Re: Apology email from QVC

Lakelife62 · ‎05-09-2023

I have to believe the person who wrote it wasn't aware of the connotations. I still see people here use the word "gyp" to describe being ripped off or short changed, unaware that the word is a slur.

If I had to judge the copy writer by posters here, I would say they did not know. And now they do.

Good for the Q issuing a quick and thoughtful apology.

rockygems123 · ‎06-04-2012

@elated wrote:
@Kachina624 wrote:
@Carmie. Most people obviously didn't get the connect or know about the source. I sure didn't and have yet to see anything I'd consider insulting. Since you seem well informed, perhaps you can advise why I should be insulted?
To many Asian-American women, hearing the phrase “Me love you long time” can be completely de-humanizing and traumatic.Yet this hasn’t stopped the phrase from casually entering various areas of pop culture, school yards, and the music and fashion industries. It’s a weaponized phrase deployed to put down Asian diaspora women, to make us the joke. It's used to reduce Asian and Asian-American women to sex objects. Asian hate crimes have disproportionately been an Asian women’s issue. Sixty-one percent of reported incidents happened to Asian and Asian diaspora women, largely due to the hypersexualization of them. While this should have happened ages ago, now is the time to make sure the use of this phrase as a weapon to belittle and objectify Asian and Asian-American women stops.
While many think the phrase started in 1989 with a 2 Live Crew track in which female vocals ooze “Me so horny. Me love you long time,” the words were originally spoken by actress Papillon Soo Soo, who portrays a Vietnamese sex worker soliciting American GIs in the 1987 Stanley Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket.
Unfortunately, we can’t ask the men who wrote the movie—Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford (whose novel, The Short-Timers, became the movie), all of whom are dead—what their intentions were when they wrote that line of dialogue. From the reactions of the soldiers in the scene, it appears the Asian female character was being mocked.

@elated

Thank you. Your explanation which was well needed at least for me was articulate and thorough, appreciate it.

untitled · ‎04-15-2012

actually I wish I never read this thread.

but if a new poster is just casually using the word

'genocide' then she doesn't know what it really means.

I just cannot let that statement stand.

Greeneyedlady21 · ‎01-06-2015

New posters or alters, one never knows

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story"

rockygems123 · ‎06-04-2012

@NYCLatinaMe wrote:
@Kachina624 wrote:
@NYCLatinaMe. The faux pas was probably made by some poor underling of a clerk who had no clue about the possible insult or that the vendor was Asian. Totally inadvertant error of something very obscure from fiction. The quote, taken alone, sounds like a lovely thought. Maybe AI did it.

No @Kachina624 not inadvertent because the grammar was poor. Nobody would write that that did not know that "expression." I don't recall QVC ever sending emails with grammatical errors in the subject line, and I get loads of them.

@NYCLatinaMe

There's always a newbie that's not well spoken or not culturally aware.

Assuming the writer was educated isn't always true.

rockygems123 · ‎06-04-2012

@Lakelife62 wrote:
I have to believe the person who wrote it wasn't aware of the connotations. I still see people here use the word "gyp" to describe being ripped off or short changed, unaware that the word is a slur.
If I had to judge the copy writer by posters here, I would say they did not know. And now they do.
Good for the Q issuing a quick and thoughtful apology.

@Lakelife62

I agree with you. It was astounding the differences in speech in Colorado when we moved here 25 years ago from SF. Whole different world. Thankfully this world in Colorado currently & ironically has achieved a better position than the floundering SF.

rockygems123 · ‎06-04-2012

@Greeneyedlady21 wrote:
It's a well known slur against Asian women, what other explanation could possibly be necessary?

Just because one isn't Asian doesn't mean one shouldn't be insulted by the corporate use of that slur or any other use of that slur. We should all care about bigotry even if it doesn't involve our own ethnic, racial, or personal identity. It's demeaning to all of us as human beings.

It's part of what being an American used to be about.

@Greeneyedlady21

It's maybe a well know phrase to some however an explanation was necessary as not everyone has been immersed in this clearly sensitive phraseology. Thanks to @elated it was cleared up for me.

And just for point of reference I wasn't raised in a vacuum, it was in SF with the largest Chinese and Philipino populations outside of their countries.

Still never heard this phrase. We were such a melting pot it may have not been important fodder in our daily lives as we lived side by side pretty with much every nationality on a daily basis and for the most part got along.

They Call Me MR Wilkes · ‎06-29-2016

I absolutely believe that the email was written intentionally, perhaps as someone's idea of a "joke."

It clearly became a very major issue internally as well as for recipients of the email if the QVC President was compelled to issue the apology so quickly.

I suspect QVC employees expressed concern and it was rapidly escalated to the President.

So many "new" posters on several threads about this incident. Some just registered today. Normally it's no big deal, but very odd and interesting today!

ISeeSetters · ‎03-08-2024

I'm seeing so much heat generated by this topic and I suggest much like others have, that someone accidentally ommitted 'A' from the sentence and didn't put a space between ling and time? Maybe this is more of an indictment of our education system rather than a perceived slap in the face of someone...Can we just call it a grammatical error and move on?