John Davison BAFTA Tourette’s incident and competing rights

It can be an insult, yes. But it's not backed up by hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, and dehumanisation, so I'm really not sure why it would carry so much weight for you?

Thanks to some of the comments on this thread, I think I finally understand white fragility.

(As an aside, personally, I've always read 'yt' to be just an abbreviation of 'white', not 'whitey', as I most often see it written as 'yt people'.

@TempestTost
I think you just don't want to extend that knowledge to a person who has a neurological disorder like this.

Considering that I've said he shouldn't be held accountable for saying it, I'm not sure why you would think that.

My issue was that you're trying to say that because there are contexts where it's not upsetting to hear the word, usually because a person is expecting it, it should never be upsetting or confronting to hear the word. Which isn't the case. If one expects it and already understands the context, one will react differently to a situation where one hears the word shouted out by a white person unexpectedly. And people have made it clear that often the body reacts before the mind can process the context. So unintended harm can be done.

My other issue was that you appeared to be using two isolated incidents where people were penalised for using the word in what should have been an acceptable context, as some kind of defence? Why were those two incidents even relevant?

Yt is a slur if we say it is. That’s what you tell us, that we can’t tell you what is and isn’t a a slur. So if we say it is then it is. Your rules biting you back.Deal with it.

YT has been used as a slur.

You saying that it isn't just means that you have either not seen it, have a different opinion on it or are ignoring how some people use it.

Either way this is a you problem.

You didn’t even respond to the post you quoted.

You: Yt is a slur.

Me: Yt isn't a slur and here’s why.

You: So you think certain people can choose what others can or can't say? That's double standards.

Me: 😳 I'm just saying Yt isn't a slur. Yes, people can say what they want and be offended/not offended by whatever. Just keep it consistent. That's the opposite of double standards.

You: <makes another post addressing the general thread>

...

I'm not sure what you're on about, although I find your post quite ironic. It seems like you're either repeating what I said in a different way and presenting it as your own point, or you're talking to a group about something else while quoting me.

Yes, the goalpost has indeed been shifting and I've been calling it out, including now. I don't know what you are doing.

My comment was specifically about ‘yt’ not being a slur because you claimed it is. That’s it. Your reply jumps to a much broader tangent which relates to the whole thread, but not to the thing I actually wrote. I don’t know what to tell you.

@TempestTost

What always strikes me is that I see the two choices as either using a word, or not using it at all.

What I find very strange is the idea that I would write it as "b###c" and somehow that would render it less shocking or offensive than if I just wrote it.

Yes, that's exactly the way I see it.

The point has always been what people find offensive.

And it seems that whatever point is made that the goal posts can always be shifted by those that want to move them or want to use them to be offended.

It is about intent
if it is not about intent, it is impact
If it is not about impact, it is about history.
If it is not about history, it is about oppression.
If its not about oppression, it is about power.

All nicely wrapped up in you can't tell a X person of y something else what to think but that doesn't seem to apply to everybody.

How about we stop changing the meaning of words and using words that cause people of any creed and colour pain, suffering ot trauma.

What this whole situation has shown me is that those that shout the loudest in claiming to be the tolerant and inclusive are infact some of the least tolerant of all when things dodn't fit in to their tidy little boxes.

If I knew someone was triggered by a certain type of music, I wouldn't play it around them.

No Black woman is blinded by magical letters. The issue is the meaning attached to them - a meaning forged through slavery, racial hierarchy and centuries of dehumanisation. The effects of that history isn't just something Black people read about in history books. Black women, men and children still live with them almost every day and in almost every sphere of our lives. We know our history and we live our present, racially discriminated against from cradle to grave and everything in between. So how exactly does the N word suddenly become “magical thinking” when the conditions that gave it meaning have only selectively changed? Slavery may be history, but racism isn’t. The idea that the word now meets some neat linquistic rule and has floated free of that history is bullshit. Don't even bother with what about songs etc that is a hot debate which only the various Black communities get to have amongst themselves.

Please don't @ me again. I am done with the DARVO, dog whistling and strawmen that you and certain other posters think you are so smart in deploying. Nobody is fooled. If it looks like a duck...

Different century. Same playbook.

All kinds of things can set off a trauma response, it doesn't have to be something that is even normally offensive.

Smell of a certain food, music, a certain kind of body type or facial hair, accent.

What always strikes me is that I see the two choices as either using a word, or not using it at all.

I don't think I have called anyone a bitch since I was a teenager. I have said it, or written it, from time to time where it wasn't being directed (by me) at someone, but with the same type of meaning (I wasn't talking about dogs.) I wouldn't use it as an adult in control of my thoughts and feelings because it's rude and inappropriate.

What I find very strange is the idea that I would write it as "b###c" and somehow that would render it less shocking or offensive than if I just wrote it. Because it's referring to the exact same word. It's the same as someone saying "the n-word." Well, we all know what word is meant, if we see that, it refers to the exact same word. I think the same is true with the concept of typing things like G-D. The symbols refer to the exact same concept and even the exact same letters.

Who is asking for those words to be banned?

I am not even sure what you are trying to say here.

The point being made is that, in fact, many people are able to understand that the context of a use of a racial slur matters.

It is not the same response if you hear it:
Being shouted at you by a guy in a back ally with six scary friend,
Being used in a racist news article
Being discussed in an linguistics article about racial languague
Being repeated by a 2 year old
In a rap song
On a youtube video made by two young black guys who use it to refer to each other every 30 seconds

You might not like any of them at all, or you might be comfortable with some. But if you tell me that people don't understand and acknowledge that these are differernt I will know you are a liar. You have essentially said so yourself in this post - context matters. And some of them are very common, especially in certain communities.

So if you then try and tell me that people are incapable of seeing that context also matters with a person with Tourette's, or that the same people who understand these other instances cannot understand that, I don't really believe you.

I don't believe that you don't understand that context matters. I do't believe that you think that people are incapable of understanding context. I think you just don't want to extend that knowledge to a person who has a neurological disorder like this.

These are not actually very similar at all, in a way they are almost the opposite.

No one is saying that racial slurs aren't real, people say them with meaning and intention at times. It's the meaning that is really offensive, not the combination of particular letters.

We also all know that sometimes we all know that the same word can be used in a differernt way. You can have an actor in a film , who is playing a role. A child repeats a word without understanding. Sometimes the same word can have different meanings in different places (UK vs US for example) or change meaning over time. There is a differernce between shouting at someone and a discussion in a linguistics paper.

Most adults are very capable of understanding these contextual elements and dealing with them, if that weren't the case, we wouldn't have things like films with racial slurs, because the audience wouldn't be able to look at it as part of the story being told.

When you have the magical language type of approach, none of this matters. A child repeating a word, or a person reading a 200 year old document or even one in another language, has the same effect because it is essentially an invocation.

No one is trying to change the meaning, but all words depend on their context in various ways.

With words like "mother" it's the same. Some places do use somewhat different languages for things like breastfeeding. There can be differernces even in what is thought of as rude vs polite talk. Sometimes small children will call their caregivers who aren't their mothers "mummy". Sometimes Mother can be used as a title for a role. Actors play mothers and everyone knows they have no actual children. No one struggles with the idea that context matters to meaning with this language.

Objections to people changing the word women aren't about any of these things. They aren't even about a natural change in language for one particular word where perhaps another word takes its place. It's about an attempt to suppress the expression of certain facts and meaning.

No one is trying to say racial slurs don't exist.

You’ve shifted my point from “Is ‘yt’ a slur?”

to “Do people have the right to say they find something offensive?”

Those are two different questions and trying to collapse them into one won't work.

The key distinction you're missing is that personal offence is not the same as a slur. Anyone can find anything offensive but whether a word is a slur is determined by externally recognisable criteria, not by individual offence.

“I’ve seen it spat out as a slur” is not evidence. It's basically saying “I saw someone use it nastily, therefore the word itself is a slur.” Objectively, that’s not how linguistics works.

People can spit any word out nastily. Yes, people can use neutral words in hostile ways but that doesn’t change the category of the word.

The “double standards” accusation doesn’t hold because you're implying that if a white person finds “yt” offensive, it must mean the same as slurs used against marginalised groups.

Trying to accurately define a term or recognising that different words have different histories and impacts is objectively not a double standard.

The double standard is in not recognising this when it comes to race but championing it when it comes to biological sex.

Also, you're reframing my point as “controlling what people can say” when it was clearly about defining terms accurately. 'Bean soup theory' comes to mind.

So you are saying that certain people get to define what other people find offensive and the impact that it has on them?

I have seen YT spat out as a slur.

Or are you happy with the double standards that you are putting forward.

and yes this whole thing ia about "vocabulary policing.", what people can and can't say.

elgreco

"whitey" really.

Surely its phonic for whitey?

As is typical, the rush to find something banal to make into something as big as a slur is unbelievable.

Yt has never been a slur or used as one and pretending otherwise erases the entire concept of what a slur is.

Yt is simply a phonetic shorthand for white, the same way blk or blck is short for black or BP is short for black people or bw/bm is short for black women/men or ppl for people. None of these are slurs. They’re labels or descriptors and a typing convenience in fast‑moving online spaces.

The fact that some people use it while being hateful towards white people doesn't make it a slur because the hate isn’t attached to the shorthand. The hate is in whatever they're saying about yt ppl.

There's a clear line between hateful behaviour, which can be expressed with any word and a slur, which is a specific linguistic tool with historical and structural weight. That distinction matters because collapsing everything into “a slur is anything someone uses meanly” erases the actual mechanics of slurs and the harm they carry.

A slur requires a history of dehumanisation, systemic power behind its use, widespread recognition as a derogatory term, harm embedded in the word itself, not just the speaker’s tone or intention.

“Yt” has none of that.

There's this rampant equivalence-seeking I notice online and it seems to be the desire to claim that any criticism or negative sentiment toward white people must have a linguistic equivalent to anti‑black or anti‑asian slurs.

It comes across as either discomfort with being named (Some people react strongly to any term that marks whiteness explicitly, because whiteness is often treated as the unmarked default. So they treat being named in any way as oppression) or bad-faith framing (Turning a neutral shorthand or random word into a “slur” can be a way to derail conversations about behaviour, power, or racial dynamics).

This usually shifts the conversation from behaviour to vocabulary policing.

YT is very much a racial slur.

But with any slur I wouldn't be expect to be called it or have anyone use it in conversation.

I would report it, but then I don't accept racism off anyone.

The term is not a reminder of the widespread dehumanisation of white people by Black people, so it's not reasonably equivalent.

So we are supposed excuse and mnimise?

Racism in any form is not acceptable.

Did this theoretical “trans woman” have Tourette’s? Surely that’s the important question here?

Repent mother… etc

I wouldn't expect co-workers to listen to me shout slurs at them on a regular basis. It often causes stress and can set off a trauma response. I wouldn't want to set off anyone's PTSD/trauma response. I know how awful those can be. It's not just being mildly upset for a moment, it can be hours or days of pain and terror. Even if someone doesn't have full blown PTSD (but has some symptoms, which is common in trauma survivors), they may find it difficult to work under such circumstances.

A trauma response is not minor. It often leads to increased blood pressure and other health problems. I had at least one hypertensive emergency bc of my PTSD. I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to regularly have increased stress in order to accommodate my Tourette's.

As PP noted, discrimination claims are always highly fact-specific. Maybe I had my own office and others could rarely hear me. Maybe I could consistently re-direct offensive verbal tics and could go somewhere private to shout. Maybe my tics were very rare. Maybe my colleagues weren't stressed by my tics. Lots of variables.

www.ptsd.va.gov/publications/rq_docs/V28N1.pdf

Many people will have a different opinion. And they will not be w*nkers.

We don't (and we can't) control the thoughts and feelings of others.

The person with Tourette's might take his/her case to an Employment Tribunal. And claim that their employer did not make reasonable adjustments to support them with their disability.

Conversely their colleagues might take their case to a different Tribunal. And claim the employer did not take reasonable actions to prevent racial/homophobic/misogynistic harassment in the workplace.

What the Employment Tribunal Panel considers to be 'reasonable' by all of those involved - employer and employees - will, of course, be pivotal. The heated debates, on Mumsnet and everywhere else, demonstrates that a significant proportion of people DO consider the targeted use of the N-word to a black person in their workplace to be racial harassment. It being said involuntarily and without bad intent, does not change this.

If/until this gets to court we can only speculate on the outcome of such a case.

Sadly, I expect all this publicity will make it even harder for people with Tourette's to find employment.

Balls! If I worked with this person and had had their condition explained to me, I would not consider their tics to be harassment. And anyone who did would be a wanker.

"Man here! So women can say they hate men, joke on mumsnet about killing their husbands and burying them in the garden, or complain about their ‘stupid’ partners giving them the ick, and everyone understands, laughs, and never mentions misandry. But if men say that they're not attracted to their wives anymore, there would be uproar and suddenly it’s misogyny” ass logic.

I rarely see the same rush for equal treatment and the inability to understand historical context or relevance when it comes to gender wars.

'YT' is very different to the N word if used negatively. It's more equivalent to calling someone a 'numpty' or a 'dumbass' if used as an insult.

As I said up thread of certain slurs:

It's more that the word is a sharp, intrusive reminder of the dehumanisation of an individual and demographic - and of the reality that many people still see that demographic as less than human. "Hey, you're not properly human, by the way - just in case you forgot about that, we thought we'd remind you."

This works for both certain racial slurs, and misogynistic slurs, where that demographic has been systemically dehumanised and objectified by those in power, suffered with less rights, and still doesn't have equality.

Caucasians, as a demographic, have not been systemically oppressed or dehumanised for the colour of their skin, so the term 'YT', if used as an insult, holds very little weight for the vast and overwhelming majority of white people. To be fair, I suppose on an individual level, if a white kid was raised in a predominantly Black community and bullied throughout their childhood for being white, it would be personally upsetting for them.
But on a larger scale? No.

The term is not a reminder of the widespread dehumanisation of white people by Black people, so it's not reasonably equivalent.