I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
And it is locational. Something insensitive in the US might be insensitive here in Oz or over in Europe… Or might not.
That is how idiom works.
Yep. Can be things you wouldn’t even think about too. For example the word ‘spastic’ isn’t offensive in the US, but is deeply offensive in the UK, similar to the word ‘retard’
Both of those terms are offensive in the US, too. People that use it just choose to not value the input from those that they offend.
This is kind of tangential, but I don’t think I ever would have known that “poof” was an anti-gay slur in Britain if I hadn’t played Pokemon White. I wanted to.use that as a nickname and had to look up online why the game was preventing me.
Exactly.
The one I always tell about is a yank commedian who, on his first tour over here, lost everyone when he asked for his audience to bend over and pat each other on the fanny. In context, the joke would have made sense in America. Here in Oz, it was far more offensive than he thought it was, and the audience got upset with him, and you could see him realising he lost us. A whole lot of explaining needed doing, for both sides. Apparently he honestly thought he was talking about backsides. Poor sod. Thankfully bewildered American being lynched by pissed off audience wasn’t the main event that night…
Odd to think of a land where poof is not a slur. It is a slur here in Australia too.