criterionforum.org

Jessica Valenti wrote a pretty good book about the double standard phenomenon called He's a Stud, She's a Slut. I used to lend it out to my students a lot. I don't know if it's intended for teenagers but I thought it was ideal for them-- not an in-depth study, but a good starting point on the topic

Werewolf by Night wrote:

furbicide wrote:I never fail to be astounded by the way the word 'cunt' is used in the US (effectively like the n-word for women, which is weird).

That’s exactly right. Funny thing is, I’m having a hard time thinking of any word one might use toward a straight white male that would be as taboo and generally offensive as those used toward women, black people, or gay men or used toward straight white men in a way that doesn’t mean to insult them by questioning their masculinity or heterosexuality. Like, is “dick” or “prick” or “asshole” seriously the worst pejorative one can use for a straight white man? “Cracker?” I mean, come on.

I thought Black Panther’s use of “colonizer” was the meanest pejorative I had ever heard. But that didn’t seem to catch on.

Werewolf by Night wrote:That’s exactly right. Funny thing is, I’m having a hard time thinking of any word one might use toward a straight white male that would be as taboo and generally offensive as those used toward women, black people, or gay men or used toward straight white men in a way that doesn’t mean to insult them by questioning their masculinity or heterosexuality. Like, is “dick” or “prick” or “asshole” seriously the worst pejorative one can use for a straight white man? “Cracker?” I mean, come on.

My sources embedded deep in the alt-right inform me that the word you’re looking for is “cuck”.

A term that has been long-fetishized before these idiots took it up.

Coming from a family of immigrants, I also don't get the use of the word "cunt" in America, either. As pointed out, "cunt" has multiple meanings, and while I would probably never say it to a woman in anger, I would never not say it to anyone in any other context, especially if I were talking to or about a man, which is pretty common (and frankly, often jovial) outside the US and in the Anglosphere, even though the word is officially considered one of the strongest terms.

And in point of fact, over here, I have heard the word "cunt" used increasingly frequently, by women, to disparage other women, which is exactly what happened here, and why Bee's audience exploded in programmed applause when she said it.

But the real reason this is happening is because Bee said it about something offensive about someone close to a president. This, I think, is the same thing that happened with Roseanne Barr's expeditious firing, and is related to what happened to Kathy Griffin and even to the first season of Game of Thrones when it was discovered that the commentary pointed out that they had put a decapitated George W. Bush head on a pike. In a century where many political officials are ripe for parody, I think we sometimes forget that presidents and presidential allies are in high places, and that many people in various industries are quick to protect such people from overt slander.

I can get loose-lipped from time to time, but it's a word I cannot bear to say in front of my mother.

flyonthewall2983 wrote: Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:42 am I can get loose-lipped from time to time, but it's a word I cannot bear to say in front of my mother.

I think there's a pun in the oven...

Luke M wrote: Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:15 am

Werewolf by Night wrote:

furbicide wrote:I never fail to be astounded by the way the word 'cunt' is used in the US (effectively like the n-word for women, which is weird).

That’s exactly right. Funny thing is, I’m having a hard time thinking of any word one might use toward a straight white male that would be as taboo and generally offensive as those used toward women, black people, or gay men or used toward straight white men in a way that doesn’t mean to insult them by questioning their masculinity or heterosexuality. Like, is “dick” or “prick” or “asshole” seriously the worst pejorative one can use for a straight white man? “Cracker?” I mean, come on.

I thought Black Panther’s use of “colonizer” was the meanest pejorative I had ever heard. But that didn’t seem to catch on.

Im partial to peckerwood, but hick, trailer-trash, white-trash, redneck, honky, etc...are available, and probably all more colorful than the dreaded n-word, which really holds sway only because of context, as etymologically speaking it's rather uninspired.

Everyone but Barr is coming back for the Conners. Hell, it worked for the Hogan Family

Some smartass on Twitter suggested that they should stay true to the show's demo by having Roseanne fall victim to Jade Helm.

Nixon and his team discovered, long ago, that most white Americans (northern, southern, eastern, western) fear and intensely dislike ALL "non-white others" who attempt to share this country with them. Since then, the GOP has progressively improved its technique for harvesting more and more white voters, in more and more places. Trump is simply the apotheosis of this process. I think one can safely assume that the majority of present-day white voters are never going to significantly change their minds. They've made a choice -- and cognitive dissonance works to convince them they made the only choice they could safely make. Civility, to the extent possible, is beneficial to the non-Trumpians for the sake of their own souls/personal integrity -- but there is unlikely to be any possibility of "dialog" that can change the minds of committed Trumpists.

McCrutchy wrote: Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:47 am even to the first season of Game of Thrones when it was discovered that the commentary pointed out that they had put a decapitated George W. Bush head on a pike. In a century where many political officials are ripe for parody, I think we sometimes forget that presidents and presidential allies are in high places, and that many people in various industries are quick to protect such people from overt slander.

Whoa, I somehow never heard of this. I'm looking at the stills, and honestly, I don't feel anyone would have ever spotted or picked that out.

Michael Kerpan wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:17 pm Nixon and his team discovered, long ago, that most white Americans (northern, southern, eastern, western) fear and intensely dislike ALL "non-white others" who attempt to share this country with them. Since then, the GOP has progressively improved its technique for harvesting more and more white voters, in more and more places. Trump is simply the apotheosis of this process. I think one can safely assume that the majority of present-day white voters are never going to significantly change their minds. They've made a choice -- and cognitive dissonance works to convince them they made the only choice they could safely make. Civility, to the extent possible, is beneficial to the non-Trumpians for the sake of their own souls/personal integrity -- but there is unlikely to be any possibility of "dialog" that can change the minds of committed Trumpists.

Patently false. The only reason Trump is president is due to the fact that he swung 2008 and 2012 low income white Obama voters in the rustbelt and Great Lakes region (basically, the Conners). Had he not won this crucial demographic (40% of the Obama coalition was working class whites), he would not have won the presidency.

They voted for Obama in 2008 and many in 2012. But they didn't back Hillary. They do however really like Sanders, someone considerably to Clinton's left.

Perhaps the problem is that the Democratic Party is an extremely unconvincing working class party?

Arent both the Dems and Reps not working class anyway ? From my French perspective, none would be considered as socialist but would instead be classed under the right wing. Dems would probably be center-right or soft right and the Reps definitely conservative hard right. In France, Trump would be far right.

tenia wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:43 pm Arent both the Dems and Reps not working class anyway ? From my French perspective, none would be considered as socialist but would instead be classed under the right wing. Dems would probably be center-right or soft right and the Reps definitely conservative hard right. In France, Trump would be far right.

Exactly. There's not even a "degraded" or Tony Blairized working class/labor party in the USA. The Democrats, while they used to be farther to the Left, never had the structural connections to trade unions that European Labor or SocDem parties have or had. There could never be a Corbyn-style takeover of the Democrats. Hell, being a "Democrat" doesn't entitle one to vote on the party's program or leadership.

It's no a coincidence that so many top Democratic Party advisors work for European center-right parties like the Conservatives in the UK or the PP in Spain. Obama called Theresa May--not Corbyn--to console her after the last election. Obama's 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, was working for Spain's Rajoy (a member of the conservative, Francoist party).

A lot of US media doesn't focus on class at all and it's been that way for a very long time. Most televisions shows and films have families that aren't exactly wealthy but only really seem to struggle financially when convenient for the plot. It's really quite interesting when placed against the working class dramas (Take a Ken Loach film for instance.) or comedies found in the UK or elsewhere. I'd need data to support it (As I don't I don't want to make any downright incorrect claims) but I wonder now how this has shaped American consciousness these past few decades.

Americans as a whole don't much like the idea of class, because it cuts against that ever-present "bootstraps" dream narrative. If class exists, it would be admitting that fortune (in both senses of the word) still has a lot to do with station in life.

tenia wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:43 pm Arent both the Dems and Reps not working class anyway ? From my French perspective, none would be considered as socialist but would instead be classed under the right wing. Dems would probably be center-right or soft right and the Reps definitely conservative hard right. In France, Trump would be far right.

Correct

The US has a center-right party and a right party.

From a European perspective, I’d say right and far right.

Barack Obama was well to the right of his British counterpart David Cameron on a great many issues, and yet Cameron was supposedly the conservative (that said, he was widely hated by many conservatives, not least for his personal championing of gay marriage).

connor -- I don't think most studies have actually proven a large swing of white Obama voters to Trump. And I find it inconceivable that you dismiss white racial resentment/anger as a major factor in the ever increasing success of the GOP (a de facto "white people's party).

I have not yet seen any detailed (and convincing) comparison of just what sorts of voters sat out the last presidential election, versus the two previous elections. With so many potential voters not voting in any given major election, one can never be sure whether the make up of the pool of voters (and non-voters) changes significantly from election to election.

Michael Kerpan wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:08 am connor -- I don't think most studies have actually proven a large swing of white Obama voters to Trump. And I find it inconceivable that you dismiss white racial resentment/anger as a major factor in the ever increasing success of the GOP (a de facto "white people's party).

I have not yet seen any detailed (and convincing) comparison of just what sorts of voters sat out the last presidential election, versus the two previous elections. With so many potential voters not voting in any given major election, one can never be sure whether the make up of the pool of voters (and non-voters) changes significantly from election to election.

Yes they have. Here's the most recent one, from Stephen L. Morgan and Jiwon Lee at Johns Hopkins University.

Morgan and Lee wrote:Abstract: To evaluate the claim that white working-class voters were a crucial block of support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, this article offers two sets of results. First, self-reports of presidential votes in 2012 and 2016 from the American National Election Studies show that Obama-to-Trump voters and 2012 eligible nonvoters composed a substantial share of Trump’s 2016 voters and were disproportionately likely to be members of the white working class. Second, when county vote tallies in 2012 and 2016 are merged with the public-use microdata samples of the 2012-to-2016 American Community Surveys, areal variations across 1,142 geographic units that sensibly partition the United States show that Trump’s gains in 2016 above Romney’s performance in 2012 are strongly related to the proportion of the voting population in each area that was white and working class. Taken together, these results support the claim that Trump’s appeal to the white working class was crucial for his victory.

No one denies that Trump won with Obama's low income white midwestern voters. It happened.

FiveThirtyEight wrote: But none of that gets at the heart of why so many people who cast a ballot for former president Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — and who saw Trump as unqualified to be president — nonetheless voted for him. Although it’s far from a microcosm of the nation, there’s one place that I believe illustrates what happened in 2016 better than anything else.

In a nation increasingly composed of landslide counties — places that voted for one side or the other by at least 20 percentage points — Howard County, Iowa (population 9,332), stands out as the only one of America’s 3,141 counties that voted by more than 20 percentage points for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Democrats can’t credibly blame Howard County’s enormous 41-point swing in just four years on a last-minute letter to Congress, voter ID laws or Russia-sponsored Facebook ads

Big Ben wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 6:45 pm A lot of US media doesn't focus on class at all and it's been that way for a very long time. Most televisions shows and films have families that aren't exactly wealthy but only really seem to struggle financially when convenient for the plot. It's really quite interesting when placed against the working class dramas (Take a Ken Loach film for instance.) or comedies found in the UK or elsewhere. I'd need data to support it (As I don't I don't want to make any downright incorrect claims) but I wonder now how this has shaped American consciousness these past few decades.

That is quite interesting, as going back to the 70s the US shows most focused on class seemed influenced by the UK with Sanford and Son a US remake of Stepford & Son and All In The Family a version of Till Death Do Us Part.

colinr0380 wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 6:27 pm

Big Ben wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 6:45 pm A lot of US media doesn't focus on class at all and it's been that way for a very long time. Most televisions shows and films have families that aren't exactly wealthy but only really seem to struggle financially when convenient for the plot. It's really quite interesting when placed against the working class dramas (Take a Ken Loach film for instance.) or comedies found in the UK or elsewhere. I'd need data to support it (As I don't I don't want to make any downright incorrect claims) but I wonder now how this has shaped American consciousness these past few decades.

That is quite interesting, as going back to the 70s the US shows most focused on class seemed influenced by the UK with Sanford and Son a US remake of Stepford & Son and All In The Family a version of Till Death Do Us Part.

A notable exception being the mid-70's Norman Lear sitcom, Good Times.

Wikipedia wrote:Florida and James Evans and their three children live at 921 North Gilbert Avenue, apartment 17C, in a housing project in a poor, black neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. The project is unnamed on the show, but is implicitly the infamous Cabrini–Green projects, shown in the opening and closing credits.

Both parents, if I remember correctly, held multiple jobs (if/when they could get a job) and dealt with racism and prejudice on a weekly basis. It was the one sitcom that often straddled the poverty line.

colinr0380 wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 6:27 pmThat is quite interesting, as going back to the 70s the US shows most focused on class seemed influenced by the UK with Sanford and Son a US remake of Stepford & Son and All In The Family a version of Till Death Do Us Part.

You'd better correct that to Steptoe & Son before you're excommunicated from Britain!

I like the idea of Stepford Wives & Son. "I simply must get the recipe for that rag and bone cart!"