Gypsy Censored Version?

[LG2008 3,797]

4 hours ago, Foxyy said:

plenty of white Americans spend their time telling other people online how offensive it is to "use the g-word".

So nothing new... 

[Controversiaga 9,778]

Pixie 

[holy scheisse 21,788]

Oh ARTPOP the album with so many controversies, we love you sweetie 

[djfreemymind 800]

Just throwing this out there:

"The term "Gypsy" (and similar terms in other languages) derives from a historical misconception that Romani people came from Egypt. "

So the word, much like the word ghetto, is inherently ethnoracially charged and xenophobic (if not racist, depending which way you look at it). The word exists bc white people were like, "These people are dark-skinned, so they must come from Egypt."

Edited 23 minutes ago by djfreemymind

[Meruk Holland 2,125]

7 hours ago, hELXIG said:

I'm confused about how this word is considered such a strong slur. Oxford dictionary has two definitions, one is referring to Romani speaking people who travel, and I know it was used as an insulting term for these people. But the second definition is "a nomadic or free-spirited person" which is exactly what the song is about. I'm curious to know if the travelling people actually have a problem with it being used or if the internet has just taken it and run with it. Because my whole life I've known the term to refer to nomadic/free spirited people. Maybe I'm just uneducated and there's some massive historical drama I don't know about but it doesn't feel that serious to me. Is it really as bad as words like f*g and the n-word? Like it needs to be totally blacklisted. Someone educate me 

My understanding, which comes from a scant few conversations with only a handful of people whom I can only confirm one was of Romani ethnicity, is that the term isn't strictly a slur, but its at the very least pejorative, like bitch and slut are to women, or queer to...queer people. And that's an interesting distinction, because pejoratives have this quality of reclamation, wherein those terms can be used in a non-negative light, i.e. girls greeting each other with "what up, sluts" or queer people referring to themselves as queer people. 

That said, there is this issue when an outsider uses these terms. A gay person using f*ggot to joke with his gay friends is one thing, but a straight person using it to call out to a gay person is probably using it as a slur. So when most of the reclamation for g*psy is used by people outside of that demographic, it's harder to say it's properly being reclaimed and instead repackaged. In this case, it became co-opted by New Age, free-love, coexist types. 

I personally don't feel that looking up definitions is going to be the safest arguments when, linguistically, words like queer and colored had innocuous meanings but have since become pejorative. And context is super important too, obviously. 

And as I said, I personally have only had a few conversations with people this affects, and they weren't representative of the entire community, but when they expressed to me that it's not a good word, I personally felt it was just safer to treat it as a slur. I had always thought of the word in the positive intention, but I can't deny that I couldn't recognize it was used pejoratively. Such as the phrased "I got g*pped" and the song "G*psies, Tramps, and Thieves" wherein being called those thing was implied as bad.

Edited 3 minutes ago by Meruk Holland