Mea Culpa

[qthewetsprocket]

A couple posts back, I used an idiom ("kicking a tar baby") which I have since been informed that many people find genuinely offensive, no matter the context. (Note: those of you on my f'list can read the post, but if you're not and you can't, then you'll just have to take my word that it was ill-advised

Comments

[oncelikeshari]

Any excuse to use a Hamster wanking icon *lol*

[qthewetsprocket]

It is such a wonderfully all-inclusive, any-occasion, beautifully succinct and adorable icon, is it not? :)

[antikythera]

The more I read, the more I realise that a lot of the stuff disguised as anti-racism around here is actually fanwank hiding behind a good cause. I'm not bothered. I hope the real anti-racism activists understand that their cause is being co-opted this way.

[qthewetsprocket]

*nods*

And if it were just those particular over-reactionary folks kicking and whining, I wouldn't be bothered. But I was starting to hear that the phrase was offensive from people whose opinions I actually respect, so yeah...thus the post.

[antikythera]

Oh, I wasn't talking about the tar-baby bit, I knew that was something that people genuinely had a problem with. I meant the dogpiling.

[antikythera]

Er, and I suppose this is an example of what I meant by anti-anti-racist -- not listening to someone's legitimate opinion because the rest of their opinions are ridiculous. Hard to get around that one. :P

[anonymous]

I'm anon here because I'm very disappointed with how the comments are going here and don't want to be associated with it. The problem wasn't only the words you used. You used it to provoke people, basically saying "yeah, I used this word that I know might be controversial in a dismissive and hurtful post, but I don't care!" Seeing that from you sucked more than seeing you make a mistake in the words you chose, as does seeing the bitter grudgewank in the comments.

[qthewetsprocket]

Yeah...as I said to another commenter above, I'd intended the idiom to be incendiary towards a certain group of Doctor Who fans who have a tendency to take innocuous things and turn them into 'omg you racist!!' accusations. My two mistakes there were that a) that intention was not at all clear in my original post, which b) didn't matter anyway, because it turns out that the idiom itself isn't quite as 'innocuous' as I'd thought (I'd understood the phrase it contained to have been misappropriated a long time ago for hurtful use, but had thought said misuse was archaic, and had always understood the idiom itself to be inoffensive - clearly, I was wrong).

In short: I'd meant the idiom to be annoying to a certain group of overreactionary folks (whose annoyance wouldn't have been quite as overrreactionary as I'd thought, in this particular case), but not genuinely hurtful to anyone. So, yeah...my serious bad there

[antikythera]

Gee... maybe we should all talk about this stuff anonymously so that stuff doesn't come back to bite us in our asses when we show them. It would make things so much easier.

[ertchin]

I had skimmed over all that, not having the necessary fandom investment. So now I just went back. And ... I'm just going to say (especially since it's late and this post is already a week old) that I believe there are some serious problems with this approach to the concerns of anti-racists (be they real or fake, concerned or whining). I won't get into it any further unless you would like to do so.

[qthewetsprocket]

Agreed. Even though this particular group of fans have a history of making false accusations, stooping to their level by using sarcasm is not the answer; especially when said sarcasm involved an idiom that turned out to be one hell of a lot more genuinely hurtful than I thought it was. Dumb move; idiot Q.

(Btw, you're right; this thread is kind of old...we can take it to PM/email if you like.)