Sorry to resurrect this thread. I didn't want to start a new one yet I did have a need to tie up a loose end. As you can see I changed my user name; I couldn't sign in with my old email address as it kept asking me create a new password, and when I did, it told me I already had a profile; round and round, and life's too short to ask for sign in help. Or perhaps it's a permanent suspension now.
Anyway:
A few weeks ago I used a banned word on this thread, not knowing it was banned, and a couple of people objected angrily with expletives . I then inquired as to what was wrong with the word, after which I received a week’s suspension and both those posts were deleted. The post had been obviously been reported.
I’m wondering if reporting something like this is the best way to deal with it; it was surely clear from my second post that I had had no idea that the word would cause offense. I think it would have sufficed to explain to me in a PM that the word was not OK, after which I would have asked for the post to be deleted myself.
I do have a valid excuse, I think, apart from my age. I'm an old-fashionedly polite person and would never knowingly use a word inappropriately
The truth is, I spent the past 45 years in a non-English-speaking European country, spoke practically ONLY that language, and have not kept up to date on the mores in contemporary English language (history is more my thing). Only at the end of last year I even began following the GC discussion. A year ago I moved to a rural area of Ireland and so again, was not up to date in changing language.
Rereading the thread, I see that it WAS explained but after being suspended I did not return to MN until today. I have to say it was very weird for me to be suspended for causing offense -- never happened before! I do apologise.
Anyway, a few off-topic musings on words and their offensiveness and their power and the trends:
When I was in my teens and 20s, (60s and 70s) the terrible forbidden word was queer, and I still cannot use it without a shudder and never have, except in a discussion of words and meanings. And now queer is so very woke!
Gay, back then, meant something totally different to what it does today, and it is so ingrained in me that the old meaning still holds true, and I've never used it in today's sense. The awful N-word has been rehabilitated by some black people, but only they can use it.
On the other hand, I still love the word coloured for black and brown or generally non-white people. It was, in my home country, a positive word, though for the wrong reasons: coloured meant mixed race, with a good few shots of white, and coloured people were middle class and white-collar, and so directly beneath whites in the racial hierarchy, higher even than Portuguese, Chinese and Indians, who were regarded as the labouring class.
I truly detest “People of Colour” and don’t use it, but it’s what Americans say you have to use and coloured is taboo. Remember that song by Boney-M, Brown Girl in the Ring? It’s originally There’s a Coloured Girl in the Ring, tra la la la la, and we sang and danced it at very single children’s party, and nobody was upset. It's a good memory, makes me feel quite nostalgic for simpler, more innocent times! But since Americans have historical objections to it, I would not use it where there are Americans around, and British too, I believe. But I can use it in my home country with ease.
So that's it. Perhaps words themselves are not as important as the way they are used, and by whom?
(C*s of course is very different. It is a highly charged political word intended to change the very definition of females. I will never accept it.)