Just responding to the crazy argument right now:

Crazy obviously gets used in both ways. 

About the girl with psychological problems you mentioned, IceCream: I think confusing it with talking about girls with mental illness is a mistake.  I dated a girl who was abused and had other ongoing family issues, and I was as nice as possible and was very patient in dealing with those issues, but of course sometimes they manifested themselves in ways that were hurtful to me.  But it would be awful to call someone with serious problems crazy.  She was a nice girl and she was trying her best, but despite all that it was still super frustrating to date her and she periodically treated me pretty badly.  (Incidentally, you were talking about poker--everything bad that happened to her started with her father's gambling addiction, and it destroyed her whole family life from a young age.  So yeah, people make their own decisions about gambling, but if you want to know the social effects of gambling date the innocent daughter of someone addicted to gambling.  Not that I'm critiquing you for being involved in gambling--I don't mind at all.  But I think people who own casinos and stuff like that are shitty people)

However, the fact is that there ARE very emotionally manipulative women who don't have mental illness in the proper sense, and the standard slang to describe them is crazy.  It's not a nice word, obviously, but sometimes meaner language may be deemed appropriate.  So it can be a critique of personality; in which case, the example you gave wouldn't be objectification.

And there ARE men who use the word crazy simply to dismiss their ex and make themselves feel better, even when they were clearly the ones in the wrong.  IceCream said that guys are often refusing to take responsibility for their bad actions.  I think that happens.  I also commonly see situations where guys used it merely because they are hurt, so they want to convince themselves that their ex wasn't worth it--a friend saying, 'She was crazy dude, don't worry about it' can be a crass version of 'You were too good for her.'

I don't know how you can pretend to know in which way it gets used more.  Seems to get used in a lot of ways.  Though, in general, anyone who's still using the word as they're getting further into their 20s is probably a schmuck.

(I'll respond to the other stuff too!  I'm at work so I get time to write in chunks, haha)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 January 21, 7:02 pm)