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?

Thats not to say MNHQ shouldn't change it. I think they probably should, but there is all sorts that goes unrecognised on here, just as in real life.

Just not acceptable works.

If you can use a phrase that upsets some of the people you post here because of it’s historical context, or a phrase that is neutral and doesn’t, why would you NOT change it?

YABU because you are incorrect about where and when the phrase originated. I can just about see why you might object to the phrase being used in relation to Ireland but you dont get to co-opt other country's history to make your point.

Interestingly my educating myself (a bit) came from mynshamefully late realisation that ‘plantation’ was to do with people not the crops they were enslaved to farm. To do with American Caribbean plantation. That lead my to shocking realisation of Irish plantation (of people) and how long ago that started and then a whole evening was gone in open mouthed reading ! Lots forgotten now - need to revisit.

What a ludicrous ignorant post.

A Pale of Settlement is first recorded in the thirteen hundreds, and the first documented use of the phrase was in the 1600s. It was nothing to do with the Irish. Absolutely nothing.

You can't simply make up a meaning and then decide it's offensive.

Bluntness - it was used. It was used by English Lords to describe anywhere outside their occupied territory in Ireland.

does it really matter who said it first (even though I disagree with Barabarian)? The use in Ireland is considered offensive by many Irish people. It’s a phrase that is easily changed. So why wouldn’t mumsnet change it?

And the bigger issue is the anti-Irish sentiment on here. A thread stood for over a week that I reported and was ignored and it was full of anti-Irish sentiment. It eventually went but the reason was fudged in the deletion message. I think there needs to be a clear statement from hq “gone because the premise of the thread was racist”.

Bluntness you can still see in google maps (satellite) some of the high mounds surrounding the pale in Dublin. Remember looking after finding out about this. People are still living with physical reminder of the Dublin pale let alone with knowledge of it !

Not sure why you are saying it has nothing to do with Ireland ? I was taught is was Calais. I then learned it was all sorts of places including Ireland.

Yes @HeronLanyon. The English decided the best way to keep us under control was to plant English (and Scottish) Lords among us, give them land in Ireland, in exchange for them keeping manners on us!
I'm so glad you studied it!

Bluntness you could have had a quick google and saved yourself the embarrassment of that post.

@HeronLanyon, if you're a reader, there's a book called The Great Hunger written by a historian about the Irish 'famine'. It's called the great hunger for a reason - there wasn't a famine! There was a failure of the potato crop, but Ireland had plenty of corn, sheep, cattle, should have had plenty of food to survive, but the English cruelly taxed us into oblivion so we had no access to this food. Again, a reference to this in The Fields of Athenry 'for you stole Trevellian's corn, so the young might see the morn, now the prison ship lies waiting in the bay'.

If you can get hold of a copy, you might enjoy reading it.
There was a thread last week about Irish people travelling, and some English people were saying well yes, the Irish travelled as there was the Famine. I just smiled, as how could you start to educate someone like that.

Bluntness I’m actually embarrassed for you with that post.

Nothing to do with the Irish? Away and google.

And the English wonder why we cheer for ABE (anyone but England) in sports!

If only they knew! They don't understand it, because they don't know why!

Genocide & ethic cleansing were deliberate policies over the 8 centuries of occupation,
which explains sensitivities of some Irish people - not planters - who know their history

At least the (West) Germans acknowledge their guilt in crimes against humanity

Sir Charles Trevelyan was a 19th Century British senior British civil servant and colonial administrator.__

During the height of the Irish famine, Trevelyan deliberately dragged his feet in disbursing direct government food and monetary aid to Irish people

In a letter to an Irish peer, Lord Monteagle of Brandon, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer,

he described the famine as an "effective mechanism for reducing surplus population"
as well as "the judgement of God"

and wrote that "The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people".

Trevelyan never expressed remorse for his comments,
even after the full dreadful scope (up to 1 million lives) of the Irish famine became known.

Wazznmennthanks for recommendation. My interest has been piqued again by this thread so that was great timing.

Doesn’t it matter that the origin of the idiom almost certainly isn’t rooted in either anti-Irish (almost certainly too late) or anti-Semitic (too early) sentiment?

It seems to be something of a myth that the phrase is specifically about the Irish pale, and when you look at early examples in print, they are all using ‘pale’ in the contemporaneous meaning of ‘boundary’. Dickens used it in ‘beyond the pale of society’ and going back to Tudor times it was used literally to describe going outside the fence or enclosure, rather than in any figurative sense, which lends credence to the idea that the phrase comes from the literal meaning rather than Irish political geography.

I’m neither British nor Irish, and I’m sensitive to the fact I don’t have an innate understanding of what the two know and understand about each other. I’ve seen some pretty grim anti-Irish stuff on MN which I find baffling. But given that the origins of the phrase mean it’s unlikely to have derived from the Irish Pale, I’m on the fence about whether the perception that it comes from the Irish Pale overrides the true origin.

Bluntness you could have had a quick google and saved yourself the embarrassment of that post

That's interesting becayse I was thinking exactly that about the op.

I respect your right to feel offended by this phrase, but I live in Northern Ireland and have never ever come across that explanation of the meaning of it in my life! Im protestant but have loads of catholic friends. So therefore if someone said it to me I would have had no idea of the offense it might cause.

So I think it's a bit presumptuous to say ALL Irish people find it racist and offensive, but I understand now that some might.

I am well aware of the background of the phrase, but still use it and have never spoken to anyone here in NI who has even blinked at its use. Feel free to be offended but don't feel free to tell me what I can say.

@BigChocFrenzy

Thanks for that post and for embarrassingly correcting my spelling of his name!

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

I don't like the amount of casual, unnecessary swearing on MN. I find it offensive. Of course it is, that's the whole point of swearing. If anyone dares to voice this concern then they are given short shrift and written off a pearl-clutchers.

So if I can't have my offense-taken listened to seriously then neither can you.

I don’t know a single Irish person who is offended by this phrase and I am Irish living in Ireland. This is ridiculous

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

If it's one person in real life, seeking to ban it in their presence, maybe. If it's one person on the internet, seeking to ban it from the English language, and you are 99% certain they are talking bollocks when they say lots of people are offended, then I think you ignore them.

I find the term 'cis' deeply offensive, but it doesn't seem to stop people using it.

I find the term 'cis' deeply offensive, but it doesn't seem to stop people using it.

It’s banned on here.