[selestify]

Rape is a highly traumatic event. Getting offended at a foreigner’s well-meaning amusement that your town name means something funny in their language... doesn’t elicit much sympathy from me at all.

Now getting your signs stolen isn’t very nice at all and becomes less well-meaning, I agree. But I hardly think the joke itself is anything immoral at all.

[DoreenMichele]

So if your five year old child has a good view of this sign from their window at home in a tiny village or walks past it regularly on their way home from school and is thereby exposed to random strangers from across the globe pretending to have sex while taking photos, you are supposed to care more that random people on the internet feel you have no right to be incensed and change the name than about the negative impacts to the people of the village where you live?

I cannot fathom why so many people are objecting to their right to change the name of their village. They don't like what's happening. They don't need the world's permission to say "I can't stop assholes from around the globe from being assholes, but I can change the damn name that is their excuse for acting like butts to my town." and now people think it's the townspeople who are in the wrong and not the random assholes from across the globe whose bad behavior they got fed up with.

Wow.

I think I need to get off of HN for a bit. This is just ridiculous.

[selestify]

I’m not objecting to them changing their name, they can do whatever they want with their own town. I’m objecting to the idea that it’s somehow immoral for foreigners to find something about your town amusing.

And yeah, maybe don’t be so prudish. Children seeing random strangers shaking their hips isn’t the end of the world. I personally find that ridiculous. But probably a little bit less ridiculous still than your initial comparison of this to rape of all things.

> I think I need to get off of HN for a bit.

Goodbye.

[ce4]

Exactly this, the people from Austria and southern Germany don't find that name offensive at all. They've had enough. And now they exert their right to be left alone and not be harassed by a serious number of english speaking idiots. Places ending in -ing hasnt the same grammatical meaning like doing something, that scheme is really common (Mering, Kissing, Manching, Piding, Peiting, and hundreds more). It's the same idiots that beleaguer known instagram photo spots - just a worse kind. And only for some quick silly joke that humiliates the people there. This will hopefully stop the influx of assholes stealing the village's signpost, "insta posing" at the village sign and making prank calls. Also note that normal people live there, probably in a closer knit arrangement than you normally would assume (3 digit inhabitants). I'm rather sure that persons who profit off the infamous name are looked down to (eg. the silly "Fucking Hell" beer brand, "hell" meaning light in that case in german). Dont forget it's normal people living over there, Doctors, Engineers, Farmers - and they want to be treated that way :)

PS: The pronunciation will not change.

[zeroc8]

Austrian here. I don't think they have much of a problem with the sexual aspect of the name, but while it may be funny initially, the joke really gets old after years and years of prank calls. I guess they just have had enough.

[Dylan16807]

The post was a suggestion to sell signs, not an approval of the portion of people taking photos that are in highly inappropriate poses.

So yes, this argument is ridiculous.

[ce4]

I'm not living there but I would guess that profiteering off the name is seen with contempt as it approves of the meaning. At least for older people. Tbh, your suggestion to cash in on that silly phenomena wouldnt make it stop. Not everything that can be profitable needs to be done :-)

[setr]

Well, it'd stop the vandalism and town theft, the originally defined issue: Free publicity that leads to sign posts being stolen. For a tiny village of 100 people, this is likely a serious hardship.

But more notably, it's a way of moving the problem into a more concretely defined space, ideally out of sight and out of mind (and the money is just a bonus). Such a shop would become like the tourist portion of any large city -- a place locals avoid, and captures most of the visting rabble.

You'll still have your vandals and troublemakers on the street, but hopefully at significantly reduced rates.

[Dylan16807]

Not my suggestion.

[DoreenMichele]

I noted that it sounded like an attractive nuisance. I failed to list all the ways in which it was an attractive nuisance and only focused on the part where it's obviously costing a small town money.

Then HN pedantry and argumentation kicked in.

The townspeople clearly see it as an attractive nuisance and not as free publicity. They chose to change the name because it's such a nuisance. Now a bunch of people on HN feel the townspeople were wrong to handle it that way and have a zillion criticisms and solutions.

The townspeople didn't ask HNs permission or opinion. And a lot of the comments here before I noted that it's an attractive nuisance were basically junior high style humor listing all the towns with "bad word" names and giggling about it -- which I initially participated in and then deleted those comments to try to behave in accordance with HN rules and treat the article in a more serious fashion, at which point I made my comment about it being an attractive nuisance.

And that's apparently where I made my wrong turn for the day. And there is no cure for where that took me, it seems.

[Dylan16807]

Not everyone that's disappointed in the name change is arguing that the townspeople were "wrong to handle it that way" and need anyone's "permission".

[LocalH]

I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape. Few things are actually comparable to rape in severity

[DoreenMichele]

I think you made your wrong turn when you equated this to the heinous crime of rape.

You are no doubt correct, which is aggravating to me for a long list of reasons.

From the article:

Increasing numbers of English-speaking tourists have made a point of stopping in to snap pictures of themselves by the signpost at the entrance to the village, sometimes striking lascivious poses for social media.

The word is not a sexual word in German. It is in English. This is being forced on the village without their consent and it is leading to sexualized behavior without their consent.

When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape. When a bunch of tourists do that to a town, we point and laugh and act like the town is overreacting and doesn't have a sense of humor.

Over the years, I have tried to think of another example of something where we make this distinction that if we agree to it, it's a good thing and if we don't then it's a bad thing. Rape vs "making love" is the only one I know where we make that distinction and the legal distinction hinges on the detail of consent.

There was a case where a man and woman were getting divorced and she accused him of rape and there was film of the incident because violent sex was her kink. He was found innocent. Violent sex with consent is kink or BDSM, not rape. Rape is about lack of consent, not about the degree of violence.

Rape is not always as clear cut as people would like to imagine. It's really common for women to feel confused about whether or not what happened to them was really rape, in part because people imagine that rape is some kind of violent assault and not simply the detail of lack of clear consent.

The legal definition of rape hinges on the detail of consent and this town is having a sexualized thing forced upon them without their consent. It's unfortunate that people feel I am somehow "escalating" this to a much more terrible thing than it is rather than seeing my remarks as clarifying part of why this is so extremely objectionable to the townspeople.

[Dylan16807]

> When one man does that to one woman, we define it as rape.

The equivalent of these no-contact actions gets called sexual harassment, not rape.