Potentially Offensive Terminology

[Scooter]

I'm including this paragraph in a newsletter that I'm sending out to everyone in my camp later today. Some other people on the board might find this to be something to think about:

Potentially Offensive Terminology

When a crew is finishing up a block, it occasionally happens that a number of planters all get thrown into a piece for the last hour or so to finish things up quickly (especially on the last day of a contract). For a number of years, myself and other people have called that a “homo plant.” My understanding of that term was that it was shorthand for “homogenous,” as in “a large group of people working together so that it is difficult to distinguish which trees were planted by any particular employee.” However, it struck me this year that this term could be considered to be offensive to some people who might confuse it with a derogatory term relating to sexual orientation. I don’t want to see any discrimination or comments which might make certain people feel uncomfortable, so I’d like to request that everyone in my camp start referring to such group planting as “cattle plants” from now on. That seems like an appropriate and non-offensive term with no uncertainty as to its meaning: the foremen and checkers are usually herding people around like cattle to make sure that the areas get wrapped up quickly and efficiently. Obviously, our foreman will be doing everything possibly in terms of block organization to avoid any group planting situations like this, but sometimes it happens.

[Rob the Checker]

Hmmmm, never heard it called a homo-plant, but I've seen lots of "cluster-fucks". And the occasional cattle plants.

[Nate]

I've heard cattle plant maybe 60% of the time, homo plant 20%, cluster fuck 15%, and "fuck this I quit" 5%.

[Screefhead]

I often hear group planting referred to as gang bangs. I also find it offensive when a checker says planters are "slutting " in too many trees.

[L'Amour]

Yeah... I've only ever heard "clusterfuck".

[TheHamsterizer]

I saw this notice hanging in a logging camp:

http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/ ... guage.html

[Tupperfan]

Well, regarding such a situation, I only heard of "queered plant", from old slang meaning "to ruin or thwart" or "to put someone in a bad position" (source). Comes from the old days of 1910's planting in the UK (Planters back then smoked even more fags)...

More seriously, I never heard the expression homo plant before. Clusterfuck and cattle plants yes, homo, no.

[MiddleAgeMayhem]

Herd plant, or gang plant, or cocksucking motherfucker plant.

[Mike]

At The Planting Company, Dorsey, Windfirm and Elf, I'd say cattleplant got 90% use, and other (clusterfuck, sometimes something weird like "line or sweep") the other 10%.

Folklore, I'd say homo 50%, other 50%