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Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

itcommunity.stanford.edu

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Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#331

Post by outside1234 »

Can we talk about Latinx?

This is entirely something that English speakers have made up for Spanish speakers. My wife, who works in healthcare for the state, and largely with farm workers, regales me constantly with stories that essentially have the punchline “Que es Latinx?” in which she has to explain to them that this means them and that it was made up (perhaps at Stanford) out of some crazy attempt to remove -a and -o endings FROM THEIR LANGUAGE because it hurts their English ears.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#332

Post by cipheredStones »

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates:

- Well-known slurs like "Jewed"

- Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite"

- Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"

- Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower"

- Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid")

- Words that, if you look into their history, originally had something to do with some racist practice ("grandfather" something in)

- Words that never had anything to do with racism, but someone who was really on high alert might wonder if they ever did ("tarball" for "archive made with the tar tool")

- Anything that might be derogatory to anybody ("Karen": "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors.")

- Terms that I genuinely have no idea how anyone could view as harmful in their actual context: "user" ("it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues"), "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")

Very much an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#334

Post by amluto »

kgwgk wrote: post #69

I don’t think I had seen those before: tarball [use instead: tar archive] While the term refers to an archive that has been created with the tar command, it can be negatively associated with the pejorative term tarbaby. whitespace [use instead: empty space] Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized. Some of the “solutions” are funny: Hispanic [use instead: Lat…

Surely tarball comes from tar, which is short for “tape archive”, which has nothing to do with the goo left behind from pyrolysis or with its color. Apparently whoever made this list doesn’t understand the purpose of the tar command :)

(Y’all should really stop conflating tar with asphalt though. The terms are related but not always interchangeable.)

Whitespace is pathetic. Even the article itself has a white background. In any case, in a lot of modern programmer usage, whitespace is not empty. Saying that empty space is significant in some file format would be rather silly. White_space is part of the Unicode standard, TYVM.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#335

Post by pclmulqdq »

cipheredStones wrote: post #332

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…

They just don't want to be called "Karens" for imposing a speech code on the school. It's 100% illegal in CA to do this thanks to Leonard's Law.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#336

Post by russdill »

than3 wrote: post #281

This kind of initiative lacks a core understanding of the requirements for thinking and intelligence in general, and by its nature of compulsion is subversive. In order to think, you must risk being offensive, in order to learn you must risk being offended. In either case, you must have the freedom to do either, and compulsion is evil. By compelling speech like that, you are indoctrinating future generations, and doi…

No post body was provided.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#337

Post by rsj_hn »

russdill wrote: post #336
than3 wrote: post #281

This kind of initiative lacks a core understanding of the requirements for thinking and intelligence in general, and by its nature of compulsion is subversive. In order to think, you must risk being offensive, in order to learn you must risk being offended. In either case, you must have the freedom to do either, and compulsion is evil. By compelling speech like that, you are indoctrinating future generations, and doi…

Quoted post unavailable.

I think most people are fine with a style guide discouraging "retards". That's not the issue here at all, and I'm really surprised that you think this is what people are objecting to. Do you really believe this is the problem?

On the other hand, a style guide discouraging "users" or "master" is a problem, especially for a school that offers Masters of Science degrees -- how exactly is their website supposed to cover that? How are software usage guides supposed to be posted online if "user" is not allowed? Or "submit"?

People turn to the web for information and need to be able to obtain this information. Stanford should understand this.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#338

Post by CoastalCoder »

hnarn wrote: post #225

Can someone please steelman the argument that language can be harmful , because I just don’t get it. There’s physical and psychological harm, clearly it’s not physical so it’s saying that people are being harmed in a psychological way from a certain type of language. Ok, so are they developing disorders, or what kind of harm are we talking about? My understanding is that we’re talking about language that causes offen…

No post body was provided.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#340

Post by jimbokun »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #275
testfoobar wrote: post #258

They apparently spider and scan their own websites for "harmful" language: I just find this wild. How and when did language itself become so dangerous to this degree? Along with most adults in my social circle, I care and think about my health, my family, my friends, my work, my dog, my environment, my community, etc. I could not give a flying fuck about language policing. Language isn't going to protect me on my bik…

Fashions will change and fade, and find fault with every word like grasping at straws to find something to be offended over. I'm sorry, that term is now racist: grasping at threads. I'm sorry, that term is now sexist: grasping at leaves. Ad infinium.

I believe a large fraction of the words they label offensive were previously replacements for other words considered offensive.
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