Question of the Day: Rape? Gay? Mangina?
WARNING: If you are offended by any of the following terms, are homophobic, or just close minded, please stop reading this topic right now.
With that being said, recently BRK, a fellow blogger whom I respect, has joined a guild called 'Sap Girls Can't Say No'. What is my personal impression? It makes me giggle a bit, maybe I'm immature, maybe I don't know somebody who was raped IRL, maybe I think it's a clever usage of words. The fact of the matter however is, that people are going to get offended and it will reflect poorly upon him as a professional (he writes for WoWInsider.)
So, I ask this to you all, for the hot topic debate of the century, do you find the words 'rape', 'gay' , and 'mangina' offensive when used as a slang term outside of the realm of 'Sexual Assault' and 'Homosexual'.
Examples:
"That Son of Arugal totally raped me."
"The Shade of Aran fight is so gay."
My personal opinion is that It REALLY doesn't bother me and I think people over react. Also, I'm bi-sexual so when people say "omg, that's exactly what a straight white male would say." I can only laugh a little bit, maybe I'm being disrespectful of the 'gay community' or whatever, but I really think that people go overboard way too much about getting offended. My personal stance is that words can evolve, and just because we associate 'gay' with homosexual doesn't mean we can't associate it with something else years down the road, the same goes with 'rape', primarily it sticks out as a big 'sexual assault', but it can also mean to pillage/plunder/humiliate/etc. a long the lines of "Raping the countryside." which in terms you could "Rape a Son of Arugal." by utterly decimating him and pillaging his loots.
So, in short, do these words offend you? What about words like mangina and my newly coined female version? If so, how do you react to them within the in-game world, do you ignore the person, rip them a new one, or what?
With that being said, recently BRK, a fellow blogger whom I respect, has joined a guild called 'Sap Girls Can't Say No'. What is my personal impression? It makes me giggle a bit, maybe I'm immature, maybe I don't know somebody who was raped IRL, maybe I think it's a clever usage of words. The fact of the matter however is, that people are going to get offended and it will reflect poorly upon him as a professional (he writes for WoWInsider.)
So, I ask this to you all, for the hot topic debate of the century, do you find the words 'rape', 'gay' , and 'mangina' offensive when used as a slang term outside of the realm of 'Sexual Assault' and 'Homosexual'.
Examples:
"That Son of Arugal totally raped me."
"The Shade of Aran fight is so gay."
My personal opinion is that It REALLY doesn't bother me and I think people over react. Also, I'm bi-sexual so when people say "omg, that's exactly what a straight white male would say." I can only laugh a little bit, maybe I'm being disrespectful of the 'gay community' or whatever, but I really think that people go overboard way too much about getting offended. My personal stance is that words can evolve, and just because we associate 'gay' with homosexual doesn't mean we can't associate it with something else years down the road, the same goes with 'rape', primarily it sticks out as a big 'sexual assault', but it can also mean to pillage/plunder/humiliate/etc. a long the lines of "Raping the countryside." which in terms you could "Rape a Son of Arugal." by utterly decimating him and pillaging his loots.
So, in short, do these words offend you? What about words like mangina and my newly coined female version? If so, how do you react to them within the in-game world, do you ignore the person, rip them a new one, or what?
Labels: personal, question of the day, serious
posted by Sylvina Solaris | 12:03 PM
8 Comments:
Here's the way I see the issue.
I'm willing to believe that there is a significant number of people put there who are bothered/offended/disgusted/whatever by the use of the words 'rape' and 'gay' in a casual and derogatory sense, respectively. It's not some major hardship for me to avoid using those terms, and if I'm saving someone some annoyance of grief by doing so, it seems worth it. I'm not personally fiercely bothered by actually hearing the terms in chat, though the callous refusal to admit that one might actually be bothering others and the refusal to reconsider one's vocabulary kind of annoy me. (Submissiveness is not a common trait amongst WoW players.) I can't make anyone watch their words, but if it's not that big of a deal, I may as well not use terminology that rubs people the wrong way when I have the choice.
As a student of linguistics, I'm more than aware that language changes and words acquire new meanings. I use the word 'sucks' and variations on it casually, even though it's original meaning is not appropriate for mixed company. That doesn't mean that words only recently divorced from more offensive meanings don't have the potential to disturb people; not everyone who plays WoW comes from deep within gamer culture. To most English speakers, 'rape' has one prominent, primary meaning. Most people are only vaguely aware of the pirate-viking plundering meaning, and are completely unfamiliar with the 'beat down' meaning present in some parts of the gamer subculture.
Apart from your post on the topic, I've never run across anyone actually using the word 'mangina', so I don't haven't really formed much of an opinion on the term.
Personally I am not really offended as a woman. If someone was using rape in a literal sense and joking about it, that is a different story. When others choose to use obscene words excessively it more obnoxious than anything else and I choose to /ignore them. I don't associate gay with homosexualitly when used in the terms you described above, I just take it as slang and move on. :)
Oh and have a fun BBQ!!!!
Saying that the Son of Arugal raped you doesn't bother me.
Saying that I'm gay because I'm specced differently than you think I should be annoys me but I'm not offended. It just makes me think whoever said it is 12 or maybe 13.
Mangina doesn't bother me at all.
Joyd makes some good points. I've never been offended at hearing the 'casual' usage of those words in the gaming context, primarily because I know how they are being used. However, I usually refrain from using them myself I can see how someone could take it the wrong way, and the sheer thought of actual rape, as in sexual assault, makes my blood boil.
That being said, I do believe that a lot of people are far too sensitive in today's culture. Saying something is 'gay' does not make you a homophobe or mean you hate homosexuals. Again, it's a term that has become adopted to mean something different in the adolescent gamer subculture and has since been used by more and more people. Then again, I have thick skin. I've been in an interracial marraige for seven years and the things said to me and my wife over that time has sort of made us immune to taking offense at smaller things in life. LOL
Not really, I think for a lot of people such language became part of daily vocabulary, especially for gamers talking to each other. I have a friend who freaks out when I call some players "scrubs" (they really are though), however, he did log on and called a newly recruited low level "a stray dog" so I dunno...
i was actually in said guild with brk. i didnt find it offensive at all, i thought it was actually pretty clever and funny. but, however...well, i can see how people would find it offensive. we do, after all, live in a country where everyone feels they are entitlted to be offended by something...
There will always be someone offended by something. The guild could be named "Death to Dragons" and it could offend me because my dog named Dragon died last year. The whole, "that offends me" argument has gotten out of hand in our society.
I say, if something offends you then be an adult and walk away, there's a /ignore feature for a reason.
I tried an experiment for a while. Every time someone used "raped" (as Sylvina explains), I would respond using castration as the model. As in,
"That Son of Arugal totally raped me."
"Yep, he completely castrated you."
The hate-spew in response was amazing. But more relevantly, that won't bother some people, but if it bothers you it's worth taking a good look at why -- and why maybe using "rape" as your insult of choice may not be such a good idea.
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