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[Max White]

... To be fair, I also never expected it to get this far.

I don't think you understand just how far I will take a debate, so let's clear that up. Until I not only feel I am wrong, but fully understand why. Until I have gone over every nook and cranny of your argument, it will not suffice, or you give up... Or I fall asleep, as I would love to right now.
And yes, I will continue to use that word in context of referring to a traveller, as I and the people around me understand it to mean, and should anybody step forward and feel offended on their own right, I will apologise, but you have not yet convinced me it is explicitly a slur.

[G-Flex]

I don't think you understand just how far I will take a debate, so let's clear that up. Until I not only feel I am wrong, but fully understand why. Until I have gone over every nook and cranny of your argument, it will not suffice, or you give up... Or I fall asleep, as I would love to right now.

I wish I could believe this, but you seem to be ignoring many of my arguments and not properly responding to many more of them.

And yes, I will continue to use that word in context of referring to a traveller, as I and the people around me understand it to mean, and should anybody step forward and feel offended on their own right, I will apologise, but you have not yet convinced me it is explicitly a slur.

I specifically meant on this forum, or other mixed-company occasions and international fora that don't involve, say, just people from your own immediate area. I should have made that more clear.

[MonkeyHead]

Dont know if it has been brought up yet, as I am far too lazy to trawl the previous pages of circular arguing.

Here in the UK we have "gypsies", most of which fall uner the "Irish traveller" tag. Heck, if the word Gypsy is used, its pretty much certain that it refers to the Irish travellers as opposed to any other group. Its occasionally used as a mildy offensive term, but has been superceded in that role by the term "Pikey" - most certainly a derogatory term for one of Irish traveller descent. There could be a lot to say about thier identity, role in the modern UK, rights, resonsibilites, attitudes, culture etc., but thats not my issue here at all..

We also have a train wreck of a TV show called "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding", which explores the juxtaposition in the culture of such traveller groups between traditional and modern values, and how traveller communities interact with other social groups in the UK. Its also an opportunity for people to have a right old laugh at crazy outfits, over the top expense and outlandish behaviour that they might not be familiar with is broadcast nationwide.

The network that makes the programme recently advertised a new series of it with the tagline "Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier". A charity that acts to protect Irish Travller families and thier rights in the London area objected to this - in particular the term "gypsier", which they claimed to be some kind of racial slur. BBC Radio News went and asked some traveller families, and they loved the word - after all, they self identify as "gypsies", and thought the word clearly expressed the difference between thier culture/mindset and that of other groups that make up the modern multicultural UK. The outcome of this complaint I do not know -I do not think any legal judgement has been made as of yet.

So, yea, is the term actually offensive? It seems not to offend the people it has been used to describe.

[G-Flex]

• How Romani people respond to it isn't necessarily the same as how Irish Travelers respond to it. This argument is more in reference to the Romani.
• There have been actual Romani people who object to the treatment and portrayal of "gypsies" on the show. Someone linked to an article about this recently. I'm not sure in which post.
• This isn't quite an argument over the term "gypsy" being an offensive word referring to the Romani (or Irish Travelers). It's an argument over whether it's okay to call someone a "gypsy" because they resemble the stereotype of the Romani in some fashion.

[Frumple]

All I know is that I'm now fairly curious if there's any word in general usage referring to traveling groups that doesn't have and/or quickly garner negative connotations. I can't really think of any.

Then again, gypsy isn't really a word that is used in the area I'm in -- gypped is, but as with Baug most people around here ("around here" being a good 2-300 miles, really, encompassing most of north florida and large chunks of the areas surrounding it) have no idea how the hell it's spelled much less where it came from. I think I most commonly see it spelled as jypped, actually.

Homeless or panhandler is the closest to the stereotypical example of gypsy, used in this area, and both are seen quite negatively. I've seen a few other terms used for traveling groups and people in other areas of the states, but again, they either have or gain negative stereotypes within very short order.

Does an offense-neutral term (that actually gets used, mind) for this type of lifestyle even exist?

[G-Flex]

All I know is that I'm now fairly curious if there's any word in general usage referring to traveling groups that doesn't have and/or quickly garner negative connotations. I can't really think of any.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/nomad

There are plenty here.

[Max White]

I specifically meant on this forum, or other mixed-company occasions and international fora that don't involve, say, just people from your own immediate area. I should have made that more clear.

Heck yea, and you know what? I'm going to make a game, and one of the core character classes is going to be gypsy, and they will have large green Irish hats and summon leprechauns.

How Romani people respond to it isn't necessarily the same as how Irish Travelers respond to it. This argument is more in reference to the Romani.

No, YOU ARE MAKING IT about the Romani! I say Gypsy, and you insist it must be the Romani no matter what, so why do they get a stake and not any other sorts? This is what I keep on saying, gypsy and Romani are not always the exact same thing 100% of the time, but you can't see that. When somebody mentions another type of gypsy, you are too quick to dismiss it just because it doesn't support your case.

[RedKing]

You know i wonder if a global debt pardon will ever happen. No one owes shit to anyone on a exact moment. Far-fetch? yes. Incredibly stupid? yes. Could it work? maybe.

The problem is that you would have to do so without anyone knowing about it beforehand. Otherwise, they'd max out their debt in a heartbeat.
Or if you made it known that it was going to happen, but were vague about exactly when, no one would lend ANY money and you'd have a massive credit crunch like we saw in the US in 2008-09.

The obvious solution is to turn the upcoming Olympic Games into some kind of debt resolution mechanism. Every time your country beats another country in a particular sport, you negate 5% of your national debt to that country.

America! I have the solution to our debt crisis! 

[Frumple]

http://thesaurus.com/browse/nomad

There are plenty here.

I... not actually seeing any. Nomad or migrant is the closest, but even those pick up bad reps. Pretty much everything else (That's a noun, anyway... and some of the others) in that list I've seen used as a slur.

[G-Flex]

I specifically meant on this forum, or other mixed-company occasions and international fora that don't involve, say, just people from your own immediate area. I should have made that more clear.

Heck yea, and you know what? I'm going to make a game, and one of the core character classes is going to be gypsy, and they will have large green Irish hats and summon leprechauns.

... Do you really think this helps?

Also, you'd be surprised at how many games/movies/etc have come very close to doing that exact thing.

No, YOU ARE MAKING IT about the Romani! I say Gypsy, and you insist it must be the Romani no matter what, so why do they get a stake and not any other sorts? This is what I keep on saying, gypsy and Romani are not always the exact same thing 100% of the time, but you can't see that. When somebody mentions another type of gypsy, you are too quick to dismiss it just because it doesn't support your case.

Erm, I've made it pretty clear that my case isn't "'gypsy' always directly refers to the Romani people all of the time", but rather that the word's non-Romani meanings still branch off of that meaning, and telling someone to, say, "become a traveling gypsy" can be seen as offensive due to the intended meaning being essentially an ethnic stereotype of the actual group, which has been and still is taking severe amounts of prejudice on many fronts. I know you didn't intend to refer to the Romani people, but you were, whether you like it or not, engaging in the perpetuation of a stereotype, especially when using it on a larger forum than your own hometown, where people associate the word with the ethnicity more than you apparently do.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/nomad

There are plenty here.

I... not actually seeing any. Nomad or migrant is the closest, but even those pick up bad reps. Pretty much everything else (That's a noun, anyway... and some of the others) in that list I've seen used as a slur.

Plenty of them (including "nomad", for example) didn't really seem that bad to me, but on the other hand, I could be wrong; I don't live in an area with a lot of migratory peoples!

It probably doesn't help that nomadic peoples are probably often discriminated against by more settled populations, leading to few words in those languages that aren't a little pejorative.

[Andir]

Can't we just say nomadic people and move on?

[GlyphGryph]

Essentially, this is an argument about kids and their use of the word gay at this point. With Max taking the role of defending his actions in calling all those gaytards that spawncamp him gay.

The whole thing is stupid.

Lets just all treat it as a learning moment to learn a bit about the plight of the Roma and move on.

[Max White]

The whole thing is stupid.

Hey, I will have you know that the Irish are often discriminated against by being called stupid! That is racist!

[KaelGotDwarves]

Gypsy is now a term that applies to a wide variety of people and can be viewed as a slur or worn as a badge of honour.

I think a big problem is that many people don't have knowledge behind the implications of the term gypsy. Sure, it may have Romani roots but it is now commonly broadly applied to any homeless welfare-state squatters and thieves as well as the traveling, skilled-labourer bohemians. Maybe Americans and non-Europeans just don't get it because other Europeans have suggested eugenics in comparison to Final Solution-esque hate manifestos that other races just don't see.

Either way, the term is loaded. I wouldn't have known how loaded it was if I didn't spend some time living in the Netherlands and traveling throughout Europe.

[Bauglir]

I get offended at what I consider offensive behavior, even if it's not aimed at me. If the only people who call others out on offensive language or prejudicial behavior are the targets themselves, that leaves a lot of space for them to engage in it freely. I'm not going to feel bad for arguing about it just because I'm not a Romani person myself.

That's legitimate. It's a similar reason as that behind why you call people out on making rape jokes; saying nothing gives the impression of endorsement. That's why, buried in that mammoth post, I mentioned saying something once and then never elucidated on why because I thought it was getting too long and I appear to have chopped off the wrong bits in editing. Sorry about that.

So I guess I'll expand on it a little here. At least from my perspective, it is right to point out potentially offensive behavior, lest the person in question determine it's acceptable to continue (after all, there's strong psychological bias toward the status quo), and anybody present who might have been targeted might not have the courage or ability to make that stand. But, on the other hand, all those things I said before still hold; by opposing an implicit status quo, you give reason to explicitly rationalize it, and it starts to get promoted to the status of "belief". Which is why I think it's better to bring it up only once each time they do that; you give them the negative feedback that you want to, and if you refuse to actually engage them in an argument then they don't have quite the same opportunity to rationalize it. It's a decent way to set up an actual conversation if you can get them to start wondering what your problem is, but that part works a lot better in person. I admit, though, that this whole thing is a practical consideration, not a moral one, and I wobble back and forth between the two more than I like to.

@Max
Maybe they are or are not, but his argument is largely based on what your words might accidentally imply. We all know you actually meant nothing malicious (or I hope we do, I have enough respect for Bay12 to think we've figured that out), and it's pretty clear by this point that you also weren't referring specifically to the Romani, but his argument is based on larger usage of the word, which almost always is to refer to the Romani. I'm not even arguing that your use is invalid - it seems entirely reasonable to me, for reasons I elucidated in my last post, just that it's less frequent. I will say that GlyphGryph's characterization of your position is overly simplistic, though.