Yeah they’re our words damn it!
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Few words are inherently bad, it’s the inappropriate context in which they are frequently used that leads to them becoming socially unacceptable.
Retard is not a medical term, it’s an insult, plain and simple. Retardation is a medical term but always paired with a specific biological function, not aimed to label an entire human.
You can also say someone’s obese, depends on the scenario and tone used. If it’s not germane to the current conversation, you’re being a dick. If it’s intended solely to bring someone down, you’re being a dick. Even if they’re being an asshole, find another retort, there are nice obese people you’ll offend in the process. Pretty much any scenario where you want to say “fat fuck” but thought you could get away with saying “obese” instead, you’re being a dick.
It’s really not that hard. This is why some people can “get away” with saying certain things, they’re saying the same words but with clearly different intentions.
Growing up in the 90s, we would always say things were ‘gay’ even though we had nothing against homosexuals. It was just the thing to say. Yeah, definitely should not have been saying that.
To add to that. A popular recess game among grade schoolers (like 10 year olds!) was Smear the Queer. I can’t remember the rules exactly but i think it was essentially tag but rougher.
Wow, I remember this too! Yikes
“Just try not to be too gay on the court. And by gay I mean, um, you know, not in a homosexual way at all. I mean the uh, you know, like the bad-at-sports way.”
- Michael Scott
to misquote Louis CK, “I didn’t even know people did that to each other. I just meant that you were annoying.”
Yeh. Growing up in the 90s/early 00s. This TV show does not appeal to me? That’s gay. The bus is late? That’s gay. You missed a penalty playing football? Gay… Experimenting with my friend after school.? Totally just part of growing up bro
I used to be a full on incel, it’s an easy hole to fall into if you hate yourself. I had to take a good look at myself and realize that I was the problem, and now I’m a far happier person
As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases “that’s gay” and “that’s retarded” (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.
While I never once meant “that’s disabled” or “that’s homosexual”… We obviously don’t say that stuff anymore.
I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.
What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn’t take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.
I watched a few Jordan Peterson videos out of curiosity, and I will also watch some Joe Rogan clips as well for the same reason. For a while, I was bombarded by alt right YouTube videos. It’s so crazy to think just a few clicks can lead you down that path. I was older when I watched so it, so I could obviously discern their real message, but if I was a younger man it would be harder. The algorithm almost seemed to slowly introduce more and more extreme views.
Watch the Pangburn videos of Jordan Peterson debating Sam Harris. It’s easy to see what a word-salad regurgitating sophist blowhard Peterson is.
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Recently started watching News Radio again, my SO was like wait “Joe Rogan? That Joe Rogan?” It is sad.
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For a while, I was bombarded by alt right YouTube videos. It’s so crazy to think just a few clicks can lead you down that path.
I think it’s that people who are into that kind of messaging are really into that kind of messaging and tend to binge-watch whole feeds. Engagement-driven algorithms present more and more of it hoping to get those ad presentations. I hope it’s not a nefarious conspiracy to boost right wing propaganda, but I suppose, without the actual algorithm, that we’ll never know.
Ive spent a good time in MRA subs. It’s not a bad thing. We need someone to bring to light the disparity in family and divorce court. We need people fighting for men’s parental rights.
There are people who go way too far into the red pill and incel territory. But MRA on its own has merits and are often fighting just for egality in the aspects of our society where women are given undue preferential treatment. There is nothing biological which makes a woman a more competent caregiver or more able to love a child. Additionally, society is changing and women are more likely to be in the work force, even in a relationship, making the idea of alimony dated.
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I’m German myself, and luckily I haven’t heard “polen” so far (Edit: Might be because I live next to France not Poland). But a lot of my classmates make a lot of kinda racist jokes about the AfD (right, potentially extremist political party) and I can’t tell whether they’re actually racist or not.
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Woe, that’s… something else
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I remember as a teen in the 90s in high school, doing a fake gay voice was considered funny and nobody thought twice about it. Even if the person wasn’t actually targeting anyone LGBTQ+ specifically, just doing the voice seemed to insinuate the somebody was less than masculine. Like, Oh, the water isn’t cold enough for you, let me repeat that request back in a gay voice to make fun of you.
I’m pretty sure if I even tried doing a fake gay voice at work now I would probably be shit-canned pretty quickly, which in a way goes to show how far society has come in not tolerating what would’ve just been crude humor in earlier times. I know the LGBTQ+ community has worked for decades to get to where they’re at today, but it still feels kind of crazy how quickly society changed.
I’m not sure why you call it fake gay. While it’s not universal, it’s still common among gay men.
I guess “fake gay” doesn’t sound right, maybe “stereotypically gay” is more apt, like it was a thing to specifically “sound gay” and and say things to demean somebody. Like, yes, there are gay guys that sound stereotypically gay, but it’s probably not right to mock a person using a voice like that. It’d be like mocking somebody with a stereotypically urban black person’s voice (“ebonics” from way back), like yeah, some people do sound like that, but it’s still not something you should be doing to mock people.
I stopped ironically wearing my Putin t-shirt.
Lmao this one is actually pretty funny, like I imagined you staring at it in your wardrobe like ‘nah, I probably shouldn’t’
And I’ve been doing that for a year and a half…
Jokes built on racist stereotypes. Used to be just another part of my family’s collection of jokes, but now I don’t see the humor in those
I know it’s controversial, but moving away from “guys” when I address a group and more or less defaulting to “they” when referring to people I don’t know.
They was practical, because I deal with so many students exclusively via email, and the majority of them have foreign names where I’d never be able to place a gender anyways if they didn’t state pronouns.
Switching away from guys was natural, but I’m in a very male dominated field and I’d heard from women students in my undergrad that they did feel just a bit excluded in a class setting (not as much social settings) when the professor addresses a room of 120 men and 5 women with “Guys”, so it just more or less fell to the side in favour of folks/everyone.
I graduated high school in 2004. So many slurs back then. So uncomfortable with them now. Good riddance.
Gay people. When I was much much younger I remember telling a friend that while I didn’t have a problem with people doing their own thing, I still didn’t like gay people. My friend said I hope when you have kids they’re gay. Guess what happened and how I feel about it now. I was such a dumb ass. When my kid came out to me I wept for joy at their bravery. I don’t take hard stances on my opinions now and try to remember that my perspective isn’t ultimate or necessarily right. There’s always a chance that I’m wrong.
There weren’t many gay people when I was growing up. At least not openly. I was first introduced to some gays at a gay bar. They basically made me feel like a juicy steak in a meat market (not in a good way). Several comments about my dick within 10 seconds of meeting them.
Today I have many gay friends that I enjoy their company but that was a huge setback for me.
It took one of those meat market experiences to make me self-reflect about how I treated women as a straight man.
Thankfully I was relatively young when it happened, but I’ll always regret how I treated women before then.
You know what, I never treated women that way but I certainly gained a lot of empathy for them after that.
It’s crazy to me now that there wasn’t a single (open) trans or gay person in my high school in the 90s. I sometimes wonder who actually was, but wasn’t able to be themselves.
My high school class was in mid-'00s, and there was one girl who very much had that butch/tomboy vibe going on. I drifted away from the class, so only heard rumours after graduation, but I think she never actually came out as anything. On the other hand three others of us (two of whom, including myself, I never would have guessed back in high school) eventually came out as various shades of queer :D
There were a couple of people who were “different” that, in hindsight, it was very obvious they were “confused”. Some of them came out later but were much less obvious.
I was in high school in the late 70s and early 80s. Nobody was out. But people kind of knew. One time I was on a train into the city (San Francisco), and I saw two students along with one of our teachers headed there. I thought that was kind of cool, but seemed also a bit dangerous and ill-advised at the time. I am fairly certain that our very popular senior class president was gay. Very sadly, he took his own life.
Did you tell them your name? Because I think that might have led them to make some assumptions.
You really tempted fate, there!
Some children Songs I could never sing vor hear again, they make me cringe a lot (racism, sexism, …)
As I’ve gotten older (65M), I find that I have grown less hurried and hasty to judge.
Hurrying and rushing really doesn’t help me to do anything faster or better, so why bother?
You do need to be able to quickly judge and assess people and situations in many settings and for a variety of reasons. That being said, I find that judging people prematurely can fail to appreciate their extenuating or particular circumstances. Everyone’s got their own lives, problems and situations. For that matter, everyone can just have a crappy day. Doesn’t mean you have to take crap from people, just helps to give the benefit of the doubt where and when feasible.
For a brief period in elementary school I used to think that’s it’s okay to litter - and not by example of my parents (they’re fine) but rather because everyone else was doing it.
I’m not proud that I was doing it, but I’m glad that I quickly grew out of it - so much that it now makes my blood boil seeing someone on the street littering (almost to the point of me wanting to slap them across the face).
