You know, I like you, but you made a total ass of yourself yesterday, and right now I'm pretty embarrassed to call you my friend.
You seem to believe in equality as an abstract principle - which is undeniably laudable - but you also seem to lack the empathy necessary to understand that there is no "double standard" of speech where sexism and racism are concerned. What you perceive as a double standard is just fairness in context.
Let's say I'm at a bar, and I feel a slap on the back of my neck. Being who I am, I wheel around and deck whoever it is that did it, before I even see them.
It makes a difference if that person is a two-hundred and fifty pound biker, or a one-hundred and ten pound bimbo. Does that mean the bimbo wasn't stupid for slapping me? No. But it does mean that her action has to be both analyzed and responded to differently than the same action coming from a biker.
It's an analogous situation, whether or not you choose to recognize it as such, with the historical victims of oppression and disenfranchisement, as against their historical oppressors. Aggressiveness on a victim's part may or may not be justified in any specific instance, but its intention, purpose, and effect is to answer injustice, not perpetuate it. The opposite is true with regard to the same action coming from a historical oppressor. Seriously, calling yourself a kike is not the same thing as me calling you a kike, for the simple reason that my ancestors burned your ancestors alive, and regardless of whatever irony or even affection I was attempting to display by my use of the word.
I hope that clarifies things. You seem like a bright enough guy, whose heart is basically in the right place. But you're in the wrong on this.
You seem to believe in equality as an abstract principle - which is undeniably laudable - but you also seem to lack the empathy necessary to understand that there is no "double standard" of speech where sexism and racism are concerned. What you perceive as a double standard is just fairness in context.
Let's say I'm at a bar, and I feel a slap on the back of my neck. Being who I am, I wheel around and deck whoever it is that did it, before I even see them.
It makes a difference if that person is a two-hundred and fifty pound biker, or a one-hundred and ten pound bimbo. Does that mean the bimbo wasn't stupid for slapping me? No. But it does mean that her action has to be both analyzed and responded to differently than the same action coming from a biker.
It's an analogous situation, whether or not you choose to recognize it as such, with the historical victims of oppression and disenfranchisement, as against their historical oppressors. Aggressiveness on a victim's part may or may not be justified in any specific instance, but its intention, purpose, and effect is to answer injustice, not perpetuate it. The opposite is true with regard to the same action coming from a historical oppressor. Seriously, calling yourself a kike is not the same thing as me calling you a kike, for the simple reason that my ancestors burned your ancestors alive, and regardless of whatever irony or even affection I was attempting to display by my use of the word.
I hope that clarifies things. You seem like a bright enough guy, whose heart is basically in the right place. But you're in the wrong on this.
Even I overextend myself sometimes.
(That's irony, by the way.)