What perfectly normal words/phrases have been ruined for you because of bigotry?
I'll start: "Shoving x down our throats"
the amount of people who have told me i'm one of the good ones because "at least you don't shove gayness down our throats," or "i'm fine with it if they dont shove it down our throats" has made me cringe whenever i hear that phrase used in any context, even harmlessly. how about you guys?
"You're being too emotional/idealistic!" in reference to my beliefs regarding concepts like nature vs nurture, competition vs cooperation etc. Even though me, as an ecology undergrad, just used my scientific knowledge of ecosystems to justify my position.
And funny that this is always said to me by someone who has never studied anything to do with biology. But they have been taught to believe that anything that isn't vicious cruelty and domination is unrealistic and emotional.
There is also something to be said about emotion itself not necessarily being devoid of reason and logic too. But its something people just assume is unreasonable because of how "emotion vs logic" as two opposites is ingrained in our culture.
But they have been taught to believe that anything that isn't vicious cruelty and domination is unrealistic and emotional.
That perfectly captures the mindset of the "facts and logic" crowd. Believing that cruelty is good actually is the mature smart adult in the room position. It doesn't matter whether they've studied anything or not, believing in cruelty makes tgem smart. You could have every credential and relevent degree imaginable, but if your position is anything approaching "maybe cruelty is not good" you're a bleeding heart, emotional, idealist, childish, untealistic, etc.
If I throw something at your head and it hits you in the face, was it because you did something irrational?
No. Maybe the throw was too hard. Maybe you weren't paying attention. Maybe you can't see, or maybe your arms don't work the way other people's do. Maybe you felt something coming and didn't know what to do and panicked. Maybe you like getting hit in the face. Maybe I threw it really softly, and you were paying attention, but you've never practiced or tried to block/dodge a moving object and it hits you on the nose.
None of those situations are irrational. The only thing irrational that could occur is thinking it happened because of something that couldn't be explained, or by maybe trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
They haven't ever glanced at formal logic aside from a list of fallacies either. They tske the stsr trek Vulcan approach and just kinda say their moral philosophy is logical without really getting into the fact that there are different schools of logic and they aren't doing any of them aside from vibes