I hear you. Ideally once NPCs get developed a bit more well add in a profanity free option to cut out most of the worst stuff (since I know there are certainly others out there who find it annoying as well).[/quote]
And some of 'em are outright slurs, so yeah, it’s not a very good look for us. I’ll PR cleaning some of 'em out tonight.
In particular, men tend to use “bitch” as a derogatory: either they’re referring to women acting above the status the speaker wishes her/them to have, referring to the act of complaining in similar fashion to such a woman, or holding that a man being referenced should be reduced to the status the speaker would place women into. In all such uses, the “bitch” position is inferior. (Hence the need to specify the “alpha bitch” in circumstances where someone in that role is nevertheless being dominant.)
Non-fellating folks also tend to use “cocksucker” in similar fashion. Apparently fellating someone is significantly lower-status, so folks label someone (generally, this one targets men, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be used against a woman) as a fellatio-provider as a way to imply that they should not be regarded as equals.
To be clear: some folks subjected to these terms work to reclaim them, cleaning off the slur-baggage and taking pride in their role. That does NOT mean that the word becomes OK for everyone to use, nor can someone who isn’t it’s target use it with reclamatory intent. Being a guy (who has neither had opportunity nor inclination to fellate anyone), I don’t use these terms. Coming from me, they’d default to being slurs, no matter my intent, because readers don’t and can’t know what’s going on in my head as I wrote them. (That’s why I put this in a spoiler section, with warning for slurs.)
These differ from “damn”, “shit”, and “fuck” (along with “motherfucker”) in that those terms are target-neutral. They’re expletives, potentially harsh ones, but they don’t actively target and attack specific groups.
TLDR: some of the NPC harsh language consists of slurs; members of the slurred groups shouldn’t have to encounter that crap when playing.
And yeah, having slurs in the game does kinda make me angry.
