ACAB is a common slogan, especially in anarchist spaces. Should we really be using it though? It is a reference to children born without their parents being married, and due to christian morality is seen as inherently negative. It is effectively a slur. Do we really think that trying to enforce the hierarchies we are trying to get away from on others is going to help us? How have we allowed this slogan to become so common?
As an anarchist I think we should be defending these people, not punishing them with the hope of some of that transferring to cops.
I saw a headline today about Trump (in private) calling Kamala Harris a bitch and someone referred to it as a slur (presumably against women). Since there’s not an exact equivalent for men, but bastard is usually the “equivalent” male-aimed curse word, I was wondering when we would see someone on beehaw arguing that “bastard” is a slur, but against the children of unmarried parents.
Bastard is only a slur against a person born to unmarried parents if being born to unmarried parents is considered wrong. In older times, this WAS seen as wrong, because sex outside of marriage, and raising a child outside of a traditional family unit, was seen as wrong.
Bastard lost its ‘slur’ edge a long time ago. Trying to call it a slur is assigning “wrongness” to the state of being born to unmarried parents.
Words change meaning over time. Calling someone “queer” used to be an insult (now it can be used as hate speech but I can also say “Oh my friend Lucy? She’s queer.” without it being hateful). For that matter, queer didn’t always have sexual implications (it meant weird) — I feel like trying to call bastard a slur is the same as trying to say “queer” is a slur against the neurodivergent.
yeah I only use bitch and cunt to insult men these days. or inanimate objects.
interestingly, “vixen” used to be a similar insult to bitch. it’s a female fox, nowadays it implies a seductive quality but back in the day it meant the same thing as bitch
Yeah calling a woman a bitch just oozes extra sexism that calling a man that doesn’t. That’s definitely in slur territory as far as I am concerned.
it’s not even so much that it’s a slur, it’s just fucking lazy. if a woman is being an asshole, tell her she’s being an asshole. or a dick
There’s still tons of people who will judge you for having children without getting married. A lot of religious groups still consider it a moral failure. And even if it was completely accepted now, it still became an insult in the first place because of that stigma, and you’d still be using it within that historical context. You can’t reclaim a slur by continuing to use it as an insult and ignoring where it comes from.
As an example, I’ve seen pretty many people use slurs for Romani people as a term for getting scammed or cheated. Usually they didn’t know the origin of the term, and didn’t mean any harm by it. They had heard it being used and assumed it was just another word. But you don’t just accept the definition these people have in their heads as an alternate definition, disconnected from the original. It has the meaning it does based on bigoted stereotypes, and by using it they’re still spreading that, even if they aren’t hateful themselves.
The religious people I know would not use bastard, though. Not in any context. Cursing is a sin to them. To my knowledge bastard has not be used in conjunction with systemic oppression, so the Romani comparison is not quite apt.
There are variations such as your British style “all coppers are bastards” and the style I’m more familiar with which stands for “all cops are bad.”
sadly that doesn’t seem to be what most people mean when they say it, lots of people defending it in comments
all cops are bratzz
No one in earnest hears someone get called a bastard and wonders about their parentage these days.
It’s simply a derogatory word.
I agree, but this is still a good opportunity to interrogate our assumptions about this, and particularly to listen to folks born out of wedlock to check if those assumptions are at all accurate to their experiences.
I agree with the examination of language. My issue with this particular case is that unless someone brings it up, there is no way to know someone’s parental status. It just does not matter to anyone that I have ever interacted with, so has never come up in conversation or even crossed my mind to ask. Bastard is kind of a vestigial insult.
I’ve still heard people with that parentage called a bastard because of it though, so what about what they think, what about their experiences? Are they just not people to you?
I’ve never experienced that and known numerous people who could be referred to as bastard children.
I think you’ll have trouble revising the slogan based on this quibble, even if there is this well meaning reasoning behind it.
Anther example is Bitch referring to a female dog. Now it’s just slang and the only people that still refer to female dogs this way are older English, Americans, & farmers it seems.
something that is spurious, irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin
I always get thrown off with ACAB and read it as A Cop at Birth like AMAB AND AFAB for male and female at birth for transgenders.
All Cops are Cunts
Better?
idk the history of that word as well as it is not used my in dialect really, but there is the whole sexist angle in that one that doesn’t really seem like much of a help to us
calling someone one of the oppressed classes as an insult doesnt seem the right way to go about it
Plays well in Australia 🤷
All Cops Are Blue, as in depressed 😔 That’s why they lash out so much. They just need therapy, a big long hug, and a good cry.
cops kill people for being depressed, isn’t that just victim blaming?
This very much minimizes the violence perpetrated by the cops while blaming depression.
We’re just retaking bastard as a slur to mean “murderous asshole” one step at a time.
It’s very much an American saying, and Americans don’t care about the other kind, don’t think too much about it.
What bugs me about ACAB is that it’s ultimately an attack on the only strong union in America, but it’s not like those bastards have solidarity so w/e.
Police unions are not unions in the same way a workers union is a union. They exist to uphold state sanctioned violence and protect the perpetrators of said violence, not create a strong working class through solidarity.
reclaiming a slur means using it as a positive reference to the oppressed group, you are just using the slur
That’s fair. We’re just stealing it from the fundies then.
Too much hand wringing. We do better when we’re not tiptoeing around our own words and actions terrified to sneeze.
nah, the meanings of words change over time. using bastard for its original definition is really only done historically, or in fiction. nowadays it just means an unpleasant person
Was bastard used in the systemic oppression of anyone? That sounds like sarcasm, but I am genuinely curious. Most of the ableist and racist slurs were and are currently used in that manner. Bastard to my knowledge has really only been used in it’s original form in a far less systemic way, and typically only for those rich enough for it to matter to them. Someone pointed out religious people not being OK with kids born out of wedlock, and that is true. That being said, I grew up in a very evangelical household, and bastard was considered a bad word, so would not be used at all, much less in that context.
it was used in systematic oppression, yes, in many instances historically and many ways in different groups
https://www.pricegen.com/bastardy-or-illegitimacy-in-england/
some info I found it
a common thing is a lack of support structures or networks, often forced out of the nuclear family unit
The laws listed in that collection all punish the parents, not the children. Most of them require the father to support the child, with the one in 1747 even giving the children apprenticeships with local tradesmen and farmers.
if they have to make laws to make sure the children aren’t abandoned, they are abandoned often
Sure, but the laws are a sign of systemic support, not oppression.
there are laws against rape, yet it is still used as a tool to maintain oppression and as oppression itself.
I’m done with this conversation
