Sal Paradise wrote:
Jeff - so if Zac had called Flannagan an ugly/ginger b@stard would that also constitute an hereditary slur? - that is if you believe homosexuality is genetic.
Here we enter some grey areas don't we?
If he called him an ugly b*****d then we have two bits to look at. The ugliness is inherently subjective, so I guess you could make a case that it is different from racial or homophobic slurring. For me, I would be happy for this just to be normal abuse of the kind that happens on sports pitches. The idea is simply to insult your target, and it is unlikely that anyone else would feel terribly offended by it. Room for debate. You could also have an exciting philosophical debate about use of the word "b*stard" as a pejorative, but I think most language scholars would tell you that the original meaning has been lost long ago, and indeed much of the stigma removed form such circumstances anyway. So this again would go down as generic insult. Which of course is not very nice, but I don't think you'd find many advocates for players being punished for being a bit mean to each other. At least I hope you wouldn't.
Ginger is different again. It is something people are born with, and as such its use as a pejorative term might well offend some people. There is, however, room (in my opinion) for a difference in how severe we perceive that offence to be. I don't know of any instance where people have suffered genuine social exclusion, or been denied access to basic rights, because of their ginger hair.
I would still think that it's one well worth steering clear of in public though.
I think the "nature vs nurture" debate might be a bit much for me this morning.
