The Free Joy State wrote:I'm not even sure what this is. Trolling, maybe...'There's an awful lot of slurs about feminists, women and some perjoratives like "bugman"
Also seems off-topic (emphases mine; there's probably more I missed):
A bit more than a week ago I was "trolling" (according to the site moderators and issues editors who reported and banned me as they have done repeatedly in what appears to be a targeted offensive against me, but I'll leave it up to the peanut gallery to decide if I was trolling in reality instead of just on a ban log). As I was posting indisputable facts backed up by real life statistics in an effort to "troll" a forum full of people who tend to display a very level-headed response towards actual trolling (presumably because I am a keyboard-masochist that delights in inflicting boredom upon myself), I was caught red-handed for posting some awful, awful slurs and pejoratives. A lot of the things said were obviously offensive and I recognised them as being such from the get-go, although I was too passionate about a subject that personally affected me and my people to hold back on using them. I take full responsibility for those words and will make it my personal mission not to use them again on this forum to offensively describe a group of people.
When looking at the pejoratives I was called out for typing, one seems to stick out from the others. "Bugman". Even to the person reporting me, the mere scattered mentioning of the word "bugman" stuck out from all the other paragraphs claiming feminist women are "fat" and "used-up" and that male feminists are "cuckolds" and "human wallets". When describing the rule-breaking elements of my post, he claims that there are "an awful lot of slurs about feminists, women" and THEN "some pejoratives like "bugman"". This wording is extremely interesting.
Firstly, the pejorative "bugman" is separated from the "awful lot of slurs" by the connective "and", as if two different things were being stuck together. Are they two different things? Is a pejorative distinct from a slur? Maybe on thesaurus.com, which only lists pejorative as an adjective and slur as a noun, but wikipedia lists pejorative and slur as being interchangeable terms (along with the more wordy "term of abuse" and "term of disparagement"). If "bugman" is a pejorative than it is clearly a slur as well, so why discuss them separately?
A great thing about the English language is the wide variety of words it has that mean more or less the exact same thing. A fair few tongues don't have this - from my mostly-forgotten high school experience with Chinese, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Mandarin, for example, isn't as colourfully full of available synonyms as English is. An experienced English speaker, such as a person who dedicates themselves to editing issues on nationstates (I see a lot of things in issues but spelling and grammar mistakes aren't in them, somebody's keeping them spotless and is clearly in possession of a high level of English proficiency), will have a good feel for the minute differences between these synonyms and know when a particular one is to be used in a particular situation. If that proficient English speaker isn't careful or simply isn't concerned with masking his or her thoughts (the less cluster A person in me is banking on the latter), the way they use a particular synonym for a word in a particular situation can speak volumes about the actual situation itself. The difference between "slur" and "prejorative" is one of how the author feels about the specific naughty word, nothing else.
Where is this post going with this? "Slur" is much more colloquial than "pejorative", which is more flowery and formal-sounding. Dragging out your words (this includes being more articulate than you need to be) is generally a clear sign that your words aren't as steady as you're making them out to be - think lying ("I didn't" vs "I did not", who is more likely to be lying?) or unsureness. Since the person who wrote this is obviously not lying about anything, he has called "bugman" a pejorative and the equivalent of "fat cow feminist" a slur because he is much more confident when approaching the latter as opposed to the former. "Bugman" catches him off guard, it's not something he's well-adapted to dealing with.
Why is this? For starters, "bugman" is a relatively new slur. People have been talking disparagingly about "harpies", "cows" and "cunts" for centuries, but calling someone a "bugman" is quite new and I can't think of many exact synonyms for it. How new is it? Hard to tell. The farthest google trends can go back is 2004, and searches for the word "bugman" have remained steady for the entirety of that time. Bugman is also the name of a TNMT villain and (endearingly) a famous entomologist from New Zealand, among other things, that have been around since the twentieth century, so just checking how many people have typed "bugman" into google is probably not a good way to assess the rise of this slur. "Bugman" as we interpret the word today, and as I was given a 7 day forum ban for, seems to have come to the forefront by about 2017. It appears to have become a thing at around the same time as "soyboy" and other slurs referring to weak men the attackers believe would not be able to hold a candle to those who tamed the land they currently live on. I guess you could say "cuck" is comparable but "cuck" has always been way more vague because it's funnier to call people it. "Soyboy" is also more different from "bugman" than, say, "slur" is from "pejorative" too actually, as "soyboy" is more related to somebody's physicality (think about how the results of Buzzfeed's "Try Guys" getting their testosterone levels checked, while banally unsurprising, triggered cries of "soyboy" across the internet as people scrambled to laugh at them for being less virile than a 70 year old)
"Bugman" is something new, and it is also something special. So what is it? This article from 2017 describes it pretty well, take it away:
What is a Bugman?
Aesthetically they’re much like their name, bug-eyed, jittery and insect-like, their very demeanour often makes one’s skin crawl. You’re more than likely surrounded by hoards of these bovine-esque people in day-to-day life. Culturally of course they’re near impossible to pin down for they cut all cultural roots at the base in fear of representation with the past. Politically many say bugmen are ‘left-leaning’ yet I’d argue the case that any affiliation with politics is entirely with the curve of the populous and thus the Bugmen – at present – inject themselves routinely with viral strains of progressivism, neoliberalism and (especially) democracy. Projected from this ambivalent attitude towards history and politics comes anti-empathetical extroversions with regard to tradition, myth, folklore, spirituality and interest, all of which, when positioned in relation to a bugman are used only alongside heavy doses of postmodernist irony. The simple matter of fact is they have zero respect or tolerance for anything antiquated or traditional, the most minor of historic morsels that doesn’t actively sell itself to them or project their personal vision of infantile-tech-utopia is cast aside. Philosophically the bugman is relatively confused, often mistaking logic, reason and rationale with one another, and replacing the idea of basic causality with their own drawn-out narcissistic assessment attempts: “Look at me, I’ve got it all figured out.” the bugman says internally.
Before you sits the social nervous system of the bugman true, a sordid mixture of fad-reverence and capitalist-lite binging. On closer inspection of the day to day life of a bugman one finds at its core the implementation of social erosion, everything that is taken from its origin is likewise bastardized into a regressive, virtual, stir-crazy version of its former self: eSports, Fantasy Football, Copy ‘n Paste Vidya (à la Bethesda/Ubisoft), New Atheism, Beards-as-personality, etc. each of these characteristics is of course filtered through the latest piece of cutting-edge high-brand technology the bugman can afford. One may have noticed already that bugmen’s ‘personalities’ are nothing more than the accumulation and composition of various popular brand names, technologies, TV shows, bands etc. The bugman is entirely defined by that which they consume. Thus the bugmen easily assimilate into their own groups, for their archetypes and traits are based off material possessions, as such grouping is quick, painless and has the added benefit of instantaneous conversation: “Sweet mechanical keyboard dude!”
There is of course a difference between a regular consumer and a bugman, there has to be, for everyone consumes. Whereas a consumer will buy a basket of groceries which they plan on eating, the bugman will purchase retro foods, meme-drinks and ironic status-tokens as a means to display the fact that they are indeed ‘in-on-it’. A consumer will buy the box-set of their favourite TV show because they genuinely enjoyed the viewing, perhaps they’ll watch 3-4 episodes a week around other commitments, a bugman on the other hand subscribes to multiple streaming services and binges series after series in the ever expanding quest for acceptance, when asked how they found Stranger Things, Rick & Morty, Bojack Horseman, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones etc. the bugman does not offer insight into their personal opinion, only regurgitates a titbit or quote from the series as a means to display their virtue of consumption. “I too have seen the thing you have!” A network of insects whose lives are routinely controlled by ratings: theirs and others. They must advance their rating by subsuming the other which is rated highly. ‘Everyone liked this, so if I like this, everyone will like me!”
Identity and consumption merge within the bugman. Hobbies become traits in the lives of bugmen. Treating their lives like as if they were an RPG minmaxer, attempting to reach peak efficiency when it comes to popularity, assimilation and acceptance. Spewing spools of popular quotes, band-names, aphorisms and social tics, the bugman is a walking media depository incapable of its own creation. Bugmen’s ‘own’ thoughts are merely misshapen combinations of that which they’ve taken in. Revelling in their ironic displays of lower case postmodern hyperbole and sardonic middle class humour. Sincerity an impossibility for worry of social suffocation, and daft humour avoided for fear of ostracisation. When a bugman sprouts anew, the previous form of personal agency commits seppuke out of respect for others. That jittery man whose bulbous eyes are darting to and fro, the one in line for the new iPhone, that’s a bugman, consumed by the idea of being first in a line of consumers, any possibility of escape is negated by the perpetual oppression and quasi-innovations of consumerism. Just as the man’s soul glimpses at the sight of a beloved memory, his perception picks up an advert, and so the memory fades into non-existence.
Note that this isn't me speaking disparagingly about anyone, this is just how the word is used.
Now that we've got the word and its background covered, let's go check out another slur and its background - "Nigger". People haven't always used the word "nigger" derogatorily - in its original English language usage, nigger (then spelled niger) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775.
The word "nigger" is considered a racial slur because of the existence of one country: the United States of America.
The term "colored" or "negro" became a respectful alternative. In 1851 the Boston Vigilance Committee, an Abolitionist organization, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word nigger, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored" or "negro".[10] By the turn of the century, "colored" had become sufficiently mainstream that it was chosen as the racial self-identifier for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."
Why should calling somebody a "nigger" be so offensive? The word just means black, and Africans are clearly dark-skinned. Let's ask actual black people what they have to say about their special slur.
As African-Americans and all other people who are well-acquainted with the dreaded N-word know, this slur carries with it a long history of black people getting shit on by the man, especially the Southern White man. Most offensive euphemisms and colloquialisms which are derived from "nigger", such as "nagger" to refer to being lazy, "nigger stick" to refer to a police baton, "nigger rich" to refer to being flamboyant but in debt and "nigger work" to refer to low-level work are largely Southern in origin. America's history of keeping the black man down is also largely Southern.
Why is this? Black people in the Southern United States were being exploited and used for a purpose by people more powerful than them. It was generally African-Americans that harvested cotton and tobacco from hugely wealthy plantations in the South all the way up to the mid-Atlantic Eastern Seaboard, imported by the millions as slaves directly from the aptly-named Slave Coast of West Africa. Conservatives arguing against reparations for blacks will argue that the USA wasn't made out of cotton, but the South at the time of slavery would have been a completely worthless shithole without Cotton and other cash crops to export to the North and other countries (Britain's industrial revolution was fueled by a surprising amount of exported American cotton despise the Empire being in control of India).
Common sense and history show us that, when developing a racial and economic caste system, one of the first thing you should and will do, even if unintentionally, will be establish a social structure that enforces the subjugation of your cotton-pickers.
The class system in the American South was a very good example of this - even poor whites, no matter how destitute they were in a south that was agrarian and pushed small yeoman farmers into more marginal lands so that agricultural fat cats could grow cash crops in good soil, considered themselves to be above blacks and never for a second stopped believing that their interests were more aligned with those of the land-owning white gentry class than they were with black slaves not far from them in terms of material prosperity (some studies suggest slaves worked a bit less yearly in terms of hours than many white northern workers and did not experience as much abuse as we commonly believe they did - despite being owned by somebody, they were still for all intents and purposes not very different from other working-class people at the time). Even the poorest white knew he was better than some no-good "nigger", even if everything he hated that black man for was not really anything but the result of a social structure that had convinced him blacks were worthless.
When slavery ended, the damage had been done. Blacks spent over a century under segregation, much of the time doing the same low-level work their slave ancestors did for meagre pay as "free" men and women, and even after segregation had ended blacks continued to face issues in America. Their issues persist today. Is it any surprise black people get very angry when called the n-word? Is it any surprise that, seeing as "nigger" became a way of putting down blacks and enforcing their role as menial workers, the black answer to "nigger" seems to be calling whites "cracker"? All slurs have history and have emerged for a particular reason.
Can a slur be a call for social change and liberation? A slur is a reminder of injustices a group of people experience. "Gook" conjures up mental images of napalm and five foot tall Vietnamese farmers with cone hats and AKs crawling through underground tunnels to avoid American bombers. "Kike" conjures up mental images of Jewish immigrants treated as a despicable alien element for having cultural differences (putting a circle instead of a cross on immigration forms due to not being Christian makes you a bad person?). As of late "kebab" should conjure up mental images of its "removal" in a Christchurch mosque. These things are bad and need to be changed.
If a slur is the result of injustice and therefore a call for social change and liberation, what will be society's answer to "bugman"? Where is their Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?
We must first look at the "bugman" not as a slur but as what he is - a low-status male whose actions demonstrate a very strong lack of personal autonomy. There are many things he could be called that seem derogatory or don't fully capture his situation - wageslave, Nietzschean last man, human cattle - and I'm not quite sure what he should be respectfully called but for the sake of giving him a sanitised, respectful name let's call him a low-autonomy man because he is powerless and most of his experience is fed into his brain and sensory system by the powerful. Actually, let's pull a portmaneau out of our asses that has no familiarity to any putdowns and call him a lowaut, pronounced phonetically with two syllables and preferably stress on the w.
It's more likely than not there are lowauts reading this post. You may not even be aware you are a lowaut because you are not being honest with yourself about something painful or you are perfectly content with being this way. I'm sure African-Americans in the south who lived a simple life of picking cotton, eating food reminiscent of modern gullah cuisine and slouching under a tree to avoid the worst of the mid-day sun had the potential to be content about their situation as well, especially if they didn't know anything better.
What lowauts need to realise is that there is the potential for something better and more fulfilling, that most of their contentedness with their situation is the result of conditioning by institutions drawn up by highly-qualified psychologists during the 20th century and that their ancestors for most of human history were their own men far more than they have ever been. You do not have to be the kind of person that gets called a human colony insect by contrarians on the internet, and if there is a "you" it's not a lowaut because the lowaut is only a negation of you that lives in your body and carries you around like a grotesque, bearded, soylent-drinking meat puppet. Think about it, are you free? If so, how are you free? How have you exercised your freedom, what do you realistically have the freedom to do? Are you autonomous? What have you autonomously done? How much are your thoughts your own and how much have been fed into you by the most vile form of pop culture that has ever existed? You are not apple gadgets, veritasium videos with the ambient at the start and end, plant-based food replacements, Rick and Morty or allegiance to the evil corporation you work for. You are a human being that has bribed ,with short-term pleasure and by people who have spent decades of research figuring out how the human brain works to exploit you, into being a slave to a bunch of dumb shit that is worthless.
You are the same as the black man who is put down for being a "nigger", is told by every institution that his place is slavery and is mildly content being one. As a child you are told platitudes about being a virtuous person who is rewarded for hard work. Your parents and teachers will see news segments on the unemployed and criminals, and complain that they are scabs who don't contribute to our fantastic society. Where has contributing and participating gotten you? Turning Point USA likes to criticise participation trophies, but do they ever ask why we promote simple participation to the max along with success? You are a worker unit, basically a slave.
The slavery you are in, however, is not human ownership but instead human financial dominion over you. You need to work to eat, you need to pay other people for basic necessities even if they didn't take money and effort to produce right before you got them (Think your rent- how much money has your fat boomer landlord earned relative to the cost of the house and how much it took to build it? Why do people sitting on passive assets and funny money have you by the balls and twist your arm into jumping when they say frog?). Your boss whips you with the implicit threat of economic penalties and offers you extra gullah grub in the form of frivolous 21st century workplace improvements like beanbags and indie music played from speakers on your workplace roof if it "improves your productivity". Your actual productivity improvements do not contribute at all to your stagnating wages, and as your cost of living increases it almost seems like your boomer landlord and your boomer boss are in cahoots to make your life a hamster wheel living hell. People around you, much like you, grow colder and more self-involved as time goes by even as all of your lives get worse and you should be relying on each other. You are socially atomised but rigidly conformist and subservient to your economic elites.
This is a new kind of slavery that coerces you with soft power instead of whips and chains. This is Brave New World without the forced genetic engineering. This is 1984 without the global totalitarian state socialist regimes (this is probably actually preferable to what we have now because it's worse at subjugating the average person, I would happily work for the party if the enemy we were fighting was the modern western world). This is the People's Republic of China without lethal injection vans and a social credit system. Actually, as time goes by all of these things seem to lurch more and more into reality and your field of view, but you continue to do nothing and carry on as if you working and consuming is totally fine and you are not being attacked from all angles by a hand that only feeds you so it can harvest your proverbial flesh. Calling lowauts sheep and cattle is offensive but, as with all slurs, it is done for a reason. In using bugman pejoratively I was a young white man in the American South taunting a destitute black by calling him a "nigger". In truth we have the same enemy, the same class of oppressor, and we should work together intersectionally to cast off that oppression by any means possible.
We must address the REASON, not the slur. We MUST free lowauts from low autonomy. The process could be violent and very long, but because lowauts are a result of the structural injustices of society and could exist in a better world for themselves and their children it seems like we have an urgent moral need to liberate them. Unless, that is, we are fully complacent with the total subjugation of themselves and eventually ourselves to industrial capitalism, as is already happening. Are you complacent to live in a world where there is nothing but markets and transactions between business parties? Are you a human being or a sole tradership giving his services for stagnant money in a gig economy? Do you want God and community or burger king and bojack horseman? As capitalism and its ability to control people escalates with time and technological advancement you could very well see yourself become more of a lowaut along with those around you. It's fun to be a contrarian on the internet calling people human insects until you become the very thing you hate and are only just cognisant enough to realise it. The amount of individuality sapped out people by our economic elites should be considered tantamount to an actual genocide and they should be punished it for it accordingly.
What do you think? Should we not address slurs in this way? Shouldn't a slur be a call for social change and liberation? Is our tendency to address the symptoms of any issue rather than the cause, on both the left and right, something that has been socially engineered into us and sustained with constant media red herrings by our elites?
If liberation is called for, how is this to be done?
