| | Joe: I've always found it curious that it is acceptable for supposedly off-limit words to be used by the groups themselves that are denigrated. For instance, blacks can use the 'n' word amongst themselves, and actually revel in it. Homosexuals have a wonderful ability of self parody and also revel in calling each other 'fags' and 'flaming queens' and so on. Anyone outside these groups using those terms would surely be condemned.
Sam-
It would be accurate to say that such parodic references are 'acceptable', not among those who belong to the group in question, so much as those who have shown by context they are accepting of a group in question.
As a fence-sitting trannydyke capitalist sow, I don't mind it if people throw practically any words (there are worse ones I won't print) at me in a *context* where no harm is clearly intended and where such words would be withdrawn if they did actually harm. But I do not speak to people who use the same words as tools of margianlization, dismissal, silencing, and dehumanization.
Now, a harmless context is easier for me to validate when I know someone is in the in-groupin quiestion, just because they're far less likely to be hostile, but that is not the strict standard. If a square girlfriend or a courteous business acquaintance wants to use nasty language with me as a means of irreverant solidarity or recognition, that's fine. But if a fellow transgender, queer, or co-worker starts calling me names I regard as offensive out of projected motives of self-hatred, or in exploitation a presumed group loyalty, or to establish some mournful cult of degradation and humility, I don't take it well any more than I would if the person was straight and square.
I can understand why the "wha's up, all ma Niggaz" phenomenon seems hypocritical from the outside, as it did to me in most of my former life. But it makes much more sense as a useful conveyance of comaradie in persecuted subcultures once you get involved firsthand. It's a benevolent way of granting trust, saying "I know you are a person who means well, so go ahead and say the worse, you've proved I don;t have to worry". Rand herself used this tactic; her capitalist heroes in Atlas Shrugged continuously reclaim terms of opprobrium in prideful solidarity, calling eaach other "exploiters" and adopting the sign of the dollar. Thus did Rand talk of "capitalism, the unknown ideal" and "the virtue of selfishness". When gay male culture uses the term "faggot" and adopts the pink triangle, the same principle is in play.
I once knew a libertarian of Iberian Latino background whose personal passion was Afro-American Civil Rights; he was a member of the Black student union at my college and none of the members would have tensed a bit had he used the "n" word... though he was far too much the embarassed Guilty White Liberal (despite his politics) to ever try, I must say!
We don't have to be postmodernists, but it sure is a postmodern world out there!
But there's nothing irrational or subjectivist about the patterns of language here. It's a matter of a different linguistic heritage, in terms of the ways in which language structure develops in response different social experiences. Standard American English is still very much a language of Norman conquerers mainly concerned about presenting an open sword-hand to a stranger met on the road; while the American gay male subculture has filtered down, via several channels, from a southern European aristocratic culture of client/patronage protection and this shows in its linguistic habits. The same is true of my own subculture, whose taproot is also Mediterranean.
It is worth noting that as a Hollywood screenwriter, Rand was well familiar with the cultural history involved; Gail Wynand and Francisco d'Anconia are distinctively southern European aristocrats and conduct business according to Mediterranean customs; the former in an assimilated Norman Sicilian, the latter is specifically a descendant of an Iberian marrano. (see http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Marranos - Io, Chris! back me up on this.., mi Casa es tu Casa!) As an aside, I find it strange that so few Objectivists notice the subtle but continous layering of cultural allusions in Rand's writing. Or maybe not so strange, given, as Leo Strauss has pointed out, that a central component of the 'Western' tradition in philosophy is an esoteric writing which is not supposed to be fully understood by most readers.
I'm not saying we should accept any of these patterns without question, only that one needs to cultivate sympathetic understanding prior to criticism. I support the classical liberal conception of the educated transcendence of parochial cultures towards a universal cosmopolis of the Republic of Letters. But I do not support the contemporary vulgarized universalism which reads its own cultural prejudices into universal reasonand then proceeds to judge other cultures by this psuedo-universal standard.
Unfortunately, today's anti P.C. types do this regularly, which just fuels the P.C.ists' conviction that universal reason *is* nothing more than a tool of white male supremacy. It's a case of the visually challenged fighting the blind.
Jeanie Ring {))(*)((}
stand forth!
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