Quote:
Originally posted by xepherys
b) Who the hell cares anyway? If you choose to be offended by one or the other (or neither) then that is your situation to decide. Society should not hinder my use of my native tongue due to other people's sensitivities. That seems counter-productive in terms of social advancement. Get over it!
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If that is the case then I send my deepest sympathies to all you deal with. Everyone adjusts the way they speak with everyone they speak to and that's not counter productive to social advancement - it's a matter of respect. Respect for yourself because you have some idea how your words will be percieved and how you will be looked upon by the words you choose and respect for the other person because you have a general idea of what words they'd like to hear. You wouldn't discuss your sex life with your grandmother - would you?
I'm indifferent to the word itself, the only thing that pisses me off is people who use the word in denial of the reason why they use it. Denotation and connotation might be two very different things but the reason why the word is used is because of it's once negative meaning. Generalizations of any sort do very little good if any good at all to any conversation as they fail to convey anything truly meaningful.
Catering how you speak isn't counter-productive to social advancement but choosing your words in utter disregard of how they'll be percieved by others is counter-productive to social advancement as it doesn't lead to good communication.