still not citing a single law to prove porn is illegal
Looks like someone knows when they've lost: good thinking backing out now. It would have been incredibly easy to prove me wrong if your claim were true, yet you don't. Not hard to figure out why.
I know I'm wrong, so I'll call them a propagandist instead of argue credibly & hope no one notices
You basically.
Cool fallacies & evasion, bro. You're 🤡ing yourself right here.
Next time, try supporting your shit logically.
So if it’s prohibited by a law
Again, it's not. Again, cite a law.
My state literally made pornhub illegal today
They did not. Words mean things. Answered here. Cite the law: you can't.
please stop doing apologia and/or propaganda
Right back at you: twisting the word illegal. I disapprove of the dumb online ID regulations, too: still not illegal. US isn't throwing pornographers & erotica writers in jail.
China has always banned porn
You said it. Not banned in USA.
You’re welcome to sleepwalk into authoritarianism
Chinese government is already there.
US still has a long way to "catch up". They're not
- sending Ughyers to reeducation camps or forced sterilizations
- organ harvesting the Falun Gong
- suppressing discussion of the times they've sent tanks against civilians.
The Chinese government doesn't care about individual rights & never has: it's baked into the formula. They always put tankie ideology first, the individual later, sometimes far later.
That's not illegalizing it & it's not throwing erotica writers in jail. Don't believe me? Cite the laws. It's legal.
just like in half the US
It isn't.
They should also be the most progressive
The tankie government that denies Tiananmen Square doesn't have much regard for individual rights?
Appealing to Trump's vanity to get their way wasn't a bad idea. We all know he's narcissism incarnate.
I think we grasp cognitive meaning & emotive force in language. I think we also understand the concept of twisting words, have likely rolled our eyes witnessing it, and generally agree that a fair, reasonable person should resist it.
The claim is the word itself is derogatory. It's an argument roughly of the form:
- Someone mentioned female humans.
- They used the noun "female".
- The noun "female" is derogatory.
- Therefore, their statement (regardless of message) is derogatory.
These look like errors of reasoning: a persuasive definition (a definition biased in favor of a particular conclusion or point of view) and a type of straw man fallacy. While it can be used in a derogatory way, that's not the general, conventional meaning.
Language isn’t always about logic.
Yet you attempt to defend the claim by a (specious) logic language doesn't follow, either. Language does follow a standard (of sorts): convention. By that standard, the claim is false.
Natural language gains conventional meaning through collective choices of the language community. This general acceptance is reflected in responses of native speakers (not niche online opinions who don't decide for the entire language community).
If (as reported) native speakers require frequent "correction" on a word's meaning, that indicates the proposed meaning isn't generally accepted. A longstanding definition (like "female" as a nonderogatory noun) holds more weight than a novel reinterpretation recognized by fewer.
If the "corrections" aren't, then what are they? At best, a proposed language change—an attempt to push the idea that the noun "female" is derogatory and change the way allies speak.
Is it a good proposal?
Would defining the noun "female" as derogatory weaken sexist ideologies? Unlikely: extremists like Andrew Tate wouldn't adjust their rhetoric because of a vocabulary. They wouldn't need to adjust a single word.
Is it just? Justice requires targeting wrongdoers narrowly—discrediting problematic messages, condemning extremist ideologies, promoting deradicalization. Blanket condemnation based on a word punishes nonoffenders instead of actual wrongdoers. Antagonizing nonoffending parties alienates potential allies rather than foster change.
The result? A reductive purity test that challenges & penalizes allies instead of challenge wrongdoers. That is neither right nor beneficial.
Would making the noun "female" a dysphemism suggest to society that femaleness is wrong/taboo? That seems misguided.
Why that word? The assumption appears to be that usage by sexist extremists taints the word itself as if the word is to blame for their rhetoric. It's roughly an argument of the form
- Sexist extremists use the noun "female".
- Sexist extremists derogate female humans.
- Therefore, the noun "female" is inherently derogatory: anyone who uses it derogates female humans.
First, is premise 1 true: do figures like Andrew Tate even use the noun "female" disproportionately? I've only seen it among socially awkward individuals: not the same crowd.
More crucially, this argument is invalid: it's a genetic fallacy (guilt by association).
Thus, the proposal doesn't advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned: it's not good in any sense.
often done when discussing science or medical topics
or legal or technical or any context for impersonal abstraction. Such language has appeared in classified ads for apartment rentals: there's even a movie about it. Not derogatory. Context matters.
It’s also used in situations where people are deliberately ‘othering’ people. Watch any police bodycam footage and you’ll see that cops frequently say “male/female” when discussing non-police individuals.
While US policing has serious issues, this claim seems forced: impersonal terms are standard in legal settings.
Assholes like Tate push a twist in this dynamic so that men are called men but women are called females
Recalling an earlier question: do they?
Though interesting if so, that alone doesn't make the word in general derogatory. Nonderogatory instances are common (as you've identified). If a word requires a particular message to be derogatory, then the message (not the word) is responsible.
The use of a word in a derogatory message doesn't make it derogatory. That would require an unattainable level of purity (ie, never appear in derogatory messages) for nonderogatory words.
Your argument really shows the people who "consider it derogatory" misattribute an entire rhetoric to a word.
Final thought: humans don't need constant reassurance that they're humans to know they aren't being demeaned (unless they're painfully insecure).
tl;dr The claim that noun "female" is derogatory is false according to conventional meaning established by the language's community, corroborated by the frequent need to "correct" native speakers. Moreover, the claim doesn't advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned.
if you say “man” and “female” instead of “male” and “female”.
That's extra cringe if they do: that person needs to sort out their words. Is it not derogatory if they say “male” and “female”?
Notice how calling someone “a black” is kinda icky?
It's hard cringe & awkward: certain to provoke odd looks.
Referring to someone as an instance of their gender could be icky & cringe. That it's also derogatory doesn't follow: the easiest counterexample is "a male".
it’s still derogatory
It logically isn't. While you think that, and anyone spending their future with you should mind it, it doesn't make it true.