It’s hammered into a lot of people’s heads that the word is very mean, and not just “insult” but “remember, people like you used to be considered animals and treated like property, subject to difficult to fathom attrocities”.
It doesn’t need to be directed to be a reminder. While reference is likewise a reminder, it’s at least couched in terms that convey the speaker understands it has weight beyond “insult”.
Couple that with saying it as a white person can carry significant reputation damage.
Since these lessons are usually imparted in childhood implicitly, and it doesn’t come up often enough to drive introspection for most people, it just lingers as “don’t say words that hurt people and make everyone dislike you”.
For years I thought “bugger” just means “to annoy” or something like that, so I would say things like “This buggers me” or “You don’t have to get so buggered about it.”
I’ve never encountered that word used with a homophobic intent, as far as I could tell. If you wanted to express that thought in my youth, other words beginning with B would be far more common. Naturally I found them as odious then as I would now.
You’re thinking of Dambusters.
And it was still derogatory, but not as weaponised as the US. More like how they used the lesser N word.
wtf is the lesser N word can we just write them in quotes? It’s not like Voldemort.
Looks over shoulder
Whispers: “numpty”
Runs away
Lmao that sounds like a python library
Ooh, so close. There is a NumPy lib.
Oh god, worse than I could possible have imagined D:
Yeah this always irks me about english/the anglosphere, people act like mentioning a word is the same as directing it at someone as an insult
It’s hammered into a lot of people’s heads that the word is very mean, and not just “insult” but “remember, people like you used to be considered animals and treated like property, subject to difficult to fathom attrocities”.
It doesn’t need to be directed to be a reminder. While reference is likewise a reminder, it’s at least couched in terms that convey the speaker understands it has weight beyond “insult”.
Couple that with saying it as a white person can carry significant reputation damage.
Since these lessons are usually imparted in childhood implicitly, and it doesn’t come up often enough to drive introspection for most people, it just lingers as “don’t say words that hurt people and make everyone dislike you”.
Candyman candyman candyman lol.
They still use “bugger” in the UK, which is basically the same thing but for gay people.
For years I thought “bugger” just means “to annoy” or something like that, so I would say things like “This buggers me” or “You don’t have to get so buggered about it.”
Boy am I embarrassed…
Once I used it like that at work, everyone was surprised, and so I looked it up after. I’m actually dead now. This is my ghost typing.
Kind of? Like you could call a child a “little bugger” and that would just be calling them annoying rather than an arse fucker
Well, there was one episode of South Park about people who annoy you…
I’ve never encountered that word used with a homophobic intent, as far as I could tell. If you wanted to express that thought in my youth, other words beginning with B would be far more common. Naturally I found them as odious then as I would now.
Doesn’t matter, the word is rooted in homophobic intent.
So is “gay”. Language evolves. Being a linguistic originalist would be a hard and eccentric hill to die on.
Well good I’m glad the UK has abandoned that principle, it was getting a bit pretentious.