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'Stupid Offensive Shit.'

 
 
Olulabelle
21:20 / 30.08.06
As a helpful exercise and because it might help us clarify what we think I thought we could try and make a list of 'stupid, offensive shit'. I think we should actually try to post things we really think rather than try and be funny, and if we do this we might garner some kind of guideline from it.

Or we might not, but at least we may have a little bit of a consensus.

I would not like to come up with a whole list and anyhow I don't have the linguistic gymnastics, but to start us off here are two suggestions for things that I think count as stupid offensive shit based on my personal experience of the board.

Things that count as Stupid Offensive Shit

* Posts that use female terms or imply femaleness in a derogatory fashion.

* Posts that suggest women are les than equal to men.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
22:48 / 30.08.06
Going on from there, here a few more, some which might need to be 'tightened up' to avoid confusion and allow the maximum amount of freedom while keep the Barb' safe:

* Posts that suggest people of a particular race, religion or nationality are less than equal to others.
* Posts that suggest people of a diffrent sexual orientation are less than equal to another.
* Posts that infer particular traits about another poster from their opinions in an attempt to invalidate those opinions (i.e, 'you must be female because you like popular music', 'you must be Jewish since you're defending Israel')
* Posts that explicitly or implicitly state that groups of people have qualities (negative OR positive) beyond their defining characteristics (i.e, saying that homosexuals are attracted to people of their own gender is obviously fine since this is a defining characteristic without which they wouldn't be termed 'homosexual'- saying that all homosexuals are promiscous (negative) or that they are naturally more 'fashionable' than hetrosexuals (a positive) is not)
* Posts that imply continuing group guilt for historical events and circumstances (i.e that 'The Jews' are responsible for killing Jesus Christ, or that 'Germans', as opposed to Nazis, are guilty and continue to be guilty for the Holocaust and World Wars)

If I think of any more I'll post 'em. As always, feel free to point out flaws in the points above.
 
 
Red Concrete
23:02 / 30.08.06
I'm a little concerned that it might wrongly cover some genuine humour, but Phex, it might cover your 3rd and fourth items (and forgive my lack of linguistic foo)

* Wanton stereotyping for the purposes of devaluing or denigrating another's argument or character.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
09:11 / 31.08.06
I think the idea behind "stupidly offensive shit" is similar to the belief that 99% of law could easily be replaced with the sentence "don't be a jerk."

Allowing other people's natural good sense and filters to work this stuff out is often more powerful, and implies greater freedom, than a specific list of what exactly "stupid offensive shit" is. But I think defining it explicitly will rob the concept of a lot of its power.

Maybe a more precisely worded suggestion that still allows lots of room for people's natural filters to kick in and work away? Something like
Think very carefully before posting something that broadly refers to an entire group of people. Statements like "All fat people are jolly", "Women don't 'get' heavy metal music", "cops are all brutal thugs" and "Americans are warmongers" are likely to get examined and dissected, usually harshly.

In my experience, jerks are often also rules lawyers, and will make blatantly offensive statements because they are jerks, and then fall back on finding some minor hole that they think will let them get away with it. And then you wind up debating the "rules" rather than dealing with the actual problem.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
09:19 / 31.08.06
Continuing to browse policy, I got more context on this thread from this part of the "members' rights" thread.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
11:25 / 31.08.06
Matt, I was going to post somethimg like what you said but you put it far better than I could have.

Thanks.
 
  
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