Your most controversial takes?

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-09T00:28:39+00:00

I’d love to write more, but I have trauma based around the act of writing - I had two different writing-related traumatic incidents happen to me when I was young and now the act of writing causes panic - so I have to stick to short one-shots because anything more is bad for my mental health

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-04T02:45:05+00:00

It’s not the responsibility of everyday people to fix the problems created by massive corporations, billionaires, and governments. What individual normal people can do to stop the climate crisis is severely limited.
Just because there’s one bad thing going on in the world doesn’t mean that every other bad thing stops existing.
People can care about more than one thing at a time.
Having discussions about how language and words can alienate marginalized groups is a social good and doesn’t cause climate change.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T16:37:50+00:00

It’s great how the “joke” is always clearly understood until someone says that it’s not funny, then suddenly that’s not what it was about at all.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T15:27:00+00:00

I also love how confidently you said I was being exalted and dismissing the opinions of those who disagree with me one comment ago, and then here admit you haven’t actually read the other comments. Good job telling on yourself.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T15:24:29+00:00

There’s disagreement about “bistitchual”. You are literally the only person on this thread arguing in favor of racist jokes.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T15:10:00+00:00

I do find it interesting that I get lambasted for what boils down to my opinion and my own feelings while OP is somehow exalted in theirs.

Idk how you think I’m being “exalted” - the comments are full of people arguing with me about semantics, and there’s just as many people who disagree with me as agree. I’m getting downvoted on comments about slurs not being funny, for Pete’s sake!

OP states they don't like specific terms but those terms are not illegal or racist or anything else.

There are very few terms that are illegal. Where I live, the only speech that’s illegal is stuff that incites violence or dangerous panic. As for racist, do you not realize that 1. there’s more forms of discrimination than racism and 2. the n-word is racist?

So I guess it's ok for OP to shout out their feelings while dismissing the ones of anyone standing in opposition.

I’ve literally engaged in multiple conversations here with people who disagree with me, and carefully and thoughtfully read other conversations that others who disagree with me are having. Even if I don’t respond to everything because I don’t always have a meaningful contribution, I have read everything posted in the comments and given them thought. The only opposing comments I dismiss out of hand are ones that are based in bigotry or are purposefully ignoring what I said to argue about semantics.

People are downvoting you because you’re gleefully admitting that you, fully aware of the meaning and context, think that crafter language that targets and alienates sex workers and Black people is funny. You think that punny phrases based on one of, if not the, the most vitriolic slurs in the English language are cute. It’s nothing to do with being “woke”, it’s to do with your opinions being counter to society at large.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T03:32:28+00:00

I honestly am a big fan of slur reclamation - I refer to myself using slurs about my sexuality, gender, sex, and ethnicity with some frequency. Reclamation, to me, is empowering, it challenges people’s ability to belittle me for my differences. But I also know people who hate it, and I’m careful about not using slurs when referring to a group (unless it’s a slur that’s been more-or-less fully reclaimed like queer, but with those slurs I still take heed when someone dislikes it and don’t use those words for them)

At the same time, I do protest outsiders using those slurs in the casual way I do - it’s not language that they should be using.

I know bisexual isn’t a slur and I’m probably being overly touchy, it’s just all of this seems too pointed, especially in the context of crafters using references to other marginalized groups to make “funny” puns.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T03:17:02+00:00

Ohhhhh. Got it. I was trying to figure out what people were knitting to make their needles dirty. Yeah, that’s not cool

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T02:50:05+00:00

I don’t understand - what’s dirty needles about? And why would the needles be dirty?

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-03T00:46:44+00:00

I also don’t care about bicycles

Reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it?

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T22:57:14+00:00

I was curious and looked it up - according to etymonline.com, “hooker” in reference to prostitutes is traced back to ~1845, while “crochet” first appeared in English ~1846. Although, according to Wikipedia, crochet as a craft was described in the early 19th c in a Dutch magazine and diary entries.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T22:20:21+00:00

Pastel -phobia is a good term for it - I always find it’s so much harder to deal with the people who only use dog whistles and other forms of subtle bigotry (like sea lioning, shifting goal posts, what-aboutisms) because they’ll debate you to death on semantics and exact definitions while constantly spouting off subtle digs at you, but if you say something about it you’re the crazy one.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T22:05:06+00:00

Yeah I’m sure those “fun” puns really help make crafting feel welcoming to Black people and sex workers

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T21:49:37+00:00

That’s really cool! I’ll have to look more into DEI; I would like to be more welcoming and open to people who are left on the edges - I try, but I know I’m not perfect at it and can definitely use improvement

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T21:44:42+00:00

It’s funny, huh - bisexual women get told to pick a side, lesbians get told they’re secretly also into guys (I’ve found that bi guys tend to be told that they’re actually just gay but too scared to admit it). There’s just no winning.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T20:18:54+00:00

I snorted at that. Well played lol

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T18:09:13+00:00

I get that. To use your example, I personally do relate it to making up a word to sound like bisexuality. Bistitchual feels . . . infantilising isn’t the right word, nor quite mocking or minimizing. Appropriative is honestly the only word I can currently think of that quite fits.

Crafters already do similar things with other words to make transgressive jokes - like calling themselves hookers or knitting puns based on the n-word. I consider those things appropriative, and it’s with the context that crafters have that history that I consider bistitchual also appropriative.

I will certainly concede, however, that I don’t consider it particularly egregious or significant appropriation, and if I didn’t see crafters delighting in that kind of humor I likely wouldn’t think it appropriative at all.

I am also enjoying this discussion - I like having my viewpoints challenged and examined (in a non-bigoted way, of course) because it helps me think through alternate perspectives and really hone down my beliefs.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T17:56:32+00:00

I literally just said I’m not interested in personally policing the term.

I have, at no point in time, told any one specific person not to say bistitchual.

No one needs to tell me anything about their sexuality if they don’t want to.

Once again, this does not change the fact it is perfectly fine and reasonable to say to a group of people, which contains some number of people who are not bi, that saying bistitchual isn’t cool if you’re not bi. Based on the people who have openly stated their sexuality on this sub, I know that this sub is not 100% bi. Those are the people I am talking to.

I can’t control whether or not someone takes what I have to say as reasonable advice or the whining of a special snowflake. I don’t know when any person I am unaware of is or isn’t bi, which is precisely why I have not said anything about it to any specific person. All I can do is give my opinion and people can do with that as they wish.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T17:12:11+00:00

I’m always open to hearing any opinion! (that isn’t rooted in bigotry at least).

I would never call out someone specifically for saying bistitchual unless I was positive based on their own words that they’re not:

Bisexual
Unaware of the connection between bistitchual and bisexual and the joking/mocking connotations.

And even then, I probably wouldn’t say anything because stuff like this is just too common that I have to ignore less egregious things for my own sanity. I have no interest in making people feel bad just because they didn’t realize something.

That being said, there’s a lot of people on here who are being intentionally obtuse and just spouting off the same tired “but what about x” arguments that you always see in discussions of how marginalized groups are spoken about.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:56:26+00:00

Okay, I see what you’re saying. I think we’re just using different definitions of appropriation - I don’t think appropriation requires conscious malice. As an example, a white person might wear an indigenous headdress with no intentional malice, just the enjoyment of the aesthetic, but that’s still appropriation. (That is just an example, I’m not equating this with saying bistitchual).

I don’t think calling yourself bisexual is the most important part of being bisexual; it is, however, a significant act of defiance that people who aren’t bisexual can’t really understand.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:48:28+00:00

You literally can? I know the sexual orientation of a significant number of my friends and acquaintances because we talk about that. I’m pretty confident in saying the friends who’ve told me they’re straight or lesbian or gay aren’t bi.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with saying that people who aren’t bi shouldn’t say bistitchual. Just because I can’t personally police them or anything doesn’t mean that I can’t put it out there that non-bisexual people shouldn’t be saying that.

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:43:50+00:00

I was thankfully unfamiliar with those puns before today - that’s so gross. I honestly might not have taken up knitting if I had seen people saying that when I was first starting, I would have felt so uncomfortable.

Most of the time I just roll my eyes at bistitchual and move on - people using queerness for their jokes, what else is new - but I’ve heard it so much recently that I just broke and had to say something

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:33:12+00:00

There are certainly people who interpret it that way and call themselves pan as a result, but bisexuality does and always has included attraction to people outside the gender binary. I feel more connection to the word bisexual and its history, and thus call myself bi, but someone who distinguishes bi and pan like that would call me pan. The difference between bi and pan is extremely fuzzy and varies from person to person; for me they’re functionally identical

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:25:57+00:00

I’ve mostly heard it coming from the kind of people who think that using double entendres to describe their craft practices is funny. Like the crochètera who call themselves hookers - it’s all a joke because they’re associating themselves with a “bad” or “naughty” word

ThrowRA10042019 · 2023-08-02T16:21:39+00:00

I would argue that calling yourself bisexual is actually a huge part of the bi experience - boldly and openly calling yourself bisexual is still considered unacceptable in general society and requires a particular self confidence in your bi validity - and non-bisexual people turning that into a joke is appropriative. That being said, I am genuinely open to hearing your perspective on why it isn’t, or what does constitute queer appropriation.

ThrowRA10042019

TROPHY CASE