Would you raise this issue? Unwittingly appropriating/laughing about a term for selling women

[RoderickRules]

Community event for a good cause, one of the stands is going to customise zimmer frames and is being promoted as ‘pimp my zimmer’
I have an opportunity to speak to the organiser so I could raise this and ask them to reconsider, would you?

zzzzz

It totally means selling women. Just because people thoughtlessly use it as a metaphor for flashy, ostentatious gaudiness (in the style of an American pimp) it doesn't mean that word has lost its actual meaning.

I know the pro-prostitution lobby would prefer it if we referred to pimps as 'sex workers' and 'pimp' fell out of use, so sexual exploitation became invisible since we'd have no words to name the different roles in prostitution and discuss it.

But it won't happen as long as feminism exists.

?

No I think you need to chill out a bit there

I would rather consult humans than google, who are not renowned for their social conscience hence my posting on here

My manager agrees, I also discussed it with another group I work with/am responsible for who would like me to raise it. Had some great contributions from MN- thanks all.

Let’s progress if we can, wherever we can.

zzzzz I think you should rtft.

We all know how the word has been used since the late 90s/early00s but we also know that the original meaning has definitely not fallen out of use yet.

Also when 'white people' started using it in an culturally appropriating way, they didn't realise how much it is always steeped in prostitution. Eg- 'pimp my ride' doesn't mean 'advertise/promote/sell my ride' - it means 'make my ride look like the car of someone showing off their excess money from selling women, in a community where people are generally poor and there is no other way of striking it rich'.

It is tasteless and inappropriate to use it in the context of the zimmer campaign and most people in business would never use it.

zzzzz can I ask if you were old enough at the turn of the millennium to have been aware of you the word was being misused?

It certainly doesn't belong with 'primp' even if they sound similar.

*how

Pimp also is the person who made money off when men paid to have a sex with me.

It’s bullshit to use it as term to make something excessive. Where it’s possibly to stop people giving pimp a positive meaning let’s do it. So that less woman are prosituted.

Just checked the etymology - it's origins are uncertain but it has been in use for about 500 years.

Pimps are people, usually men, who sell prostituted people, usually women and girls.

The 'positive' use of the word is one that comes via cultural appropriation at the same time as: (apols this will be offensive)
nigga - to mean man
ho or bitch - mean woman

This came via the music industry (& blacksploitation movies I think too?) because there are links between the American music industry and prostitution (in fact there has been for ages right up through jazz) and Don 'Magic' Juan makes no disguise of it.

This promoted the idea of the flashy pimp as an aspirational figure more globally as American rap spread 'gangsta' culture to the mainstream.

Why do you need my age to accept that I think differently to you?

Because it would explain why you seem a bit oblivious to the origins of the words mainstreaming.

ICJump

And I agree - as long as we see a pimp as a flashy aspirational figure - with no reflection on how he precured his wealth - then more vulnerable young girls are going to be taken in by his 'gifts' and his 'flashy rides' without realising they are being groomed for expoloitation - and he is definitely not and never will be/has no interest in ever being her 'boyfriend'.

*Procured

and was informed that pimp means ‘make fancy’ and nothing else.

Disgusting ignorance.

Is there going to be a "buy one sense of humour get a grip free" stall too?

I would suggest that the only reason you would want to know my age, sex, whatever is so that you could use it as a “reason” to legitimately (in your mind) dismiss my opinion.

I would say it would explain your lack of awareness about how the word has changed in use. If you were born in say 1995 - it would seem to you that pimp was 'mainly' used to mean 'make something showy and flashy' because thats how it started to be used in the mainstream, and you wouldn't learn the actual meaning until, say 2008, at an age when you would probably learn about prostitution which you had been previously shielded from because you were a child.

Explain rather than dismiss