Generational differences in perspective

[Bazzle]

I’ve said a few times that Lit (or at least AH) seems to skew older.

A few things recently have got me thinking about this. Do you agree that there are gaps between what older and younger people think about a range of topics?

A few that come to mind include;

1. Non-con seen through the lens of girls being “good” and needing to be seduced (which isn’t so much of an IRL thing nowadays)
2. Interracial being taboo
3. Jokes about sexual orientation
4. Jokes about disability
5. Men crying

I know younger people are sometimes accused of being woke snowflakes, but do we have significant room for misunderstanding each other in areas like the above?

Not seeking an argument, certainly not a political one. Just curious.

Emily

Soooo.



My woke thoughts on it all.



During the good ole days of before 20xx and wokeness become mainstream and was a "thing".



In the UK we have had two cultural and one political 'revolutions'.



Humour in the UK came through two routes - the comedians who toured the working mens clubs. Dominated by fat white men getting drunk with the cash leaving the wife at home.

Then those who were touring the end of pier comedy/verity shows for families on summer holidays.



So you get Morecambe and Wise and in one camp and Les Dawson in the other.



During the 50-70's you still had men down the pit and the women at home? We also had a large immigration influx from the commonwealth.



The working mens humour and sexist/racist views on the world could be reinforced though humour?



Then we had the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70"s. Which meant quite rightly that by the 80's and 90's women were "allowed" to work. They were no longer stuck at home.



BUT culturally the humour was still centralised on the comedians of the 60's and 70's still doing their old stuff?



However generationally we now on second generation immigrants. They were British. The racism didn't work.



At the same time we had the political revolution of Thatcherism which removed the industrial industries in favour of the city men.



The collective loss of the unionised workforce. Being physical men down pit or in the car factory was ripped out and replaced with either robots or call centre work?



The need to be a manly man was gone. Plus those pesky women were equal in that call centre job.



Culturally the comedians were no longer going to working mens clubs. The end of pier shows were gone too.



Ultimately every 10-15 years there is a change?



Political and cultural which that generation rejects the thoughts of the past. In the UK Brexit was a battle of the past v the current v the future. The past politics won. But the culture is of now. There's a bug in the matrix. You can't go back.



What I am ultimately trying to say is the things suitable for the past are wrong. But in 10-15 years time it will change again. One way or
another. We have to accept the now, culturally we can't go back.



B

 

[StillStunned]

Maybe my perspective, growing up as an outsider, was slightly different from those of you saying, "It was all jokes, but we had a thicker skin and laughed it off."

It was bullying. It was ganging up on whoever was different - anyone who was short, fat, a different colour, who had a different accent, who came from a broken home, who was poorer than most, who had strange hobbies, who was bad at school, or too good at school, who didn't fit very rigid ideas of what a boy/man or girl/woman should be.

And we all did it, because it meant we weren't the ones being targeted. It was a herd mentality of driving out the weakest, and you joined in because then you belonged. And like I said, for now you weren't the one being bullied. Until a few minutes later, when you were.

At the same time, where I grew up, it was pretty much accepted that kids became sexually active anywhere above the age of 14 or so. Maybe not "get naked and do the deed" active right away, but anything involving hands at the very least. Girls and boys both.

And the whole interracial thing was never a fetish. People of different ethnicities were uncommon, but that was mostly because the population was 99.9% white. But no-one batted an eyelid if it happened. Strangely, as society becomes more polarised, that seems to be changing for the worse.

 

[Bazzle]

the whole interracial thing was never a fetish. People of different ethnicities were uncommon, but that was mostly because the population was 99.9% white. But no-one batted an eyelid if it happened. Strangely, as society becomes more polarised, that seems to be changing for the worse.

Politics is behind the culture.

The polarisation is because there is a core of people who still think it's the 70's because that is what their dad told them.

Then the politicians come out and say wasn't the 70's wonderful...they get a few nodding heads..

But the MAJORITY have moved on. Culturally further forward.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Do you agree that there are gaps between what older and younger people think about a range of topics?

Yes, though location, class, money, nationality etc are likely to be as significant.

A few that come to mind include;

1. Non-con seen through the lens of girls being “good” and needing to be seduced (which isn’t so much of an IRL thing nowadays)

If you're trying to write 'reluctant' rather than outright rape, you need a reason for the reluctance. So it's an obvious go-to. But the idea of not wanting to be 'a total slut' and only 'empowered' was sure strong in my generation (born mid-70s) - resulting in the Swept Away fantasy only changing very slightly from 10-20 years earlier (see Nancy Friday's works on women's sexual fantasies - I admit I read them because they were the best porn available in the early 90s and my ex lent me one, but they're amazing at demonstrating the changes in sexual attitudes from the 60s to 90s) - the 'actual rape' fantasy changes to 'I didn't mean to so soon', and in real life, girls getting really drunk so 'it wasn't my fault I slept with him' (direct quote from at least a dozen women I could name at college in the early 90s...)

1. Interracial being taboo

I think you really have to be American to get this. Not saying our mixed-race generation post-GIs being 'over sexed and over here' were treated well, nor the Windrush generation who came over in the 50s and 60s, but that was class as much as anything. Most of them married white people for sheer numerical reasons. My mum was a civil rights activists in the US in the 60s, but I never understood her references to escorting black people to vote (were they too stupid to figure out where to go?) or rather ham-fisted attempts to ensure I was extra polite to the serving staff (black) when we went to London - I was 14 or 15 when there happened to be a doc on Ole Mis on TV and my parents got me to watch it with them and it just did not compute. Even after an hour of explanation it didn't make sense.

And let's face it, 30 years on it doesn't make sense either.

Kinda creepy fetishization, yeah, I understand that. Taboo? Nah.

1. Jokes about sexual orientation

It was a huge step forward in the 90s when we actually got jokes *about* sexual orientation, as opposed to 'he's gay' being the punchline. Gayness isn't inherently funny. Can it lead to funny situations and jokes? Hell yeah! But just pointing at someone and going "You're gay! Hur hur hur!" isn't. Or to clarify, it's never been funny to the people being pointed at, and those who do it never managed to come up with anything funny. Anything that's just "You're different and inferior" in different words, not funny.

1. Jokes about disability

I'm kinda surprised how many people here said jokes about disability weren't acceptable in their lifetime. I know lots of kids jokes are more shock or horror at a situation, and Helen Keller jokes don't necessarily mean someone's going to take the piss out of a deafblind person any more than "x in a blender" jokes mean theyre going to get done for animal cruelty, but really?

I mean, when I was at school it was routine for the teachers to call me a fucking spaz (note for Americans: in the UK calling someone a spazz or spastic is a slur on a par with nigger or Paki...) and point and laugh, so it was hardly surprising for kids and employers to yell at deaf people going "Can You Hear Me??" and think its hilarious, people in bars stealing someone's crutches and thinking it's oh so funny, people making 'the disabled face' and using phrases like window-lickers...

Just having a disability isn't funny. But it leads to even more opportunities for humour than being queer does, in my expert opinion. But tbh most people I know never knowingly met anyone disabled growing up, except the very elderly. Certainly before I went to uni, the only people in wheelchairs I'd ever seen (except those injured or very elderly) were beggars, usually affected by thalidomide. Not just not met: seen.

Access at my uni was pretty shit, but had a number of students who'd studied hard in their teens as they'd been unable to have a social life, so if getting to the bar or theatre meant finding four large sober-ish guys to carry them upstairs, they were all for it!

Since then, my and others expectations about disability access have gone up. I expect all new buildings to have step-free access, TV to be captioned, staff to provide information, government services to be accessible without voice phone, etc. And I expect other people to think at least a little, too.

Recent example: Madonna yelling at a fan, 'why aren't you standing?' Fan was in a wheelchair. Clearly, Madonna hadn't considered disability as a possibility. She apologised and said 'glad you're here', but the apology was "Politically incorrect, sorry about that" rather than apologising for it being a thoughtless demand. Or a school hosting an evening event, unlocking the main male, female and mixed toilets, but not the accessible ones because it just didn't occur to them.

Disabled people are up to 20% of the population. Queer people are up to 10%. People who aren't white or majority ethnicity are a decent proportion, whatever country you're in. And women make up half of the world, too. There's a big contrast in my workplace between the new grads (20s) where that's just how they've been raised to look at the world, and you can't assume anything about their sexuality from them saying 'my partner', my generation (40s, 50s) where the people most pushing that diverse view of the world tend to have been on the pointy end of it, and the bunch that retired 10 years ago, many of whom simply saw it all as Political Correctness Gone Mad (not all, but a lot).

1. Men crying

Totally unacceptable in UK public until Paul Gascoigne did. (Was one of the top 2 footballers in the country for some years, then had alcohol problems and lost his money, and a bizarre episode involving trying to catch an active shooter killer). And not really for another 10 years (see alcoholic). Over a whole generation, I can see a difference, but actually dealing with emotions is something both men and women are both pretty shit at here.

I know younger people are sometimes accused of being woke snowflakes, but do we have significant room for misunderstanding each other in areas like the above?

Not seeking an argument, certainly not a political one. Just curious.

Emily

 

[THBGato]

Men crying

Have you read @BrokenSpokes essay on feelings? https://www.literotica.com/s/feelings-an-essay It's really good.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Is this for real? Where and when was this?

Flogging as a judicial punishment was not removed from the Canadian Criminal Code until the early 1970s and I doubt it had been actively applied for a long time, but it was on the books.

IIRC, there were a number of other eye-openers when I did my first casual read of the CCC, like pretending to practice witchcraft, staging a prize fight, blasphemy, ‘alarming’ the Queen (whatever that was), playing ‘three card monte’ (with the specific note that it didn’t matter what the game was called or how many cards were dealt) and so forth. Maybe some of them are still on the books, but I hope not.

 

[HordHolm]

Flogging as a judicial punishment was not removed from the Canadian Criminal Code until the early 1970s and I doubt it had been actively applied for a long time, but it was on the books.

IIRC, there were a number of other eye-openers when I did my first casual read of the CCC, like pretending to practice witchcraft, staging a prize fight, blasphemy, ‘alarming’ the Queen (whatever that was), playing ‘three card monte’ (with the specific note that it didn’t matter what the game was called or how many cards were dealt) and so forth. Maybe some of them are still on the books, but I hope not.

The same kinds of things are true for the UK - blasphemy wasn't removed from the books until 2008, and there were prosecutions until at least the 70s.

 

[MillieDynamite]

These are interesting discussions and I don't know how to even engage in them. My folks are both old fashioned and oddly not so much. They accepted my lesbianism without batting an eye. Yet, didn't like Jo and I cohabiting without getting hitched. My dad isn't comfortable with talking about, writing about, or discussing sex in general. he doesn't watch porn (at least I don't think he does), doesn't read dirty stories other than mine, but doesn't condemn those who do. He was a ladies man when he was young, cheating on both his first and second wife, but hasn't on my Mum and is very narrow minded about those who cheat these days. He doesn't have a problem with transexuals but mum does.

I've been shaped by them yet we have some definite political differences. We manage to discuss and not argue though. My sister is 11 years old than me, and we don't get along well. My brother is 14 years older than me and we get along fantastically. Of course, being adopted, and the fact they weren't at home when I came into the picture has something to do with that. But I'm further apart on most issues with my Sis than my folks. She's ultra conservative on a lot of things.

My dad doesn't listen to any new music. Nothing since 2000 unless it's by older artist. I listen to almost everything out there. He used to be that way, or so I've been told.

I definitely get that different generations look at things differently. Dad has a certain aversion to gay males, they hide it well, but I can tell Dad's uncomfortable with gay men. Mum on the other hand gets along well with gay men, because she feels safe around them. Straight aggressive me scare the shit out of her if dad isn't around. I'm also more comfortable around M2F and gays than straight aggressive men. Mum's never been assaulted by any men. I wish I could say that.

Yeah, none of what I'm writing actually addresses the generational differences well though. I should just clam and shut my trap now.

 

[EmilyMiller]

@SimonDoom we’ve been round this loop many times before, I have no illusion of changing your mind, it holds vice versa.

This isn’t meant to be an argument, or even a debate. Just offering a different perspective.

First of all, words can clearly do harm. I doubt you would argue about this. Every genocide in history has been proceeded by dehumanizing the subjects of it. Every autocrat uses words to deflect attention from their own misdeeds and to blame some chosen “other” for their followers’ misery. We see this even today in American politics. Indubitably words can cause harm, even mass death. Words are more powerful than you claim.

It is also undeniable that some BBC porn dehumanizes black men. It is also an utter twisting of the realities of slavery, where 99 times out of 100 it was black women being raped by their white male owners. The “danger” of the rapacious, animalistic negro is a 180 degree twisting of what actually happened. Is it not feasible that some black people might just be aware of this and find the BBC trope deeply unpleasant, particularly in a world in which racism against black people is alive and well?

Next, like any intelligent person who believes in what they are saying and wants to convince others, you choose your own words carefully. In particular you employ “offend.” That’s such a loaded word.

I was offended about something here recently, someone on AH making fun of dyslexia. I don’t have dyslexia, I wasn’t personally impacted by what they wrote. I was indeed offended. What do I mean by that? I mean that I am capable of empathizing with someone who does have dyslexia. Of putting myself in their shoes, of figuring out that the “joke” could be hurtful (not offensive, hurtful) to someone with that condition.

I explicitly responded to this via empathy, by sarcastically asking them to make a joke about ASD next time, a condition I do suffer from. I put myself in the position of someone who was the subject of the joke and determined that it could have been hurtful.

When it comes to something like rape porn (see I’m doing it now as well, I could use a euphemism like non consent or - even worse - dubious consent) that doesn’t offend me. It hurts. It hurts viscerally. It hurts deeply and personally that people think sexual assault is a fitting topic for titillation. And you know what, I’m allowed to be hurt. There is nothing wrong with me being hurt by it. There is nothing wrong about me having flashbacks when the topic comes up. That’s not something wrong with me, it’s something that was done to me. And my feelings are totally valid. Asking for some consideration about them does not seem unreasonable. What’s bad about asking people to think about the feelings of others? Isn’t that a positive human thing to do?

Which comes back to words. I support free expression. But I don’t support needlessly hurting other people. Not offending, hurting. There is clearly a tension between these two things I support, and it’s hard to draw the line clearly. But I do not agree that freedom of expression trumps avoiding hurt. They are both laudable things. When two laudable things come into conflict, you have to consider things on a case by case basis, not using sweeping generalizations like “free speech is sacrosanct.” It isn’t, which is why we have legal remedies against untrue and malicious claims. Which is why we have penalties for advertisements that lie. There is no such thing as unfettered freedom of speech, not should there be.

But… I’m not arguing for legal protection. I’m not arguing that writing rape porn should be a felony. I’m simply asking one set of humans to extend some consideration to another, to put themselves in the shoes of victims and to think - am I really making the world a better or a worse place by what I am doing? Am I adding to or subtracting from the sum of human happiness?

I’m not telling anyone what they should decide. I am asking them to think of others as well as themselves. Surely that’s OK to do, isn’t it?

I’m not going to get into a point by point discussion or defense. I don’t think I need to defend anything I have said . And I don’t need to add to it. It’s another point of view, which I believe it’s valuable to state.

To reiterate, I’m not seeking a debate. Just making a statement.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

These are interesting discussions and I don't know how to even engage in them. My folks are both old fashioned and oddly not so much. They accepted my lesbianism without batting an eye. Yet, didn't like Jo and I cohabiting without getting hitched. My dad isn't comfortable with talking about, writing about, or discussing sex in general. he doesn't watch porn (at least I don't think he does), doesn't read dirty stories other than mine, but doesn't condemn those who do. He was a ladies man when he was young, cheating on both his first and second wife, but hasn't on my Mum and is very narrow minded about those who cheat these days. He doesn't have a problem with transexuals but mum does.

I've been shaped by them yet we have some definite political differences. We manage to discuss and not argue though. My sister is 11 years old than me, and we don't get along well. My brother is 14 years older than me and we get along fantastically. Of course, being adopted, and the fact they weren't at home when I came into the picture has something to do with that. But I'm further apart on most issues with my Sis than my folks. She's ultra conservative on a lot of things.

My dad doesn't listen to any new music. Nothing since 2000 unless it's by older artist. I listen to almost everything out there. He used to be that way, or so I've been told.

I definitely get that different generations look at things differently. Dad has a certain aversion to gay males, they hide it well, but I can tell Dad's uncomfortable with gay men. Mum on the other hand gets along well with gay men, because she feels safe around them. Straight aggressive me scare the shit out of her if dad isn't around. I'm also more comfortable around M2F and gays than straight aggressive men. Mum's never been assaulted by any men. I wish I could say that.

Yeah, none of what I'm writing actually addresses the generational differences well though. I should just clam and shut my trap now.

That was interesting - and a little sad in parts.



Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

Have you read @BrokenSpokes essay on feelings? https://www.literotica.com/s/feelings-an-essay It's really good.

Nope - will add it to the list.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

You're making me feel very young.

How so?

Emily

 

[KeithD]

How so?

Emily

I apparently don't have the old codger hangups you seem to think my generation has.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The problem is, a lot of unfunny pricks who think they're George Carlin or Archie Bunker or Mel Brooks or Lenny fuckin' Bruce--and they ain't--make what they think is a joke, and get mad when the person who's the butt of it doesn't laugh.

Like, if someone calls me a faggot and makes a joke about it at my expense, they might think it's hysterical. I might feel pressured to laugh with them, because their next reaction might be to kill me.

But that's not a great reason to laugh. If anything has changed about comedy, it's that more faggots feel secure enough in their communities not to laugh along with hacky jokes made at their expense.

I get it. It's comedy, and there isn't really such a thing as subject matter that's off limits. But the touchier the subject is, the more finesse the joke requires. A lot of self-proclaimed comedians can't or won't understand that. They don't understand that the bar has been raised and they've failed to pass over it.

The most offensive thing in the world is a comedian demanding that people laugh at a joke that a middle schooler could have come up with. Or a comedian who skips the jokes altogether and instead simply parrots their audience's prejudices back to them for an hour. Going for "clapter," as Norm MacDonald derisively called it.

I think that is very accurate. “It’s just a joke” doesn’t mean it’s not deeply hurtful. It seems it’s just an excuse for bulllying.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

I apparently don't have the old codger hangups you seem to think my generation has.

Oh, I don’t think everyone has them, any more than I think that about younger people.

Making some generalizations.

Emily

 

[Voboy]

Back when I was a kid if you shot your mouth off it was going to get settled out of school.

Yes. There was always this side of it, too.

"Offensive" speech had an outlet when I was a kid, and that outlet was after school at the senior center across the street. That was the designated duelling spot. We'd go, we'd fight, and presto. Clean slate.

I won't go as far as to say the adults in our lives "encouraged" extracurricular fighting, but they certainly knew it happened and they never really had a problem with it because it tended to maintain order, thus making their lives easier. It was definitely more accepted among parents and teachers than it is now. I'll say this: an offended kid had two options. Reply with wit that cut even deeper, or challenge the taunter to a fight.

Either way, it tended to increase respect for the offended kid.

 

[intim8]

But… I’m not arguing for legal protection. I’m not arguing that writing rape porn should be a felony. I’m simply asking one set of humans to extend some consideration to another, to put themselves in the shoes of victims and to think - am I really making the world a better or a worse place by what I am doing?

This.

 

[intim8]

I apparently don't have the old codger hangups you seem to think my generation has.

I don't either, but I used to. And the effects linger and manifest in strange and random ways.

 

[AlexBailey]

Yes. There was always this side of it, too.

"Offensive" speech had an outlet when I was a kid, and that outlet was after school at the senior center across the street. That was the designated duelling spot. We'd go, we'd fight, and presto. Clean slate.

I won't go as far as to say the adults in our lives "encouraged" extracurricular fighting, but they certainly knew it happened and they never really had a problem with it because it tended to maintain order, thus making their lives easier. It was definitely more accepted among parents and teachers than it is now. I'll say this: an offended kid had two options. Reply with wit that cut even deeper, or challenge the taunter to a fight.

Either way, it tended to increase respect for the offended kid.

There was a time when taking it out after school was a regular thing to do. In my experience in California it was sometime in the late 80’s when conflict between social groups became lethal. Parties that would previously break out in fistfights started breaking out in gunfire or stabbings.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yes. There was always this side of it, too.

"Offensive" speech had an outlet when I was a kid, and that outlet was after school at the senior center across the street. That was the designated duelling spot. We'd go, we'd fight, and presto. Clean slate.

I won't go as far as to say the adults in our lives "encouraged" extracurricular fighting, but they certainly knew it happened and they never really had a problem with it because it tended to maintain order, thus making their lives easier. It was definitely more accepted among parents and teachers than it is now. I'll say this: an offended kid had two options. Reply with wit that cut even deeper, or challenge the taunter to a fight.

Either way, it tended to increase respect for the offended kid.

That's the thing, what people refer to now as "Toxic Masculinity" when it comes to boys will be boys had its place. You said it well, it maintained order. It also was what would always stop the bully, when they ran into someone who would hit him back, it usually made him less eager to keep acting that way.

Here's a story I tell sometimes that shows the difference in then and now. We moved to a new neighborhood, my foster mother told me "Hey. there's some boys out there your age, go make some friends."

So I go out, start talking to a couple of them, and things are going okay...until a few kids from down the street come over on their bikes with that "Oh, look, new meat" bullshit. One of them starts mouthing off, and I look past him and there's my foster dad sitting on the porch with a friend and he's watching. The kid shoves me. I try to step away and he swiongs at me, but misses because I'm pretty quick. Another look, dad is watching. Message clear, on my own.

The kid is a year older, taller, heavier, and we end up getting into it. I get a few shots in and a really slick little thrust kick because I'd just started taking Kenpo. He gave me one good shot that split my lip, blood everywhere, put me on my ass, and he went to just flop on top of me and another kid grabbed him and pulled him off. I get up and walk over to the house, bleeding, dirty, shirts ripped and dad says "You okay?" I'm like yeah," he says. "You did good, go see Ellen so she can clean you up. His friend, I think his name was skip says "Hey, no shame in that, you put up a good fight.

But there's more. I go back outside but in the yard and I used to have some cool Shogun Warrior toys.(dating myself) and some of the kids came over and we're all playing. I look over in the next yard and there's the kid who started with me by himself just watching. My mother calls me upstairs and when I get there says "Invite him over to play." I'm like "You see what that kid did?" she says "Its over, invite him over, and make a friend."

Okay...I went down, went over to the fence and said, "Hey, you want to come over?" He hops the fence, tells me he's sorry he hit me first, shook my hand and....I still talk to that guy to this day.

A great lesson from a crappy scene, but its how it was...can you see most parents doing that now?

 

[Voboy]

That's the thing, what people refer to now as "Toxic Masculinity" when it comes to boys will be boys had its place.

I'll just hasten to add, since you posted this as a takeoff on a post of mine, that "toxic masculinity" is not something I was bringing up. I think it's a loaded term with modern connotations I'm not comfortable commenting on.

Em asked whether living in a prior era affected our views of the things she listed. I think jokes and the way we take them have changed, and that the era of universal mockery I grew up in also coincided with an era of accountability for the things you said: the accountability was after school at the senior center.

I am biased, but I view that humor culture as something that built resiliency (in me, anyway: I was a frequent target of jokes) and that accountability culture as something that regulated unduly offensive speech. My points go no further than that. I'm not going to use the term "toxic masculinity" to describe that culture because I think it's misleading: girls mocked, teased, and fought just as often as boys.

You can use it on your own. It's no part of my vocabulary.

 

[GlennJenko]

Even "master bedroom" is being eliminated as a real estate term

TIL

I long ago stopped using the term 'Indian' to refer to Native Americans

Me too. I remember when I was about 5 that playing "cowboys and Indians" was a common thing still (bear in mind I'm only in my early 20s) but by the time I reached my teens and learnt about the American West that I was uncomfortable using the term 'Indian' for Native Americans. I never use it nowadays.

A little off topic but more in line with the original questions, it's interesting that even in my lifetime things have signifcantly changed, I'd say for the better. When I was small using the term "tranny" was still common, but I would never ever say that now. Same with "retard" which I'll admit I sometimes slip with but I know is not acceptable.

I grew up in the 60s, when people had a sense of humor

Oh yes, I've seen some of the 60s ideas about "humour" and I'm cool without that. People nowadays still have great senses of humour but, as others here alluded to, there's a certain bar you have to be able to cross for it to actually be funny and many people don't reach it.

There was no such thing as 'Political Correctness'. It was just Frikking Humor. Nobody got their panties in a wad.

Ah yes, the 60s, where nobody "got their panties in a wad" but white people freaked about black people using the same water fountains or schools as them - because thinking that things shouldn't be separated by race was what we'd consider "politically correct" in today's terms for many. And I know there's a lot of 60s era "humour" that railed against such "ridiculous" beliefs.

EDIT: but to answer Emily, I think it's clear there are certainly generational divides, but also nationality based ones and class ones too.

 

[Voboy]

Same with "retard" which I'll admit I sometimes slip with but I know is not acceptable.

I think this was geographic, not necessarily generational. Where I grew up, "the R word" was almost as offensive as the N word and only the real bullies used it. This was forty years ago.

Then I moved to a different part of the country, where apparently nobody has gotten the memo about saying things are "retarded." I still hear it all the time here.

 

[intim8]

That's the thing, what people refer to now as "Toxic Masculinity" when it comes to boys will be boys had its place. You said it well, it maintained order.

That's a great story, and it really describes how men used to interact. It wasn't toxic, it was how you earned your place. Not by being tougher or stronger or winning the fight, but by strength of character.

Film back in the day was full of scenes of men grappling in the street, looking like they were trying to kill each other. Then, before any real damage could be done, they shook hands and went for a beer together. Everybody knew where they stood. And more, they'd proved that once they were friends, they could have each others' backs.

It is easy to pooh-pooh that now, to say that violence isn't the answer, that you can settle your differences with words. But there are some things that are more primal than words, that are more fundamental to human nature. Things that were necessary when we lived in the caves, and that we can only pretend are not necessary today.

Things that establish healthy boundaries and the willingness to defend them. It wasn't about settling differences. In lovecraft's story, there were no prior differences. There was just sizing each other up and then, afterward, establishing honor, grace, mutual trust and dependibility, and good will. And his parents taught him that lesson in real time, while supervising it, loosely, to be ready in case it got out of hand.

I so wish I understood this when I was that age. Even more, I wish people understood it now.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

To reiterate, I’m not seeking a debate. Just making a statement.

The whole point of a forum thread is to discuss a topic with different points of view and ideas. This essentially is debate no matter how informal. So you can't avoid that.

It is also undeniable that some BBC porn dehumanizes black men. It is also an utter twisting of the realities of slavery, where 99 times out of 100 it was black women being raped by their white male owners. The “danger” of the rapacious, animalistic negro is a 180 degree twisting of what actually happened. Is it not feasible that some black people might just be aware of this and find the BBC trope deeply unpleasant, particularly in a world in which racism against black people is alive and well?

Hate to break it to ya but the BBC trope (which I agree is based wholly on racial stereotypes - although not necessarily racist in itself - depends on how it's played) is mostly propagated by ... black men.

It all comes down to feitishizing self. I know that the majority of you look down on me for playing in chat but I also have extensive experience roleplaying in forums. In forums writers go back and forth with several hundred words at a time and many plays read not unlike novels, so the literary quality can be very high. The vast majority of roleplayers looking for BBC are black men (or men claiming to be black although I'm quite certain that most of them actually are black - I can explain that one further if you wish me to). There are a lot fewer spade queens out there than BBCs.

Men often have great difficulty getting women into bed in general (especially men online). Getting women into bed requires charm, tact, game. It requires effort. Many men lack these skills, so they resort to fetishizing. "Hey girls, 10" cock here, jump on." "Ex-marine here back from deployment, come thank the troops, help me with my PTSD!" "Any young girls out there into older men, I have silver temples. Feel free to climb me!" They think that this can take the place of their lack of game and/or excuse them of putting in any effort. The BBC trope is largely certain black men fetishizing themselves to get laid easier. I'm only saying this from years and years of observation on literary and chat sites like this.