Nina - When I was 18 I turned around to a chef in my workplace...
You may not believe me, but I had a similar experience when I worked in a supermarket. The boss was a real letch and would talk about the (young) girls that worked there in some pretty disgusting ways. I pulled him up on it, and he laughed in my face and threatened me with my job. With my colleagues, we ended up getting him fired through a tribunal. But I don't think you're going to believe me, because all you know of me if the words I type when I'm tired and bored at work, so who cares?
if you used the word slag in my presence to describe the behaviour of anyone I would tell you to shut up
Fair enough, that's your right. And if I was in your presence, we could discuss this at length a lot easier than we can here, and it would have been sorted by now. I have apologised sincerely about using that word in this space, but I'm not going to lie and say I've never used the word IRL, or that none of the people I associate with do.
I realise that I shouldn't be using the 'people I know' defence here, but in the last few hours I've passed this thread around to my friends, my mother and my partner. All of them understood what I meant and agreed with me (although my mum gave me one of those looks your mum can give you when she read the 'slag' bit, but she did agree with my general point). This is not my point though, please don't take it as me looking for approval, I was trying to see if people I knew and respected would find this as offensive as Barbelith has (although I'm sure I'll be reamed for it upthread).
My point is that Barbelth is one of those places where you shouldn't use throwaway abuse in generalisation. It is, as others have mentioned elsewhere, a safe-space where people shouldn't have to come across 'hate-speech' (as that's what it was interpreted as) of any kind. I was using lazy, working-class (which I am, and proud) shorthand in this, which is a more intellectual space. Rather than deleting my comment, I chose to first try to defend it, and then apologise profusely when I remembered that in this space, I was in the wrong.
They're just having a night out, behaving as aggressively as they want to, doing what they want to and there's nothing wrong with that . . . I think you should sit back and think about why you dislike it, why you feel puritanical about women inhabiting and using their bodies in their own way for their own aims and why you have a problem with Saturday nights in most towns in this country.
This, I feel, is a discussion for a whole other thread. If you started one, I would be glad to continue this discussion. It is a very interesting subject, as yes, I do find the whole pub, club and fuck mentality of most people my age (the men more than the women, conversely) distasteful. I would be happy to explore my feelings further in another thread.
I've tried to be as honest, thoughtful and non-sarky as possible in this reply, please accept it in the spirit it was intended, which is that of bridge-building and positive intent. |
