August 11, 2016

"While European hooligans are fully conscious of what it means to mimic monkey sounds when pestering a player born in Cameroon..."

"... Mexican soccer fans might not necessarily mean the chant as a homophobic slur. As a lifelong Mexican soccer fan who has heard and spewed his share of insults, I am not sure whether the crowd’s behavior is truly driven by a desire to dispute the opposing goalkeeper’s sexual orientation. Still, the hypothetically harmless nature of the mob’s motives is not enough to defend the chant...."

From "Mexican soccer fans need to stop this homophobic chant/Why Univision is broadcasting a statement denouncing the 'Eeeh, puto!' cheer" by Mexican journalist León Krauze in The Washington Post.

Krauze says "puto" has lots of meanings and is hard to translate, but Google acts like it's easy:



I can see wanting to get the rowdy crowd to shut up, but I'm skeptical of the "homophobic" feint. There is so much repression these days coming in the form of playing on people's fear of even the possibility of being considered racist/sexist/homophobic.

Just yesterday, retired Gen. Michael Hayden was on CNN telling us: "You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear." That's scary stuff, but you're not supposed to hear it as scary because Trump is racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ xenophobic/ murderous/ insane and he needs to be stopped.

Or so I hear it.

And I expect General Hayden to take responsibility for what I hear.

81 comments:

tim in vermont said...

"Your wife's a dike"

JackWayne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JackWayne said...

Puto means faggot.

buwaya said...

Puta - whore
Puto - male variant, catamite

Its a Mexican thing, not general Spanish usage.

Interesting yesterday, Duterte called the US ambassador "bakla", homosexual. He also said "Putangina, buwisit ko diyan"
"Sonofabitch, he bugs me". Puta in there of course is the Spanish Puta.

buwaya said...

To expand, "putangina" is used where in the US one would use "fuck" or "fucking" or "sonofabitch" as an interjection.

Clayton Hennesey said...

You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear.

"Or so I hear it.

And I expect General Hayden to take responsibility for what I hear."

This is the current age in a nutshell, isn't it: I am powerful now because you are responsible for me. All of my wants, all of my fears; in fact, through the managed expression of my fears I can systematically dictate my wants to you and thus the self-evident necessity of your satisfying them.

Succinctly termed, this would be anti- social Darwinism: the dominating survival and prevalence of the least fit through the utility of their weaknesses.

MadisonMan said...

I'm reminded of Student Chants at Camp Randall.

These things are best ignored.

buwaya said...

The consequence of modern technology.
You can no longer choose to speak to suit your audience.
Formerly one spoke in parliament as suited that occasion, and in the tavern as it suited that one, to the ambassadors individually, and the troops as it suited them.
Now everything you say to your cronies at the tavern is heard by the world.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

This is why I love your work, Althouse.

Hagar said...

And I expect General Hayden to take responsibility for what I hear.

Good for you, Professor!

BTW, David Goldman (Spengler) has an article up about a disturbing conversation he had with the General Hayden.

CJ said...

I also like the WaPo explaining a homophobic chant away as spicy/exotic cultural flair - something you gringos wouldn't get. Can't a Confederate flag be just spicy/exotic cultural flair?

Sebastian said...

"There is so much repression these days coming in the form of playing on people's fear of even the possibility of being considered racist/sexist/homophobic." It's nice of you to notice. People have a right to define the meaning of life and of the universe except when it displeases their prog betters.

"Just yesterday, retired Gen. Michael Hayden was on CNN telling us: "You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear." That's scary stuff" So, what are you gonna do about it? It's actually useful stuff: useful to shut up people, useful to go after men "raping" college women, useful in bringing harassment suits in the workplace, and so on.

"but you're not supposed to hear it as scary because Trump is racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ xenophobic/ murderous/ insane and he needs to be stopped. Or so I hear it. And I expect General Hayden to take responsibility for what I hear." Keep expectations alive. Yeah, he'll take responsibility for what you hear: "You hear right, lady. But if you say the right things, there's nothing to be scared about. Just don't go to Trump territory, understand? Make sure you can't be misunderstood. Got it?" If you don't like it, find yourself another country.

This is also another example of how Trump makes it harder to oppose PC. I don't take Hayden as a die-hard prog, but Trump aversion makes him go over to the dark side. Yeah, yeah, he shouldn't, and it's not Trump's fault, and the PC fight wasn't going so great, but still: the Trump fallout will restrict speech, not liberate it.

It'll be interesting to see how the LGBT vs. Mexican thing plays out: methinks the Mexicans will have to bow to gay orthodoxy over time. They are just not Other enough. Now if they convert en masse to Islam, that'd be a different story.

BarrySanders20 said...

The Mexican fans' "EEEEh PU-TO" is clearly an intentional slur. It would be equivalent to US football fans yelling "Aaaaah HO-MO!" on the opposing team's kick-off. It doesn't mean they think the goalie really is gay. It's cultural and they will say they are just having fun. But its easy to see why NBC or the NFL wouldn't want that on its station or at its games - same with Univision.

It's similar to the way the Brazilian soccer fans are chanting "Ehhhh ZI-KA!" every time US goalie Hope Solo kicks the ball. They are ragging her for her pre-Olympic Zika tweets, but it is not racial or sexual orientation related so it's seen as a joke. They are just having fun by participating in the chant.

So Mexican soccer fans are chanting gay slurs. That's pretty calm in comparison to other things they do, like throwing batteries and bags of urine at opposing players.




dreams said...

"BTW, David Goldman (Spengler) has an article up about a disturbing conversation he had with the General Hayden."

And I agree with David Goldman that Trump has good common sense.

the gold digger said...

Google does not speak Spanish. I do.

"Puto" is neither a verb nor a gerund. It is a noun that means "male whore." "Puta" is female whore.

"Fuck" is a variant of "joder," as in "jodido" means "fucked." I think "chingar" is also "to fuck," but I do not want to ask my Mexican co-worker to verify that for me.

"Chuchar" is also "fuck," as in "chucha madre."

buwaya said...

The fight over PC is not going where you think it is around the world. In most places public discourse has gotten cruder in the last few decades, the commoners having gotten more access and no longer aping their betters. The US and parts of Europe are different in parts because of the aristocratization of the mass media. But I think this is a dying thing.
White Americans/Europeans of a certain social class are constrained, but not others.
Case in point, the Philippines. Duterte speaks as the masa, the poor commoners speak. They did not speak like that in the villages back in the day. Such credits was in fact a marker of the upper classes. President Quezon (leading politician of the 1910s-40s) spoke like that, in private (his favorite word was "cono" - cunt).

J. Farmer said...

"Puto" is just the masculine form of puta, which is like calling a woman a slut or a whore.

Rob said...

Is it just my imagination, or is Professor Althouse exhibiting some dangerously subversive thinking these days? The University of Wisconsin Madison Soviet can't be oblivious to this. I expect Althouse has been designated for re-education, pending only the manufacture of a dunce cap for her to wear while paraded through the streets.

J. Farmer said...

@TheGoldDigger:

I think "chingar" is also "to fuck," but I do not want to ask my Mexican co-worker to verify that for me.

I was always told that fuck was "chinga." In my high school, we had to take foreign language each year. I chose Spanish. And because this is west Florida, at least half the class were fluent Spanish speakers, which I never thought was very fair. As mature 14-year-olds, the first thing the non-Spanish speakers did was ask their classmates all the Spanish curse words. "Mama mi pinga" and "chinga tu madre" were two favorites that I heard incessantly for the next four years.

JAORE said...

First of all,thank you General for your service to our country.

Second of all, Sir you are a dick.

n.n said...

Jennifer Lopez of "la cabrona" fame.

Whoopi Goldberg defending trans-social orientations and a rape, or is it rape-rape, culture.

The rainbow coalition demanding selective exclusion ("=") of politically unprofitable orientations.

I wonder what people hear when Democrat politicians call for progressive abortion rites in a final solution that will not be infringed by scientific facts, human rights, and moral principles.

Roughcoat said...
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Roughcoat said...
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Martin said...

Hayden is a real POS. David P Goldman (Spengler) took him down spectacularly in his Asia Times column a couple of days ago. Not that he (Hayden) would care.

Roughcoat said...

Point 1: Out in Wogland, the Wogs are going to act like Wogs.

Point 2: Most of the world is Wogland.

Point 2: In general, the public utterances of generals on matters not pertaining to war should be held in the same regard as the public utterances of entertainers and celebrities. What's more, much of what most of them say about war should be pretty much ignored. Remember: great generals, like great art, are rarities; a larger number are merely competent; a great many are mediocrities.

Hagar said...

Chingase, cabron!

Hagar said...

Esta frijoles, cabrito?

rhhardin said...

I don't mind being called racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic/ murderous/insane.

It just gives me the right of way in a reply.

Lesson of fencing.

Static Ping said...

Even if they speak the same language, curse words can vary from country to country. It happens with English. The only language pedantic enough to even try to enforce universal epithets would be French and I doubt it would work, assuming they are even attempting to do so.

From what I am grasping from the text is "puto" is a reference to a homosexual but in the context is just more or less a general insult of minimal seriousness. This is much like using "retarded" and "moron" to mean stupid people rather than than the clinical definition for specific mental deficiencies. I suppose the English equivalent was when "gay" was used to describe anything the speaker did not like.

Honestly, I have no particular interest in using various slurs, but the fact that my "betters" keep telling me what I can and cannot say based on their personal values makes we want to use them.

Fernandinande said...

Bing translates "puto" to "gay".

Titus said...

Hayden looks like a pink penis

buwaya said...

Also, re Spanish imprecations, etc., these will vary by country and region.
Just to be clear.

Chinga, chingar, and infinite variety of phrases incorporating this word are Mexicanisms.

rhhardin said...

It's 1:30. Time to check if the M-Th Klavan podcast is up yet.

Rush has gone into morality and repetition of repetition mode.

Krumhorn said...

Actually, I think it's a very funny display. The crowd is a reasonably coordinated unified voice over several seconds in hurling a single homophobic slur

https://youtu.be/qlHiqNmW79U

And yes, Ann, the word "puto" means "faggot".

-Krumhorn

Anonymous said...

"And I expect General Hayden to take responsibility for what I hear."

Same here, and what I hear Gen Hayden sayign is that he's a totalitarian nut who things the 1984 is a "how to" guide, not a warning.

I expect you to fix that at once, General.

Fernandinande said...

buwaya puti said...
To expand, "putangina" is used where in the US one would use "fuck" or "fucking" or "sonofabitch" as an interjection.


My (bad) Mexican friend was expecting some "Chihuahua Mafia" fellows over for a delivery and told me "Don't say that 'como tu mama' shit to these guys, they're serious", so of course I said it as a greeting and they looked confused but laughed.

buwaya said...

In my flavor of Spanish, nearly extinct now, "coño" was universally used where Mexicans would "chingar". This is also typical of Spain, though there they have a much larger variety, helped mightily by regionalisms. You can travel 50 miles and find yourself being insulted in entirely different terms.

In my day, the lunchtime gathering of mestizo lads at school, or men at a bar, was referred to as "the coño boys".

tim in vermont said...

When Harvard plays UVM in hockey, I always expect them to call the Catamounts the Catamites, but they never do on account of UVM is a hockey factory, sending great players to the NHL, while Harvard hockey has produced the movie Love Story.

Jeff Gee said...

The Dominicans I worked with ten years back insulted each other with "pato," which means "duck." I don't know if this was a pun on "puto" or a Dominican idiom, but it was clearly a lack-of-masculinity insult.

Alexander said...

People who clutch pearls because Europeans make a monkey joke or Mexicans scream something vaguely gay are a bunch of faggots.

RV Martinez said...

The word "Puto" exists in Spanish.
In Spanish you need concordance of gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural).
Puta (female prostitute)– Feminine/Singular
Putas (female prostitutes)– Feminine/Plural
Puto (male prostitute)– Masculine/ Singular
Putos (male prostitutes)– Masculine/Plural

JackOfClubs said...

This is bad. You can mess with people's religion, politics, and even their bathroom habits. But start messing with sports fandom and there's going to be trouble.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

You're responsible for what people hear, but only in certain circumstances.
Like, a lot of people hear Hillary Clinton's various statements on guns and what they hear is "Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the 2nd Amendment." Hillary's not responsible for that, though...even though that's what people hear, it's just that those people are crazy and stupid, so Hillary's not responsible for that.

See what I mean? It DEPENDS, guys! A rule is a rule is a rule, unless you're a Leftist.

the gold digger said...

In my flavor of Spanish, nearly extinct now, "coño" was universally used

I lived in Miami for a few years. I thought "coño" was a Cuban thing.

My neighbor told me he knows some Spanish swear words.

"!Besa mi cura!" he said.

I am still laughing.

William said...

What is it with soccer? It seems to attract the most boorish fans. The sport itself is more boring to watch than curling or golf, but the fans are rabid degenerates........What is it about the sport that encourages such violence and homophobia. The players must learn to take responsibility for the reactions they inspire. My suggestion is that the players be made to play the game on stilts. This would further minimize the occasional scoring that seems to rlle up the crowds. Perhaps they should also wear blindfolds as a further precaution.

richardsson said...

In Mexican street Spanish, puta means bitch or whore. Puto is a homosexual (i.e. actually it means faggot in street Spanish.) Other commentators are right about chingar. Chinga te means fuck you. Those are fighting words, of course. That's the way I learned it at my very diverse junior high; diverse before there was diversity. Needless to say that those are the words you don't learn in Spanish class. To paraphrase a Mexican leader: so far from God, so close to East L.A.

Achilles said...

Chinga = fuck
Chingada = fucker
Puta/puto = whore/faggot/pussy
Medicon(not sure how it is spelled) = more specifically gay in connotation.

Curious George said...

Lame. These guys are the real deal.

n.n said...

Did this urban translation occur before or after the joyous, merry, carefree gay lifestyle was lost to the transgender/homosexual orientation?

Rae said...

Why is a Mexican journalist writing about Mexican soccer fans in the Washington Post? Don't any Mexican newspapers want him?

BarrySanders20 said...

"What is it with soccer? I...What is it about the sport that encourages such violence and homophobia?"

As opposed to what? American football, the gentle game with the accepting fan base?

As for soccer, the intellectuals will tell you that national team support is an outlet for nationalism and the game is a substitute for warfare. It's tribal. The hooliganism against other teams' fans is ritualized male violence. Lots of countries vie for most violent fan base. The Mexican chant in comparison is papas pequenas.

Of course the Germans are the best at the game, which supports the theory that the game substitutes for war. Best to keep them busy chasing the ball and devising ways to break down a team's defense as opposed to inventing new ways to perfect mechanized invasion.

Matt said...

Google is right. As an adjective, "puto/a" (along with "pinche" and probably a million other words) can mean something like "fucking." Google even gives an example: "estuve toda la mañana metido en una puta oficina."

@Achilles: the word you're looking for is "maricón."

buwaya said...

"Why is a Mexican journalist writing about Mexican soccer fans in the Washington Post? Don't any Mexican newspapers want him?"

The Wapo pays better. The Wapo audience also agrees with him, the Mexicans probably don't.

buwaya said...

"In Mexican street Spanish, puta means bitch or whore."

All Spanish, all flavors. Means "whore", simply that. But way more popular and varied uses of it than the equivalent English words.

Maricon is also general Spanish usage.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Google is covering for Mexican homophobia.

Smilin' Jack said...

I can see wanting to get the rowdy crowd to shut up...

What else is there to do at a soccer game? Sure, you could just sit there quietly and watch the grass grow, but you could do that at home.

Darrell said...

Start forfeiting the game for the Mexican team.
The chants will end pronto.

David said...

Puto/puta also can mean "fuckable." So maybe it's a compliment.

David said...

"I don't take Hayden as a die-hard prog, "

Perhaps not. But he is a world class suck up.

bleh said...

The soft bigotry of low expectations.

Etienne said...

General Hayden is the reincarnation of Lavrentiy Beria. He just hasn't been arrested and executed yet.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

'Puta' is an easy female and 'Puto' is the male counterpart... In most Latin cultures that I'm aware.

Yelling Puto at a soccer stadium may not be meant as a sexual orientation putdown per say... however, if it is assumed that males are brave/valiant and females are cowardly/weak, an effeminate male is, by default, 'puto'.

The homophobic insult comes in thru the back door as it were.

Michael said...

You cannot be responsible for "what people hear" you say, because that would give those people total and unaccountable power over you. They could decide to "hear" whatever they want and judge you accordingly. There is no reason to assume that "people" are acting in good faith. What should matter is what a reasonable person would hear you say, and whether he/she would be offended. The strategy of the Left, however, is to avoid being reasonable and to treat the "reasonable person" with contempt. We get what we want or we sh*t all over you, full stop.



Jeff with one 'f' said...

Just yesterday, retired Gen. Michael Hayden was on CNN telling us: "You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear."

This exact sentiment was communicated to me by my hospital's HR director at a sexual harassment seminar.

Fernandinande said...

"European hooligans are fully conscious of what it means to mimic monkey sounds when pestering a player born in Cameroon..."

What does it mean? What do the hooligans think it means?

I think it means that the Cameroon guy is on the opposing team and they're trying to pester him. That's uncivilized.

Maybe the hooligans should be supplied with a list of acceptable insults, like "poo-poo pants", or "one of your parents is so overweight that he or she has his or her own zip code", which don't conflict with modern virtue signaling.

Sayyid said...

All the comments saying "no way, it just means man-whore" are wrong. That's one of the meanings. It's not the only meaning. Kind of like "bitch" doesn't just mean "a female dog." In this context, it's definitely being used with the anti-gay meaning.

Also, it's no harder to translate "puto" than it is "bitch" -- that is, it's not hard at all. It's just a word whose meaning is context dependent. Hard to translate is a word like the Swedish "Lagom" or German "Treppenwitz."

Gahrie said...

What i want to know is why the thought police aren't attacking the Spanish language as a tool of the Patriarchy like they are English. Spanish is actually much worse than English....but nobody is inventing new pronouns in Spanish for some reason. (or any other language than English actually)

How do you say mother in Spanish? Madre.

How do you say father in Spanish? Padre.

How do you say parent in Spanish? Padre.

Where the fuck is the outrage from the SJW warriors?

Quaestor said...

You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear.

Just heard an idiot talking nonsense. And it's the idiot's fault.

Jose_K said...

In my flavor of Spanish, nearly extinct now, "coño" was universally used. Still used, means c..T and still the most obscene word in most LatinAmerica, and part of the worst offence "c de tu madre" or c.. of your mother It was added to the dictionary in 1990 despite being used since the Romans left Spain ( it came from cunnus, cunni).I have Horace translation where you read love of Helen or Helen´s sex instead of the proper translation of Hellenae cunnis
Back, it the subject, In Colombia and Venezuela, maricon , f.. t, is used as "dude" even by both men and women ( especially, the high income, highly educated people). In the same vein, Mexican uses carbon.. cuckold as "dude".
But yes, they are heckling the opponent and calling him ,male prostitute.
Of course there are less offensive ways, in Argentina they used to throw toilette paper to the field

Quaestor said...

buwaya puti wrote Duterte called the US ambassador "bakla", homosexual. He also said "Putangina, buwisit ko diyan"
"Sonofabitch, he bugs me".


Please excuse my curiosity, but a word used Duterte has rung a long silent bell in my memory. Deep into my childhood, I can't say more exactly, I heard a word that sounded ludicrous to my ears. I was too innocent to know the meaning, therefore I reasoned out one for myself. I concluded it was an onomatopoetic for shooting an arrow -- POON! the release, TANG! the impact on the target. So I'm out in the back shooting, going Poon-Tang! Poon-Tang! at the top of my lungs until my mother upbraids me in the sharpest of her very circumspect terms. Sometime later I learned the true meaning, which I took as even more risible than my invented usage. It didn't fit the pattern. All the Anglo-Saxon scat words were monosyllabic concoctions of short vowels and rock-hard consonants -- shit, fuck, cunt, cock... Poontang sounded like baby talk, and what interest do babies have in a lady's naughty bits? I dismissed it as absurd, and have never used it, even in impolite conversation, until now, and only in the interest of etymological speculation.

Could an American soldier, sailor, or Marine serving in the Philippines have heard putangina and imported it into American English in a corrupt form?

Jose_K said...

BTW: The FIFA forces teams to play without public and fine them heavily when their fans throw bananas or do things like chanting in support of the Serbian Tiger

Quaestor said...

I short-circuited...

I heard a brain-damaged crone talking nonsense. That's obviously Hillary's fault, right, General?

Gahrie said...

Could an American soldier, sailor, or Marine serving in the Philippines have heard putangina and imported it into American English in a corrupt form?

I've heard that pootang was derived from an Indian (India Indian)word, but in the same fashion that you suggest.

Quaestor said...

I've heard that pootang was derived from an Indian (India Indian)word, but in the same fashion that you suggest.

Is it pootang or poontang? (Safari hates them both and wants to change them to "pouting" and "pointing" respectively.)

According to the Urban Dictionary it derives from Filipino.

buwaya said...

I have no idea where "poontang" came from, and it doesnt seem to have an acknowledged source. Internet says everything from New Orleans French to Limba (African) to Ilocano (and though Filipino, thats a foreign language to me).
It doesnt sound, exactly, like anything Tagalog (cunt - "puke", "puki", also much used in imprecations) though of course it could be a corruption as you say.
If military slang it certainly could be Filipino as there was much occasion for that; if naval sailor-speak anywhere in the world could serve as a source.

Sydney said...

"You're not just responsible for what you say. You are responsible for what people hear."

The acceptance of this kind of thinking always becomes prominent when Democrats are in power. The longer they are in power, the worse it gets. We can not afford even one more year of a Democrat in the White House if our civilization is to survive. They do not represent people of good will.

Johanna Lapp said...

Here in Philadelphia, it seems to mean he-whore.
And something different from gigolo, who sells himself to women.

Robert said...

So, all the more reason to defund Prog Ed in K-12, university, law-journalism-film schools; replacing the anti-republic pedagogy with Western Enlightenment.

Courts will act against people otherwise presumed innocent because of "a fear" generated by fearful minds, not actions of the accused. Further, we are seeing the media routinely is encouraging the unhinged to do violence or murder against leaders the media does not approve of. And the same goes for supporters of those the media does not approve of. They also are targeted by the unhinged, after media encouragement.

This is no joking matter. The ax-to-root solution is to defund the Prog worldview from public education. It is not hard to figure out: the Prog worldview is a violent one, and the end result is supersize evil. Defund it now.

bflat879 said...

I'm not sure if all those people who are against Trump, understand h ow foolish they sound. Some of these people, doing the most complaining, are the same people who didn't serve George Bush that well. If Hayden would go out and comment on the numerous lies of Hillary Clinton, I'd have a smudge more respect for him.

gbarto said...

Always heard poontang was an exaggerated pronunciation of the French putain. It means whore and comes from the Latin pudenda,meaning shameful.

SGT Ted said...

I thought "Maricon" is Mexican for homosexual.