Last night I had a nice argument with the wife concerning a comment one of her friends used on her facebook page. I thought the comment was inappropriate since it utilized cultural slur. The word was jipped. Now, part of my wife’s argument is that it wasn’t spelled like “gypped”, but I killed that excuse very quickly. The wife then reiterated that she was sure no offense was meant, but when I asked her that if the friend had instead said that she felt, “jiewd” would it make it any better, she said it was different. But it isn’t different. Gypped refers the interactions with the Gypsy crowd and the sense of being cheated or of having received less than a fair trade. It is somewhat similar to the “jewed” comment others use to signify that they have received less than they desired from a transaction, or that someone has been overly frugal or cheap.
Just because we don’t understand the intentions or full meaning of what we say, does not excuse us when using the phrase. It is a phrase stereotyped for a specific cultural group, and as such is highly inappropriate. So I wondered, how many more of these phrases do we use without realizing it?
That one bothers me a lot.
Another one is when people, especially people in Utah, use “gay” to mean lame or stupid. I hear it all the time, especially from guys ages 16-25. It’s wrong and it’s not fair. What makes it worse is when they try to justify it by saying, “I’m not talking about gay people.” Well, you said gay, so forgive me for thinking that you actually meant gay.
The fact is that you’re using a word that describes people that are different than you and implying that it is automatically negative. Of course people are not going to appreciate it.
Their argument makes just as much sense as if someone used the word “Mormon” to mean immature or naive, and they justified it by saying they “weren’t talking about actual Mormons.”
or how they use the first letter of a swear word instead of the word and leave it up to the listener to fill in the blank….what’s the difference?