I’ve read through some articles to help better my understanding of the words above. I will link a few in the comments below. Be warned as they contain sensitive material.
I will describe a bit of the history of “tr/p” from what I’ve researched. Originally, it described “a man cross-dressing as a woman”. They know they’re a man, but they dress with feminine clothing. When used to describe the cross-dressers, they claimed the word for themselves. However, calling a trans woman a “tr/p” is transphobic as it basically says “they’re not a woman, they’re just a man dressing as a woman”. It evolved into the insult is it today. Furthermore, “tr/ps” have NSFW implications in manga, which only furthers the reason why the word shouldn’t be posted within global.
As for “s*mp”, I didn’t realize the implications behind this one until I read this. griefy already explained it pretty well in the top post, but I’ll go ahead and expand on this a bit. The reason why this word is also discomforting is because it is connected to certain trends such as #notallmen and calling women sexist. I remember having a lot of shame being male due to previous movements of the “nice guy” and feeling scared to even interact with females as coming across as “one of those guys”. I see this word is just another term of sexism, whether jokingly used or not. I admit that I might have used the term once or twice because I was thinking it was some term of endearment due to all the memes.
I will admit though that, if you explore enough, many words have their own unfortunate implications and can be the cause of controversy if you look deep enough. However, since these are more clear, they’re more prone to be abused in ways that are more hurtful. That’s why I will agree with griefy in having these words kept under careful surveillance or, if possible, restricted on the filter list. Though I can see that becoming a problem when talking about how annoying the PP Zero Traps would be and getting a warning, so that might not be the easiest to track…
And now, I’m gonna respond to some certain statements.
I think you brought it forth pretty well. You could have left it at “these words are not friendly/SFW”, but the expansion on each word gives good reasons why.
Move it to General Discussion. It fits better there.
While this may be true, it’s really easy for people to slip into using these terms in derogatory ways. Because of how grey these words are, I feel it’s better to avoid using them at all than to allow usage. Besides, there’s a multitude of other words to describe having a male feminine Pokémon or praising one’s attitude or personality. The regular user will not explore these words since it doesn’t have as much meaning to them as those who are affected by them.
It is always nice to see people get more open-minded, yes. But they don’t have to use the term itself. People can RP their male feminine characters without calling them “tr/ps” or the like. They can just avoid the labels entirely and be enbys! /shot
This made me think a bit more. We already have restrictions that people 13+ can play PMU, but PMU’s still being treated as a family-friendly game despite the age restriction. Which brings up another question: is PMU going to be put as PG-13 because of the restriction, or will it stay family-friendly despite not allowing children on the game? In that regard, I feel like this discussion, among others, should be kept up for the time being.
This whole paragraph is in line with my views on this. I might have given the history behind it, but after reading through a few comments and thinking a bit more, dumb people are still going to be dumb and insult others or use the words without realizing the implications. I feel strongly that if an updated swear list gets implemented, these words should be added as well with small asterisks/footnotes with descriptions on why.
Even so, it should be contained in case it does become a slur. Back when I was younger, “r/t/rd” was a common word that my school used. We were kids, and the adults weren’t telling us off, so we used it freely. Because of that, it grew up with me and it took me a while to unlearn saying the word (about 6 months or so). That’s why it’s better to nip the slur at the bud before it starts blossoming.
I feel this is the proper way to move forward when using these slurs. Just having the warning by staff would generally help improve the situation behind this.
I’m glad this is being addressed despite being a sensitive topic. However, I also can see how this could get out of hand. If someone decides to take a more controversial stance in saying “this word wasn’t bad before” or “you’re just too sensitive”, I feel like it might break out into a huge flame-war. If you’re really passionate about this, bring this up with staff members in DMs by linking this thread so they can take this problem into consideration.