Dysphemism

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/9/2012 05:43 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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

Get your quotations right, Wilson.  I did not write that -- Victor did.

Joel


>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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org