Dysphemism

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> no sexual innuendo attached.

Are you certain of this? Is this the way that the women that you know
regard it? IME with this expression - necessarily distinct from yours,
of coarse <har! har!> - the entire point of it is sexual innuendo,
that a man is subordinate to another man in the same sense that a
woman is: WRT the extent he abuses the other, woman or man, the choice
is his.

It was once argued to me that the expression,

_to work like a nigger_

was complimentary, because it's the mirror-image of the usual
stereotype that blacks are lazy. Hoever, the usual interpretation is
not that blacks work hard, but, rather, that the work that blacks do
is so contemptible that no white man would stoop so low. You can't
explain it away.

Inat is to ay, it's not up to straight men to decide by casual
proclamation what's sexist or anti-gay. Even the Pope has to be
speaking _ex cathedra_ in order to effect a change in Catholic dogma.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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