Happens all the time, Sweet Virginia.
Who needs a list, the band’s friggin’ name was Suicidal Tendencies.
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Yeah, punk just caused a huge wave of anxiety among the parents of Gen-Xers, even though punks were such a little subculture compared to say hippies… And this was a global thing, too. In the US, a whole subset of therapist emerged to deal with kids who were sucked into dangerous lifestyles like punk. In Yugoslavia (well, post 85 or so), East Germany, or Russia, they just arrested them, but still. Same rhetoric about the social danger of punk was found.
But no one called them C or attention whores, at least the bands with young men in them.
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Heh. I went searching for some examples of the utter moral panic that Madonna caused with Papa Don’t Preach, and found this gem of a passage
But, yeah, no disagreeing that provocative female artists get misogyny gravy ladled on top of criticism of their genre.
Time for a pick-me-up.
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I’m pretty sure that a lot of punks called punks cunts, let alone other people. I’m not sure when the term ‘attention whore’ first gained currency, but it definitely applies to any number of the bands that I don’t like.
References to prostitution certainly don’t strike me as being gendered.
As for “C”, it seems to only be a showstopper in the US for some reason. I accidentally muttered it once at a business presentation when a computer crashed and the room instantly frosted over! (tugs at shirt) “Sorry about that, just a brief technical glitch, folks!” Much of the English-speaking world tend to be equal-opportunity offenders with regards to sexual language and might also refer to something as “cocking”, which has no real equivalent in US slang. Notice that I didn’t bother to obscure it! As clergy, I sometimes even use FFS as a positive phrase, to the perplexity of some.
The differences with use of sexual and/or gendered language seem to depend a lot upon cultural baggage. Some people might use such terms in only a pejorative sense, while for others it might be good-natured. My ex went on extended tirades of gendered insults against me, yet was aghast if I responded in kind with even one. So, there was obviously a severe imbalance there. As something of an armchair linguist and lexicologist, I strongly dislike the popular tendency of the eggshell-walk of deciding that a term is pejorative, needs to be abandoned, and euphemistically replacing it with another word which essentially means the same thing - ad infinitum. All this does is allow groups to confirm their own perceived marginality. rather than assert themselves. So, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, I think it really is more healthy for people to embrace such terms and have some pride, rather than allowing their cultural narrative to be controlled by others. This makes it no less important to be sensitive to how others feel about such things - but should be balanced against one’s own better judgement.
It is a showstopper. I’d politely ask that you and @anonymouse refrain from deploying it against
women, or defending such deployment. Same with “whore.” Not cool.
Apparently, this thread needs another dose of Kathleen Hanna.
When we were playing in the ’90s and men would come to our shows and yell, “Take it off!” or call us the C-word or the B-word—or, most commonly, they would just say, “Shut up!”—in a way, they were doing us a big favor. At the time, of course, I wanted to punch them in the face and drag them out of club—and sometimes I did. But sexism exists in every room we’re ever going to walk into. Racism exists in every room. Homophobia exists in every single room. When people bring it to the fore, it’s like popping a blackhead. All of a sudden, everybody knows: There’s sexism in the punk scene—we can’t ignore this issue anymore. Because before, it was totally being held down. People were like, “Sexism doesn’t matter, man! It’s the ’90s!” It’s the same thing that happens today, where people are like, “Sexism doesn’t matter! It’s 2013!” Or “Racism doesn’t matter! Look at Barack Obama!” What’s scary to me is that maybe men, and some women, aren’t going to shows and being like, “Shut up! Just play your music!” or “Show us your tits!” or whatever—people just take to the internet and rip other people apart.
I was reading an article online about Vivian Girls, and I happened to look at the comments, and it was horrifying. Horrifying! It was every single thing people had said about us in the ’90s—but even worse. That’s what really opened my eyes to, you know, one step forward, two steps back. Maybe it’s safer for women to be at shows now, but it’s not safer for women to be on the internet.
It’s a good interview, and since Ms. Hanna talks a bit about how Pussy Riot’s feminism is threatening to actual Marxists, gets us back on topic. 
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Yeah, I should have said ‘Attention whore applies to any number of bands that I don’t like, irrespective of gender’.
I think ‘cocking’ originates with Chris Morris - it’s a kind of malapropism in that somehow normal curse formation processes would block it, but it’s not clear why. Like you wouldn’t tell someone to ‘shit off’.
Anyway, it looks like we’ve hit the inevitable point where the language is policed rather than the sentiments. Tedious.
You could have called them “attention gigolos” or “penises” “irrespective of gender.”
But you did not.
And if you take the song “Just a gigolo” and change it to “Just a whore” does it ring the same (irrespective of rhyme)?
No, it does not.
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Duly noted. The article you quote from here is neat. But I don’t agree with some of the points made. Saying that “sexism exists in every room we’re ever going to walk into.” sounds not only cynical, but also self-defeating as both a personal stance and as a movement.
It’s easy to remind people that sexism matters, but then you say that people should choose their words carefully based upon the gender of the person they’re talking to. Unfortunately, I am aware that many find this to be pedantic, but changing what I say based upon the gender of the listener is precisely an act of sexism. All sexism, racism. homophobism, etc are is a set of stereotypical, implicit values about what it means to be a certain kind of person. I think it offers more support to help people (loaded phrase coming!) to stand their ground and avoid being made to feel marginal in the first place. This is usually when people yell that “That’s easy for you to say since it proves you must be X kind of person with no problems!” But no, it isn’t. And no, it doesn’t.
The dynamic can be compared to dealing with an aggressive dog. If one succumbs to fear, the dog has defined the narrative and is more likely to attack. If one acknowledges it’s presence without allowing it to define the narrative of the situation, it is less likely to attack. And even if it does (unusually aggressive dog!) then you have the benefit of facing it, rather than being compromised by running away.
The dialectical equivalent is that of owning every term that gets thrown at you, without reacting, and using this to keep control of your position, argument, and self-worth. And no, it is definitely not easy, and not complacent. But my experience has been that it works. Constantly re-defining your terms to accommodate people’s poor semantic games? Not so much. Not a popular argument, perhaps. But I think it’s important and will leave it at that. I would not be able to offer support to sex workers of every kind and "C"s of every sex and gender if I so second-guessed myself as to mince words about it.
They don’t have to be, but I’d argue it usually is, in this specific context, in this particular case (meaning, it’s generally applied to women in the music industry).
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Yet it’s true, at least in my experience.
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But your experience is the past and the present. Going from this to “every room, ever” makes poor treatment sound like a permanent problem. Making it out to be universal and permanent sounds more likely to discourage activism for some people than to describe a path toward liberation.
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Wow, 534 posts? This thread is kind of representative of what I loathe about GamerGate type shit and why I usually avoid it for the most part.
It’s like a virus spreading across the Internet distracting people from real issues we need to tackle on this Earth (like, now). Such a waste of something so incredibly powerful and such a wasteful distraction for good people. If all this concerted effort went towards gathering support for Bernie Sanders or someone else to lead the USA, I bet it’d have quite an impact. Instead many of us are spinning our wheels in thread after giant thread squabbling with sociopaths and miscreants who will never, ever see the light no matter what is said.
How very, very disheartening… but I do hope some will question whether all this is worth their time and get focused on important issues. Well, anyway… here’s to hoping some of you can take your same passion for things like this and put it towards something that really matters.
Life is too short.
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You didn’t actually read the thread, did you? Or even, say, the last ten posts?
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I skimmed through it. What did I miss? What’s your point?
That very little of this thread had anything to do with Gamergate.
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That very little of this thread had anything to do with Gamergate.
I said it was kind of representative of GamerGate type stuff, I didn’t say it literally had anything to do directly with it. I apologize if that wasn’t clear enough. I was hoping you were going to point to parts of this thread I missed in regards to what I was talking about.
Again, I just wish people would put this same kind of energy and effort more into issues that matter instead of complaining about how the country/world is going to shit and there’s nothing they can do about it.
I’m not saying everyone in this thread or BBS is guilty of such a thing, but I do see a preponderance of it and I find it a bit disheartening that such good, smart people who could get together on issues that matter… often don’t bother.
Then again, getting a lot of intelliegent progressives together to work together in solidarity for real goals is often like herding cats IRL, so I guess I shouldn’t think a place like this BBS should be anything more than what it is now.
But, I hold out hope sometimes anyway that perhaps some day the group here will collaborate on something meaningful and world-changing.
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So how can I make my campaigning and charity work more effective then?
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[quote=“SmashMartian, post:543, topic:43201”]
So how can I make my campaigning and charity work more effective then?
[/quote]If you’re being facetious, I’ll point you to this part of my post you may have missed:
If you’re being serious, please PM me.
Why would you think that?
Prefer to keep things out in the open, thanks. If I get dragged in to sharing personal stuff via PM, don’t know where it’ll end up. If I just keep things vague and general in the open, I’ve got more control, if you get what I mean.
Your point seems to be that it’s really easy for people to whinge about things, but taking actual positive and constructive action is more difficult, this is a good chance for you to, ya know, walk that talk. 
If it proves useful to me, even without you not having a scooby about what it is that I do, chances are it’ll be useful for someone reading along at home. I’m not fucking with you here, just using the opportunity to get something constructive. Useful general info is useful and often bears repeating. Bullet points, kind of stuff. Distilled wisdom or something like that.
You sound like you’ve got some ideas. Let’s hear them.
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