This thread is full of fail. As everyone has already said intention is everything, black people call each other the N word all the time and it's okay. Why? Because they aren't saying "Hey slave!" the word has evolved to have a different meaning, and now when its used its saying "Hey my friend!".
All the over-sensitive people need to realize this. You all are correct, there is no way to justify joking about someone being sexually assaulted, but no one is joking about that, they are just using a word that happens to also mean that. Take the word *** for example. It can mean a donkey or a stubborn person. In both cases is describes something as basically being stubborn and unwilling the move (physically or mentally). Now lets apply this same logic to the word ****. It can be an the act of physically sexually assaulting someone against there will, or just beating someone really badly. In both cases the word is being used to suggest that one person forced the other to do something against their will (in one case its a sexual act, in another its losing a match.)
Words have different meanings, and language is continually changing all the time. How we use the word is much more important than the word you are using. How we use the word clues people in on which meaning to apply. If I walk up to someone who has been sexually assaulted and say "I love ****** women!" then she should be offended, and rightfully so because of how I used the word. However if I say "Man, I love ****** noobs" then she should not be offended, because I used a different meaning of the word.
On a side note people need to seriously grow up. If parents don't want their children to be exposed to foul language then its the parents job to do anything necessary to stop that, not ours. Words have different meanings...thats really all there is too it. You can't just ignore the other meanings of a word just because one happens to be negative.
If you find **** so offensive then you better never use these words either:
-Murder (I just murdered that guy.)- Could be offensive to the families of murder victims.
-Beat (It was a good game, but I beat him)- Could be offensive to victims of abuse.
-Owned (Man, he got owned)- Could be offensive to descendants of slaves.
-Burn (referring to an insult)- Could be offensive to survivors of fires.
-Gay (That was gay)- Could be offensive to homosexual.
-Lame (That is lame)- Could be offensive to people with physical disabilities.
-******** (Man, that move was ********)- Could be offensive to mentally handicapped people.
You are only allowed to say "I won by a large margin and there was nothing he could do".
Also, have any of you ever been *****? How do you know how those people would feel? What they think? How the handle it? How it affects them? What they find offensive? Most of you are just going off of the information you gathered from watching marathons of Law and Order SVU.
