MetalRaven said:
Thats where we differ. I believe intent is very important and I believe as stated in my original argument that the taunter is not so much claiming that all women are weak but rather attempting to emasculate Crosby by robing him of his male identity.
Except you're ignoring the very clear pattern of who these sorts of insults get applied to. Nobody called Scott Stevens a girl's name. Nobody called him Roberta Probert. These insults are almost universally applied to players who are seen to be lacking in strength or courage. It's not a random designation with no meaning and it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Again, look at the Stevens/Bellows clip. Bellows is "a woman" because he didn't get up fast enough from an injury or was faking an injury. Not just a random, pulled from the ether taunt with no meaning behind it.
Words used to associate men with women, and gay men, are often about weakness and a lack of courage. You can't just pretend that isn't true. You can't just guess at what someone's intent is there because it doesn't matter. The words themselves, the propagation of those stereotypes, they matter regardless of intent.
MetalRaven said:
As for the bananas and gypsies at no point did I defend banana throwers at all. If anything my stance should point very much against it as I see very clearly its intent, which isn't potassium deficiency. I also was very much aware of the gypsies and the origin of gyp and other slurs such as getting jewed but thanks for the lesson. I love stories. Please don't take for one to be defending them. I, of course, appreciate that you attempt to paint me as such...
You're free to get overly and transparently defensive if you like but you entirely missed the point. The point is you don't know what the banana thrower's intent was. You don't have a deep insight into how enlightened he is on racial politics. We don't know these things because the guy who did it never said. We don't know if he hates all black people or if he just hates Wayne Simmonds and wanted to hurt him however he could.
But again, the intent doesn't matter. It was someone trying to deny Simmonds' humanity and that's true regardless of those things. Much like you're defending the people trying to deny someone's "masculinity" by it's traditionally defined sense. I don't need to think someone is a dyed-in-the-wool racist for them to do something that's unmistakably racist. Just like I don't need to think that everyone who chants "Cindy Crosby" is a virulent misogynist to know that it's an inherently sexist thing to do. You're free to look deep into someone's soul to try and get to what they "really mean" but I'm pretty comfortable judging people on their actual actions.
MetalRaven said:
Not all men believe women are weaker. Not all men believe women play inferior hockey. Their intent is to emasculate one individual not make broad statements such as women are weaker. I think that speaks more to the observers view on women then the taunters. Cindy Crosby says nothing bad about women, just the removal of his identity by changing his name and then his male identity by turning it female.
But both of those claims are demonstrably not true. It's not about "one individual". It's an incredibly common thing in our language that you yourself have pointed to the dictionary to show that to many, many people "Emasculation" means to make weaker. You can't use the dictionary definition, which is really just a reflection of common usage, to establish common usage and then pretend that the common usage doesn't exist.
You're going to try and say you know the intent of everyone who does that? You know the "intent" of everyone who calls a man by a woman's name is not a function of their having been raised in a society where "emasculation" is listed in the dictionary as making someone weaker but, rather, they're making a convoluted and bogus effort to simply deny his male identity but that's got nothing to do with strength because...I'll be honest I barely understand what you're saying this is at this point. It's basically just reading as straight up hogwash. You're tying yourself in knots to deny the blatantly obvious.
MetalRaven said:
We did. I believe we called Alfredson Krusty? Just means we're more creative then other fans, for the most part.
Yes, because his hair resembled a cartoon character. That is not "we did" in reference to using sexist terminology to denigrate another player. All taunts are not as bad as each other. "We" don't refer to him as Danielle. We don't refer to Karlsson as "Erika". That isn't creativity. There's nothing "creative" about yelling "You're human garbage" or telling someone their game reminds you of excrement or booing whenever someone touches the puck or any one of a thousand things that you can do and be an obnoxious fan without being sexist, racist or homophobic. It really is just the barest minimum of decency and relative enlightenment being sought here.
MetalRaven said:
I would have went with Sidney Crotchy myself but what can you do the masses prefered Cindy.
Well, to start, what you can do is stigmatize that sort of thing by correctly pointing out that the people who do that are acting like sexist idiots.
