To think that if you’re told a phrase is offensive, you don’t insist on using it?

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Yes, a TAAT. The context is that we explained to mumsnet HQ that the phrase ‘beyond the Pale’ is found eyebrow-raising by many (but not all) Irish people.

The Pale was the name given to an area of Ireland under English rule and those outside that area were considered uncivilised aka ‘beyond the pale’. This is a phrase that is only used with raised eyebrows in Ireland and certainly feels inappropriate, if not offensive, coming from an English person.

Mumsnet use it as part of their racism guidelines as in that they only ban language that is ‘beyond the pale’. Mumsnet accept the origins of the phrase. However, they insist on using this phrase to describe whether something is or is not racist.

Given the context, AIBU in requesting that Mumsnet find another phrase in their racism guidelines?

I'm Irish, I find humour in many things & always will do.

You said you were "half" Irish in your last post. Where did you suddenly find the other 50%?

@zampa I'll put details when I have 5 minutes but the phrase call a spade a spade isn't offensive! It was only offensive in that one very specific context because of a racist meaning of the word spade.
The OP accidentally made a racist pun by using the phrase. That was the problem, but the phrase itself.

Make sense?

There are many manifestations. Names like Conor and Liam are considered naughty boy names

And with that OP you lost any credibility you might have had.

When I worked at a call centre I was told not to use the phrase ‘bear with me’ as it means to be naked with someone

No it doesn't. Even as a homophone for "bare" "bare with me" isn't an expression.

The pale clearly does apply to Ireland and clearly did not originate in or was used exclusively in Ireland.

@HillyMillylunchmunch I realise that the phrase isn't intrinsically offensive but acknowledge that some people do find it offensive. As can be seen on this thread the same is true for beyond the pale.

I found this article quite interesting; www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade

No it doesn't. Even as a homophone for "bare" "bare with me" isn't an expression.

Oh I know that. I was just pointing out that sometimes people can get offended about something when there isn’t anything to get offended about.

Jane & Wazz, it bothers me not one bit what you think about my humour or nationality etc etc.

I'm not of the snowflake generation & I have very differing views on life & history. The past is gone, it can't be changed.

This issue is a small fish in a big pond & similar to the university student group, or whatever they are called, who decided the wearing of Poppies glorified war & should be banned from the campus. That's an issue to get riled about.

the snowflake generation

Ageist

not the phrase itself

So people who are offended are wrong because you're not offended Flowerpot

My husband and I are of different nationality/race/colour....I can assure you are children are both not partly one or the other.

It was Flowerpot who made the distinction, not me.

Think you're all nit picking for the sake of one missing word in the second post. Calm down dears!

There is no additional 50% that has miraculously appeared. I am half Irish & half South African & I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years. Trust me, I know what true racism is.

Pale is an old name for a pointed piece of wood driven into the ground and — by an obvious extension — to a barrier made of such stakes, a palisade or fence. Pole is from the same source, as are impale, paling and palisade. This meaning has been around in English since the fourteenth century and by the end of that century pale had taken on various figurative senses — a defence, a safeguard, a barrier, an enclosure, or a limit beyond which it was not permissible to go. The idea of an enclosed area still exists in some English dialects.
[...]
The earliest figurative sense that’s linked to the idiom was of a sphere of activity or interest, a branch of study or a body of knowledge, which comes from the same idea of an enclosed or contained area; we use field in much the same way. This turned up first in 1483 in one of the earliest printed books in English, The Golden Legende, a translation by William Caxton of a French work.
The Phrase Finder adds that the first printed reference of the phrase "beyond the pale" (rather than just the word pale in its figurative sense) comes "from 1657 in John Harington's lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella."

In that work, the character Ortheris withdraws with his beloved to a country lodge for 'quiet, calm and ease', but later venture further - 'Both Dove-like roved forth beyond the pale to planted Myrtle-walk'. Such recklessness rarely meets with a good end in 17th century verse and before long they are attacked by armed men with 'many a dire killing thrust'. The message is clearly, 'if there is a pale, you should stay inside it', which conveys exactly the meaning of the phrase as it is used today.

I would say the phrase is inoffensive because it has multiple meanings. Just because one out of many is offensive to a minority of people, you can not ban the use of the phrase in its entirety.

This has been a really interesting thread. I love language and reading of the origins of phrases.

I do wonder though if the English will always be disliked because of things the English did hundreds of years previously. Can history ever be left in the past or will it always be used against them? Might be an interesting thread in itself.

YANBU. I didn't know thats what that phrase meant. I thought it was just..like when people go pale when they are scared or something. For some reason.

However, a poster on Mumsnet raised the issue that as "spade" has become a racial slur in the past century, the phrase has taken on a darker meaning.

I didn't know this was offensive either. I wonder how many offensive phrases I use without knowing that they are offensive..

Maybe in Ireland it’s offensive as it refers to one thing.

Maybe in England it isn’t because it refers to the fenced enclosure?

I don’t know. Now I’ve been told it’s offensive to Irish people I wouldn’t use it to an Irish person. But not sure an English website can be asked to stop using a phrase which isn’t offensive in England.

As an English person I wouldn’t use the term “retarded” but I belief it’s considered ok in America. So I wouldn’t complain if I used an American website and people used it.

Spade is surely only offensive if it’s being used as an offensive term. Not if it’s being used in the context of a digging tool, which is what “call a spade a spade” refers to.

@NicoAndTheNiners Mumsnet isn't an 'english' website though is it 🙄

Well U.K. website then. And yes I know Northern Ireland is part of the U.K. but OP says “Ireland” not Northern Ireland. I don’t think mumsnet is an Irish website.

The Internet crosses borders.

And also your statement re northern Ireland ignores that many of those resident in Northern Ireland identify as Irish and are allowed to do so under GFA.

Bluntness factually and historically it is an offensive phrase that comes from the English occupation of Ireland.

Can you share the etymological evidence that the phrase derived from the specific Irish pale rather than the literal use of the word ‘pale’ as ‘fence’ well beyond the period of the Irish Pale?

Everything I’ve read suggests otherwise, but I’m always glad to get new evidence for something like this.