Church sign (December, 2007.) photo by thers/Whiskey Fire. Click for Large photo.
The "C" Word
Only one word has ever been forbidden on Group News Blog.
Not the "N" word, although we strongly discourage it. But the "C" word.
You won't find it it our postings, and it's not allowed in our comments.
Over at Whiskey Fire I was reading the many comments about this photo. One person genuinely thought the "C" word was Chanukah... how sweet.
Then I read the following (which contains the "C" word itself [nsfw]):
Whiskey Fire Comments (Jemand von Niemand)How appropriate that on Christmas Eve day, I should have an Epiphany.
Every time I hear someone use the word, "cunt", it carries the same force for me that I hear behind the N-word. It's meant to devalue, even dehumanize, the recipient -- because every real man knows a cunt is only good for one thing.
There's so much violence washing around just beneath the surface with the wingnuts in these days; it's a lot of bad juju looking for a way out of the bottle.
And there's so much encouragement of violence, bigotry and intolerance by way of example from our sociopathic, twisted 'leaders' in the public sphere.
It's a big step from using the violence of language (the C-word, or the N-word -- or, as was popular in Nazi Germany, the J-word --) to actual violence... but it's just a step.
He's right.
Everything that exists, exists in language. What we speak, we bring forth.
I've used the "N" word rarely in GNB Comments, usually while writing quick little "joke" responses, trying to punch up the humor, make it more colloquial.
That stops now.
It isn't that I am unwilling to use either word in a serious script if as the screenwriter I say the piece demands it.
Group News Blog isn't that place.
Or at least, I can't imagine now, any work short of serious writing of the highest order in which either of those words might ever be appropriate.
Reading the above quote was almost like taking a body blow. How violent both words are. They are intended to hurt actual people, to mess them up, to keep them in their damn place, to make them less than the real humans (the white males.)
All this is why here at Group News Blog where we are in love with diversity of all kinds -- races, genders, sexual orientations & practices, religious beliefs, physical conditions, plus stuff we don't even know what to name it yet -- you will no longer hear either word again, ever.
At least not from me.
Happy Christmas Eve to all of you. "God bless us every one!"
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