Toxic Masculinity

[quote=“Naoza, post:16, topic:400”]
"Deus Vult!"Huh?
[/quote]It’s a Crusades-era battle cry taken up by modern Nazis who see themselves as crusaders. It’s a habit taken straight from the KKK and Neo-nazis(As in, the real dedicated ones who wear uniforms and so on).

I largely alternated between female when being precise and lady when being a bit more playful. It’s not a big issue to just use lady all the time, it just seems like I’ve got nothing that quite fits the linguistic hole female used to fill.

I’ll give an example:

“What I’m thinking in transit to a meeting varies depending on whether I’m meeting a dude or a lady”
This is what I’m basically going to use from now on but it has a certain informality about it that makes me uncomfortable using it in some situations. Nevertheless it’s what not being “that guy” requires right now.

“What I’m thinking in transit to a meeting varies depending on whether I’m meeting a guy or a girl”
Fine but implies age, This plus it now has romantic undertones using those words. Not ideal.

“What I’m thinking in transit to a meeting varies depending on whether I’m meeting a man or a woman”
This one seems more formal and tends to imply I’m talking about someone older than me.

“What I’m thinking in transit to a meeting varies depending on whether I’m meeting a male or a female”
This one was perfect until shitheads made it not perfect anymore. It implies nothing and shows the only things my thoughts depended on are the gender of the person I’m meeting.

I use this one a lot. I think the age implication is offset when directly contrasted with “guy”, and I’m not sure what you mean by “romantic undertones”. I would much rather be able to say “gal” though, but it would be weird.

EDIT: “Ladies” is probably age dependent. As a 22 yo in college it would automatically sound less like I’m saying “ladies” and more like I’m saying “laaaadies”.

I mostly just use lady all the time. And then use little girl if it’s a little girl.

Eh, maybe it’s light but if I hear the terms “meeting a guy” or “meeting a girl” one of the thoughts I have is to append “for a date” maybe that’s just me or maybe I have to reexamine that.

My mom often says “females” when talking about groups of women. It annoys me to no end and I yell at her for it, but she’s too old to understand that it’s only used by shitheads nowadays.

Eh, I generally give older people a pass when it comes to things like that. It’s one thing if she’s being actually sexist, but if it’s a once-benign word that’s been co-opted by a demographic of shitheads she probably rarely interacts with that’s probably ok.

I do not and cannot disagree with you on any of your points.

I just am… shall we say, grieving over the loss of something that was normal. And a bit annoyed I now have something new to catch myself doing and stop. Will I get over it? Of course I will. I’m just whining and and a bit upset that the way I’ve been living my live up until this point has been unintentionally hurtful to others.

I’m basically 100% sure I still do similar things every day that are hurtful to others that I just haven’t realized yet are dehumanizing. Much like my language up until this point. It sucks and I don’t like it.

I will get better and better every time someone calls me out or, better yet, I see it before someone calls me out and I call myself out. Like happened here.

I should note that ((( ))) is code for jew, which originated from the white nationalist movement. Progressive twitter took ownership and now proudly self-identify as jewish using the braces as a fuck you. Similarly there are new key words, specifically using tech names to similarly code word racism (Skype = Jew, Google = Black, Yahoo = Mexican, etc.)

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What’s insanely telling of where we are right now is that all of this code word stuff keeps setting off my tin foil hat alarms, but I know that you’re right. It’s just so crazy.

Welcome to the gong show.

@chaosof99

I’ve run into virtue signalling before and it can be mildly exhausting to deal with. I usually divide it into two forms for simplicity’s sake.

  • Online virtue signalling is something I usually ignore, because it is usually mostly white, mostly men making fools of themselves and pretending everyone else doesn’t exist. I’m usually a token, talked about by people who honestly should have a more basic self awareness. I have lost count of how many liberal-minded folks that I thought of as allies defend a woke position by accepting such vicious stereotypes about me and and other groups and ignore me when I complain about it. They want a gold star for not being the most vile nazi that they proceed to make the conversation about them. These interactions cover such a small amount of people that discussing it beyond simply acknowledging that it exists seems pointless.

  • Real world virtue signalling, by virtue of the fact that internet anonymity is taken away, is far more benign. I run into it whenever someone I know is newly woke about an issue and inserts themselves into a conversation with all of the zealousness of a new convert and trips over their foolishness. I remember a friend and I were discussing something trivial, I think it was the controversy over Doctor Strange and something Tilda Swinton said. The concept of the otherizing and cartoonish depictions of Asia were discussed, where the movie fell short and where it did not. I brought up the term Orientalism, to critique the Euro/American fetishization of Asia that the original Dr. Strange comics participated in, which was a part of the wider interest in appropriating various Asian cultures to sell stupid garbage to guillible middling class people and hippies. Another friend of mine interjected themselves into the conversation to state that using saying Oriental is bad. I had to take a second to wrap my mind around the fact that an educated nonasian person was telling me, an asian american person, that using Orientalism to describe the negative stereotyping and fetishization of my culture was bad. So I had to have a nice conversation to get them to chill out. They did. The point of not being “that guy” isn’t just to learn how to not be the most annoying nazi asshole around but to also learn some social calibration and take a second to wait, listen, and ask questions before saying something.

On the topic of “basic self awareness”, do you perhaps realize that an accusation of “virtue signalling” is essentially an equally vicious stereotype? How, exactly, do you know when someone’s words are purely for show?

As a concept, “virtue signalling” is a reasonable one; signalling theory is interesting and legitimate economics and the notion of virtue signalling is a reasonable derivative of that theory. It’s fine to discuss it in the abstract, e.g. as it applies to costly religious rituals.

However, when you accuse an individual person of “virtue signalling” without having any kind of solid evidence of the motives behind what they’re doing, you’re just being an asshole.

[quote=“DoubleGomez, post:33, topic:400”]
I brought up the term Orientalism, to critique the Euro/American fetishization of Asia that the original Dr. Strange comics participated in, which was a part of the wider interest in appropriating various Asian cultures to sell stupid garbage to guillible middling class people and hippies. Another friend of mine interjected themselves into the conversation to state that using saying Oriental is bad. I had to take a second to wrap my mind around the fact that an educated nonasian person was telling me, an asian american person, that using Orientalism to describe the negative stereotyping and fetishization of my culture was bad. So I had to have a nice conversation to get them to chill out. They did. The point of not being “that guy” isn’t just to learn how to not be the most annoying nazi asshole around but to also learn some social calibration and take a second to wait, listen, and ask questions before saying something.
[/quote]OK, so you encountered someone who didn’t know what “Orientalism” was, they interrupted you, and now you’re complaining that you “had to have a nice conversation” with them?

Sure, you can say that they were rude (or perhaps even “that guy”) for interjecting in the conversation, but how exactly did you determine that this person was virtue signalling rather than expressing an honest position?

Also, what are you even talking about when you refer to “liberal-minded folks … defend[ing] a woke position”? How exactly are they accepting vicious stereotypes about you in particular, and how do you know that they’re virtue signalling?

Wow, that’s like when a black person refers to someone as black and a white person “corrects” them that it’s African American. It’s like, I know you’re not coming from a bad place, but c’mon guys.

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I realize I’ve heard this term a lot recently, and also the term “woke” and I’m not sure what either of them mean. Especially woke. Is it a new word?

I’m going to echo Luke’s sentiments on “woke”.

Orientalism I’m all too familiar with as one of my coworkers did her thesis on Orientalism and accuses everything from certain packaged ramen to the statement “NY is more accepting of foreigners than Tokyo” to be orientalist. I can’t say she’s been terribly effective at informing others as to what she’s talking about. But she has gotten me thinking, maybe I shouldn’t talk about Asia around her for fear of being called on something I don’t understand as she does.

Looking it up hasn’t really addressed my specific questions.

Woke means you are a person that has become aware of current issues. Woke is usually used in a positive manner, sometimes humourously such as when a typically non-political entity like a weather app makes a political statement.

Surely you’ve heard of the phrase “wake up sheeple!” it’s the same thing. It doesn’t have the same connotations of tin foil hat conspiracy theorists unless you actually use that phrase in its entirety either.

“Orientalism” in its modern sense was really defined by Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism. It refers to the way Western culture sort of fetishized Middle Eastern and East Asian cultures in the 19th and 20th centuries; the process of repackaging stuff as “the ancient wisdom of the East” and such while simultaneously treating non-Western cultures as backwards and barbaric to justify colonialism.

It still shows up in various forms today – the way weeaboos treat Japanese culture tends to be a good example.

Is this “orientalist trash”?

[quote=“lukeburrage, post:36, topic:400, full:true”]
I realize I’ve heard this term a lot recently, and also the term “woke” and I’m not sure what either of them mean. Especially woke. Is it a new word?
[/quote]There’s two versions.

There’s Virtue Signalling was first popularized by James Bartholomew in The Spectator, as a non-partisan term for people whose involvement with a cause begins and ends at things like insinuating Nigel Farage is a Racist(he is) but never actually doing anything against it, or Cameron defending 0.7% of the British GDP on Foreign Aid, without ever bothering to check if it’s actually doing anything. Basically a condemnation of talking the talk but not walking the walk.

The other Virtue signaling is basically one of the right-wing buzzwords that sprung out of Gamergate, that sits right alongside “Cultural Marxists” and the like, where it becomes nothing more than a cynical attempt to look good for thinking the right thing, when you don’t really care about the thing in question. Anything can be this form of Virtue signalling, and much like “Cuck” or “PC Culture”, it’s basically been diluted to the point of uselessness by idiots sneering it at anyone who disagrees with them, and as a catch-all that basically means “I disagree with you therefore you’re wrong but I can’t articulate why.”