Discussion Main / NWordPrivileges

Old TRS thread that went nowhere.

The only people i've witnessed objecting to ""queer"" are TERFs, ace exclusionists and other types of exclusionists, who want to police which letters are allowed into the acronym and only hate ""queer"" because it's "too inclusive" and impossible to police.

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by notahandle on Jun 4th 2013 at 2:22:28 AM

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Ambiguous Name, started by iwantedtoaddsomething on Nov 21st 2020 at 3:34:52 AM

Are non-race related entries allowed here? I'd like to know if I can add one about Bitch magazine, since I'm told it's trying to reclaim the B-word, much like us Black folk supposedly did with the N-Word.

Troper Premonition 45 added the following entry:

• In the 1977 New York City Democratic mayoral primaries, Mario Cuomo used "Vote for Cuomo, not the Homo" as a slogan against Ed Koch (though Koch ended up winning). During the 2018 New York Democratic gubernatorial primaries, Cynthia Nixon, who is openly bisexual, used "Vote for the homo, not Cuomo" as a slogan against incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mario's son.

I commented it out, because as written it's Not An Example (or at least, has too little context to judge whether it's an example or not). N-Word Privileges is "some people are allowed to use slurs without causing offense, but others are not." This doesn't say anything about whether the word "homo" was considered any more or less offensive when used by the (presumably straight) Cuomo as opposed to the (bisexual) Nixon.

Premonition restored it with the edit reason "There's the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) spectrum," which doesn't address my question.

Pulling it here for discussion.

exactly when is naruto enraged or otherwise put off by anyone using the term jinchuuriki?

I pulled the following entry:

• In LGBT communities, it's fairly common to use queer as a blanket term to refer to all genders and sexualities apart from straight and cisgender. But if a straight cis person uses the word in front of an LGBT person, they can expect a well-deserved ass kicking to follow.

The wording will have to change regardless: I'm sure we can find a way to phrase the example without calling for physical violence against people for a simple faux pas.

But I'd also like to ask: is this an example at all? Certainly the word "queer" is often used as a pejorative, but it also has fairly neutral uses as well, and I can't say I've ever observed any LGBT people getting angry at a straight person for using the term in a non-pejorative way. That's just one person's experience, though, so maybe there's a different consensus that I'm unaware of?

There's been a little back-and-forth over some examples from The Boondocks, so I figured we should probably hash them out at length rather than trying to have a conversation in the edit history.

Going down the list:

• The Boondocks uses the N-word very liberally. Most of the black characters, and a few white characters, say "nigga" frequently. The DuBois family are an exception though, never saying the word once.

This doesn't really give any information that wouldn't be better explained in the specific examples, so I deleted everything except the name of the series and added a colon.

• This show's N-Word Privileges go beyond just profanity. It often plays offensive black stereotypes for humor; had it been created by a white guy, it probably would've been derided as racist.

Deleted; it violates Examples Are Not Arguable with the Weasel Word "probably," veers into Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment territory, and is just generally Not An Example since, as far as I know, the creators of The Boondocks have never held that their use of the word is okay while other people should not be able to say it.

• In "The Garden Party", Robert tells Huey and Riley that they shouldn't use the N-word, even though Huey points out that Robert says it all the time.

Not An Example; Robert isn't trying to tell Huey and Riley that his use of the word is okay because there's something different about him, he's just being a hypocrite.

• Lampshaded during Uncle Ruckus' "Don't Trust Them New Niggas Over There" song. After he finishes singing his horribly racist song for a bunch of rich white guests, one woman comments that she thinks it's okay for "them" to use the N-word, and then the audience applauds politely.

This is a valid example; I adjusted the wording slightly.

• An entire episode "The S-Word" (based on a real story) is spent parodying and deconstructing this trope when one of Riley's teachers calls him the N-word and the media find out. The teacher's excuse was that Riley says the same word all the time.

Not An Example. The teacher is arguing that because it's okay for Riley to say, it must be okay for him as well, which is an inversion if anything. Riley never argues that it's okay for him to say; he pretends that he doesn't say it. Hypocrisy, not this trope.

• Lampshaded again, apparently it is used so much in the Freeman household, that Riley thought that was his name until he was three years old.

"These people use this word" is Not An Example. There has to be an attempt to establish a standard for who gets privileges and who doesn't. This doesn't explain whether there is such a standard in play or what that standard is.

• "The New Black" lampshades it too, along with a number of other taboo words, like "fag" (which was censored on TV) and "retarded", which both Riley and Rollo Goodlove used throughout the episode, the latter of whom points out that it's okay for him to say "nigga" on TV but not *bleep*.

Ditto. Unless Rollo is claiming that it would not be okay for a white person to say "nigga" on TV or that it would be okay for a gay person to say "fag" or a mentally disabled person to say "retarded," (which he might have been doing, but I haven't seen the episode in a while), it's Not An Example. If he is claiming those things, then say so in the example.

"The title of this trope comes from a comedian's explanation of why white people can't say the N word."

Who was this comedian, exactly?

"Another argument that's sometimes made is one of consistency: if all the other filthy words are given a pass in today's permissive society, why not the ethnic insults too?" This was added to the trope description. I'm pulling it here, because I can't find any examples currently listed that really go into this thinking (heck, I've never seen this thinking in real life), so it strikes me as an invitation for natter, since it's a tossed-in open ended question.

Near the bottom of the description, it says, "Please note that this trope had been misused. If the link is not an example of this trope, link it to another trope." — In what way has it been misused? I want to know in case any examples I want to add don't quite fit.

It's a bad idea to actually use the term "N-Word Privileges" when you aren't talking about being black... Learn from my wisdom, friends. Learn from it.

Shouldn't this be behind the anti-Google wall? It's undoubtedly "inappropriate".

"Those belonging in the out-group feel bereft at not having every single possible word in the English language at their disposal"

Oh horror of horrors.

I deleted this: "(Another aspect of the Double Standard: the "W-word" and "G-word", whitey and gringo, though clearly slurs, were until recently freely usable by anyone without getting called on it. Allegations (albeit unfounded ones) that American President Barack Obama's wife may have used the former is one of the first times it's ever been indicated that a black person might not have "W-word privileges".)"

What evidence is there that "whitey" is freely usable by anyone without getting called on it? To begin with, it's incredibly short-sighted; somehow I don't see black people in the 1950s South getting away with using "whitey," and that counts as before "until recently." And I can't think of any examples of a major political figure getting away with using "whitey." Henry Louis Gates is still catching flak for using "whitey" once when he was in high school.

"Because whites as an ethnic group have not experienced racial discrimination (at least in history recent enough to be considered relevant) as almost every other ethnicity in the U.S."

I wouldn't argue that for the US, but around the world white people certainly suffer plenty of racial discrimination.