Actually it’s a Mr. Show reference. Although The Screwtape Letters is brilliant, and Narnia is fun when you’re like eleven years old.

I’m a racist, a classist, an imperialist. It doesn’t hurt me to be named that nearly as much as it hurts the victims.

And I’m an asshole. Pleased to meet you.

It isn’t helping that your handle, C.S. Lewis Jr., is that of a noted misogynist.

So you’re a racist and a misogynist. So what. Get over yourself. I’m a racist, a classist, an imperialist. It doesn’t hurt me to be named that nearly as much as it hurts the victims. And it may help for the privileged to acknowledge our complicity.

I feel more like it’s a weapon I found lying around — I’m not totally down with this collective guilt trip — but I have come around to the gender politics underlying why it’s too emotionally and culturally loaded for me to use. The fact that I know plenty of women who use that word, including my wife and mother (note: not the same person), isn’t actually relevant and represents a separate problem.

Also I note that you are assuming I’m white. Do I type all ofay or something?

Anyway, I have a decent vocabulary and I’m sure I can come up with better, less discriminatory invective to hurl at the deserving. As much as I loathe being lectured to, I am willing to admit when I’ve got it wrong. I thought about it for a few days and decided the “n-word” parallel was valid and i should probably cut that shit out. Thus, point taken.

CS Lewis Jr., I’m a beginning blamer here, but I’ll just give you my personal take on the ‘c-word’, which I find so offensive that I don’t like it when anybody uses it: When you ‘reach for the sharpest rock’, remember who it was that turned that rock into a weapon in the first place. ‘Mo-fo’ and ‘c-sucker’ (no, I don’t like those words either) were turned into weapons by men to use against other men. The c-word was turned into a weapon by men to use against women.

Just as the n-word was created by whites to use against blacks, and blacks have taken possession of the word for themselves to defuse its power, it is ONLY acceptable when used by a black against in reference to another black. I assume that the whole story of the n-word is contained when two black people use it ‘jokingly’ (? is that what’s going on?) with each other.

When you (a privileged, white male) speak the c-word, you essentially tell a female listener that you still don’t get how offensive that word was and always will be because it was a weapon created by you (the privileged, white male speaker) for your sole use against the listener. It will never be appropriate for you to use that word to a woman.

Argh, this is getting long and seems incoherent. Going away to cogitate some more.

The fact that the sensitive white person doesn’t mean it — maybe they believe Mexicans are just as human as they are, but they can’t help it that the strawberry they’re biting into was picked by an impoverished Mexican migrant worker — doesnt mitigate the effects on the persons of color. The effect of white people on the world is experienced by people of color as racism, because it is racism. Racism afflicts the individual white person irrespective of her personal bigotry or lack thereof. This is not a Twistyism. It is a fact.

I got taken to task for calling Ann Coulter a “cunt” during the recent blog dustup and I have decided to retire the term. I would still say she’s a putrid sack of maggot-ridden pigshit, but the very fact that I would reach for “cunt” as a handy equivalent for that sort of putdown betrays the context in a way I’m no longer sanguine about. It’s very tempting to reach for the sharpest rock, but when what you get with the Boy’s Happy Hate Meal is “motherfucker” — possibly “cocksucker” (which includes me after a few beers) — while the girls get called “cunts,” I can only rationalize for so long before agreeing that it makes more sense and is much less divisive simply to call Ann Coulter a malignant, rotting length of distended rectum and avoid the ugliness of gender-based discrimination.

Right, I know, yay for me. Still, wanting to share. Let the healing begin.

All white people benefit from racism. This does not make all white people racists.

Ergo, not all male people are misogynists?

(Not trolling, seriously wanting to talk.)

Also, I am a huge Heinlein fan but I can see how he could rub feminists the wrong way (lame double entendre recognized but not intended).

(Too many parentheticals indicate need for dinner. Back later.)