Comment by DoreenMichele
5 years ago
Perhaps that solves the financial part, but it doesn't solve the part where people who speak some other language are sexualizing the name of their town which apparently wasn't named that way to make some kind of sexual statement.
I'm for the decriminalization of sex work, but I also think that needs to be something someone chooses and is not compelled to do. The very definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent, which is why we can distinguish between kink and rape: People can consent to BDSM. The definition of rape does not hinge on the detail of whether or not it is physically aggressive or even violent.
If their primary issue is that it is an affront to their sense of dignity, making money off of it doesn't fix the issue. That's a bit like saying "If you give a few bucks to the woman you raped, it's somehow okay now that she didn't want to have sex with you."
She's highly unlikely to feel like giving her money afterwards somehow makes it okay to assault her.
Rape is a highly traumatic event. Getting offended at a foreigner’s well-meaning amusement that your town name means something funny in their language... doesn’t elicit much sympathy from me at all.
Now getting your signs stolen isn’t very nice at all and becomes less well-meaning, I agree. But I hardly think the joke itself is anything immoral at all.
So if your five year old child has a good view of this sign from their window at home in a tiny village or walks past it regularly on their way home from school and is thereby exposed to random strangers from across the globe pretending to have sex while taking photos, you are supposed to care more that random people on the internet feel you have no right to be incensed and change the name than about the negative impacts to the people of the village where you live?
I cannot fathom why so many people are objecting to their right to change the name of their village. They don't like what's happening. They don't need the world's permission to say "I can't stop assholes from around the globe from being assholes, but I can change the damn name that is their excuse for acting like butts to my town." and now people think it's the townspeople who are in the wrong and not the random assholes from across the globe whose bad behavior they got fed up with.
Wow.
I think I need to get off of HN for a bit. This is just ridiculous.
I’m not objecting to them changing their name, they can do whatever they want with their own town. I’m objecting to the idea that it’s somehow immoral for foreigners to find something about your town amusing.
And yeah, maybe don’t be so prudish. Children seeing random strangers shaking their hips isn’t the end of the world. I personally find that ridiculous. But probably a little bit less ridiculous still than your initial comparison of this to rape of all things.
> I think I need to get off of HN for a bit.
Goodbye.
Exactly this, the people from Austria and southern Germany don't find that name offensive at all. They've had enough. And now they exert their right to be left alone and not be harassed by a serious number of english speaking idiots. Places ending in -ing hasnt the same grammatical meaning like doing something, that scheme is really common (Mering, Kissing, Manching, Piding, Peiting, and hundreds more). It's the same idiots that beleaguer known instagram photo spots - just a worse kind. And only for some quick silly joke that humiliates the people there. This will hopefully stop the influx of assholes stealing the village's signpost, "insta posing" at the village sign and making prank calls. Also note that normal people live there, probably in a closer knit arrangement than you normally would assume (3 digit inhabitants). I'm rather sure that persons who profit off the infamous name are looked down to (eg. the silly "Fucking Hell" beer brand, "hell" meaning light in that case in german). Dont forget it's normal people living over there, Doctors, Engineers, Farmers - and they want to be treated that way :)
PS: The pronunciation will not change.
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The post was a suggestion to sell signs, not an approval of the portion of people taking photos that are in highly inappropriate poses.
So yes, this argument is ridiculous.
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