But words will never hurt me.
But words do hurt.
Maybe that works on school play grounds when you are 10 but words are used as weapons.
When I was doing diversity training I had a list of words that hurt us, and a list of words are okay if we use them.
Pink News just posted this from 2018 on their Facebook, it was true then and now.
Just like the word “Queer” was out of use for many years and now it is being reclaimed by the community.
That is how words go out of favor… when they become weaponized and used as a slur against us by the oppressors.
We may not like the words, and words do hurt us… but they are not illegal.
Sadly the First Amendment allows the bigots to use the word to verbally attack us. According to the courts it only becomes a bias crime when threats or an actual attack was made.
The Republicans are going after college presidents…
Yes, words hurt! Hurt deeply but our Constitution protects all speech.
Last week I wrote about how the Republicans don’t want an educated public… they just want us to learn Reading, Ritihng, and Rithmatic. They don’t want an educated public.
But words do hurt.
Maybe that works on school play grounds when you are 10 but words are used as weapons.
When I was doing diversity training I had a list of words that hurt us, and a list of words are okay if we use them.
Pink News just posted this from 2018 on their Facebook, it was true then and now.
I look at the word as being the same thing as the word “Tr***y” is for us. Many trans people find it is acceptable for us to use but not for any cis-gender people.Is the word ‘d*ke’ offensive? [I am using the asterisk, not the article]
If you’re a lesbian, or a sensible person of any other sexual orientation, you’ll already know that the word ‘d**e’ should not be used lightly and is generally considered offensive.
By Bea Mitchell
June 1, 2018If you don’t know what you can and cannot say when it comes to derogatory queer terms, ‘d**e’ is a slang word for lesbian – often those of us who present masculine, butch or androgynous.
It originated as a derogatory label for lesbians, and is still used as such by some, well, dumb people, though has since been reclaimed by many girls-who-like-girls, and is widely accepted within the queer community.
Why? Well, people often argue that there’s power in taking back slur words used against them. What others have used to hurt us, they can no longer, because the power has been taken away from them.
According to GLAAD, the term d**e is still derogatory and offensive, and the criteria for using the word should be the same as those applied to vulgar labels used to target other groups. It should not be used except in a direct quote that reveals the bias of the person quoted.
These days, D**e Marches are proof of how the lesbian community has reclaimed the term. D**e Marches – mostly-lesbian protests akin to LGBTQ+ pride parades – aim to increase lesbian visibility and activism, and include people who identify as bisexual, intersex, non-binary, transgender, and so on.
Despite all of this, it’s still very much used as a slur – just look at right-wing pundits Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes, who, in March, went on a bizarre rant in which they claimed that “sexless, depressed, old, chubby dykes control the political narrative.”
We may not like the words, and words do hurt us… but they are not illegal.
Sadly the First Amendment allows the bigots to use the word to verbally attack us. According to the courts it only becomes a bias crime when threats or an actual attack was made.
The Republicans are going after college presidents…
Once again the Republicans ignore a little thing like the Constitution… just a minor detail.3 Presidents on the Hot Seat
In a four-hour hearing, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT steadily defended themselves, their institutions and free expression. Lawmakers remained skeptical.
Inside Higher Ed
By Katherine Knott
December 5, 2023House Republicans lambasted the leaders of three elite universities for more than four hours Tuesday in a contentious hearing that was focused on campus antisemitism but frequently veered into broader conservative critiques of higher education.
“I do not refer to colleges and universities as ‘higher education,’ because it’s my opinion that higher-order skills are not being taught or learned, and I think today’s hearing indicates that,” said North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx, the top Republican on the House Education and Workforce Committee, which hosted the hearing.
“I have always defended higher education, but today I am embarrassed,” said Louisiana representative Julia Letlow, also a Republican.
[…]
The presidents stood by their policies and commitments to free expression, their efforts to support Jewish students and their institutions’ diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which Republicans on the committee have blamed for the rise in antisemitism. Gay, Kornbluth and Magill all condemned antisemitism and said they need to do more to make students and faculty aware of its “insidiousness.”
Foxx set the tone for the antagonistic hearing in her opening remarks, calling antisemitism and hate the “poisoned fruits” of the institutions’ cultures.
“After the events of the past two months, it is clear that rabid antisemitism and the university are two ideas that cannot be cleaved from one another,” said Foxx, who played a video of recent campus protests.
Foxx later asked the three presidents to explain the rise of antisemitism on their campuses, suggesting that hiring practices and curriculum choices were fostering a hatred of Jewish people.
Last week I wrote about how the Republicans don’t want an educated public… they just want us to learn Reading, Ritihng, and Rithmatic. They don’t want an educated public.
Whether you like it or not our Constitution protects your speak, whether it is pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, whether it is pro-LGBT or anti-LGBT, or pro-whatever speech or anti-whatever speech the Constitution protects it.GOP smells blood in the water in elite school antisemitism controversy
The Hill
By Lexi Lonas
December 11, 2023Republicans hostile to the way elite universities shape the nation’s cultural and political debates are smelling blood in the water after a disastrous hearing in which the presidents of three schools refused to say students who called for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined.
One of the presidents, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, has already resigned, and Republicans are seeking to stoke pressure on the other two who testified last week, Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“One down. Two to go,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), whose questioning of the three presidents went viral after they gave evasive answers to her queries, said of Magill’s resignation.
The House Education Committee has now announced a full investigation of antisemitism at universities, signaling GOP lawmakers have no intention of letting the issue quiet down anytime soon.
[…]
“Republicans have been trying this for a long time,” said Ryan Enos, professor of government and faculty associate in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, one of the schools under fire, when asked if Republicans could use the momentum against higher education to advance certain policy proposals.
One of the most popular GOP education targets in recent years has been schools’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which specifically came under fire at the Education panel hearing, with some conservatives blaming them in part for rising antisemitism. Other GOP lawmakers threatened to go after the schools’ prodigious federal grants for science and research if they failed to mend their ways.
If all is going as planned I should be on my way back from a friends house in Haverhill.
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