What is offensive??

[Peppermint]

In posts like the "Lost Lustre" thing personel attacks and offensive comments are mentioned. Whats that all about then?

If most of the stuff posted here offends, how on earth do you get on in real life?

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[ashanta]

Tom,

I believe you know the answer to you own question. Your profile indicates you are of a similar age (you are slightly younger) to myself and therefore wise enough to recognise that there is, in the main, four elements to the YBW forum. There is the genuine person asking for help and advice, there is the genuine provider of advice, there is the genuine person who will pass on advice or experience who admits that it is what they know or feel and hope that it will help the person seeking help or knowledge. The fourth element is the element which seems to spend all their time on this website looking for opportunities to either criticise or make fun and who to take a position of strength through allegiences of similiar minded people. I was even subject to a response to thread which I included a post in which I happened to make an elementary spelling mistake!
It's a great website and I enjoy participating. I will continue to do so by learning from others and hopefully passing on any information I have learned to others who are seeking it.
I have recently communicated through this website, to people I have met over many years of sailing, who I would probably never have communicated again.
Lustre??

Regards.

Peter.

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[rhinorhino]

I think the lack of audio and visual clues may have a lot to do with what people find offensive on-line. I may be smiling as I type but you can't see that.
Context / personal knowledge of the other person also has a large part to play in RL but is largely missing from on-line discussions.
This true story shows what I mean. Two gay lads, one asian one white live together, their pet names for each other are packi and honkey. One night as they walk past a police officer one calls the other packi and gets arrested for a racialy aggravated public order offence.
On the other hand the inability to administer a cyber-punch on the nose may encourage comments that would not get made in RL.



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[Jools_of_Top_Cat]

You see this is why the whole thing is nuts. Paki's call each other Paki's, because it is short for Pakistani, like Brit is short for British, unlike what you have said by calling him Asian, Asia being the most populated continent, I would be peeved if everyone called me European, I am a Brit.

How is it offensive, The Japanese do not understand why it is offensive to the rest of the World to call them Nips. It is an odd place when those making up the racist statements are not those who should be bothered by them. Any Pakistani people on this board, do you find it offensive to be called Paki, if you do I will desist, it is only a shortening, it is easier to say, thats all.

I guess Aussie and kiwi is out then, I will tell my girlfriend I can no longer call her a kiwi and she must never refer to herself as a kiwi ever again, for I will find this offensive. And she shouldn't call me a.... well I wont say what she usually calls me.

I for one have had enough of political correctness, PC is the most offensive thing that has happened this century (nearly), it is making us all racist bigots, can we please stop it.

<hr width=100% size=1>Julian

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.topcatsail.co.uk/TC_IrishCruise_2003_00.html>Irish Cruise</A>

 

[chippie]

I wouldnt mind being called a Kiwi, but to be called an Aussie , that would be offensive ;-) Just Kidding , but it does illustrate how the lack of body language etc could lead to difficulties. Tolerance tolerance tolerance.

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[Evadne]

I agree. PC is authoritarianism by the back door, IMHO, but that doesn't mean we can't all be nice to each other from time to time. The trouble is, it's not what you say that is offensive it's what you mean by it. Jools' example shows this exactly, to my mind. The Japanese may see nothing wrong with "Nip" being short for "Nipponese", but to a European or American it is a racist epithet with overtones of WW2. If I called someone on the forum a Stinkie, they may not be offended, it's a common enough term of endearment. If I use it to a stranger's face in a heated argument, however, it could only be construed as a deliberate insult.

I don't think you can lay down rules about what is offensive in writing or not, except in the grossest of cases, which is why we have a human (Kim) to mediate and lay down the law for us. I have always been impressed by the alacrity with which most people apologise if they've accidentally given offence, it's one of the things that sets a good tone in the longer and more rambling threads, and makes for such a friendly atmosphere, in my opinion.



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[ruthhobson]

Isn't that the wonderful thing about language the way it changes and adapts? When words are hijacked and used in an offensive way by others this generally leads to certain words becoming unacceptable. The word paki is often teamed with other words - eg Paki go home. So Paki becomes offensive due to the context it is most frequently used in. The same has happened in the past with words associated with women, making phrases that were acceptable 20 years unacceptable now.

I can use certain language with my girlfriends, girl to girl, but if a man said it - especially one I didn't know, well .... he'd probably get a mouthful back. I don't see why the same can't apply to 2 Pakistanis talking.

BTW Gay is now being used as an insult in schools often by very young children, so expect a change in language use there too.

Ruth

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[kimhollamby]

Problem for us too

Have to say the hairs on the back of my neck twitching after reading these posts, even after fully understanding the context.

Reason? We are a very public outfit living in the tallest building south of the Thames with a long list of laws to consider and have to stay the right side of them. There are countless references to the way in which you can get hold of us and so to stay safely the right side of racial legislation and the like is hugely important to the future of these forums, quite apart from any moral values we hold.

So should we ban Aussie and Kiwi if we are concerned about slang terms regarding other ethnic groups? It's a really good question which I will happily duck for now!

Drifting on in the thought process a bit, despite that last paragraph sounding like a PC statement in double extra bold and despite all of the introspective navel fluff inspection that has been going on around the forums of late I would also argue that our position of responsibility makes these forums stronger in the overall context of the Internet, rather than weaker. There has to be an accepted level of responsibility in using them on the part of the users themselves, which is not really the case on newsgroups and 'invisibly owned' forums. It might occasionally mean we have to step in when issues are being aired that might be considered PC but it also means that there is some protection against excesses that are not always fair, welcome or, for that matter, remembered by the poster the morning after a booze-fuelled Internet session the night before.

It's a proud claim of ours that we rarely have to directly intervene in posts, whatever the perspective that some might have. That reflects well on the general population of people using Scuttlebutt and the other ybw.com forums, whatever the detail niggles. We will continue to play an active but subtle role in nurturing that.



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[MainlySteam]

Well Julian I am going to pose you a hypothetical problem, which may even come to be. As another from the antipodes I am going to decide that New Zealander is an offensive term too, as it has connotations that we are just some sort of inferior new version of Dutchmen. So we will have to think up a new PC acceptable name for us all down here - a current appropriate one might be Hobbits perhaps? I think I could live with that - well at least until I get around to working out that there is something offensive about it.

In the end I think there seems to be far too many super sensitive paranoid people around and they all seem to have the moniker of PC. However, I have to concede that it is nice to have them about as one can spend otherwise dull moments winding them up {edit: after reading Kims post I hurredly add to my last sentence "not on here though." whew!}.

John

<hr width=100% size=1><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by MainlySteam on 31/10/2003 09:52 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[Gunfleet]

Re: Problem for us too

Your office is in the millenium wheel, Kim?

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[owen]

If I were webmaster I would be thinking "why cant they stick to antifouling and stern packing" but as you say in RL we all tend to drift onto other more contentious issues. I think kim does a good job in keeping an eye on things without becoming too interventionist-however he is responsible for what appears . I only look on one other chatroom and that is for doctors only- they also cannot stick to medical issues and one forum(religion) and some contriutors have had to be suspended due to offensive remarks- so YBW forums are not alone.

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[kimhollamby]

If it was in a MW glasshouse...

...then I guess I would have the tallest office this side of the Thames for a part of the day, one of the lowest at other times...and an awful lot of camera-touting company. One could go home and truthfully declare that one's day had been a bit up and down.

King's Reach Tower is 111m (pretty much the same as St Pauls as it happens) and Millennium Wheel 135m so you are right to stop my idle boast, unless we get into the semantics of whether the Millennium Wheel is a 'building'. As it happens I'm only about 80m or so up in my office, a distance I have contemplated when looking at rope stands at the boat show...

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[robp]

And of course the onus is on the prosecutor, to prove that the INTENT was to be offensive. As someone reminded me the other day, Law and Justice are two different things in practice. (As can be applied to the speeding camera discussion). My ten year old will sometimes say, "why is that rude daddy?" Cynicism takes some mastering!

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[jwatson]

Re: Problem for us too

Nah, not the Millennium Wheel - Kim doesn't spin that much!

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[ruthhobson]

Re: If it was in a MW glasshouse...

You could say - what goes around comes around .....

It seemed apt. Sorry.

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[aod]

I think your points are indeed very valid. It's a different matter having genuine consent to address a good friend in a derogatory fashion as oppose to assuming that someone that you didn't know shouldn't be offended because you don't think it's offensive.

What should also be born in mind is that even if you do have consent and it's just a term of endeerment the stranger standing nearby may not think so.

Racism/Sexism (because the two are inextricably linked to the same value system) are a visible/audable manifestation of a prejudice based on ones values and are usualy projected as a statement power or superiority.

One black man brought up in the same neibourhood as another may use the term nigger to his friend. Both have the same value systems, and both know that the use of the word isn't a statement of power or superiority thus not racist thus not offensive. However. their use of the term isn't consent for a white person to use the word with impunity because historicaly when uttered by a white person to a black person it's associated with power/superiority and will be interpreted as such.

It's the same with the word Paki.

It's a complicated issue which will never be resolved in a forum and indeed Kim is right in saying that IPC walk a fine line, so if for no other reason contributors would be wise to consider 'why they are making the post'.



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[rhinorhino]

If you seriously do not understand why that term is offensive to vast swathes of people you have a real problem and should seek race relation training at once, you aren't a police officer are you?

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[DeeGee]

Jeez.... and there was I, thinking that this forum was actually inhabited by a load of complete w********s who haven't a clue about anything. But now I know better. They are all PC persons, minded to think carefully before every post, and to run it all by the lawyers. Wow, and there was I.............

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[Sybarite]

You should see the Northern Ireland current events one on the BBC site....!!

John

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[Sybarite]

Re: If it was in a MW glasshouse...

Hm you are 30 feet lower than Mirabella's mast...??

John

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