• 0 Posts
  • 3 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 8th, 2023

help-circle

  • It’s strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.

    If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?

    Probably not.

    Would you say that the swastika isn’t a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?

    Maybe. I can’t speak for you.

    The origin of something doesn’t determine its usage.


  • I challenged this notion with a lib the other day.

    The watermelon originated in Africa. That doesn’t mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.

    You can also look to the origin and continuing usage of the swastika, especially in Asian cultures, as another example here - you aren’t going to tell me that the right-angled unicode swastika being used by westerners on the internet isn’t done in service of fascism 99% of the time.

    And on that matter, don’t let erm-ackshually dorks tell you that the 90 degree swastika wasn’t used by Nazis and isn’t representative of them. One of the most famous depictions of the Nazi swastika is a right angled one:

    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1214749781387436032/pu/vid/450x360/o0Nxlts0lffM8lUv.mp4