<3

NO YOU c:

I'll show YOU!
♡♡♡♡

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! *hamboning frantically*

Lmfao!

Mostly jus showed to remind you that you're lovely~

Second journal bringing this stuff up that I've seen in the past day. Wonder why its getting on people's minds so strongly so suddenly

Well… to be clear the events in this journal happened a few weeks ago, and I wrote the journal because I saw JustDrox's. So… hopefully mystery solved? :)

Yeah Drox's is the other one for me too. Dislike that he said removing cboy and stuff from his art is "fixing" them cause there really isn't anything wrong with it. Seems like something he was pressured to do in a way and I would hate to see others do that because some people dont wanna just have a you do you attitude.

I can't speak for JustDrox. But while I do think it's defensible to identify personally with the word "cuntboy", it's certainly not true that there's nothing wrong with it; it's definitely problematic to a lot of people who aren't "just being sensitive". Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, and when those consequences affect others then it's polite and reasonable to seek an alternative.

In other words, you can keep saying cuntboy, but you should be able to defend it in a better way than "I can say what I like" or "why are you offended, don't be so sensitive". For example, I don't use it myself but "cboy" is in my art tags because that's what people search for, and using it gets the artists I've commissioned more exposure and hopefully more work.

Yeah, as I said on JustDrox's journal about this, the term "intersex" seems to be the most culturally accepted, for labelling it, if there has to be a label for it specifically. Which there does, for clarities sake, and to allow those that have issue with such things the ability to avoid it where possible. But for the personal description, it's as you said, "You do you!"

Yeah I wonder if intersex is really more accepted or it's just that there aren't many intersex people around to complain about it :) Alas being intersex myself doesn't make me part of a secret club where I can just find out ;) I will say that personally it doesn't bother me, but I can see that it'd be different for many others.

I have a sort of crackpot theory that fantasy herm characters on FA started labelling their stuff as intersex because "hermaphrodite" is offensive to intersex people… except that the characters in the art genuinely ARE hermaphrodites, so it's actually kinda silly from my perspective :P (hermaphrodite being a person with male and female genitalia, while intersex is a state somewhere between the two but never both because that's physically impossible in humans – obviously a physical constraint that doesn't apply to fantasy characters).

TL;DR: there were some ducks and some swans and it was complicated :)

In the end I don't think it matters where the word started. Language changes and adapts to our will over time. If people want "cuntboy" to be offensive, then it will remain offensive, if they want it to be a polite way of referring to an individual that is biologically and physically male but with a vagina, then that's up to them. After all offence is taken, not given.

After all offence is taken, not given.

Is it really that simple? It's very pithy. If I called someone a nigger, is it entirely their fault they're offended and am I entirely blameless for their response? If I called your mother a whore, or you a pedophile, and you hit me for it, would you be guilty of assault and me an innocent victim? If I shouted "oh my god he's got a bomb" or "fire!" in a crowded room and someone got trampled to death or shot in the ensuing panic, should I face no consequences? I don't think so. This underlines the point I made to BlyTheAuraWolf - freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. I think if you know a word causes harm and offense and you intentionally use it, then that's on you at least as much as the person who gets offended. Intent matters a bit, sure, but it's almost bizarrely wrong to suggest that the speaker is wholly blameless. Otherwise nothing you say has any meaning or value, because you never have to own up to or defend anything you say or think; it's a sort of post-modern art view of language and personal responsibility, where words leave your throat or fingers, and it's up to the audience to ascribe meaning to them and bear full responsibility for their interpretation and reaction :P

To lighten things up, coincidentally today's XKCD has something to say on what I interpret your position to be: https://xkcd.com/1860/ :)

I think so. After all many of the intentionally malicious people WANT to get a rise out of you. By getting upset and making them feel like they've won, you've essentially achieved nothing, other than validating their malicious behavior. Language as I said can adapt and change over time. If not then the word "nigger" wouldn't be in the English Dictionary, for fear of offending someone...but it is (Oddly not seen any slurs towards Caucasians in the dictionary though).

Now while the situation with the idea of you calling my mother a whore or me a pedophile and me hitting you (which I'd never do btw) is similar to the use of the word "nigger" as the intent is to offend, and insult. The idea of shouting "oh my god he's got a bomb" or "fire!" isn't as the intent is either to cause a panic, or pull a prank.

With the calling my mother a whore or me a pedophile, and me getting violent. Of course you should be punished because the intent was to upset me, but I should be punished for resorting to violence, when I could have just held my anger and upset in and pursue a battle against you in court for slander. I've damaged my own position by letting you rile me up. Now for you in this case punishment is hard, because in these scenarios if you truly believe I am a pedophile or my mother is a whore, then if it truly matters to me I should either admit you're right or prove you wrong, that way correcting your incorrect assumptions. I know this doens't always work, but I always feel it's worth a try. The only option then is for me to counteract any action against me for assault with a similar case against you for slander and/or any other possible cases within a courtroom.

Concerning the incidents of you hypothetically shouting "oh my god he's got a bomb" or "fire!" and someone getting trampled to death. I believe that falls under a charge of manslaughter or something similar. So you'd face justice that way with the punishment being decided by either a judge or a group of your peers.

But generally speaking I agree with you. As you said "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" and "f you know a word causes harm and offense and you intentionally use it, then that's on you at least as much as the person who gets offended" I agree with you. Intent does matter. Which is why to me it's up to the group of people that can take offence to a term to essentially disarm their haters as it were. If People of Colour choose to no longer see the word "nigger" as an insult and treat it as a compliment or just as meaningless as a word like "Caucasian" to describe white people, then the definition of the word will adapt, and change, and over time old meanings can get abandoned by society. To me this was proven true by the word "Gay" as it was originally just an offensive term, and now homosexuals wear it as a badge of honour and with pride. It's just not offensive anymore. The same can happen to nearly any word if the people that are offended by it, choose to change it's meaning. Though i'll admit this isn't possible with the terms "dickgirl" and "cuntboy" because to change them you'd have to make the words "dick" and "cunt" not be obscene or offensive, and sinec those words aren't targetting a particular group, and are used in a general fashion, it's a much more uphill battle than with the term, "intersex".

We do all share responsibility. Those taking offence, deciding if they want to still take offence or change how things work, equally as those that intend to offend should realize their words have consequences, no matter how free your speech may be.

Speaking personally, that comic didn't lighten things up for me. It actually made me feel offended. But rather than rant and waste both our times I'll just link to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

Although that video is too surreally absurd to make a valid argument about anything (it's a pretty good example of the slippery slope logical fallacy), like you I think we largely agree on most of the points made here, including your responses to the scenarios. I appreciate you being civil - I struggle with it sometimes, and probably came across more strongly than was reasonable, so sorry about that. To me it's not odd that general slurs about caucasians are thin on the ground in the English dictionary: England was overwhelmingly caucasian and saw no reason to insult itself as a whole - there are plenty of more specific terms relating to class and character though, like spiv, chav, pikey and toff, and obviously terms relating to foreign caucasians, like wop, frog, kraut, etc.

I do think the issue is rather more complex than people simply accepting and then subverting words, but since you yourself pointed out that this isn't always easy or even possible, let's leave it there.

Same to you. It's nice to actually have a conversation on here without tempers getting all strung and being able to be civil with someone. It's become far to rare, so thank you.

Couldn't find pikey, chav, wop or kraut in my dictionary, yet it has spiv, toff and frog (concerning it's offensive meaning), as well as yank for Americans and nigger for People of Colour...then again I got my dictionary in 2012...so it might be out of date a tad...still the terms it has were listed as informal besides nigger which was listed as offensive. Dictionaries are weird little books.

And I only just noticed your icon is saying fuck...I thought it was going meow.

Haha,  Smelly was kind enough to do me a "Meow" version too, but "Fuck" is the original and best and I promise I haven't changed it today :)

Sounds about right!
And yeah.. I absolutely agree

*grooms*

*groomgrooms also is a cat and feels like saying meow! to stay with the journals title*

<3

A decade ago someone called me an 'androgynous nonhuman entity' and I thought that was pretty cool.

You're also an autonomous carbon unit BOOM!

...idontgetit

Yup, I remember discussing this with you; I'm still in the same boat, though I still haven't quite decided what I wanna do. I want *a word* for simplicity's sake, but I find myself hopping back and forth among 'cboy,' 'intersex,' and 'well he's a guy but with female equipment' as I try to juggle being concise and not offending people. None of it offends /me/, mind you, buuut even if I feel like a lot of people are rather oversensitive about words (especially when I'm describing myself with them, not them) I still at least make an effort to avoid causing offense. Tl;dr - I feel like we need -a word- that's not... well, any of the existing ones, for reasons you stated. By and large I use 'cboy' because people *already know what it means,* but uh... how about one that doesn't start with an initialism for 'cunt'?

Well using any other word than cunt will offend the growing movement of broflakes – angry white men who think everyone's getting oversensitive – and they're a lot louder, more numerous and more offended than anyone else I've encountered tbh, so you can't win, especially by coining yet another neologism :D

"Just a guy", expanding to "Just a guy with a pussy" when relevant seems fine to me (simple and to the point) if that's how you identity. I think "intersex" is at least somewhat defensible too; of course it's an idealised, almost mythical form of intersex with no hormonal or physical issues that trivialises/fetishes the third sex, but then what furry art isn't like that? :P

I might just be a dreamer, but hopefully someday soon science will have advanced to the point where there aren't any hormonal or physical issues this side of the mirror as well~!

An interesting perspective~ I personally have never really viewed the term as bad or tasteless per se, more of a "layman's term" if you will. The same way that an uneducated person might call a monitor a computer, if you catch my drift(I couldn't think of a better example, sorry -w-) Anyway, that's just my two cents, I found your post interesting and thought I'd contribute~<3

Plus, it's wayyyyyyy easier to understand, hence why i view it as the 'layman's term'