I would like to say, I find your perseverance and determination to meet your challenges head-on really rather inspirational. Everything you achieve (and I think you achieve a lot) really means something.

YES. I agree with billytea on this, vw.

Oh, about using the word "Dutch" as an insult: I asked my CouchSurfee, a woman from Copenhagen about it. She didn't know what I was talking about. She said there's some kind of using slurs towards Swedish that coming to buy stuff that are cheaper in Denmark (mostly beer), but the main words that are being used to talk about someone coming from a place where people are "stupid" are names of cities/regions in Denmark itself.

The only thing I can think of is that when we say "Going Dutch" or "Going Dutch treat" we mean that each person pays for themselves.

I never thought of this as a slur until I actually said it to someone Dutch and she was offended -- according to Sophie there is a sterotype that the Dutch are cheap. I felt awful but she forgave because she knew I meant nothing by it.

I think of the various slurs we used to obliviously toss around when I was in middle school and I'm kind of shocked that my Mom didn't point out to me, "Um, Trudy..." Maybe she just never heard me call those little black canvas shoes "chink shoes" or tank tops "guinea Ts". Of course, "chink" and "guinea" were fairly toothless in that time and place and even people of the respective ethnicities used the terms pretty mindlessly.

Of course, "chink" and "guinea" were fairly toothless in that time and place and even people of the respective ethnicities used the terms pretty mindlessly.

It wasn't until I was in college that someone told me that "Guido" was offensive. In high school, we used it all the time, and the people we were describing with it weren't always Italian.

~ma for ita.

There's so many that hardly even ping as slurs until you think about them - welshing on a bet, paddy wagons, etc.

It wasn't until I was in college that someone told me that "Guido" was offensive. In high school, we used it all the time, and the people we were describing with it weren't always Italian.

We knew it meant Italian (well, Italian-American) and when we used it to describe someone NOT Italian we were saying they dressed/acted like Italian guys who dressed/acted like that.

It was certainly a sterotype but not necessarily a slur. It was akin to "preppie" or "jock". And it almost always described guys.

It was certainly a sterotype but not necessarily a slur. It was akin to "preppie" or "jock".

Yeah. Though, when I was in high school, we used "Abercrombie" instead of "preppy."

Abercrombie! Hee!

"Guinea T" and "wife beater" were used interchangeably (tough my school almost always said the former). Eventually somebody noticed they were pretty offensive. Now Torrid referrs to them as "beaters". Which? Still offensive. It's like saying "the N word". You're still USING the term, you know?

Oy, I just got cranky on my blog. Be interesting to see if there's any response.

Even "Indian summer" came from a slur. It's amazing the way these things become fixtures.