PSA: Hate Speech

[brewer]

I feel so safe now.

[LadyForCamus]

I feel so safe now.

You were never in any danger.

[Homeless Nutter]

Well, then don’t call any of our female membership a c*nt, and you won’t have anything to worry about, will you?  I know that must break your heart.

Don't get me wrong - I know the main racial slurs and the homophobic ones, and I think I'm doing a reasonably good job avoiding them. But pocaracas raised a valid point - not all of the broad assortment of colorful and nuanced terms, that Americans coined in order to demean minorities, is immediately obvious to non-native speakers.

[Losty]

Well, then don’t call any of our female membership a c*nt, and you won’t have anything to worry about, will you?  I know that must break your heart.

Don't get me wrong - I know the main racial slurs and the homophobic ones, and I think I'm doing a reasonably good job avoiding them. But pocaracas raised a valid point - not all of the broad assortment of colorful and nuanced terms, that Americans coined in order to demean minorities, is immediately obvious to non-native speakers.

But how is that a real problem? We don’t charge forum bot with going around whacking of the heads of anyone who uses a slur. We have real people behind the scenes and our first course of action is always to let someone know how they’ve violated a rule and what’s expected of them in the future to avoid problems. So maybe someone speaking English as a second language uses a slur and we tell them “hey, we don’t allow the use of that word here” and they say “oh sorry i didn’t realize” ....so....where’s the big problem that arises?

[LadyForCamus]

Well, then don’t call any of our female membership a c*nt, and you won’t have anything to worry about, will you?  I know that must break your heart.

Don't get me wrong - I know the main racial slurs and the homophobic ones, and I think I'm doing a reasonably good job avoiding them. But pocaracas raised a valid point - not all of the broad assortment of colorful and nuanced terms, that Americans coined in order to demean minorities, is immediately obvious to non-native speakers.

Then we’ll deal with those as they come up. It’s really that simple.

[brewer]

I feel so safe now.

You were never in any danger.

Talk about subjective. 

My take, making a rule of "no slurs" is over the top, an attempt at making a safe place. How's that worked previously?

[LadyForCamus]

Don't get me wrong - I know the main racial slurs and the homophobic ones, and I think I'm doing a reasonably good job avoiding them. But pocaracas raised a valid point - not all of the broad assortment of colorful and nuanced terms, that Americans coined in order to demean minorities, is immediately obvious to non-native speakers.

But how is that a real problem? We don’t charge forum bot with going around whacking of the heads of anyone who uses a slur. We have real people behind the scenes and our first course of action is always to let someone know how they’ve violated a rule and what’s expected of them in the future to avoid problems. So maybe someone speaking English as a second language uses a slur and we tell them “hey, we don’t allow the use of that word here” and they say “oh sorry i didn’t realize” ....so....where’s the big problem that arises?

Seriously; there are slippery slope fallacies abound in this thread right now.

[Losty]

You were never in any danger.

Talk about subjective. 

My take, making a rule of "no slurs" is over the top, an attempt at making a safe place. How's that worked previously?

It literally changes nothing, this shit was already against the rules anyway. I think it will work out just fine. And if we lose the people who just can’t bear to refrain from using the n word, my heart won’t be broken.

[pocaracas]

As for your bottom line, slurs were already covered. The point of this (and correct me other staff if I’m wrong) was mainly as a heads up that we will be actioning this from here on out. We had the option to just toss out a shit ton of warnings, but we decided it was better to make an announcement just so it was clear to everyone that from here, if you use slurs you will get a warning or further action if you continue after the warning has been given.

Losty, this was added to the rules. It's not just an announcement. It's an extra rule to address particular examples of trolling or whatever that was already covered. Sure, you can keep it in, but as a sub-point to a main rule.

I’m trying to be understanding of you because it seems to me that you clearly do not have an understanding of my culture, but I can’t lie and say that the reactions of you and some others here hasn’t slightly tainted my view of people.

And here is another problem of this rule: it depends on your culture. It discards the international reach of the forum and imposes rules that are ambiguous to anyone out of your culture, which is the grand majority of the world's population (though, I know it's a minority of the forum's population - but maybe it's not a negligible minority). Maybe it comes about because most (or all?) of the staff are now US based?

Also, expanding on Nutter's comment, one can claim the same about terms coined in the UK, Australia, etc to demean minorities in there, and you in the US have no way to tell that are slurs.
And I'm trying to keep it limited to the English language, as it's the forum's official language.

---

Talk about subjective. 

My take, making a rule of "no slurs" is over the top, an attempt at making a safe place. How's that worked previously?

It literally changes nothing, this shit was already against the rules anyway. I think it will work out just fine. And if we lose the people who just can’t bear to refrain from using the n word, my heart won’t be broken.

It's not the silly n word that's the problem. If that's the problem (as it seems from your and Camus' posts), then create a rule that specifically bans the use of "the n word".

The rule is too broad as it is. Some people use colorful language and will have to be systematically reminded not to say certain words... or end up banned.

[LadyForCamus]

Oh, well. I really have zero sympathy rn.