But it’s also possible everyone was just making assumptions about the behavior of French women. Americans have long regarded Europe and especially France as devil’s playgrounds full of loose women and universal healthcare, so when soldiers came home, reasonably sexually restless, and tried to convince their ladies to get a little dirtier by claiming they’d seen French and/or Italian women slutting up, what reason was there not to believe them? (Some people tried to make “Florentine kiss” happen, but it didn’t, well, roll off the tongue.) The phrase itself probably came from soldiers telling each other, “While in France, get the girls to kiss you,” which was later shortened to “Get a French kiss.” Maybe they just thought French girls were hot. Leave it to the patriarchy to ascribe all manner of sinful behavior to any woman they find attractive.
Of course, kissing with tongues was less taboo in Europe. In fact, the French didn’t even have a word for it until 2014 because it was just another way to kiss, much like how we don’t have any specific words for shoving your tongue down a person’s throat or darting in and out like a confused fish. That year, they adopted “galocher,” which is derived from the French word for an ice skate, so they might still not be totally clear on what we’re on about.
Cryptocurrency – Another Reason It Sucks
When you picture a Bitcoin enthusiast, you’re definitely thinking of a weirdly aggressive white guy, and there’s a reason for that beyond their Elon Musk fan Twitters. Cryptocurrency has been dubbed “the currency of the alt-right” for reasons that no one understands but have something to do with it being decoupled from any government, and it’s completely changed the economy of white supremacy, which is, ugh, yes, a thing.
Back in the day, if an extremist organization wanted to support its extreming, they typically sold music, played concerts, or hosted events. In other words, they had to be good (or at least try) at something, just like the rest of us. With the rise of the internet, they realized all they had to do was yell racial slurs into YouTube or harass someone off social media and watch the donations and ad revenue poor in.
Everything was coming up racist until PayPal, Google, GoFundMe, and everyone else you need to make money online decided they didn’t want to help a bunch of hate criminals, but good, old, terms-of-service-free Bitcoin was there to pick up the slack. The whole idea is that it’s beholden to no one, leaving alt-right leaders free to set up their own platforms where they receive donations via cryptocurrency.
Arguably, none of that is Bitcoin’s fault, but when people are comfortable enough to hack into a portfolio manager’s system to blast racist messages to its customers, you have to wonder if your gloriously decentralized currency was actually a great idea. The exchanges themselves have their own problem: One was so toxic to its Black employees that a good three-quarters of them (that is, 15 out of a 600-employee company) have walked out over the last few years.
Top image: ilovetattoos/Pixabay
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