In middle school, a group of us boys were standing around talking about guy stuff. Someone would say something like "Yeah, don't you hate it when your balls itch?", or "Don't you hate it when your dick almost gets caught in your zipper?" and everyone would relate to it and laugh and fun was had by all (notice I didn't use the term "male bonding", which is just about the worst term ever. Guys hate it when you use that term, because it completely negates the very action of being a guy by adding some wimpy psychological element into things).

One guy speaks up and says "Yeah, it's kinda like those hairs that grow on the end of your dick."

We all turned and stared at him for a minute as he tried to look for a friendly face to laugh with, which he never got.

I was reminded of this after a similarly awkward event that occurred in my Black Literature and Aesthetics course, which is just as lame as it sounds. The teacher is dispassionate about any course material and nervous about her job. Even though she's black, she's afraid to use the word "nigger", replacing it with the words "racial epithet" when we read over it in class. She needs to be fired for her denial of reality.

Anyway, a white girl was asked to read the dialogue from some white guy at the first NAACP convention in like 1910, during a debate over whether black literature should make blacks look cool and smart, or whether they should use stereotypes to do some creative trickery. This was interesting, except the girl who was reading it got very, very nervous and even though the passage used the words "negro" and "nigger" she kept stumbling between the two at every instance, making a jumble of "niggero-I-mean-nig-I mean-negro", which no one else seemed to acknowledge but me. After she was done, I exchanged glances that I, too, felt her pain under the oppression from the black man and him keeping us down with his stupid guilt and quest for reparations. It's all about words, and we're losing the battle right now.

While we're talking about race-I-mean-nig-I-mean-racial epithets, I learned the other day that the word "jew", alone, offends some people. I used the word and a girl started speaking up for me to stop using "that word". I asked her what I'm supposed to say instead of jew so I don't hurt her feelings, and she said "I dunno, 'person of the jewish faith or race' or just 'jewish person'."

So let's just brush up a bit:

"Jew" has one syllable.

"Person of the Jewish Faith" has seven syllables.

I explained to her that she was a fucking moron if she thought I was going to linguistically detour around common terms so that she doesn't feel bad about her society or that she isn't more ethnic and can't share suffering with people. Likewise, I am fine being called a "mic" or even "Irish stallion", those terms don't affect me because I. am. strong.