Joey Styles has been released

[El-P]

A pussy is a cat. Cats are fucking cowards.

 

(fun fact : the most usual cuss word in French to design an idiot/asshole/fucker is "con". It used to mean, well, "pussy". As in, ya know, "pussy". No one in their right mind would even argue about it being offensive to women today. Of course, I've sadly heard that idiotic argument once of twice, but it was ridiculed. Every french woman say "con" all the time (and it's female counterpart "conne", or even the more agressive "connard" and "connasse", which sound even better). Mostly to tell fuckers that they are fuckers. Something strikes me as very "anglo-saxon" in this debate.)

[JerryvonKramer]

Universities need to teach basic logic before they teach French theory.

 

 

Note this. So the word "pussy" has an etymology. It meant cat first. It then became a slang word for female genitalia. Then it became slang for people acting wimpish.

 

Most dictionaries would therefore think of the word having three distinct meanings. So to use it in the third sense is not necessarily an idictment on the first two. You aren't bismirching cats or female bodyparts, you are using it to communicate that the other person is being wimpish.

 

All these arguments are fucking nonsense and distract from the important things. Y'know, important things like the actual president of the USA being Donald Trump. Stuff like that.

[goc]

 

 

I would like everyone who thinks calling a person a pussy for being a coward to do a survey. Go to every women in your life: your friends, mother, sisters, wife, gf, etc.. and ask what they think and see how hilarious it is to call someone pussy.

I'd like you to do the same survey and ask how many times those women have called men that word to embarrass/emasculate them. If it was so offensive to every woman on the planet you'd think they wouldn't use that word themselves.

I guess we hang with completely different circles, because I don't know people who do.

Well poor Dawn Marie must be suffering from internalized misogyny because she used it to describe Gabe's actions in this whole deal.

 

http://411mania.com/wrestling/dawn-marie-writes-letter-about-the-recent-joey-styles-controversy-is-critical-of-quackenbush-sapolsky/

 

[El-P]

Note this. So the word "pussy" has an etymology. It meant cat first. It then became a slang word for female genitalia. Then it became slang for people acting wimpish.

 

Except, and I'm only guessing, it probably became slang for people acting wimpish, as an extrapolation on men being "strong and brave" and women being "fragile and, well, wimpish". Therefore, reducing the entire gender identity to its actual sex (sorry, I can't use the word "genitalia", it's too stupid sounding, it's like a police report) as a metonymy. Therefore, "pussy" really meaning "girl" in a negative way, *in this context*. Therefore...

 

But anyway. I haven't seen the video, so I canno't judge of the joke being efficient and funny or completely offensive. Needless to say, Styles being a Trump sympathiser doesn't make it sound too good/funny to me, but then again, not seeing/hearing it, not commentating on it.

[goc]

 

Note this. So the word "pussy" has an etymology. It meant cat first. It then became a slang word for female genitalia. Then it became slang for people acting wimpish.

 

Except, and I'm only guessing, it probably became slang for people acting wimpish, as an extrapolation on men being "strong and brave" and women being "fragile and, well, wimpish". Therefore, reducing the entire gender identity to its actual sex (sorry, I can't use the word "genitalia", it's too stupid sounding, it's like a police report) as a metonymy. Therefore, "pussy" really meaning "girl in a negative way. Therefore...

 

But anyway. I haven't seen the video, so I canno't judge of the joke being efficient and funny or completely offensive. Needless to say, Styles being a Trump sympathiser doesn't make it sound too good/funny to me, but then again, not seeing/hearing it, not commentating on it.

 

Please do more definition detective work on how the word "pussy" went from being used for cats to being used for a body part and whether or not it means people really just want to have sex with cats.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

Note this. So the word "pussy" has an etymology. It meant cat first. It then became a slang word for female genitalia. Then it became slang for people acting wimpish.

Except, and I'm only guessing, it probably became slang for people acting wimpish, as an extrapolation on men being "strong and brave" and women being "fragile and, well, wimpish". Therefore, reducing the entire gender identity to its actual sex (sorry, I can't use the word "genitalia", it's too stupid sounding, it's like a police report) as a metonymy. Therefore, "pussy" really meaning "girl" in a negative way, *in this context*. Therefore...

 

Yeah, but seriously, fuck all that. It literally does not matter. It doesn't matter for fuck's sake.

 

 

Instead, dedicate yourself to doing all you can that Marine Le Pen doesn't get in or we might be seeing the end of Western Civilization. That matters.

[Blehschmidt]

and now Dawn Marie has added her two cents to this whole thing and....wow...just wow.....

[Loss]

Words matter. They directly and indirectly affect our attitudes toward just about every issue. We cede the language, we cede the narrative. We cede the narrative, we have nothing. This cuts both ways, whether it's insistence on saying "radical Islamic terror", always prefacing criticism of the Supreme Court with the word "unelected" or calling them "judicial activists", evolving from "illegal alien" to "undocumented immigrant", calling black shooters "thugs" and white shooters "lone gunmen" or determining as a society that calling someone a "pussy" or "cocksucker" is offensive. There are political costs and political benefits to all language, so I'd rather people just figure out what they truly believe and then try to win the argument on the merits. Maybe language isn't the most important thing, but it has an outsized role to play in all of the important things.

[El-P]

Agreed. I teach French (the language), so, believe me, I know the weight of meaning and social value of words.

 

But "pussy". For fuck's sake. People are looking at symptoms instead of trying to fix the illness. Meanwhile, Donald Trump gets elected.

 

Please do more definition detective work on how the word "pussy" went from being used for cats to being used for a body part and whether or not it means people really just want to have sex with cats.

 

Pussycats are sweet and cute. It's an affectionnate word for the female sex. Much, much better in French than "con" too (which has been replaced, thankfully). Pussy is a nice word. We don't have any nice ones for the male sex BTW. Dick. Hey, dickhead ! Well, it works in French too. "Tête de noeud" = "dickhead".

 

Dawn Marie (pro-wrestlingonly) ? What has she been up to since she was (supposedly) doing seedy charity work ? (was that proven ? is she part of Jeffrey's Ponzy scheme now ?)

[JerryvonKramer]

Words matter. They directly and indirectly affect our attitudes toward just about every issue. We cede the language, we cede the narrative. We cede the narrative, we have nothing. This cuts both ways, whether it's insistence on saying "radical Islamic terror", always prefacing criticism of the Supreme Court with the word "unelected" or calling them "judicial activists", evolving from "illegal alien" to "undocumented immigrant", calling black shooters "thugs" and white shooters "lone gunmen" or determining as a society that calling someone a "pussy" or "cocksucker" is offensive. There are political costs and political benefits to all language, so I'd rather people just figure out what they truly believe and then try to win the argument on the merits. Maybe language isn't the most important thing, but it has an outsized role to play in all of the important things.

This sort of thing doesn't work. Why? Because no amount of clever people enforcing it among themselves is going to stop tabloids running front pages like this:

 

 

They got away with it. None of their readers saw anything your clever people wrote. Your good fight was for nothing.

 

And then, this happens:

 

 

As millions of people collectively roll their eyes at "political correctness gone mad", which is the ONLY PART OF THIS THEY EVER SEE.

 

And then Brexit and then Trump and then what? Oh.

 

No let's sit around arguing about words more.

 

When I say that this stuff doesn't matter, I mean literally it doesn't matter. It has failed to change a damn thing. Women still voted for the pussy grabber. They didn't give a shit.

 

That whole project of "controlling the narrative" has spectacularly failed to control the narrative.

[Loss]

There are limits to that, and you know that's true. People cared overwhelmingly that Hillary Clinton called racists deplorable and that Barack Obama called people in small towns bitter, yet they talk about everyone else being snowflakes.

[Loss]

And yes, there is no way to discuss this wrestling topic without getting political, so I'll allow it in this thread.

[JerryvonKramer]

There are limits to that, and you know that's true. People cared overwhelmingly that Hillary Clinton called racists deplorable and that Barack Obama called people in small towns bitter, yet they talk about everyone else being snowflakes.

The insane levels of hypocrisy we've seen from the right in the past week needs to be flagged up more. So no complaints from me there.

 

However, PCness and word policing does not get over. It doesn't resonate with a lot of people. It makes them angry. Think of the heat a referee gets at a typical sports event. No one likes the ref. PCness operates at the level of the ref. It's anal, it's jobsworth-ish, it's preachy. It just pisses people off.

 

Remember when Joe Biden said he was going to take Trump down the back of the school shed and kick his ass? That got over. Nothing PC about the message, and violence is bad kids, wah, wah. But understand "the people", or forget even inverted commas, just people in general.

 

This is all about how to win the battle and the war. SJW tools lose battles. They are widely reviled. They GIVE THE SPACE to normalise and legitimage the very sentiments they are seeking to suppress. Because there's a soft slope between anti-PC eye-roller and actual bigot. Most of those in the former group are just people trying to get on with it muttering about red tape and beaurcracy. People I've seen in every job I've ever had. We don't want to lose those people by pissing them off. It leads to "shock" election losses and a complete asshole like Mike Pence with his hands on some tasty looking social policy laws.

 

Get smart, box clever. Pussyfooting around pussy is doing neither.

[Loss]

So maybe the answer is to fight back against the right, who very much have their own PC culture. It's just that when they call people "job creators" or use the word "infanticide" to describe abortion or call torture "enhanced interrogation techniques", we don't point out on the left that they are being politically correct. But we should. It's a tactic the right has proven works well.

[El-P]

And yes, there is no way to discuss this wrestling topic without getting political, so I'll allow it in this thread.

 

Maybe you could split the non-Joey stuff into the Military Industrial Suplex.

 

Agreed with what has been said above BTW, by both of you.

[Loss]

Do you see a difference between word policing and criticizing someone's words? It seems like the latter is called the former pretty often. "War on Terror" is one of the greatest examples of politically correct language in American history, and was purposely phrased in the abstract so that it could mean whatever those in power wanted it to mean, which would allow them to continue it indefinitely. In that case, the words came with a heavy death toll. I do think generally speaking that everyone could stand to be more comfortable with being challenged, and I also agree that the left's attempts to make people think about their words has not always worked, last week being a particularly glaring example with devastating consequences. But we see the impact they have all the time. Look at the polling disparity between support for "Obamacare" and support for the "Affordable Care Act".

[El-P]

Word policing basically comes down to : "You can't say that, it's offensive." (implying a moral judgement on the person who says the words)

 

It's usually extremely counterproductive, because playing victims is the favourite games of the people at the right/extreme-right. The very idea that Trump is *anti-system* is as comical as... well, the idea that ECW was *fighting against the big two*

[BrianB]

 

 

 

I think that's a false dilemma. It's possible for it to be a combination. And it's the combination that makes the firing fair enough to me. I also bristle a bit at the suggestion from some it's gotta be about offensiveness. I'm not personally offended by the joke, but it's still way out of line for what I think are clear, obvious reasons, which Bix and others have highlighted. When someone deliberately disobeys their boss, does it in a flaunting, throw it in their face for all to see way, and not only disobeys by making a political joke, but also a joke where the punchline is that someone would get sexually assaulted bcs they're attractive...that's a confluence of a lot of bad stuff in the context of "disobeying the boss." 'm not sure it matters, but the joke didn't get over either.

I'm just saying that if it was a different milder political joke no one would give a shit.

 

Also, the more people weep about not getting called pussies, the more other people will want to CALL THEM pussies. Just basic psychology. Tell a kid they can't do something and their impulse is to do it, forbidden fruit. Trump was the guy who no one was meant to vote for. Turns out lots of Americans don't really like being told what to do. So they got in the booth and did their own personal little Stone Cold moment. Basic facts.

 

I'd talked about which hills to die on before, picking and choosing battles. I've said before where all this leads. Now literally Donald Trump is the fucking president and Britain is leaving the EU. And there are still people saying "hey, don't use the word pussy" in earnest like that's the important thing going on. How about waking up and smelling the coffee and confronting exactly what that behaviour does and where it leads. I mean for fuck's sake, look at the year we've had and here people are arguing about the word "pussy". Jesus Christ, can't take it anymore.

 

Also, I want to be clear. This is not a "meltdown", I'm not losing it. I'm angry at the extent to which sensible discussion in every realm has been hijacked by SJW-ism. Make no mistake, blindly dogmatic PC policing is part of the confluence of problems I blame for the present situation. And I get angry about it because it comes from people who are meant to be on my team, meant to be clever, meant to represent, broadly speaking, the left. Get your heads out of your arses for five minutes to see what where that method of approaching the problem gets you. I'm not apologising for this post. Someone has to say it. And at the same time, fuck Joey Styles.

 

 

Okay, sure. Did you mean to quote someone else? I think what you just typed was more talking past than talking toward the points I made in my post. Suggesting pussy as a putdown wasn't anywhere on my list of why I'm fine with Joey Styles getting sacked. The joke was out of line because it was Styles saying that a female announcer looked good enough to be sexually assault-able.

 

FWIW, I don't care about using "pussy" as an insult or agree that calling someone a pussy as a putdown is "problematic." If someone finds it that way, I think they should a) get their priorities in order and b. would ask why they watch wrestling to begin with? Wrestling feuds and matches are usually all about bullying and ultimately resolving most disagreements with violence. Moreover, the characters and storylines, even today but especially in the past, are usually inextricably wrapped up with ideas about masculinity and standing up for yourself. IOW, anybody who seriously wants to police all these things is going to constantly find stuff that is going to work them into a shoot.

[Grimmas]

Here's the big issue I have with all of this anti-pc stuff.

 

If I say something and someone tells me it's offensive. It hurts this group, it marginalizes them, or even it just hurts them personally. You know what I do? I stop, because I don't want to offend or piss people off. Why would I?

 

For example I grew up in a small hick town in the 90s, saying things were so god or that was retarded was phrases that everybody said. I don't say them know, because I know they offend people. What would be the purpose, unless you want to offend those people?

 

Even personally, some people care about which version of their name you use (Pete or Peter, or whatever). If that person told you, you know I prefer this version and I don't like the other. You would obviously use the version their prefer. Why wouldn't you?

 

So if you want to make racist, misogynist or sexual assault jokes you are free to. Just know you are pissing people off and upsetting others. Why would you want to do that?

[Matt D]

Here's the big issue I have with all of this anti-pc stuff.

 

If I say something and someone tells me it's offensive. It hurts this group, it marginalizes them, or even it just hurts them personally. You know what I do? I stop, because I don't want to offend or piss people off. Why would I?

 

 

You call Creationists idiots pretty frequently. Just saying.

[Grimmas]

 

Here's the big issue I have with all of this anti-pc stuff.

 

If I say something and someone tells me it's offensive. It hurts this group, it marginalizes them, or even it just hurts them personally. You know what I do? I stop, because I don't want to offend or piss people off. Why would I?

 

You call Creationists idiots pretty frequently. Just saying.

 

True enough.

 

To clarify, then, creationists is an incorrect fact denying stance. Offense is intended in that case, because they are harming the world. if my offense is not intended, then I change.

 

To go back earlier, if you feel you want to offend people then fine. Just don't lash out at people for people offended then.

[El-P]

Honestly, if people were a bit smarter, they wouldn't be offended when there's no offense to be taken.

 

I still have no idea about that Joey Styles joke, because like I said, I didn't hear it (and on paper, it does sound pretty fucking bad to me).

 

But context and knowing whom you're talking to is everything. Someone too easily offended is a sign of inflated self-importance and ego to me. (again, not talking about truly awful sexist comments and rape culture level shit like your new President said during the campaign for instance)

[Grimmas]

Honestly, if people were a bit smarter, they wouldn't be offended when there's no offense to be taken.

 

I still have no idea about that Joey Styles joke, because like I said, I didn't hear it (and on paper, it does sound pretty fucking bad to me).

 

But context and knowing whom you're talking to is everything. Someone too easily offended is a sign of inflated self-importance and ego to me. (again, not talking about truly awful sexist comments and rape culture level shit like your new President said during the campaign for instance)

Is it really about being offended and more about Joey you are an asshole for saying someone is so attractive that she is a likely candidate to be sexually assaulted.

 

People use the term offense, when it's more "fuck you are a sleazeball".

[cpst]

Edit: Nevermind...

[BrianB]

 

Honestly, if people were a bit smarter, they wouldn't be offended when there's no offense to be taken.

 

I still have no idea about that Joey Styles joke, because like I said, I didn't hear it (and on paper, it does sound pretty fucking bad to me).

 

But context and knowing whom you're talking to is everything. Someone too easily offended is a sign of inflated self-importance and ego to me. (again, not talking about truly awful sexist comments and rape culture level shit like your new President said during the campaign for instance)

Is it really about being offended and more about Joey you are an asshole for saying someone is so attractive that she is a likely candidate to be sexually assaulted.

 

People use the term offense, when it's more "fuck you are a sleazeball".

 

 

I think part of the reason the anti-PC crowd has jumped on this Joey Styles is because they think it's more than just people saying "you're a sleazeball" it's, hey, we're going to tell you that you're an asshole and we're going to advocate to get you put out of work. In other words, the response is disappropriate to the alleged wrong. The reaction isn't just "hey, here's why you're wrong and you need to have my attitude about this"...it's you need to be publicly shamed for the comments you made. And, furthermore, those merit you getting punished economically as well in order to get the message.

 

However, for reasons I've said previously, I think the reality of the Styles situation is more complicated than the over-simplified pre-conception that many people had when they heard about this and now seem to want to continue to see. It's not simply that some off color joke that was offensive to a segment of the audience and got shit-canned for it.