GDT 6/23/24 Arizona Diamondbacks (Cecconi) @ Philadelphia Phillies (Sánchez, C)

[VoteForKalas]

Great win, fantastic start by Sanchez and timely hitting

[zambonir]

Kind of crazy to think how winnable the awful Walker start was even. But a lot easier to play from ahead.

[donaldorc]

Suárez is earning his new salary.

Hahaha! I meant Sanchez.

[donaldorc]

Another mighty fine homestand

Yes, but I was hoping for a few more home runs in the heat.

[zambonir]

I think we should all be proud of ourselves for not bitchily correcting you because we all knew what you meant.

[allentown]

The jumping on with corrections of mental glitches has not been done by women.

[zambonir]

Um, I think you deciding to associate that word exclusively with a particular gender is a you problem.

[allentown]

No, i think you using that word at all is a you problem.

[zambonir]

I was directing it at myself - as I was tempted to make the correction and have certainly made others - as much as others. It's a gender-neutral term in 2024 despite its roots or the fact that can it can still be used offensively in certain contexts (and not at all in others). I will concede the word choice was probably incorrect, however - it implies malice or unkindness which I don't think any of us intend when we correct people - but doing so can still be - a better word choice - haughty - because (as in this case) we usually know what the person making the mistake meant, or that it was autocorrect.

[DurhamBull]

It's a gender-neutral term in 2024 despite its roots or the fact that can it can still be used offensively in certain contexts (and not at all in others).

I don't think any of us get to choose or dictate how other people perceive a word. For me, being open to other interpretations can be hard, because it's frustrating to feel misheard or misunderstood. But it's also an opportunity to step outside of my own world, and to see things from someone else's perspective. And IMO that's the main purpose of this board, although obviously we usually focus on baseball.

For me, the term in question is still very heavily gendered, although less so than it used to be. (Less than completely, 100% gendered isn't saying much, though.) I put it in the category of land mine words that have so much cultural baggage that I'd rather use some other term. Fortunately English is a big, messy language so we have lots of choices.

Happy baseballing to all!

[dicemen99]

It's a gender-neutral term in 2024 despite its roots or the fact that can it can still be used offensively in certain contexts (and not at all in others).

I don't think any of us get to choose or dictate how other people perceive a word. For me, being open to other interpretations can be hard, because it's frustrating to feel misheard or misunderstood. But it's also an opportunity to step outside of my own world, and to see things from someone else's perspective. And IMO that's the main purpose of this board, although obviously we usually focus on baseball.

For me, the term in question is still very heavily gendered, although less so than it used to be. (Less than completely, 100% gendered isn't saying much, though.) I put it in the category of land mine words that have so much cultural baggage that I'd rather use some other term. Fortunately English is a big, messy language so we have lots of choices.

Happy baseballing to all!

I don't agree with this. Avoidance of this is exactly what gives them weight and continues the stereotype.

It's a term that has been gender-specific in the past and probably remains so for many of us of a certain generation, but I think you would see a far different interpretation of its use if this board skewed younger. I spend a lot of time with my youngest daughter (who is 25) and consume a lot of popular media while doing so - just yesterday I heard this term being used genderless twice by a couple of Gen-Zers. I'd like to think that people of our generation will be able to do so as well soon, but is yet to be seen and I can't speak to how women of a particular generation will react to that.

I don't see any problem with Z's use and the subsequent minor back-and-forth of differing opinions. That's a good thing - keep it up.

[zambonir]

I think those are both fair arguments at this point. But yeah, even as a Gen Xer in his 50s that word was the name of several popular songs as well as a long-running magazine - i.e. it was coopted for ironic and feminist use, but it has also become more genericized. And the adjective (or in my case adverb) is a bit different than the noun. I would never call someone that noun or even describe them or their behavior with that adjective. But to characterize some Internet banter with it didn't seem like a big deal and my initial response to Atown's comment was because I found his comment more sexist than my word choice (or at least I took exception to the idea that I would have only used that word to describe a post by a woman). I see that's not where he was coming from though.

But it was still the wrong word. Not because of any offense, but lack of accuracy! Someone could have just corrected me with the dictionary definition

So, back to baseball. Between Sanchez's performance and Turnbull's return, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola are now the #4 and #5 starters by ERA (and Turnbull still is #2 even with his relief innings included).

[allentown]

My original response was an attempt at a light-hearted response to what was always a very sexist, misogynist adjective/adverb/verb/noun used as a putdown for any female who was even moderately assertive and refused to defer to males. I think some feminists later coopted it, in the same manner than many Blacks made heavy use of the n-word in an attempt to dilute its sting. I realize it has fallen into more generic usage' I don't see that as a good thing.

[phillychuck]

As an older person, "bitch" still seems sexist, but "bitchy" much less so. My wife would often ask me about a certain male friend, "Why is he always so bitchy?" and she is the last person who would use any term she considered misogynist. And dog breeders (we have neighbors who do this...) use the term quite differently.

[bkox]

My how times have changed... I remember when the board would censor hell.

[phillychuck]

You mean H-E-'double hockey sticks'?

[donaldorc]

This has been the most debated of my posts since I registered over 20 years ago. And it had nothing to do with baseball!

[andyb]

Imagine if you tried to defend Matt Klentak or something like that!

[zambonir]

I actually half-expected it to be asterisked - some other word that I had in a post from a cut-and-paste was not too long ago.

[julio]

I actually half-expected it to be asterisked - some other word that I had in a post from a cut-and-paste was not too long ago.

You know, the principal reason that forum software offers censoring tools (whether the blackouts that Discourse applies, or the word substitutions that phpbb did) is because users feel obliged (entitled?) to push the envelope... to see just "what they can get away with." No matter where your administrators try to draw a line, some users will want to go "just a bit farther" - and some will want to go much farther, of course. Self policing doesn't work, and without rules (and enforcement), LCD rules. (That' s not Liquid Crystal Display, kids!)

In my opinion, DurhamBull nailed it:

Fortunately English is a big, messy language so we have lots of choices.

There are almost always better word options than the few that we all know will set some peoples' teeth on edge. Most of us have enough of a command of English vocabulary that we are aware of these better word options. So it seems to me that when those few words are invoked, it's because somebody wants to provoke somebody else, or at a minimum, is indifferent to others' sensibilities.

Which is not to say that, once in a while, the expletive isn't the better (or even necessary) choice - because of its shock value, because the purpose of something is specifically to provoke. But that only works if it's rare; if the expletive is one of your go-to adjectives/adverbs/nouns/verbs... it doesn't shock, it just defines you as crude.

Bottom line, for me? I would love to just disable the censoring function, and be confident that there would not be a race (or a gradual slide) to the rhetorical bottom. But posters keep triggering the blackouts (albeit fairly rarely now), and writing things that they expect to see censored. That's not confidence building.