Evangelicals to Trump: ‘History Will Record the Greatness That You Have Brought’

[John E.]

dgszweda, I don’t doubt that you’re correct about Google search results of the word. Sadly, we could put together a whole list of words that have an appropriate contextual use that if we were to type into a search engine would result in pornographic links. I’m not sure it’s necessary to start banning words because they’re used by pornographers.

I would agree, if this was something sometimes results in pornographic links. What I am trying to indicate is that there is practically no legitimate use for it today, especially when 100% of the results come back as pornography. That is because today the word is not used in how you think or how Oxford defines it. How it is being used today, and how the younger generation would view it is that “it is another man taking another man’s wife, having relationships with her, and turning that man into a cuckold”. If no one really cares, that is the choice of the moderators. The fact that besides about 5 sites that are returned back are okay to view and the other 99.99% sites are hardcore pornography, should add caution to us in how the word is used today in the world. In the modern world this term is no longer viewed as a general word, but a word that defines a type of pornography. Obviously the world understands it to be this way, just not Sharperiron.

No one on SI (that I’m aware of) is advocating that the word become part of our daily lexicon. We’re simply defending Jim against your accusation that he used an “extremely offensive” word.

You wrote:

In the modern world this term is no longer viewed as a general word, but a word that defines a type of pornography. Obviously the world understands it to be this way, just not Sharperiron.

It defines a certain type of pornography, true. But there are many words that define certain types of pornography. The fetish industry is not only wicked, it’s prevalent. I’m not debating that. Once again, by your standard, we could find many words that we’d have to label “extremely offensive” because they’ve been co-opted by the fetish porn industry.

Just because a word defines a type of pornography doesn’t mean that the type of pornography provides the only definition of the word(s). The world understands what I just wrote. The alt-right has adopted it to describe what they believe are cowards who are too weak to stand up for themselves politically and who vote against their own self-interest. As a #NeverTrump writer, I’ve been called that word more times than I can count, often followed by the threat of violence and even death threats. I’m pretty sure that I have a fairly good handle on what many in the world mean by that word.

One of the nastiest parts of the Internet is the tendency of pornographers to use otherwise innocent words like “bunny” to link to their wares. Hadn’t known that “cuckold” was such a keyword, and hopefully David managed to learn that without a nasty meeting with HR or something like that. :^)

Regarding the Google search correlation, the question I’ve got is why one would search for “cuckolds” on Google in ordinary life. It’s a word with Shakespearean and some other uses, but I just don’t get why one would look it up on Google search. “Hmm….let’s see if I can find some articles, pictures, and videos about men whose wives cheated on them!” Um, no. I’m content to know what the word means and have it used simply with classic literature, biology, and the like—if we want to do guilt by association, count me out.

Assuming this site’s information is reasonably accurate (and I have no idea how accurate, though the information is interesting on the evolution of the use, if that evolution is accurate), then the term “cuck” that is in question here is fairly new in use for political purposes (ca. 2016), but definitely rising in popularity for that type of usage. So in short, here we seem to have a case where the word was more associated to porn, but is actually becoming more used in the political sphere similar to how the comic utilized it.

Scott, while I’d bet “cuck” will be making, sadly, its porn debut, we will yet have a distinction between the political “cuck” and the pornographic use of “cuckold”. Can’t see myself using it much outside of historic literature and perhaps biology, though. I do not “get” the historic thought of finding humor in adultery, to put it mildly.

Bert, as I understand it, the word was already well established in porn (so no debut waiting), but has been acquired and redefined for political usage (so the opposite of words normally getting appropriated the other way around). But I agree, I had never even heard this shortened form of cuckold until this thread (and still probably would not have if dgszweda had not pointed out his objections), and I don’t expect seeing myself using it again outside this thread. Though if I see it used now, in the political sense, I’ll have a better understanding of it.