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)