• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Is racism really the issue here (Wang)

DrZoidberg

DrZoidberg

Contributor
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
11,216
Location
Copenhagen
Basic Beliefs
Atheist
Trigger warning. There will be mention of penises and/or Chinese persons. If either of these trigger your sensitive nature, do not keep reading.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41107089

A Hollywood actress called Chloe Wang changes it to Chloe Bennet and makes it. She says that changing the name helped her getting call-backs. Therefor racism. I'm sorry, but this isn't racism IMHO.

If I go to Hollywood with the traditional Swedish name Vagilord Analmucus I'm going to have an uphill battle. Yeah, it sucks that her Chinese name means PENIS in English. But reality is that it does.

Demanding that every country expunges every name that means something potentially offensive in every other language, will leave us with no names at all.

This is retarded.

Sorry, almost forgot about the trigger. HUGE MASSIVE CHINESE PENIS BEING WAVED AROUND LAZILY

Which is the name I was given at birth. It's a traditional Swedish Viking name.
 
After all, a largely English-speaking people elected a leader called Fart, or something similar. I expect it was because he was a German paternally.
 
DrZoidberg said:
Trigger warning. There will be mention of penises and/or Chinese persons. If either of these trigger your sensitive nature, do not keep reading.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41107089

A Hollywood actress called Chloe Wang changes it to Chloe Bennet and makes it. She says that changing the name helped her getting call-backs. Therefor racism. I'm sorry, but this isn't racism IMHO.

If I go to Hollywood with the traditional Swedish name Vagilord Analmucus I'm going to have an uphill battle. Yeah, it sucks that her Chinese name means PENIS in English. But reality is that it does.

Demanding that every country expunges every name that means something potentially offensive in every other language, will leave us with no names at all.

This is retarded.

Sorry, almost forgot about the trigger. HUGE MASSIVE CHINESE PENIS BEING WAVED AROUND LAZILY

Which is the name I was given at birth. It's a traditional Swedish Viking name.
Click to expand...

1. She may not have known that wang means penis and just assumed that it labelled her as Chinese to the people deciding on call-backs.

If you find that incredible, consider that I did not know the slang meaning of wang until some minutes ago on this thread. I learned English in England as a teenager many years ago, lived there 18 years, served in the R.A.F., and have lived in Canada for many more years than I care to reveal here, have been called, and have called others, a stupid prick and variations of that many times, but never heard anyone use the word wang for it on either side of the Atlantic or in South or Central Africa. . In fact today I looked up the Urban Dictionary to confirm your claim that it is a synonym of prick etc.

2. You may want to reformulate the last part of your OP which seems to claim that your name MEANS AND IS AS FOLLOWS:

HUGE MASSIVE CHINESE PENIS BEING WAVED AROUND LAZILY
Which is the name I was given at birth. It's a traditional Swedish Viking name.
Click to expand...

3. She looks less than half Chinese.

How,s that for a racist statement? :)

or this:

In the Street Of A Thousand Arseholes,
By the sign of The Swinging Tit,
Hoo Flung Dung was murdered
By his brother Hoo Flung Shit.

This was the first "English poem" I learned from my "teachers" all those years ago.
 
Last edited:
Sensible. A studio is going to be reluctant to release a movie with "Wang" in the credits.
 
Umm, most english speaking people are mature enough to recognize when Wang is being used as a name and when it is being used as a penis euphemism.

We have a lot of penis euphemisms. Were you aware that the common english last name "Johnson" is a penis euphemism? But no one has trouble distinguishing the two different uses?

Also "Woody" Harrelson has no problem showing up in credits.

Dick.
 
Do studios really think people read the credits?

I mean, other than watching Rawhide credits just to see that Jesus is spelled 'Haysoos' there...
 
I'd be convinced by data, not intuition.

It could be penises, it could be racism. I can't say I'm 100% sure until data backs up either conclusion.

And by racism I don't mean somebody is sitting there going 'fuck that Asian', but rather there is a body of evidence that suggests people with white, professional sounding names are more likely to receive callbacks. It could very feasibly be sub-conscious bias.
 
Sarpedon said:
Umm, most english speaking people are mature enough to recognize when Wang is being used as a name and when it is being used as a penis euphemism.

We have a lot of penis euphemisms. Were you aware that the common english last name "Johnson" is a penis euphemism? But no one has trouble distinguishing the two different uses?

Also "Woody" Harrelson has no problem showing up in credits.

Dick.
Click to expand...

No, Sir. No, I don't think most people are mature enough to tell the difference. And a guy can have a penis-name. It makes him more manly. A woman, nope. It's just the giggles.
 
Keith&Co. said:
Do studios really think people read the credits?

I mean, other than watching Rawhide credits just to see that Jesus is spelled 'Haysoos' there...
Click to expand...

They will if there's a funny. I remember a while back when there was a Chinese guy in Sweden called the equivalent of Massive Scrotum (Tung Pung). I think everybody in the entire Sweden shared this nugget of joy. All he did to enjoy this attention was to have a listed phone number. He wasn't even famous.
 
I once met a Vietnamese cab driver named Phuc Yieu. There used to be a game programmer named Dick Head.

Eldarion Lathria
 
DrZoidberg said:
Sarpedon said:
Umm, most english speaking people are mature enough to recognize when Wang is being used as a name and when it is being used as a penis euphemism.

We have a lot of penis euphemisms. Were you aware that the common english last name "Johnson" is a penis euphemism? But no one has trouble distinguishing the two different uses?

Also "Woody" Harrelson has no problem showing up in credits.

Dick.
Click to expand...

No, Sir. No, I don't think most people are mature enough to tell the difference. And a guy can have a penis-name. It makes him more manly. A woman, nope. It's just the giggles.
Click to expand...

That may or may not be before looking at evidence. Fortunately, we aren't compelled to stay in the realm of philosophy, there's evidence easily to come by: There's a ton of Johnsons, including female Johnsons, including female Johnsons famous as actors. Wikipedia has an entire  List_of_people_with_surname_Johnson, with a 100 or so links to disambiguation pages since a 100 or so first names have *several* famous Johnsons to show, among them, at first glance, Alice and Anne.

If you go to the Alice disambiguation page, the first individual listed is a broadway actress.
 
Jokodo said:
DrZoidberg said:
No, Sir. No, I don't think most people are mature enough to tell the difference. And a guy can have a penis-name. It makes him more manly. A woman, nope. It's just the giggles.
Click to expand...

That may or may not be before looking at evidence. Fortunately, we aren't compelled to stay in the realm of philosophy, there's evidence easily to come by: There's a ton of Johnsons, including female Johnsons, including female Johnsons famous as actors. Wikipedia has an entire  List_of_people_with_surname_Johnson, with a 100 or so links to disambiguation pages since a 100 or so first names have *several* famous Johnsons to show, among them, at first glance, Alice and Anne.

If you go to the Alice disambiguation page, the first individual listed is a broadway actress.
Click to expand...

Johnson is a much more well known name than Wang and thus less of an issue.

Also, a dirty name isn't going to stop a company from hiring such a person. However, given basically equal people (and when you're dealing with unknowns, they're all pretty similar) they're going to choose the safe option.
 
Sarpedon said:
Umm, most english speaking people are mature enough to recognize when Wang is being used as a name and when it is being used as a penis euphemism.

We have a lot of penis euphemisms. Were you aware that the common english last name "Johnson" is a penis euphemism? But no one has trouble distinguishing the two different uses?

Also "Woody" Harrelson has no problem showing up in credits.

Dick.
Click to expand...

The fact that people can consciously separate the dick meaning from a person's real name is irrelevant. Of course they are not actually concluding the person is a literal penis.
What matters is what it immediately and automatically evokes in the listeners mind.

And that is determines by how commonly the various meanings are experienced by the listener. For most Americans, "wang" is heard many many times more often a dick euphemism than a last name or any other meaning. Johnson is either the #1 or #2 most popular name in all 52 US states, and is an extension (pun intended) of "John" which is among the most popular US boys names for the last couple centuries.

Unless one lives in S.F. California and hangs around a lot of Wangs (ha!) you almost never hear the name. In fact, most Americans probably have heard "Wang" used as a name in the context of a dick joke more often than in a real situation. And that isn't due to racism, but because the word reliably gets a laugh, because the "dick" association is so strong and automatically is activated for US audiences.

Yours sincerely,

Jacques Strap
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom