I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
Cracking a whip near a horse makes it run in the direction you want at the speed you want. That’s training an animal. Employees or subordinates aren’t horses to be frightened with loud noises, either.
So, the sleigh driver who wastaking his family for an hour-long ride was training the animal? It was also used to make recalcitrant or reluctant work animals perform better while working. You could call that training, I suppose, but it’s a bit of a stretch. It also wasn’t uncommon for race horses to be whipped to make them go faster. I don’t know if it still is, it’s been far too long since I bothered to check anything horse race related. But cracking the whip was used for a very long time to get animals to work. Also people, which is the problem.
Whatever the context, you’re comparing people to animals or slaves. Which is better?
I was talking about history, backed by common knowledge which can be easily corroborated, and not very much my opinion about those acts, except the last sentence.
Also, people are animals. Perhaps you could use that as a reason to treat animals better instead of as an excuse to treat people worse.
You’re fucking with me, right?
Sure I am. It’s not like the first child abuse case in America wasn’t fought using an animal cruelty law…
What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck are you talking about? What does that have to do with anything even remotely related to this conversation?
Well, this all started when you displayed ignorance about animals, which I tried to correct. Then I just followed along with your meanderings. Now l, if you want to back up and explain how I’m wrong about whips being cracked at animals (and people) in the context of getting them to perform work instead of solely to train them, hence the term “cracking the whip” being a euphemism for getting back to work and not solely getting back to training, please do.
If you’d rather ignore the original conversation and instead talk about your reply, please inform me how my pointing out your ignorance of animal husbandry has any bearing on me comparing people to slaves, or how that would be out of context when discussing the phrase “cracking the whip.”
No seriously, you’re fucking with me, right?
The original conversation was about how it’s offensive to compare employees to animals or slaves, so the metaphor is offensive either way, because those are the two situations where one might “crack the whip” as a means of motivation.
Do you call the local animal shelter when it’s raining cats and dogs?
What the fuck are you talking about?
It just seemed you were taking an idiom literally.
I was discussing being offended by an idiom because of its connotations, but you’re talking about motivating employees with loud noises. This seems to me like you’re offended by the idiom’s denotation.
So, do you call the local animal shelter when it’s raining very hard, assuming literal cats and dogs are falling from the sky and need homes? :)
(Please don’t take any of that too seriously, I wasn’t trying to be malicious and life is far too short!)
I worry that I didn’t properly communicate my thoughts in my first post, since in your reply to me you seemed to think I was placing blame on the receiver of offensive speech.
I assure you, I’m not blaming anyone for being offended. I would hope that, as language and communication are both complicated and all of us are, quite literally, constantly learning to be better at it, some measure of grace might be extended all around as long as people operate in good faith.
If someone is genuinely offended by something I say, that is not their fault. It means I was careless in what I said, did not properly gauge my audience, or, far more often in my own life experience, spoke in ignorance. Like the time I made a “your mom” joke to a coworker whose mother had died when he was a child. I was ignorant of that fact, and so something this is obviously rude but intended to be playful was received in a way I had not anticipated.
In that circumstance, this coworker informed me and I apologized, and never again made a “your mom” joke to him. But at the same time, he understood that most people our age at the time had living mothers, and was therefore not angry with me. Grace was extended, because life is hard and it isn’t worth being upset when we can get along.
Another time I was speaking to a Jewish coworker and asked about her interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, and was then comparing it with the interpretation of my devout Christian parents. I was genuinely curious, but she later told me that it offended her that I so cavalierly talked about her holy text in a way that seemed to imply shared ownership. Perhaps she thought I was trying to evangelize (I was most certainly not).
To me, this exchange is still somewhat baffling to this day. Both religions read and interpret the Torah, surely she knows that fact already? But I still don’t blame her for being offended. That reaction wasn’t something she decided on. Instead it taught me to be a little more gentle in the way I talk to people about their religion until I know them better.
Circling back around, the idiom “crack the whip” is nearly always, at least in my experience, tongue in cheek. And is usually somewhat ironic: the person saying “I should go crack the whip” is also not working when they say it, after all. To me, it evokes a carriage driver who has become distracted talking to someone and realizing they should be driving the horses.
I fully comprehend that isn’t how everyone may view the idiom, and idioms by their inherently non-literal nature can be subject to broad interpretation. So that particular idiom I avoid using. My entire point was to say that this OP, asking for a list of offensive phrases, is taking an important step in learning to communicate better: they are realizing the onus is on them to avoid offending others.
Now, all of that said, there is equally a responsibility on my part as a listener to allow for grace when someone offends me if I have no reason to assume malice. That is to say, if some relatively thin person says around me, “Ugh, I’m so fat” while looking in a mirror, my initially emotional reaction is to be offended by their ostensible declaration that being fat is disgusting and that therefore they must find me, a much fatter person, so much more disgusting.
But what’s probably happening there is that this person is expressing their own insecurity. One that I share, which is why it offended me. Yes, there’s an outside chance that this person is trying to be a dick and insult me in a roundabout way, but people are usually too self-centered and merely insensitive rather than malicious. So it’s better for me to apply the best interpretation of what they’re expressing and go through life happier.
Anyway, I’m sorry if I offended you! :)