The comedy of this list is perfected by them banning the use of the phrase "calling a spade a spade".
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Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
341–350 of 1001 posts
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#342I remember English teacher lady being slightly offended because I kept referring she as "he". I could not help it, native language has no grammatical genders. But this was 50 years ago, could not imagine what would happen today. Judging by Youtube-videos bodily harm would be almost certain.
I'm eternally grateful that it doesn't have grammatical gender and that we call everyone "it". Spares us from some of the nonsense getting imported from the States.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#343The corporate memphis art and the content warning is just the cherry on top of this steaming pile of crap. Projects like this are doomed, because they fundamentally ignore how language works, how language evolves, and how humans work. My favourite example is "idiot". Once upon a time it was a clinical diagnosis used by physicians to describe people. This word of course turned into a slur, so the diagnosis word had to…
Maybe doctors are realizing how language works? I bet "mentally handicapped" is less likely to become a slur because it's not short, catchy and convenient like "idiot" or "retard".
The irony, since retard was chosen as a gentle way of saying "slow".
Mabye you're right, more syllables, less catchy.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#344There would be less emphasis on symbolic politics, such as this project, if we could make material progress on social inequity. It does not cost any money to change language. It would be difficult and costly to seriously reinvest in people who have been left behind. For example, if it was politically possible guarantee schools in poor neighbourhoods were funded just as well as schools in wealthy neighbourhoods, do yo…
It's not funding. A teacher friend's literally been told that he should let a student stab him before defending himself.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#345They 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…
The thing more of us need to understand is this has never been about "safety", it's about power and control.
Becoming able to control someone's thoughts is very, very powerful and sought after, and what are thoughts composed of? Language. Define the language and you define how people think.
Define people of latin origin should be referred to by "latinx" and nothing else and congratulations: An entire collection of cultures was removed of their identity and subjugated.
Define all environmental concerns as "global warming" and later "climate change" and congratulations: You just invalidated swaths of inventions and solutions created by our forefathers and turned entire fields of science into a handy little political tool to fling around for profit.
Define science as something to be unconditionally trusted and congratulations: You just turned science into a religion and gained one of the biggest religious forces known to man to use for profit.
The people behind all this are very ingenious and very dangerous; he who controls language owns the human world.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#346Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking. We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of our species' evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion, just as we have finally begun to see the light.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#347Does anyone have any good alternative to saying "dad joke?" The term "dad" in "dad joke" excludes anyone who doesn't, is incapable, or chooses not to have children (procreating?) and who also identifies (explicitly or implicitly) as a member of the category "male" (a vestigial term from the sex-assigned binary heterodoxy). I don't think calling "dad jokes" just "jokes" is precise enough language because people typica…
> Does anyone have any good alternative to saying "dad joke?"
If you ask my kids, a good alternative would be for me to just not tell any jokes.
(See what I did there? That's a dad joke, and I'm proud of it.)
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#348I 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…
> Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their characteristics
For people so obsessed with language, it seems pretty silly to so readily conflate "definition" with "classification".
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#349It'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,…
I can think of a few more!
"register" - might indicate that someone has to register as a second-class citizen, enemy alien, etc.
"bit" - might imply that someone is only a 'bit player', leading to feelings of inferiority.
"tool" - an obviously offensive word meaning that someone is only fit to be used by others.
"terminal" - we need to be sensitive about words that bring up the concept of death, to avoid triggering effects.
"inheritance" - individuals are not the product of their ancestry!
"class" - we don't need a class-structured society, that's a leftover from a feudal past.
"polymorphism" - too close to hermaphrodite, must be eliminated.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#350I read though the suggestions. So "trigger warning" is now problematic and the proper alternative is "content note". And "Preferred pronouns" is hate speech, because you imply that pronouns are merely a preference, as if the person can choose their identity. Godspeed.
These people continue to swallow themselves through the ratchet of cancellation.
They are like the Star Bellied Sneetches. Except instead of applying and removing stars from their bellies until no one knows who is in or out or good or bad, they include and exclude by ever more tortured use of language.