| adidasss |
10-30-2020 10:51 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwb
(Post 2142028)
Once again it's not just about which groups suffered more but the legacy of the specific slur
The f word has some recent dark history but nothing in comparison to the hundreds of years of systematic subjugation that is tied up with the n word. It literally harkens back to a time when an entire race of people were bought and sold as property and abused as if they were simple livestock. You just don't have the same sort of history with the f word. For one thing, gays were pretty much exclusively in the closet prior to very recent times. Not that that's a dignified role to have, but but black people never had that option. They were systematically enslaved by the millions and then later lynched by the thousands. Please cite comparable numbers of homophobic hate crimes during the same period before you proclaim it was "safer to be black than gay".
And the n word was literally always prevalent in the racism towards blacks in America. The f word is a much more recent slur with less baggage.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violen...st_LGBT_people
Quote:
"An early law against sexual intercourse between men is recorded in Leviticus by the Hebrew people, prescribing the death penalty. A violent law regarding homosexual intercourse is prescribed in the Middle Assyrian Law Codes (1075 BCE), stating: "If a man lay with his neighbor, when they have prosecuted him (and) convicted him, they shall lie with him (and) turn him into a eunuch".
In the account given in Tacitus' Germania, the death penalty was reserved for two kinds of capital offenses: military treason or desertion was punished by hanging, and so was moral infamy (cowardice and homosexuality: ignavos et imbelles at corpore infames); Gordon translates corpore infames as "unnatural prostitutes"; Tacitus refers to male homosexuality, see David F. Greenberg, The construction of homosexuality, p. 242 f. Scholarship compares the later Germanic concept of Old Norse argr, Langobardic arga, which combines the meanings "effeminate, cowardly, homosexual", see Jaan Puhvel, 'Who were the Hittite hurkilas pesnes?' in: A. Etter (eds.), O-o-pe-ro-si (FS Risch), Walter de Gruyter, 1986, p. 154."
Laws and codes prohibiting homosexual practice were in force in Europe from the fourth[13] to the twentieth centuries, and Muslim countries have had similar laws from the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century up to and including the present day. Abbasid Baghdad, under the Caliph Al-Hadi (785–786), punished homosexuality with death.
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If we're comparing the length of time discrimination and abuse lasted towards these two groups of people, homosexuals "win" easily since laws against, punishment and state sanctioned persecution of homosexuals has been going on for a few millennia and continues to this day (if we take just the US as an example, the last statutes which criminalized homosexual behavior were abolished less than 20 years ago).
If we're talking about the geographical extent of discrimination and abuse, not all black people were enslaved and not all countries had black slavery, as opposed to homosexuals which were by and large discriminated against and abused in most of the world (and continue to this day, including most of Africa).
If we're talking about the substance of the discrimination, black slaves were considered things, and thus valuable, they were not persecuted and exterminated for being black, unlike homosexuals who were considered less than things, an "abomination" and therefore not even worth existing.
We can also compare how many people are getting killed worldwide today for their race as opposed to their sexuality etc etc.
Is it the same? No. Is it comparable? In my opinion, very much yes.
But I would say even more importantly, which is something Lucem alluded to, is how something is perceived within a specific community towards which a certiain insult is aimed. The vast majority of gay men consider the f-word hurtful and very insulting. That should be enough for its discontinued use.
If you have a minimum of empathy that is. |
