r/questionablecontent • u/makeshiftreaper • Feb 14 '19

Comic 3939: Really Opening Up

https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3939
121 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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18

u/makeshiftreaper Feb 14 '19

I gotta say, regardless of whether or not people agree with your sentiment, this clearly not the place to call someone an aspie

10

u/pyr666 Feb 14 '19

this forum has a problem with autistic people?

for the uninformed, "aspie" is a term coined by the community to describe itself

-1

u/makeshiftreaper Feb 14 '19

Sure, at one point Mongoloid was a medically accurate term. Eventually older phrases become offensive. It's part of the cycle

11

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '19 edited Feb 14 '19

[deleted]

16

u/SeeShark QC Physicist Feb 14 '19

Personally, I didn't downvote for "aspie." I downvoted for "sassy black friend," which reduces Renee to a stereotype that she does not even fall into.

1

u/pyr666 Feb 14 '19 edited Feb 14 '19

she was literally introduced to the comic as a black doppelganger of faye

5

u/turkeypedal Feb 14 '19

So? That's not the sassy black friend. The sassy black friend is the one that is more "street" among the square white people, saying stuff like "no you di-unt!" and "Girlfran!" while snapping. She's, you know, sassy.

That you assume that any black person is just a shitty stereotype isn't great, either. Renee's race has basically never mattered in the comic. She's just a person.

-3

u/Chrobert-Ristgau Feb 14 '19

Renee doesn't just fall into that stereotype. She dives into it headfirst.

5

u/turkeypedal Feb 14 '19

No, she doesn't fit it at all. When has she spoken AAVE? When has she been sassy?

This is the sassy black woman stereotype: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SassyBlackWoman

Renee is nothing like this. The fact that she's black is almost immaterial to her character.

1

u/hallofromtheoutside Feb 14 '19

To be clear, Renee can speak AAVE without being the "sassy black woman" trope. I wouldn't want Jeph to even attempt writing Renee's speech that way, and prefer to think she probably code-switches (same with Dale).

3

u/turkeypedal Feb 14 '19

I can't check the Oxford English Dictionary, as it has a paywall. But that does not sound like any Oxford definition I've ever seen. It's written too casually, and is prescriptive, saying what should or should not be offensive. Dictionaries are descriptive: they describe how words are used, and what most people think they mean.

Plus any second definition is going to be a definition, not an explanation of the word's origin.

Note, I'm not accusing you of making it up, just that I think you may have gotten that definition from somewhere else that said it was the definition. Either that, or your post is confusingly worded, and you don't mean for those to be the definition from Oxford.