Sunday, February 2, 2014

Problematic is Problematic

This came up on a topic on Jezebel's GT forum: does anyone else hate the word "problematic?"

Until I became (no matter how marginally) part of the SJ blog world, I never heard the word. I've heard things described as bigoted, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, whatever... but problematic seems to be preserved in the social justice blogosphere. And I hate that word.

I hate that it's often a very passive stand-in for those other, more accurate words: racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, or transphobic.

Another reason this bothers me is that women are expected to be passive, to criticize, but not to harshly. Problematic is ambiguous, and not too damning.

Am I alone in this?

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