if someone does the “fine, you’re right, i’m clearly a terrible person, i’m satan, i’m the worst person alive, i should just die” thing in response to criticism of their harmful behavior, they are trying to manipulate ppl and flip the situation around so that they look like a victim
stop tolerating this in 2k17 tbh. like really and truly, if you or your friend thinks this is okay pls call the hotline on the bottom of the screen and learn how to take responsibility for your bad behavior
The bad thing is I do this on a regular basis. Not because I want to manipulate people, but because that’s actually how I feel. I’m bad at receiving concrit. I can’t say that everyone who reacts this way feels the same as I do, but…not every case is like that.
have you considered that, regardless of your intentions, reacting in such an exaggerated way would make it very difficult for anyone to criticize you or tell you that you’re harming people with your behavior? i’m not interested in searching out people’s motives, i don’t really care why someone does or says manipulative things. being unable or unwilling to simply apologize and not make it about themselves is a solid indicator that a person is not interested in being held accountable for their bad behavior, and people, especially the injured parties in question, shouldn’t have to tolerate it.
take responsibility for your bad behavior 2k17 tbh
Okay, life lesson time.
When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept getting involved with people who would say, “Oh, I’m a bad person” any time I brought up ANYTHING that was the least bit of a disagreement.
Like, “Please don’t leave my X on the floor” would get, “Oh, I’m a horrible person!”
HERE’S WHY THIS IS A HUGELY PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR, and if you think I”m calling you out and you think you’re about to shut down, take a breath, remember that this is about learning, and keep reading.
What is important is what happened after. My boyfriend might say, “Oh, I’m just an awful boyfriend” and instead of him acknowledging the BEHAVIOR and working on fixing it, he’d get me trying to buck him up for the next half hour, telling him he was a good person. The behavior that started it all would not change.
Well, things led to things and I went back home to live for a while, and found that the same exact thing was happening… with my mother.
And then I learned about pattern arguments. Pattern arguments are the ones where you keep having the same nonproductive argument over and over again. They don’t all follow this pattern, but this is a really common one.
The trick?
BREAK THE PATTERN
First you have to know what the pattern is. In this case: 1. Grievance 2. Self deprecation 3. Ego stroking
So, with my mother, we started in on one of these, and she said, “I guess I’m just a terrible mother.”
And instead of reassuring her, instead of derailing the issue and letting it go… I said, “When you say that, it makes me wonder how terrible a daughter I could be that you would think you were a bad mother. We have this conversation this way over and over, and the problem that I have always gets pushed aside in favor of trying to make you feel better. When you’re willing to have a real conversation about this, I’m happy to talk to you, but I’m bored with this argument, so I’ll see you later if you want to really talk.” And I left the room.
Now, my mom is a reasonably self-aware person, and does a lot of hard emotional work, and so she got it, very quickly. 10 minutes later she came out and found me, and we had a real conversation about whatever the hell the issue really was, and we have literally NEVER had that particular pattern argument again in 23 years.
Boyfriend came to visit. I was upset about something, he started in on the “I’m just a shitty boyfriend” thing… and my response?
“Yep. You are.”
His jaw dropped. He blinked.
And I said, “Look, that’s what you do. You say shit like that and it means you don’t have to change your behavior, and I’m tired of the pattern we have where I tell you something isn’t working for me, you tell me you’re terrible, and I spend half an hour making you feel better. I’m tired of it and I”m not doing it anymore. If you’re willing to have an actual conversation about this, and not just the same old argument, I’m game. But this thing we do where you talk yourself down and I butter you up? Is boring. And I’m over it.”
We also did not have that argument again. (The relationship finally ended for real a while after, but it ended in a grown-up way, and not with a ridiculous meaningless fight.)
When you knock yourself down, the gut instinct for the people around you is to pick you up. But that means you’re not pulling your weight in the relationship. You’re making them do the work and you’re not actually hearing them.
So that brings us to another point:
How to deal with criticism
Okay, so if you’re not going to knock yourself down when someone says something negative about you, what DO you do? We don’t actually train people to take criticism well. But it is an art and a skill and NECESSARY to finding emotional stability in the face of a critical world.
I see it as a flow chart, but since the flow chart I made for it ended up in a book that I don’t own the copyright to (not a big deal) I’ll write out the decision tree here instead:
1. Someone offers criticism (constructive or not!)
2. Listen and think about it without immediately trying to defend yourself. You can say, “Okay, I need a moment to take that in and think about it because I want to understand it.” Or something else appropriate to the situation. It is okay to ask for time to think in most circumstances. Most people will appreciate that you are thinking about their words instead of immediately getting defensive or counterattacking. Think about whether what they are saying is valid, might be valid or is not valid.
3A. If it is valid, then you have a choice. You can try to fix the behavior or you can acknowledge that it is a valid criticism but decide you aren’t likely to fix it. Start by acknowledging the validity of the criticism, and then say what you’re going to do to fix it, or say that it’s valid but it isn’t something you’re willing (or possibly able) to change, or say that it’s a valid criticism and you’ll need to think about possible solutions. They may have a suggestion. Taking it or not is also a choice.
3B. If you’re not sure it’s valid, but it might be, tell them, “I really need to give this some more thought.” or “Can you tell me more about this? I’m not sure I understand the issue well.” Or “If you can point me at some reading material or search terms, I’d like to study this before I decide what I’m going to do.”
3C. If you know it is not a valid criticism, STOP a moment, and look at WHY they are making it. This is where Active Listening can be very helpful. “I hear you saying that X is a problem. I don’t see it that way right now but I’d like to understand better why you do.” Or if you think they don’t have enough information, “I hear you saying X, but my understanding of the issue is Y. Here’s what I know about it if you’re ready to listen.” If they’re just looking for a fight, tell them you’re not interested in fighting, and disentangle yourself.
4. If the criticism is something you are going to listen to and take action on, tell them what kind of action you’re going to take. If it’s something you’re hearing and thinking about, tell them that. If it’s not something you’re going to do anything about or it’s just wrong, thank them for their input and move on.
Literally never is it going to be helpful to say, “Oh, I’m just a terrible person.” That’s very much like a nonapology-apology in terms of how unhelpful it is to any conversation. It’s kind of worse because it actually expects emotional labor from someone who is already having to bring up something unpleasant with you.
Think about what they say Decide whether you’re going to do something about it Do the thing, or tell them you’re not going to do the thing. Don’t demand emotional labor from other people when you were the one who messed up.
Apologize if appropriate.
This is all predicated on the notion that you’re talking to someone who actually wants to communicate and isn’t just an asshole on the attack.
Because seriously, the whole “I’m a terrible person” thing?
Boring as fuck. Knock that shit off. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. But take responsibility and have a little self-respect and don’t make others pick your emotional dirty towels off the metaphorical bathroom floor.
Leach’s “fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon” was clearly inspired by MetalOllie’s “Cheeto-faced, ferret wearing shitgibbon” (which proved so popular you can even buy it on a mug). Shitgibbon has a lot going for it, with the same punchy meter as other Trumpian epithets popularized last summer like cockwomble, fucknugget, and jizztrumpet. (Metrically speaking, these words are compounds consisting of one element with a single stressed syllable and a second disyllabic element with a trochaic pattern, i.e., stressed-unstressed. As a metrical foot in poetry, the whole stressed-stressed-unstressed pattern is known as antibacchius.)
But shitgibbon didn’t originate with MetalOllie. Its early history has been traced by Hugo van Kemenade, a resourceful word researcher whose biggest claim to fame is finding the earliest known use of the word selfie in a 2002 Australian forum post. (He goes by @hugovk on Twitter and just “Hugo” elsewhere.) As Hugo shared on English Language & Usage Stack Exchange and Wiktionary, shitgibbon can be found all the way back in 2000 on music-related Usenet newsgroups.
EvilJam32, 21 Mar 2000, alt.music.tragically-hip Good luck and goodbye to the most sick-making, hypocritical bunch of shitgibbons i’ve yet encountered on the Web!
So, it’s not the fact of being a gibbon per se. Various other monkeys would work: vervet, mandrill, etc. However, crucially, baboons, macaques, black howlers, and pygmy marmosets are out.
Moreover, it’s not completely unlimited. Some words fit but don’t make much sense as an insult: cock bookshelf, fart saucepan (which I quite like, actually), dick pension, belch welder.
Others sound like the kind of thing a child would say: fart person! poop human! turd foreman!
Yet others are too Shakespearean: fart monger! piss weasel!
Clearly some words (waffle, weasel, gibbon, pimple, bucket) are better than others (bookshelf, doctor, ninja, icebox), and some just depend on delivery (e.g., ironic twat hero, turd ruler, spunk monarch, dick duchess).
For a while, I’ve been discussing vowels in insults with fellow linguist Lauren Spradlin. Note that when we talk about vowels, we mean sounds, not letters. Don’t worry about the spelling, try saying the below aloud. Spradlin has brought my attention to the importance of repeating vowels increasing the viability of a new insult of this form: crap rabbit, jizz biscuit, shit piston, spunk puffin, cock waffle, etc.
I would argue that having the right vowels actually gives you some leeway, so you can get away with following the first word with — gasp! —- a non-trochee! Be it an iamb (remember iambic pentameter?) as in douche-canoe, spluge caboose, or the delightfully British bunglecunt (h/t Jeff Lidz), or even more syllables: Kobey Schwayder’s charming mofo-bonobo.
Contrary to what Taylor has, I think “douchebaboon” would actually work just fine, for the same vowel-matching reason that “douchecanoe” works. (But “shitbaboon” and “shitcanoe” are both pretty bad, I agree.)
But unless the second word has a matching vowel (in which case all bets are off), I think we can systematically predict which trochees are going to be okay. Let’s group them and have a look.
The good ones all seem to begin and end with a consonant (unlike ninja – and I’d argue that kitty, pizza, zombie, banjo, ascot, ankle, emu, inkhorn, office are equally bad). Extra consonants are okay in any position (lobster, blanket, vortex), but you need at least one in each. The only counter-example I’ve found here is “monkey”.
As I’ve been constructing examples, I’ve also been noticing that while assonance makes the compound really good (see douchecanoe), consonance seems to make it worse: I avoided pisspirate, fartfreedom, shitscholar. But perhaps this is a matter of taste – I can imagine someone liking pisspuffin or wankweasel.
Morphological constraint: monomorphemic
The good examples are also all monomorphemic, at least to current English speakers. For example, “gibbon” isn’t gibb+on, and even though -et might once have been added to helm-, blank-, buck-, this is no longer transparent to English speakers. On the other hand, many of the rejected words are transparently composed of parts: book-shelf, sauce-pan, ice-box.
Indeed, I can’t seem to find any compound that really works (jetpack, doorway, keyboard), although there are are lot of compounds in English and I certainly haven’t tried all of them. I wonder if this is some constraint against creating a (one-time, nonliteral) compound out of a word that’s already compounded. English is happy to entertain stacked transparent compounds (bathroom towel rack screw holder) but might have a harder time if the whole is supposed to be opaque. Counterexamples welcome here.
Semantic constraint: non-human
That leaves us with “doctor”. It’s dubiously morphologically transparent: English speakers probably recognize -or from words like “actor”, but “doct” isn’t an English word by itself. But I think that’s a red herring – I’d argue that the important part here is that doctor already refers to a human (or human-like) entity. There’s something similarly weird about shitdentist, shitdemon, turdscholar, fartbarber, shitpirate, douchelawyer, and so on.
There are two possible reasons that I can see for this constraint. One is confusion – if you call someone a shitdentist, do you mean that they’re a shitty dentist or a generically bad human being? Whereas if you call someone a shitweasel, they’re clearly not actually a weasel, so you must just be insulting them. To this end, the generic titles (shitmaster, turd duchess) seem to work better than specific professions, because we already have a tradition of ironically calling people titles, while we don’t have a tradition of ironically calling people doctors, lawyers, or other professions.
But secondly, having your second word be an animal or an inanimate object dehumanizes the target of your insult, which is more insulting – as Taylor notes, the swear+title forms are probably ironic. [Update: it’s not that you can’t say, for example, assmaster or cockdoctor. It’s just that in the right context, they’re practically compliments.]
Abstract and mass nouns are also pretty weird for the opposite reason, because they’re hard to associate with a human at all (shitweather, shitlanguage, turdmonday, shitfreedom).
At any rate, since this now seems to be an active area of linguistics research, I think we need a name for this construction. I’m going to propose “shitgibbon compounds”.
This was written by a non Jew, and honestly, I’ve never been so happy. This is so validating. Finally, someone who isn’t Jewish is calling out antisemitism on the left. Finally.
“
Supporting the self-determination of many oppressed minorities such as
the Kurdish people, it would be hypocritical and flat-out wrong for me
to say I did not support the self-determination of the Jewish people.
Being historically discriminated against, oppressed, and subject to
genocide, Jewish people have every right to want self-determination, and
denying this is anti-Semitic. Now, I have seen the left liken this to
the settler colonialism of Indigenous peoples in Canada. While I am
opposed to plenty of actions taken by the state of Israel, most notably
the vast displacement of Palestinians and the expansion of settlements
that continue to marginalize and displace Palestinians, I am
uncomfortable with the comparison. This is because white people
colonizing has a far different and more oppressive history. White
supremacy exists. “Jewish supremacy” does not, and such myths have only
perpetuated hateful sentiments against the Jewish people. Further I’d
like to pre-emptively add that I would not classify Jews as white
because historically Jewish people as a class have been otherized by
white supremacy, not included in any of it or its benefits. Yes, some
Jews are white passing, just as some Arabs (including myself!) are.
“
THANK YOU!
“
Because of this difficult and nuanced situation, the concerns of Jewish
people are often not addressed on the left. When any other group says “I
am a (marginalized group) and this is (racist/sexist/homophobic etc.)”,
leftist strategy is always to believe them. It’s not to question the
lived experience of members of marginalized groups or to say “no, this
is not racist”. Thus, when Jewish people feel alienated by certain
tenets of anti-Israel politics, we need to listen to them, not simply
say “no, this isn’t racist, there’s a difference between supporting
Israel and supporting Jewish people”. Yes, of course there’s a
difference. I support Arabs while thinking that plenty of the
institutional practices of Arab states are extremely problematic. But we
need to be held accountable and realize that systemic anti-Semitism can
make us think we’re not being racist or discriminatory towards Jewish
people when we really are.
“
I want a story about a king whose son is prophesied to kill him so the king is like “whatever what am I supposed to do, kill my own kid wtf is wrong with you” so he just raises him as normal, doesn’t even tell him about the prophecy, and instead of some convoluted twist of events that leads to the king’s murder the son grows up and when the king is very old and dying and in excruciating pain the kid is just like alright I'mma put him out of his misery.
The king’s son becomes the new king, and is prophesied to defeat evil and bring an age of prosperity. His generals and knights all crack their knuckles but he pretty much ignores them and focuses on strengthening the infrastructure of his kingdom. Forty years later he is old and sick but still hearing his subjects’ grievances, and a general’s like “how will you defeat the prophesied evil now? You’re old and weak.” Another visitor, a teenager fresh out of the kingdom’s public education system, looks at the general like he is an ignoramus. The king eradicated poverty, housed the homeless, taught the ignorant, ended class exploitation by abolishing the nobility and imprisoning the corrupt, and established a highly respected guild of doctors that recently figured out how to cure the plague. There are no brigands because there is enough wealth for everyone to live comfortably; hiding in the woods and taking trinkets from people simply doesn’t make any sense for anyone but the desperate, and the people are not desperate. Evil is a weed, explains the teenager. It grows in cracked roads and crumbling houses and forgotten corners, rooted in indifference and watered by suffering. But the king demands that broken things be mended and suffering people be made well.
No evil lives in this kingdom, says the teenager. It starved to death before I was born.
A partial list of things people did to try to cancel Milo’s appearance at UC Berkeley before Wednesday:
~particularly following MY’s outing and sexual harassment of a trans student at UW Milwaukee (but also before), we talked with our communities about their thoughts on free speech versus harassment and realized many ppl supported the former but not the latter
~wrote op eds in high-profile news media about the differences between free speech, hate speech, and harassment
~met with many folks targeted by both MY and the Trump administration to hear their concerns and solutions to MY’s talk; many asked for us to begin urging for cancellation *the above was all in November, immediately following the election of DT and the dramatic spike in hate crimes against the same groups MY targets*
~we developed a large-scale letter writing campaign to faculty and administration urging for the cancellation of MY on the grounds that his speeches have targeted and harassed students and created unsafe campus environments
~worked with members of the community who wanted to draft letters to UCB administration urging for cancellation (particularly trans and poc people)
~once the sale started, we urged friends to buy out all of the tickets so the auditorium would be empty (we later learned that a only fraction of MY tickets were made available for public sale, and that his camp is very familiar with this tactic and just lets more ppl in the day of) *this was all in December*
~organized a mass call in campaign to the Chancellor and to President Napolitano urging for cancellation
~visited other schools that invited this speaker and saw how many white nationalists use these talks to build their movement and how violent these spaces can be
~faculty wrote a letter to administration urging for cancellation; they were doxxed on Breitbart for signing on and began receiving personal messages meant to silence and intimidate them
~faculty wrote an op ed about MY’s harassment and hate speech; some faculty received death threats for this
~submitted over 50 union grievances stating that the MY talk constitutes a hostile work environment under Article 20 of our contract, which protects against harassment and discrimination
~developed a toolkit that critically examines the history of free speech, pointing to its historical exclusions as well as limits outlined in the constitution, and how MY uses this argument to help build the white nationalist movement and to instruct people how to purge its others; some students who helped write this toolkit were doxxed and began receiving personal messages meant to silence and intimidate
~wrote numerous op eds in our school newspaper, writing for which some students opposed to MY’s visit received very chilling death threats
~consulted lawyers on the matter of free speech vs. harassment so we could better understand the legal framework
~after the near-death shooting of a Milo protester at UW Seattle, we reached out to local and state politicians to convince our administration that this talk was a threat to public safety
~held several large public meetings to discuss and debate the merits of allowing this speaker a platform vs. urging for cancellation on the grounds of certain harassment and likely violence; it was at this point that the Berkeley College Republicans began following some of us in attempts to intimidate us
~actually met several times with UCB administrators and read aloud death threats we’ve received, urging them to protect our right to free speech in the context of threats meant to chill us
~learned that undocumented students would be targeted by MY and that the UCB administration knew this and offered them no protection *this was all in January*
This is, again, a partial list that only includes things I remember. I’ve seen many op eds shame protesters (esp. black bloc) and say, why didn’t you do x, y, z first? Believe me, if you can think of a tactic, we tried it. Next time someone shames us for not pursuing the polite route of asking nicely for the psychological and physical safety of us and our friends and loved ones to be honored, start reading this long list of things we actually did before Wednesday.
I’m fucking tired and glad that creeper wasn’t allowed anywhere near a UCB mic.
how about instead of posting screencaps of inglorious bastards to represent our neo-nazi killing moods why don’t we share pictures of actual WWII jewish defiance
Members of the Bielski partisans, an organization of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination in western Belarus. These guys lived in the fuckin forest for two years and saved 1,236 Jews during that time.
Members of The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (United Partisan Organization),
a Jewishresistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II.
Anyways that’s just a sample and all of the information I got from the Wikipedia page that you can refer to and find more badass Jewish defiance from WWII. Contrary to what the media will tell you, we weren’t just sad prisoners waiting for the “generous goyim” to save us. We fought back, and we fought back hard. Don’t undermine actual Jewish resistance through screencaps of Brad Pitt from a movie that frankly put more of a spotlight on the “generous goyim” who killed the nazis more so than “The Bear Jew”.
Jews defied the holocaust. We defied our genocide. Don’t forget us.
A while back ago I spoke in great pain on how I’m losing friends fighting racism.
I talked about how one can have friends (white) who will invite you
(black person) to a Christmas dinner, but will engage in vehicular
manslaughter when it comes to Black Lives Matter protesters. What I
didn’t really discuss was this radicalization process among the white
community in America which makes such violent ideas possible.
Radicalization?
You probably never really took a look at it. You’re probably wondering
what am I talking about. Radicalization? What radicalization?
The
put this into perspective, I do a lot of political/protest rallies as a
street photographer. Out of the thousands of photos I’ve ever taken, I
never seen anything like this in a political rally before in my life.
The crazy thing about this photo is the fact that it was difficult to
get anything like this. You see, the photography is tightly controlled
in a Trump rally. They are NOT media friendly. The bigger take away
here is the fact that this is is categorically odd to capture at a
political rally.
As Donald Trump continued to validate the claims of white supremacists, Americanized Nazis,
and other racists, I always think of this photo. When Richard Spencer
held an Americanized Nazi rally in Washington D.C. and mainstream
(whitestream?) media attempted to romanticize the alt-right, I thought
of this photo.
I think of this photo a lot. As a black abolitionist, I never really stop to think about what does white supremacist ideologies and propaganda feels like to a white person. When it comes to that question this photo says plenty.
Sure, to a black person this level of pride is sick and disgusting.
But to a white person, all of this — white supremacy, white privilege,
white defaultness — is simply, the way. All of this is simply the way
things are. While these things are largely invisible in (white)
American society, these things are in fact known and understood.
What takes place is a caste system within a
society. Currently, America is NOT one reality for all. You cannot
argue that we live in an equal society if a police officer can murder
me and attempt to place false evidence by my body, and not be convicted.
White Radicalization is a Reality
With an intricate collective of white supremacist
websites, blogs, message board forums and conservative pundits, glued
together with conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns (which guides stupid whites into kinetic action),
we are now facing a moment in modern history where white people are now
becoming radicalized into white supremacy at an alarming rate. Where a
man named Barry Goldwater campaigned as a blatant white supremacist and
failed, Donald Trump did the same and succeeded. Nazis think they can
wear suits and nice haircuts and do Nazi salutes downtown Washington
D.C.
Some of the friends I’ve lost, the white ones, now dance with
the devil when it comes to the white radicalization process. I’ve
noticed this when Obama was in office. One white male I’ve known for
the Army years had a friend call me an Obama lover, which contextually sounds like nigger lover.
Honestly, the guy is so stupid it’s not a serious loss. Other white
friends ROUTINELY share racist, bigoted propaganda on social media, with
them actually taking refuge in racism, saying things with a false sense
of shielding sarcasm, like:
“…but that would make me racist huh?”
“I’m gonna have to be racist…”
“….race baiting…”
If you were to look at the
social media accounts of these radicalized white men, you’d think that
American police forces are infallible, devoid of corruption — but
federal (non-conservative) politicians are full of lies and deception.
The list could go on.
America will talk all day about radical Islam and radical
black speakers and writers. No one ever thinks to talk about white
radicalization, which is a unique danger we’ve seen on this planet before.
Anyway,
I do believe that there should be a discussion on this white
radicalization process taking place. That conversation will have to be
brutally honest. If this discussion doesn’t take place, feel free to
catch up on fascism, because it’s what follows next.
USA followers, here is your daily reminder in this time of high political energy that it’s okay to take care of yourself. In fact, you must. Change is made by doing things, not by reading Tumblr posts and reacting to them emotionally. In fact, too much emotion can make us less able to act. So it’s okay to scroll past or blacklist important issues on your dash if you need to save your energy. Below are some tools people have designed to keep you informed and equip you for action without overwhelming you:
Daily Action Items for the Easily Overwhelmed
MyCivicWorkout: Emails you everyday with one thing to do
MegaVote: Emails you what your reps are about to vote on
These Rebels Have Amassed A Library From Syria’s Ruins
Outside, winter’s chill grips the grey, war-ravaged city, a nightmarish landscape of bombed-out buildings, piles of rubble, and smoldering trash frequently strafed by screeching warplanes or regime helicopters loaded with crude bombs made of dynamite and metal shards.
But inside the basement of a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, the world beyond Syria’s borders opens up. It is a place of learning and ideas, with books salvaged from the wreckage outside and cobbled together into a makeshift library of 15,000 volumes. A photocopy of an old history book, a shelf full of children’s stories, and self-help books by Tony Robbins, sit alongside a J.M. Coetzee novel, a volume of Islamic scholarship, and slim editions of Arabic poetry by Mahmoud Darweesh or Nizar Qabbani. They are read by candlelight during lengthy power outages or at the war front by rebel fighters.
“With all the destruction, we need to hold onto our culture,” said Ahmad, one of the main organizers and the spokesman of the library. Speaking to BuzzFeed News over the course of weeks of interviews conducted over a dotty Skype connection, he asked that his last name be withheld for fear of regime reprisal against his family. (read more)
