Something interesting pointed out by Nydwracu on Twitter that I think deserves a bit more of a mention than a retweet.
To find out what’s actually considered obscene today, find a presentation on swear words and see what’s starred out. http://t.co/ADQ2DOqyB0
— Wesley Morganston (@nydwracu) February 21, 2014
Buzzfeed (webcache) has a listicle (ie: an intellectually absent presentation of stolen images) of facts about swearing on Twitter. The second and third charts have a list of offensive words. Such words as fuck, pussy, shit, ass, retard, and bitch are simply stated in the graph, but nigga and cunt are spelt n***a and c**t.
To make it more interesting, if you look at the original report both nigga and cunt are spelt out normally, which means that Buzzfeed specifically and purposefully went out of its way to censor those specific words.
You can tell what our society holds profane and holy by what words are unspeakable.
I am interested in how cunt gained so much greater exosemantic negativity than pussy or bitch. I would guess it’s because cunt is generally used against women exhibiting negative masculine behaviours, while pussy is generally used against men exhibiting negative feminine behaviours and bitch is generally used for either the same purposes as pussy or against women exhibiting negative feminine behaviours.
I guess its acceptable to call out effiminate men and misbehaving women, but not masculine women.
****
On a completely unrelated note, here’s something too big for tomorrow’s Lightning Round or Twitter, but not worth its own post. I ended up at the race realism page on something grossly mistitled RationalWiki (thanks, HBD Chick) and found this far too amusing not to point out
Adaptation to environments, including social environments, through natural and sexual selection is the linchpin of evolution. Remembering this means knowing why scientific racism is ridiculous. To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others. This at minimum requires an explanation, a specifically evolutionary explanation, beyond mere statistical assertion; without that it can be assumed to be cultural bias or noise. Since most human intelligence is in fact social intelligence — the main thing the human mind is built for is networking in human societies — this would require this social evolutionary arms race to have somehow stopped.
It isn’t often someone so thoroughly destroys their own argument within three sentences. Thank you RationalWiki, you amused me for a minute.
For those who don’t see it, intelligence (measured through IQ) /= social intelligence.
Other fun points the “rational” dude missed:
Measurement without theory is always sufficient, if it’s accurate. If we ignored measurements that conflict with current theory, science would be religion and never advance. (Paging global warming!)
Brains are expensive. They cost the organism energy. Fitness comes down to tradeoffs. It is laughably ignorant to assert that more of anything is always more adaptive.
You can only adapt as far as the mutations you get. Populations diverge in isolation, always.
Our ancestors IIRC had larger brains. It appears that we have evolved to use smaller brains more efficiently now. But we don’t know that for sure.
“Adaptive” is always in reference to a given environment. Eskimo sinuses aren’t adaptive in Sudan. Populations diverge in isolation for this reason as well.
It’s sad that some Lewontonians are so hell bent on forming tidbits of uncomprehended science into a religion dumb enough to make the creationists feel insightful.
The funny thing is, in the U.K., ‘cunt’ is rude on the level of ‘asshole’ here; similar connotations, not considered a swear word, doesn’t offend women the way it does here.
“To argue that races or ethnic groups differ innately in intelligence, however defined, is exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some people than for others. ”
Wouldn’t that also be exactly equal to an assertion that intelligence has proven less adaptive for some mammals than others?
You mentioned but didn’t R.T.? You should stop at B before moving on to C, F.N…. L.O.L.!