Hey, we should all really stop using racist slang to refer to customozation

blashork [she/her]@hexbear.net to Unixporn@lemmy.ml – 132 points –

Meta post I've decided to make. I enjoyed the unixporn subreddit a lot when I used reddit more. I enjoy customizing my linux de as much as the next nerd.

But you definitely shouldn't use racist slang to refer to the process.

To be clear, I didn't know the origin of the term 'ricing' until fairly recently. I was chattimg with my friend and used it to describe my de setup. They informed me that apparently it's from car customization, and is a pejorative against generally asian men who customize their car to look like a racecar.

After learning this I was sad to realize just how engrained it is in linux de customization culture. I personally have stopped using the term, and I would ask everyone here stop as well.

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The arguments being made here are the same ones that were used for f*ggot, tr*p, nword, g*psy, r*dskins, etc etc etc.

It's the same damn thing every single time, a bunch of reactionaries will piss and whine and piss and whine and piss and whine because they have to make the most minimal amount of effort to adopt a new word in their vocabulary instead of the problem one. They will piss and whine forever until eventually accepting it, like all the others historically.

They join a long long line of pissy whiney losers for making the same tired old arguments we've seen for so many things before.

This is an example of the American cultural imperialism someone else was whining about above. In the UK a f@ggot is a type of food. There are adverts on the telly for it. A fag is a cigarette. Gypsy is not necessarily perjorative (it appears as a category on the census). Not sure what tr*p is, but if it's tramp, that's a homeless person. Also, a fanny is ladybits.

tr*p

This is generally a censor of the word "trap". While it obviously has several non-slur meanings, it is also used as an extremely visceral anti-trans (and in particular, anti-transfem) slur :/

The implication is that transfem people are "secretly gay men trapping straight men into being attracted to them". It is associated with simultaneous sexualisation, homophobia, and transphobia >.<. If someone called me that IRL I would be seriously worried for my safety, as that's often the kind of thing people would say before either raping or killing or injuring a transfem person for """threatening""" their fragile sexuality, then using the trans panic defense.

The term got it's start on 4chan, and people used it for femboy characters in anime (who are often poorly translated and may actually be trans in a lot of cases), but the kind of dehumanisation aspect of it means it very very quickly became a viscious anti-trans slur :/

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