Ricky Gervais still bravely expressing hatred of female genitalia

Yes, still. I guess it went so well last time, with the whole “if I told Hitler ‘stop killing people you cunt’ then people would scold me for sexism” caper. This time it’s cruelty to animals instead of Hitler. It’s a public post on Facebook.

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Ricky Gervais

I did a tweet once calling those who skin dogs alive, cunts and someone actually bothered to comment on my language, not the inhumane torture.

25,508 Likes  764 Shares

First comment:

And those who complained are cunts.

587 Likes

There was a little time between the screen grab and now – half an hour or so. There are now 27,882 Likes on Gervais’s post and 633 on the first comment.

Imagine if the word had been “nigger”. Would Gervais say that? If he did say it would he be getting all these Likes?

There’s just nothing hipper or funnier than vomiting on women. Nothing.

Gervais “will continue to use offensive words like cunt, atheism & Derek”

Ricky Gervais is so proud of his clever joke about how people will object to your use of sexist epithets EVEN WHEN IT’S HITLER YOU’RE CALLING THEM that he put in some time defending it on Twitter as well – entirely and obliviously missing the point while doing so. God he’s thick. I think I’ve mentioned this before (but then, he keeps illustrating it), but I thought David Brent was satire, when it turns out he was just Ricky Gervais.

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Ricky Gervais @rickygervais 4h

Sorry I called Hitler a cunt. I wasn’t thinking. His behaviour just got to me. Soz. [Read more…]

Charlie Hebdo is not racist

Salty Current has a post explaining the nature of Charlie Hebdo’s satire.

In 2011, I recommended a documentary about the paper and their struggles surrounding the publication of anti-Islamist cartoons. What struck me in the film, surprising given the paper’s (often self-promoted) image as not just irreverent but irresponsible, was how thoughtfully the people at Charlie Hebdo approached humor in this case.

Guess what, they didn’t approach it the way, say, Ricky Gervais does, basically saying that (as Salty puts it) “humor should offend.”

The attitude of the editors at Charlie Hebdo, as shown in the film, was quite different. [Read more…]

Now the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society has also issued a statement on shirtstorm / shirtgate. (That’s what they call it, just as the AAS did.)

It’s not nearly as well worded as the AAS statement, but it’s still good to have. I doubt that Dawkins will be calling the RAS “pompous idiots” the way he called feminists he considers wrong “pompous idiots,” so the statement is good to have. It might conceivably cause Dawkins to reflect on the fact that some people he respects actually agree with the feminists he considers wrong (and pompous idiots). [Read more…]

The performativity of class status

Ally Fogg on the other hand has an interesting (as opposed to familiar and deadly-boring) post on the meanings and resonances of “cunt” in the UK, with an emphasis on the class aspect.

In my last blog, I noted in passing that I am prone to using very offensive language, including the word ‘cunt.’ I think it was coincidence, but around the same time Ophelia blogged on that very topic, and inadvertently created a perfect case study of the phenomenon I was discussing.

It was entirely coincidence; I hadn’t seen Ally’s post when I wrote mine. I wrote mine because of the inspiration of Ricky Gervais’s Facebook post.

As PZ noted in a follow-up called ‘How to drive a Brit crazy’, anyone objecting to the use of that word is likely to reap a torrent of comments saying “it’s a perfectly acceptable word; everyone says it in England.”

I’ll return to the question of whether ‘everyone says it in England’ in a minute, but first let me observe that what PZ describes is a classic example of the “you shouldn’t be offended by that” fallacy. [Read more…]

Ubiquitous? Actually, no.

PZ has a post on The Cunt Question (that’s where I saw Maki Naro’s tweet, and there are more there).

The defenses are hilarious, irrational, and indignant. It’s incredibly common to see people protest that it’s a perfectly acceptable word; everyone says it in England; it doesn’t have any sexual connotations at all, because apparently, people in the UK are so stupid that they don’t remember that it’s a word that refers to the female genitalia. The Argument from Regional Ubiquity simply doesn’t work — would we accept that Southerners get a free pass on calling people “nigger” because everyone down there is rednecked cracker, so it’s OK?

I must remember to call it that, because I have this argument over and over again. It’s The Argument from Regional Ubiquity and it is bullshit.

There are a lot of good comments.

The first, for instance, by aziraphale:

I’m a Brit and I have never, in my whole life, called anyone a cunt. Possibly because if I did, my female friends (mostly also Brits) would never speak to me again. [Read more…]

When Hitler was on Facebook

Another thing about Ricky Gervais’s bit of Facebook wisdom is how childishly wrong it is as a claim (much less an argument).

If you grabbed Hitler and shouted “stop killing innocent people you cunt”, someone on Facebook would call you out on your sexist language.

Well first we have to accept that “you” can “grab” Hitler in the same world where people will comment on Facebook about what you shouted at him. It’s too much to ask us to accept that. If Ricky Gervais were in a position to “grab” Hitler and shout something at him, he wouldn’t be in a position to report his shouting on Facebook. [Read more…]

25,789 others like this

Another blow struck for the right to call people cunts.

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Ricky Gervais
If you grabbed Hitler and shouted “stop killing innocent people you cunt”, someone on Facebook would call you out on your sexist language.

And?

Has Ricky Gervais ever done a Facebook post saying “If you grabbed Hitler and shouted ‘stop killing innocent people you kike’, someone on Facebook would call you out on your anti-semitic language”?

I don’t know for sure, but I seriously doubt it. People like him don’t defend calling people niggers or kikes, but they do defend calling people cunts. Why is that? Because the first is not ok while the second is ok. Why? I can only conclude it’s because hatred of women just doesn’t even show up on the radar of people like Ricky Gervais.

I despise people like Ricky Gervais…and Penn Jillette and all the rest of the “it’s hip to use misogynist epithets because everybody knows women are dreary buzzkilling cunts” crowd.

H/t Stephanie