MusicPlayerNetwork.com Forums Featured Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage GearSlutz petitioned to change name

I relate this only to report, not to express an opinion. But someone on change.org has started a petition for GearSlutz to change their name on the grounds that it’s misogynistic and less than inclusive. The thing is getting legs.

https://all.change.org/p/gearslutz-gearslutz-please-change-your-name

Nice to have a clear, descriptive, and totally uncontroversial name like “Music Player,” innit? 😎

SF

indeed

Wait until they land on "muff wiggler"

men can be sluts too, it is not gender specific so how can it be misogynistic ?

the petitioner is uneducated,not our fault lol

Good.

I'm old enough to accept the name in the spirit in which it was created. I think there are better changes that could be made to the forum to make it more civilized in ways other than language, but that's not going to happen.

Gear Ho?



Insights, incites and a lame attempt at humor by Notes

Considering everything else going on these days, I’m not moved to action.

I checked the dictionary definitions and etymological sources and according to them, the term, in any era close enough to be of relevance, commonly refers to a woman. It's not a gender-neutral term in other words.

The Gearslutz name, the first time I saw it, did strike me as in bad taste. A bit of the old "hawhawhaw" wink wink nudge nudge sort of male idiocy. The kind of thing that, when challenged, always gets the defense of "we didn't mean nuthin zjust a joke, man!"

If the name goes to the Correctional Institute for Offensive Nomenclature for execution, the loss to the world will be something less than microscopic.

nat

As mentioned above, unless better policy and policing are implemented I don't care what they call it.
An occasional random visit is all they get from me and I wouldn't have anything to say if they disappeared entirely.
I've never considered joining and changing the name alone will not entice me.

This site is much better managed, people are very nice here by comparison to some of the outbursts I've run across elsewhere.

I don't waste any time on the site. Has no particular value, IMO

True that.

Mostly I agree. Sometimes I'll do a global search on the internet for information on a specific product I want to know more about and I will find a Gearslutzs thread with useful posts by somebody who has the product and knows what they are talking about. Other times it will be virtual "Big Time Wrestling" for music nerds who just like to post in order to inform the rest of us as to their unfounded opinions/blatherspew.

A mixed bag beyond any doubt. If I'm lucky I'll find a Sound On Sound or Tape Op article first and not bother with GS.

I found MPN doing one of those searches, realized it was different than GS in positive and powerful ways and jumped on board. No regrets there.

We are the internet's best-kept secret, and perhaps that's a good thing. If we needed a tag line, I'd vote for "Safe, sane, and smart - where people trade knowledge instead of insults."

My favorite GearSux moment was when someone said I should be ashamed of myself because I don't know what I'm talking about, and I should refund the money of all the people who came to my seminars at places like GearFest and NAMM because I'm so wrong about everything. I enjoyed telling him that people don't pay to attend my seminars My offense was recommending that people not use processors in the master bus if they were going to give their mixes to a mastering engineer, and mentioned that people should pay attention to true peak values (which he said was just "technical bullsh*t").

The hell of it was I was just trying to do a helpful, totally non-controversial post to answer a question. But if someone wants to start a fight, they will.

"I like kittens, they're so cute."
"You ageist pig! So you hate them once they grow up!! You want old people to die!!!" Hey Soylent Green fan...you disgust me!"

Yep, I've seen similar many times. Hence my comment above (and below):


I've been incorrect on here and been corrected. I take that as helpful and useful, and responses have been polite and to the point. Pretty sure you've done such to me and will probably need to do it again at some point. No harm, no foul, I'm here to learn and meet interesting people, not to puff up a "Virtual Ego" that amounts to less than zero.

When I don't know something, I first do a search. When I want an informed opinion, I ask here

A female friend of mine sometimes refers to herself as a "house slut," meaning she likes to visit houses that are for sale to get architectural / home decorating ideas. I presume that "gear sluts" is a similarly self-deprecating statement of "we like gear, sometimes to a silly degree." I consider it tasteless, but harmless. I guess if I go much farther, I'll veer into politics or something, so I'll stop there.

Okay, one _tiny_ aside: Didn't the (new as of this writing) K2700 story break on GS before it got to any of our respectable sites? Is that any indication of its value?

I should mention that the, to me, dumb name of Gearslutz has not kept me from participating in that forum and finding a lot of very useful info.

My take on this sort of thing is - if some name or other bothers somebody, then let the person who cares about it have their way. Show respect for what people care about, even if I don't care, or if it just seems too minor to bother myself about it. If it's not a moral or ethical issue to me, but it is to someone else, then it is a moral or ethical issue, and I just abstain from voting as having no skin in the game.

nat

Same here. I really don't think GearSlutz's foundation is hatred of women. It's just hatred of anyone who doesn't agree with you.

When I was a kid I remember the old saying "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me." But that doesn't mean I'm against all "correcting." I think changing technical terms like master/slave makes sense, not just because of the connotations, but because there are words that convey the actual functionality more clearly. One software company changed its term for plug-ins that shouldn't be loaded from "blacklisted" to "blocked." Regardless of whether anyone thinks it's a change that needed to be made, to me "blocked" is much clearer. It means the plug-in still exists, but it's not loaded.


Sure. I think the issue is whether visiting the site is more likely to yield a positive or negative experience. GS has deep roots in the internet, so it has great SEO and often, a search query will reveal a thread on a particular subject. More often than not, it deteriorates to the point where extracting an accurate answer becomes difficult.

We also need to consider that GS is known for combativeness. As a result, those who want to engage in combat can go there and have a good time. At one point during my tenure at Harmony Central, people were injecting political threads in the Sound, Studio, and Stage forum to the point where it became a distraction and a turnoff. So, I created "The SSS Political Party" forum, and all political discourse had to take place there. It became immensely popular and accumulated a huge number of posts, but most importantly, it kept the other forums free of sewage. It was kind of like Harmony Central's septic tank.

Certain forums have certain characters. I'm sure some people avoid Musicplayer.com because there's so little drama, so they find it boring.

Imagine if you were a woman, and you had been called a "slut" by your father, by a boyfriend, or a schoolmate when you were a teenager. The person delivering the insult might have felt the insult was deserved based what clothing she was wearing, based on some sexual act real or imagined she was thought to have done, or really anything. As an insult or accusation, the word has a very different impact, and a very different intended impact, when it is directed at a woman as opposed to a man.

I go by the sticks and stones policy.

My personal philosophy is that if it wasn't meant to offend, don't look for it to offend. If it was meant to offend, apply sticks and stones or ignore it.

On the other hand, I am aware of other people's sensitivities and I try to avoid terms that will push their buttons. It's a "do unto others" thing.

If in business, and you wish to make a profit, keep your opinions to yourself, and definitely be careful of the words and names you use. When I worked at Motown, and it was the time of the Detroit riots, you never knew how Berry Gordy stood on the issues, although I'm sure he had strong opinions about it.

My grandparents were all born in Italy. As a kid I liked being of Italian heritage and I considered the terms Wop, Dago and others to be something to be proud of.

"Be kind to others" and "turn the other cheek" both seem like good advice to me.

Notes

I'm all for clarity. If it means what I think it means in this context - that a program won't support certain plug-ins so they won't be loaded if they're called - then I think "blocked" is clearer than "blacklisted." I suspect that a lot of today's users are young enough not to know what a blacklist is.

On the other hand, Master/Slave makes a lot of sense and it's been a standard term since the earliest days of synchronization. Anyone who wants to change those terms just wants to get rid of the suggestion of the time of the plantation era.

And then there are just dumb word usage that's been popularized by the news media and now creeps in everywhere. My favorite word to hate is "pivot" and I've encountered it three times in articles in the issue of Pro Sound News currently on my dining room table, and I'm just a couple of articles into it. And another of my words that make me scream is "social distance." Within our field here, I've encountered that often in articles about live events and recording sessions.





[Refraining here from commenting on all the schools, highways, and buildings named for Confederate heroes being re-named to erase that part of Virginia's rich history]

My Dad was a WWII vet. The Army needed a lot of meteorologists in a hurry to help with air war - both offense and defense. He already had a geology degree, but signed up for a crash meteorology course at the Univ. of Chicago that got him into the service as a Lieutenant with a specialty. They sent him over right after the Normandy invasion. He had a small company and a big truck very much like a UPS truck, except it weighed who knows how much as trucks did in those days, and was crammed full of weather equipment. He had to take his small crew behind enemy lines to gather weather data at the local level and radio it back for use by the pilots and planners.

It was a dangerous job to say the least. I have a couple of ammo boxes he brought back, full of god-awful-looking shrapnel, part of what was left of one of his trucks that got hit. He lost a lot of men, saw Patton, was in on the occupation of Germany. I'm quite proud of him for all this.

On the other hand, he came back from the war with a long list of derogatory names for just about anyone who wasn't an American - and Americans who weren't the right type of American (pollacks, wops, etc.) got the slurs, too. He was right wing, dallied with the John Birch Society, and it just drove him nuts that Cassius Clay changed his name to Mohammed Ali, just couldn't leave it alone. Many dinner-time speeches on that one and many other similar rants, some directly targeting myself. Three martinis got him all loosened up and righteous.

So I opted for the suburban hippie thing, and set myself in quiet but firm opposition to all this bigotry of my Dad's. He knew it and gave me a lot of grief. He was basically a good father, a good neighbor, and a regular guy who was much of a muchness with all the other guys of his generation.

So what do I do with this heritage? I love and honor my Dad, and at the same time I fully recognize his flaws and failings. I don't feel superior to him, but my entire adult life has been shaped by my determination to avoid the bigotry and narrow-mindedness that he sometimes represented.

Where are we going to find perfect heroes? Do we burn everything from the past that doesn't meet the criteria of the contemporary cause de jour? Are we so perfect that we are offended and rejecting of anything and anybody that isn't perfect??

Believe me, future generations will look at us and wonder about our mix of awful and wonderful, and feel conflicted whether to hang their heads in shame or defend their heritage. I say yes and yes.

nat

Penny Lane was supposedly named after 18th-century Liverpool slave trader James Penny. In the fall of 2019, my wife and I traveled to Northern England including Liverpool, and did the "Magical Mystery Tour." The guide acknowledged the links to the past, but said there was resistance to changing the name because "if you erase the past you can't learn from it." Plus, there was a song about it or something like that...

btw- Liverpool was a blast, even though a bit heavy on the Beatles references. The British Music Experience is there (kind of a mini-Rock and Roll HOF, but actually better), and it was interesting to see that George and Ringo grew up in Council Housing, Paul in a nice middle-class home, and John was actually a rich kid in comparison; so much for Working Class Hero.

Like others I don't want to dive too deep into this end of the pool, but to me, history is history. What happened, happened. We can't erase it, but we can learn from it. I can think of no better rationale for the human condition than to identify errors, acknowledge them, learn from them, and not make them in the future.

In Fresno, I met a woman who was in Cambodia when it was bombed and then came Pol Pot. She was too small (5) to work so they let her stay with a woman who was too old to work.
One night around 3 am she woke me up and told me everything she remembered from that time - Dad breaking out of one camp, breaking Mom and brother out of other camps, finding the last brother out in the jungle where he lived by eating frogs and anything he could find. Dad led a group of villagers including his family through the jungles at night to a refugee camp in Thailand.

From there they were sponsored to go to the Phillipines, then North Carolina and somehow she ended up in a photo class in Fresno where I was a lab assistant.

It is a horrendous history but I don't want it "erased", ever. Humans are already pretty terrible at forgetting their mistakes and repeating them, that was something that should never happen again.
Somehow, she is cheerful and hopeful, I spoke with her on the phone 3 days ago.

Hopefully I didn't get too political just now, felt like sharing that.

Thank you. What you said has nothing to do with politics, it's about the human spirit.

I want to mention one other thing. The world is analog, not digital. A good example is the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. He did horrific acts, not the least of which was a massacre of 300 Union troops, mostly black, after they had surrendered. He was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and post-civil war, suppressed voting rights of blacks in the South through violence and intimidation. Not a nice person, to say the least. He bought the whole Confederacy/slavery thing hook, line, and sinker.

Bad guy, right? Take his bust out of state houses, right? A truly horrible person who did horrible deeds.

But...as noted (accurately) in Wikipedia, he later realized he was on the wrong side of history, as well as morality.

After the lynch mob murder of four blacks who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue, Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown in August 1874 and "volunteered to help 'exterminate' those men responsible for the continued violence against the blacks," offering "to exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of Negroes."

On July 5, 1875, Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve the economic condition of blacks and to gain equal rights for all citizens. At this, his last public appearance, he made what The New York Times described as a "friendly speech" during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a young black woman, he accepted them, thanked her, and kissed her on the cheek. Forrest spoke in encouragement of black advancement and of endeavoring to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans.

In response to the Pole-Bearers speech, the Cavalry Survivors Association of Augusta, the first Confederate organization formed after the war, called a meeting in which Captain F. Edgeworth Eve gave a speech expressing strong disapproval of Forrest's remarks promoting inter-ethnic harmony, ridiculing his faculties and judgment, and berating the woman who gave Forrest flowers as "a mulatto wench". The association voted unanimously to amend its constitution to expressly forbid publicly advocating for or hinting at any association of white women and girls as being in the same classes as "females of the negro race". The Macon Weekly Telegraph newspaper also condemned Forrest for his speech, describing the event as "the recent disgusting exhibition of himself at the negro jamboree."

To me, Forrest is someone who shouldn't be condemned without an asterisk. He should be held up as an example of doing the right thing - not because of his horrific acts, but because he learned, of his need to repudiate them later in life, and pay the consequences of repudiating those acts. He identified his errors, acknowledged them, learned from them, and not only didn't make them in the future, but dealt with the condemnation he attracted because he felt compelled to do the right thing.

Or take Malcolm X, a firebrand who excoriated "white devils," and preached racism and to some degree violence, while simultaneously encouraging blacks to be self-reliant and to separate themselves from whites. Later in life, though, he had an epiphany, and came to the conclusion that all men are brothers. As he said to Alex Haley after a journey to Africa:

"Listening to leaders like Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nkrumah awakened me to the dangers of racism. I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another.

Brother, remember the time that white college girls came into the restaurant‍—‌the one who wanted to help the [Black] Muslims and the whites get together‍—‌and I told her there wasn't a ghost of a chance and she went away crying? Well, I've lived to regret that incident. In many parts of the African continent, I saw white students helping black people. Something like this kills a lot of argument. I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I'm sorry for now. I was a zombie then‍—‌like all [Black] Muslims‍—‌I was hypnotized, pointed in a certain direction and told to march. Well, I guess a man's entitled to make a fool of himself if he's ready to pay the cost. It cost me 12 years.

That was a bad scene, brother. The sickness and madness of those days‍—‌I'm glad to be free of them."

I have tremendous admiration and respect for both Nathan Bedford Forrest and Malcolm X (in fact if he was alive today, I'd bet he would be an honored Senator). They learned, they grew, and they did what they could to overcome their programming and break free of it. They thought for themselves, and came to conclusions which I think represent the shining side of the human condition.

This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with being human beings who live, grow, and learn. We all make mistakes. But we also have the power to correct them. Whether we choose to do so or not is up to us.

And thank you in turn, an excellent post. I could go on for hours but I've said what I needed to and you took that idea and added hugely to it.
I like how it stays centered and moderate on MPN and don't want to challenge that status quo as I've often found that with freedom comes an insurmountable situation and eventually a sense of alienation.

I don't deny that every body has an opinion and the right to state it but there seems to be an overall agreement here that we are family because music. That is deep enough, powerful enough to heal us all.
I love having a safe spot. I hav grown and changed a great deal, there is still progress to be made.
Cheers, Kuru

I always found the name odd, and mostly didn't like it showing up in browser history lol. I think that's why they had the GearSZ variant URL, that even has a different logo. It still shows in history as "Gearslutz" though.

I think it was intended to be self-deprecating, like calling yourself a "gear junkie," or considering beautifully lit, close-up photos of gear "gear p*rn." As such, it seems pretty harmless, and pretty much asexual.

...because only men can be "gearslutz"?
...because "slut" as an adjective isn't valid?
...because sluts are an unappreciated, oppressed and misunderstood demographic?


WTF.

I hate that this know-nothing faction of the left forces me into agreeing with Jordan Peterson, and risks my "commie lefty card" in turn. Reality is, you can't have victimless humor, and the use of a pejorative ironically has to have a subject.

I am SO SICK of the median i.q. wanting to ignore context - because they're incapable of perceiving it - as an excuse to support a position. They're insisting something is ad hominem based on syntactical agreement; "common denominator social media jousting strategy".

I hate the 21st century.

As with many sociopolitical or philosophical discussions here at MPN, this one is coloured by the demographics of these fora, which lack diversity. Just, ya know, throwing it out there that most posters here (myself included) are not the concerned slice of humanity, and therefore, should maybe just take a seat and listen for a bit.

P.S. Hopefully we can all recognize that words can have different meanings in different contexts? And that some connotations can be too strong to overcome in a public setting? And that oppressed peoples can also reclaim slurs to use as self-identifiers, but that doesn't give dominant groups the right to start using them without consequence? Maybe? Can we?

Well, the primary definition of slut is "a promiscuous person." So it sure seems to me the implication is that the self-proclaimed "sluts" are promiscuous when it comes to gear. I have heard men referred to as "sluts" by other men, although come to think of it, not in the last 10 years.

And language does change over time. These days, if someone says my music is "sick," it means they like it. Yes, it's entirely realistic to think the term "slut" is applied more often to women than men. But for a bunch of people in a male-dominated industry to liken themselves to what's popularly considered to be promiscuous women...well, what to make of that?

One of my teachers in Switzerland referred to me as a "cripple" because I wrote with my left hand. I didn't care, he could call me whatever he wanted...it didn't change who I was.

Now, if the people asking for a name change are women who consider themselves sluts, and are embarrassed to be associated with argumentative (mostly) dudes on a forum, then I'd say they're totally justified in wanting a name change.

Having said that, though, I did sign the petition. Regardless of whether or not the intent was to offend or exclude, if people see it as such, it does not do the pro audio community any favors.

And I'll also say one mistake people make is assuming everyone in a specific, identifiable group thinks the same way. Over the years I've worked with a lot of women who are musicians, engineers, or coders, so I tend to put a lot of weight on their opinions regarding sexism and such. They don't all think the same. I've known quite a few women who very much dislike the well-intentioned "Women in Rock" groups and panels. For them, it's uncomfortably close to..."she's a good guitarist...for a girl." They'd rather be identified with their avocation or vocation, not their sex, and feel that it ghettoizes women within the industry. Other women find it empowering, because they feel they're not lone voices in a male-dominated wilderness.

And finally...

Maybe the primary reason why there aren't that many women involved in audio is because they don't want to be. Let's face it, the music industry is not exactly a bright and shiny career path these days, nor is it doing particularly exciting things, or capturing the public imagination the way it once did. If you're young, female, artistic, and technically inclined, you might find the idea of doing animation, concept art, smartphone apps, or game design much more appealing. I was talking to a friend who works in the movie end of computer graphics, and at least in her work, most of the people there are now women.

Maybe compared to men, the reason for the paucity of women in audio is because they're smarter

Yea, pretty much this. They pointed the finger inward with the name and have some fun with it. It is by no means intentionally derogatory or misogynistic.

People need to get over it. One tiny corner of the internet and someone's got their shorts in a knot. Please

I don't really object to the name to be honest. And I don't object to people being obnoxious either but it doesn't seem to play well on the interwebz.
We used to "cap" or "do the nines" all the time in Fresno but that was in person among friends and more a battle of "wits" than how it appears on a forum.
Body language changes context, sometimes radically.

I got up here and was adopted by an Elder of the Lummi Nation who loves my guitar playing. We were at a family event and per tradition the Elders all sat together, having a beer, ripping each other a new one and laughing.
It was funny. Since we were not familiar with each other, they let me be and I did the same. My brother Dean has since learned that he can say anything he wants to me but he better be ready for a verbal blast in return. We both just laugh, it isn't belligerence.

I see threads on Gearslutz go wrong and I can't tell if somebody is trying to be funny or are just an insufferable asshole.
So I prefer MPN where we mostly remain polite and civil to each other. It decreases the risk of false hostility through mis-interpreting caused by an essential lack of information. That's probably the worst thing about these times, our shift to an anti-social platform for social discourse. I don't kid about in the same way because it isn't taken the same way.

So, with the exception of an occasional thread that contains valuable information, I kinda think Gearslutz sucks ass.

I think Gearslutz as a name is incredibly tone deaf if not also incredibly misogynistic, but then so is the industry.

I also think Muffwiggler is problematic, and there have been similar calls to change that name and many internal discussions over the years. The founder of Muffwiggler died a few years ago, and I think that had paused the discussion.

So as you can surmise, I’m pretty sensitive to these perceptions due to being raised by many women and raising two strong young ladies myself. They feel excluded in the rock music scene around here even though they’ve both been first chair drummers because they prefer to not hear rape and gay jokes/insults, which is basically the only thing coming out of the mouths of the Call of Duty generation in my area. So little things like site names do count for some people.

But...

I think a petition to change these names is stupid. They are not public entities. These are either money making or self-sustaining private entities. If this is the brand perception they want to transmit, that is their right and I’d even encourage it. It makes it easier to make determinations about the group of people who have no problem with it, not because I want to shame or judge anyone, but because it’s important to know what people’s priorities and triggers are. If you have no issue with it, and your family or social circle has no problem bandying about words like that, well, who is anyone else to judge. But if you won’t use words like slut casually in mixed company, you may want to consider that the people you are uncomfortable using those words around are the same kind of people that might want to ask about gear and get your advice.

I doubt they thought it through that far. I'd probably file it under "seemed like a funny idea at the time."

It blows my mind that anyone would have a problem with female drummers just because they're female. Do you think those kinds of people are in the majority, or the last gasp of a bygone era?

Prince agreed with you

If they wan't to call themselves slutz, why on earth not?
It's not as if they're pointing a finger at anybody else.

SO much fuss and bother over nine little letters!
Good grief, who CARES!

Time to get a life.

I'm more concerned about what may happen tomorrow in a country I don't even live in, and constantly thank goodness I don't live there.

Good luck sane American people on inauguration day.

So the take that is gaining traction here is - correct me if I mistate - is that, if you use a slur sort of term in the context of self-deprecation, then it's ok.

Really? Think that one through.

So say I get this new job, a construction job - a really hard, sweaty, dirty sort of construction. But hey, I'm just an assistant to the bosses in the trailer, so all day long while 48 out of 50 employees are toiling and sweating and stinking under hard outdoor conditions, I'm in the air conditioning, not a bead of sweat or a speck of mud. So at the bar after work, I tell my buddies, laughing, that, yeah man, I'm totally the house N***** in this new job.

Self-deprecating humor of this sort work only because the slur is a real slur, but you are only pretending it applies to you because it looks funny when you do so.

Like, say, you stub your toe and hobble a bit, so you play it up as a "funny cripple".

And your defense is that your humor is self-deprecating?

nat

...And on that note:

Women Only - Does the "Gearslutz" name bother you?

Best,

Geoff

Depends on the context. Black people can use the n-word with each other, but it's nothing any white person should ever use, because its history is 100% white people using it in an insulting, derogatory way. Black people using it dilutes the derogatory part. (Although I have to admit that growing up in the 50s, when there were separate water fountains for black and white people, hearing it still makes me cringe regardless of the source.)

An even better example is "queer." When I was growing up, it was always used as an insulting, derogatory term. Then gay people took ownership of it, threw it back in the face of the haters, and used in a humorous context ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy") as well as a political one ("We're here, we're queer, get used to it"). They completely demolished it as an insult because they simply said "we don't recognize it as such, so you can't hurt us by using it."

If a woman's audio group called themselves "GearSlutz," would anyone object to that? I'd put it in the same category as the previous two examples. Another question is whether women consider the word slut positive or negative. If they consider it negative, well, regarding GearSlutz, if the shoe fits...

Sometimes at seminars I use my "old clueless guy" imitation, the "get off my lawn" mode, to get a point across and add some humor. Am I insulting old clueless guys? I guess I am. Well, it always gets a laugh...they'll just have to deal with it.

If the majority of women find the name problematic, then change the name. I'm not a woman, I don't have a dog in this fight. They can call it GearBlurf for all I care.

I don't even know what this means. I've never heard it used before. Perhaps it's unique to your side of the pond?

I'm afraid you'll have to explain what the word you shun to use is.

And none of what you do explain is self-deprecating.

It seems the first is a kind of boast, the second an attempt at humour.

Good points, Craig.

My post assumed that the issue we're on about is when one group borrows a slur typically applied to another group and tries it on for comic effect - because the slur doesn't really apply to the comic, it's a funny hat that doesn't fit and looks ridiculous.

If it's a family joke - yes, that's different. But to be a family joke, the slur needs to be acceptable by consensus within the family as applied between family members. Even then, some family members may not like it as it comes too close to home, too reminiscent of bad experiences not to be made fun of. But the family can sort that out.

nat

Watch Tarantino's Django Unchained. The Samuel Jackson character is a "house N***". A slave who worked as a servant in the big plantation house, and typically was resented by the field workers, etc. Cushy job, and Jackson's portrayal is fantastic.

And as to your comment that none of my examples involved self-deprecation - I can only simply disagree and refer you to the common definition in dictionaries, etc.

How do you define self-deprecation?

nat

I hope it's the last gasp of a bygone era. Remember, musicians were the first to openly defy the rule not to hire black musicians in a swing band. We generally care about how well you play and how well you play with others, not what gender or sexual persuasion you are.

I hired a female drummer in the early 1980s. Why? We lost our drummer, we held auditions, and she was the best choice. She had a small kit, she held a very steady beat, she used tasty fills to support the song and not dominate it, she was cooperative, she contributed to the music with good suggestions, and bonus; she even sang backup. Her gender had nothing to do with it.

The audience didn't seem to care either.

Back on topic.

A business has the right to call itself whatever it wants to. However, a name can limit an audience. It can also focus on a specific audience.

If you name your business something with universal appeal or at least universal non-rejection, anybody interested can shop at your business. Amazon is a good example of that.

If you want to appeal to a specific audience a name targeted to that audience is appropriate. Metallica is a good example of that.

If you want to reject a certain audience, choose a polarized name that the group you want to reject hates.

In the years I worked with Motown, and that was during the civil rights and the Detroit riot era, Berry Gordy never let on how he felt about it, and nobody at Motown was allowed to voice their opinion either. Later Marvin Gaye broke that mold threatening to leave Motown over songs like "What's Going On", "Mercy Mercy Me" and the others on that LP.

Personally, I don't make shopping decisions on names like GearSlutz. Others will. I have some friends who will not shop at a store that displayed a Trump/Pence sign. To me, displaying either that sign or a Biden/Harris sign at your place of business is a sure way to lose customers and income in this particular era.

In this era of Political Correctness I sometimes don't know what to call certain groups if I want to refer to them. Are you LGBTQ, Gay or Queer? Are you Black, African-American, or a Person Of Color? I could go on but you get the idea. However, I refer to people, I mean no malice and I neither want to offend anyone or make them uncomfortable.

I think we all need more tolerance, more sense of community, less division and less animosity towards 'the others'.

Insights and incites by Notes

I've solved that issue! I refer to them as "humanoid bipeds."

That sentiment, at least in my experience and my kids’ experiences, is slowly but surely growing. Or, more accurately, I would say people have been more emboldened to exhibit their biases. My high school band director had a real problem with my older daughter being the marching band percussion section lead and made no bones about telling her so. He told her that girls shouldn’t play snare because the weight of the rig may damage their uterus. When confronted, he hung on the word “May” to indicate that he wasn’t forbidding her. My younger daughter who is only a sophomore in high school is now the snare section lead and ironically, there are no male snare drummers at the high school presently.

I just asked my daughters about their experiences when I started typing this, and they both agreed that almost as bad as being excluded from rock bands because of insecure male egos is when they are asked to be in a band specifically because they are girls. I think what they were trying to articulate is that it’s male dominated to the point where their gender will NEVER not be a point of discussion or controversy.

I just discovered that the decision has been made to change the name. More about that here:

Jules from Gearslutz.com statement on petition to change GS name

Best,

Geoff

Well if I ever get to play live again, and they're good, I'll be sending you a PM

It's hard to wrap my head around prejudice. It's just so illogical. I just figured the prejudice against women musicians was going the way of hand-held calculators and Atari 1040s. I'm disappointed to hear that's not the case.

Well, good for Jules. It's great that he's responsive, regardless of whether the change was needed or not. As he says, he'll never be able to please everybody.

No.

That's not an equivalence. That's ridiculous.





No.

I just listened to the video. The owner’s rationale is certainly legitimate, particularly when he spoke about teachers referring students to the site for education and reference and were embarrassed to refer to it by name. In that context, I get it.

If they would improve the level of moderator activity and reduce lenience considerably, I might even consider joining.
Too many loudmouth shit-stirrers on there. There are quite a few posters who have solid knowledge on useful topics but they are too often buried in the murk of belligerence and rampant ego strumming.

Curious that people on Twitter are "praising" the renaming of GS that produce music with lyrics that would be considered porn 10 years ago.

Real derogatory intent SHOULD NOT be diluted by casting the net so wide that almost anything humorous is captured. If one wants to go on some Anakin Skywalker anti-comedy idealistic crusade it should be regarded as such. The only thing that could be left over is Joe Pera and chicken crossing the road jokes.


Maybe Jules should consider:

www.peoplethatlikegear.com
www.supergearlikers.com
www.proliferategearenthusiasts.com
www.superseriousgearpurchasers.com

Well I welcome your take on things sincerely (but hey, no need to yell and get all dramatic, sir.)

I don't see your response as something I can process as it's just negation, not discussion.

It's pretty simple to simple 'ol me - slut is a slur directed at women, derogatory and contemptuous. House N*** is an archaic slur directed at black slaves, derogatory and contemptuous. In one case, the guys call themselves "slutz" as a joke, knowing they are not really sluts as the term is commonly used. My made up example seems quite equivalent - they guy "tries on" the slur commonly used for someone else, and the "humor" is because he knows he's really no such thing.

So....I'm open to correction 24/7.

nat

You're making a straw man.

Thanks for this, Geoff. I'd encourage everyone to read through this linked thread and sit with those replies for a bit.

Ah, good counter. Let me knock some rust off my debating skills such as they are...they won't be shiny, but maybe serviceable.

So where in particular is the non-equivalence (since the strawman argument is based on substitution of an original contention with a non-equivalent distortion of the original contention).

Is it that "slut" and "House-N***" are not both slurs? Or that one is a petty slur, and the other is a serious slur? I'll assume that's the non-equivalence you are pointing out - let me know if I'm wrong about that.

"Slut" has a history of being a very serious slur - 'tho I admit it's not as serious as it used to be. But try it out on your female friends, family, and acquaintances, and see how petty a designation they seem to feel it to be. Practice your ducking skills, first, I would suggest.

But I'll accept that my made-up example is a purposeful exaggeration, and that in this day and age, the racial slur is a "felony" while the sexual slur is a "misdemeanor".

Still, I don't think I'm using a strawman, because an exaggeration is not necessarily a distortion. My point was that a lot of posts in this thread seemed to take the stance that, if a slur is used in the context of self-deprecating humor, then it's ok to use the slur. As a matter of principle. My argument is that, no, it's not ok because that usage of the slur is still a perpetuation of the slur. The "joke" would have no point if the slur were not still considered a hurtful, negative term. Since a lot of guys seem to be under the impression that "slut" is too lightweight a term to get all exercised about, I used a heavy-weight slur in my example to make my point.

I should mention I suppose that I was chatting about this current thread kerfuffle with my wife, and when I said the word "Gearslutz" she made a disgusted face and said, yeah, that's clearly a guy's forum.

So...if it's accepted that "slut" is still a bad word to use against someone, I think my point stands. If "slut" has been emptied of negative connotations in this day and age, then my point falls.

nat

Somehow I believe the word "gear" factors in as a modifier to the word that follows it, like an adjective. The two words are contextual.
Musicians have colorful language (not that this is good) and it's the world in which we live. Musicians say things like, "I'm gonna whore myself out as a hired gun." after their failure at writing their own tunes or failing at getting a recording contrct. Context matters in terms of the audience and participants.
There's a YouTube channel by an RV woman who goes by name "WonderHussy". Is this OK because she's a woman? Will she get reported someday as being offensive?

No kidding. Particularly now that there are more replies than there were when it was originally posted. It might be a bit of a wake-up call, sad as it is.

No, you're quite right, thanks for illustrating my point.

I see the first thing the new Congress has decided to be worthwhile isn't mask mandates, vaccine plans, $2,000 stimulus... but to eliminate gender adjectives from the floor of the House.

After a prayer to "the monotheistic god" it was closed with "Amen and a woman".


I'm sorry, this is complete anti-intellectual buffoonery masquerading as some sort of neo-puritan philosophy. If a person can't accept nuance in wording with a sense of humor they're mentally deficient.

So many good posts here, but I exceeded my unknown-to-me 20 "likes" per day, so don't anyone feel offended if I didn't "like" their post. :-)

Although I did understand the term to be a form of G.A.S. when a friend told me about GS a number of years ago, the name DID convey to me that it was a male hangout, whether intentionally hostile to women or not, so I thought it was ill-thought-out and in poor taste even if not explicitly harmful or poor-intentioned.

Having said that, the toxic atmosphere on that forum is why I have never joined, and still wouldn't after a name change, unless somehow that name change encouraged people to be friendlier. Unlikely that it would, but it would be worth it to me if it at least improved the gender ratio of the contributors. No way to know ahead of time, and I'm in agreement with Majuscule about this being a decision for the affected parties and not us men.

As for men calling other men sluts, or themselves sluts in self-deprecation, as a bi member of the LGBTQ community I have only ever heard that amongst gay men (so far).

I've been a GS user for a number of years but evidently I've managed to stay out of the "toxic" parts. People can be a little snappy at times, but I haven't seen too much of that everywhere (not counting the dedicated political threads lol).

It hasn't been as toxic the past year or two, after they started censoring and banning people.

I surf there about every two weeks, and I see nothing compelling for me to go back. Too much noise, too much attitude, where's the beef?

Here and there, now and then, I've been considering some piece of audio gear - not high end or top shelf but apparently functional and potentially useful. My classic searches are "name of product + review" or "name of product + forum". I've gained useful knowledge to guide my decision many times.

Sometimes, there are links to the topic on Gearslutz. That can mean anything from a sensible person who has the item explaining the pros and cons realistically to somebody getting shredded because they don't have an original Neumann U-47 and therefore will never be able to do anything good, ever.

It doesn't take long to spot which is which.

The only place I've found anything like that on MPN is some of the older threads on the George Massenberg forum. I guess all the noise moved from there to Gearslutz?
Everybody here seems to able to chime in and be helpful without getting puffed up and belligerent. That doesn't mean that everybody on here is always correct, I've had my moments just for one.

It is a value added feature, being reasonable and polite but still able to pop off a joke here and there.

Apparently the cancel culture outrage mob has won again, in the Gearslutz Newsletter email today:

„Cancel culture“ isn’t a thing.

Boycotts of companies, for a variety of reasons, have been happening for as long as I can remember. It's not a new thing, it just has a catchy name now

Actually, it kind of is, but it’s simply re-surging in popularity and from a different ideological point than in the past. Don’t forget where doxxing came from. Even the good old New York Times says as much. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/t-magazine/cancel-culture-history.html

That said, what happened here wasn’t cancel culture at all. There was a petition, not a hallmark of cancel culture. Neither was there doxxing or intimidation of the administrative team. This was simply a user base reasonably asking for some changes without harassing anyone - the way it should be done.

Wow, am I the the only one that’s totally offended by use of the term “Gear” in the name? ... i think it should be changed to “music equipment”

But seriously, I think this is a great conversation and, while I have nothing of substance to add, I wanted to convey what a thought provoking discussion this has been for me to follow and I appreciate everyone’s input. I personally never considered the use of the term as derogatory but just thought it was a clever use of a slang expression denoting an exuberance for all things music gear related. I’ve visited that site while trying to do research for different music related purchases but, as others have said, it really is difficult to get through all the static there to get much useful in depth information.

So, in the end, I always end up coming back here to get the opinions and real world experiences from you guys/gals and try to make an educated decision based on these ... and you have always been spot on for the most part.

A great example of how a “real forum” should operate.

Thank you all for your insights!

There is a thread at the MW forum trying to get the new owners to change the name.

As for Gearslutz, I vote for GAS Whores.

There's that quote from Eleanor Roosevelt..."Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." Just think how valuable social media would be, if the participants discussed ideas instead of people. I'd much prefer "how do we make this better?" than "It's your fault that things are bad."

Ultimately, to me the Gearslutz flap is simply a business changing with the times.