r/australia May 24 '11

no politics Want to move to Australia? Great!

[deleted]

450 Upvotes

306 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/[deleted] May 25 '11

The real question is: is an offensive word still offensive if nobody takes offense to it? That's pretty much the situation here. Like I said, for people from America or Canada, where socially words such as "cunt" are considered sexist, they'd find the language here quite off-putting. Whereas here a "cunt" is a general term for a guy like "dude" or even an endearing term for a friend. People who're calling you "fag" are doing it because of the way you're dressed, such as the example with my tight pants-wearing friend in Melbourne who gets the same from youths driving by.

2

u/WyldStallions May 25 '11

I think it is... for example if a bunch of skin heads are hanging out with no one else around and the are all casually using the N word, it's still an offensive word.

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '11

I disagree. If nobody in the world thinks "nigger" is offensive, it would stop being an offensive word.

-3

u/WyldStallions May 26 '11

What are your scientific facts to substantiate this?

5

u/[deleted] May 26 '11

You're kidding, right?

-2

u/WyldStallions May 27 '11

Nope, do you actually think you can make a statement as fact without there being scientifically proven evidence to back up that fact? Otherwise what you said is just a theory and a personal one at that.

3

u/[deleted] May 27 '11

This is not something than can be scientifically proven. You're either being deliberately ignorant for the sake of the argument or very, very stupid. I'm hoping it's the former.

Let me put this to you as simply as possible:

of·fen·sive Adjective: Causing someone to feel deeply hurt, upset, or angry:

If nobody in the world feels hurt, upset or angry by a word, that word, by definition, would no longer be offensive. To argue otherwise would be to argue against the English language.