Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 13:07:22 -0500

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: Offensive Terms and Gender?



Before you start wondering how I seem to be replying to a posting you

didn't see, let me point out that this was a direct note to me from

Peter Patrick. I'm replying on the list because I thought that others

might also find the question of offensive terms and gender interesting

and because this was Peter's last paragraph in the note to me:



Don't know why I didn't post this to the group-- if you want

to continue it, you can forward (I don't know how to once I've begun

the message in this mail system!). Thanks again,

--peter



Natalie,

I appreciated your message about use of "nigger" in the South.

I have to admit I was a bit shocked, though, that you'd _never_ come

across the derogatory use, and I'm wondering if it has something to do



I've been thinking about it off and on all morning, wondering if I have

heard "nigger" in my life but have managed to block it out of my memory

since I am always quite annoyed when people equate Southernness and

racism (which is an erroneous equation -- and thank you, John Baugh, for

saying so). At lunch today I was talking with a colleague originally

from North Carolina but who has lived in Mississippi for the past twenty-

five years and asked her whether she had ever heard "nigger" used outside

of movies or discussions about the term. She said no. When I told her

why I was asking, she added, "Face it. You and I don't run around with

the kind of people who would use that word." Since she had to leave for

class then, we didn't continue the conversation -- as in defining "the

kind of people who would use that word."



with gendered patterns of audience design. Like David Muschett, I too

(despite my lack of any strong Southern accent-- or perhaps because of

it, in the sense of an "outsider" being baited?) have been on the

fringes of many exchanges where it was used among white Southerners.

But mostly men, and mostly without women participating: so I wonder if

there's an expectation of censoriousness by Southern women, a version

of the usual projection of virtue and morality onto women (with all

the negative consequences THAT imposes!), so that in the default case

female hearers are expected to disapprove of the term.

I certainly know my own mother would have smacked me across

the room if I had ever used it in front of her!

Don't know why I didn't post this to the group-- if you want

to continue it, you can forward (I don't know how to once I've begun

the message in this mail system!). Thanks again,

--peter



--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)