There’s nothing wrong with calling the subject of the post an asshole. They are an asshole.
We don’t have “Tenure” here. People who contribute to the community are given more latitude than others in very limited circumstances, but that does not mean we check account creation dates when deciding to moderate here. Not to mention, somewhere here that long would know that “Christ, what an asshole” is elevated to true meme status here to begin with.
Here’s where your problem lies. You decided to make assumptions about mental illness. If you had realized you were in the wrong and decided to leave it at that, fine, no harm no foul. But you didn’t do that. You then went on a rant about how calling someone an asshole is, somehow, a mental health thing (which, BTW, is a great way to backdoor the idea that assholes are mentally unstable and essentially reverse the very intent of the “don’t associate mentally unstable folk with assholes” rule in the first place, which is novel enough I literally LOL’d when I read it). Then? You made the entire post about you, the fact that you were called out, and clearly couldn’t deal with that fact. The very opposite of “being cool”.
That’s my problem, and yes, I take it personally. I should have just banned you outright for making this post about you, derailing the topic and wasting the community and the moderators time because you didn’t like being called out, but I did decide instead to call you out here instead in light of how long you’ve been here, in the hopes that you’d realize two things:
1 - this place is a community. If you start actively fighting it by trying to trolley it with “But asshole is an assumption” bullshit, you are pissing in everyone’s cornflakes on purpose
Ok, so how is it that a brand new member with an obscene user name can make a post (which will probably be removed in minutes, but still…) using a terrible slur directed at gay people, but if I try to use the word t-r-0-l-l in a discussion that’s about literal, mythical t-r-0-l-l-s it can’t appear without a moderator approving it first? Seriously, what’s with the list of words that trigger automatic review?
Via error message, I just learned there’s a bad word I can’t post on BoingBoing that’s, from what I’ve gathered, relatively acceptable everywhere in the world except the US. Provincial much, bb?
What if I use “berk”? But then that ruins the hilarious wordplay I wanted to deploy. “Berkservative Republiberk.” Nope.
I think it’s less provincial prudery here but compassion for those who were upset in the past at usage of, well, whatever word you meant. Which is about as opposite a motive as you can find from DeSantis and the other cynical sociopaths like him as you can find.
You get that there are decades, sometimes centuries, of misogyny in language, right? There are places all over the world where Women have fewer rights than Men do. We don’t choose to excuse that behaviour just because other parts of the world have decided that is ok.
I’m sorry that it is annoying because it requires changing the learned vernacular. I had this same experience in my own life with specific words to describe minorities that were practically muscle memory for me. But those words don’t target me, and it’s the last I can do to recognize their origins and work to change my speech for the good of others. Like, literally the least I can do.
So, yeah. What others have said. We’re not going to regress in our aims to be respectful of Women just because it happens to cause you to have to think a little before you type.
…That sounds an awful lot like you are trying to make a cheap joke about American politics for an American audience. But you’re upset that you can’t because it’s mostly a slur in America? I’m not sure you thought this through.
