Couple attacks Autistic teen photographing them

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That's a rather unwise approach to teach a kid, especially an autistic one, who has an increased natural difficulty for acquiring street smarts. There are lots of legal things that piss people off, and, if you piss off the wrong person, you may not live to tell the tale. In order to go through life with a reasonable chance of survival every day, it's important to know to avoid those actions, unless you've decided to intentionally provoke someone and take the consequences. No matter how much you may think their motives don't matter, ignoring them will be perceived by almost everyone as actively looking for trouble, and it will effectively be so for all intents and purposes.

It really depends on the circumstances. If he was in their personal space and wouldn't stop, then he deserves criticism. But if he just took a picture or two then went away, I don't see how it's a problem.

I just did that in the last post and nothing happened...so still convinced its insulting people with the term that would raise problems.

In some places cigarettes are called fags.

I hate being photographed, and having a camera thrust in my face is probably the easiest way to make me dislike a person. I can sympathize with the couple, and I don't feel sorry for the teen. He's old enough to know better.

I cannot sympathize with thugs. I just want them segregated from society somehow for the protection of the innocent.

Actually what he did was not technically illegal. If he had kept photographing him after they told him to stop it would have been illegal, or if he had posted it online and slandered them. But simply taking a photograph of someone in a public place is not illegal.

A "fa***t" originally meant "a bundle the sticks you gathered for kindling". From there it easy to see how the term evolved into the British word "fag" meaning "cigarette" (its a stick that you set on fire after all).

How we Americans came to call male homosexuals "fags" and "fa***ts" I dont know.

But in Britain a "fag-got" is also a dish made up of fat gravy and pig guts popular among the Victorian working class. Since its a lot of ingredients bundled together thats probably why its named after a "bundle of sticks".

Fag-gots are sold in stores and are rebounding in popularity in Britain. But Brits get in trouble for using the term on Facebook.

In Britain you can talk about "eating a fag-got", "sucking on a fag", and then top it off by admitting to eating "a spotted dick"(a cake type dessert") with out offending any one!

amuuricans are so puritanical.

The terms Fag and fa***t (I'm not putting the asterisks in this word, the site is), when used in references to homosexuals, are probably derived from the British term fag, which was the name applied to junior boys at all boys boarding schools. Fags acted as virtual personal slaves to older boys. The fags duties generally involved running errands, cleaning shoes and cleaning the older boy's study but teenage boys being what they are some of the older boys undoubtedly took advantage of the unwritten rules that fags must obey their fag master, without question and must never tell tales to the teaching staff. It became an accepted practice in some schools for older boys to use their fags for sexual purposes, hence the term fag being applied to homosexuals.

Actually, by coincidence my avatar Jute, was a fag in the 1968 movie "if...."

fa***ts, the savoury meat dish, go back a lot further than the Victorian times and they're still eaten today.

Fags, as a name cigarettes probably has its roots in bundles of firewood, kindling, which are essentially small sticks for burning, as are cigarettes.

Last edited by Jute on 28 Sep 2016, 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually you wrote fa***ts (plural)... try typing fag-got (singular) without the hyphen.

Decades ago I came up with that same theory as well.

Here in the states we get British literary dramas on Public Broadcasting stations. And back in the seventies our family watched "Tom Brown's School Days"- a classic about the British private school system in the 19th Century. And we heard the Victorian characters talk about "fags" all of the time.

Like you said - the middle school boys had to work as servants for the highschool aged boys. Shining shoes, housekeeping etc. And the servant were called "fags".

So...you have teenage boys- and these were one-sex only schools without girls around. No dating in the 20th century sense. And these boys are just starting to be teens. So it easy to imagine "serving" someone might drift into "servicing" them. And thus it easy to imagine how the term "fag" could drift in meaning.

But there is one problem with that theory. That practice of servitude in schools (I dont think) was ever used here in the states. And where it was used (in the UK) the word "fag" is not used for a homosexual (it means a "cigarette"). So that bit of slang did NOT catch on were they did have that practice. But the homosexual meaning DID catch on here in the states where did NOT have it for some reason.So its still a conundrum in word origin.

I believe the term is remains offensive because it was derived from the terrible historical practice of burning homosexuals at the stake. In New Zealand it is considered a totally unacceptable word in civil society, never used in civil discourse and identified with hate speech and prejudice. Media never use it because complaints to the press council have been uniformly upheld and fines can result.

I am from the UK and the term fag is, or rather was, used quite frequently to describe homosexuals, as well as being used for small boys in boarding school and less commonly for cigarettes.

hmm alright guess you're right about that bit, however does this savory meat dish you are talking about include a hyphen or not?

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. More so, being angered about someone taking your picture does not justify assaulting someone.

I don't know what the societal expectations where you are, but that's not how it works where I am. First off, if you are in a public space you have no reasonable expectation of privacy from being photographed. If a person does not wish to have there photo taken, then it is expected that you state as such, and if pictures were taken, you ask for them to be deleted. Most people, who are not disturbed, do not assault somebody for taking a picture of them. It is the people who assaulted him who violated basic social expectations, and it is them who did not learn well.