As a non-native English speaker this page is gold.
Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
461–470 of 1001 posts
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#462What a wonderful list of words to start using more frequently.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#463Absolutely disgusting. I can't even imagine how corrupted the minds of those who come up with such lists. Having thick skin is a good thing. Actively showing off your fragility isn't. Treating people charitably is a good thing. Actively looking for gotchas isn't.
At some point, weakness became a virtue.
Well by making weakness a virtue you get a populace that is much easier to control
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#464No post body was provided.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#465> OCD
Maybe they should ask actual OCD sufferers whether the term offends them when used to mean “detail oriented” because if they had asked me, a bona fide obsessive-compulsive patient, I would have responded with “meh.” My OCD has caused me untold misery, wrecked relationships, and made work difficult, but we all have a subtle sense about when people mean us harm or are just using a term as a shortcut. Almost never is “OCD” meant to cause personal distress, nor should it.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#466They 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 cu…
Hanlon's razor applies. I don't believe that most of the people doing this are motivated by malign intent. Some are, some people really get off on telling others what to do, getting people fired, etc. But most truly believe they they are doing a service to minority groups.
In your example of "Latinx" for example, if you are a white person who doesn't speak Spanish but you really want to help improve society, it probably sounds like a great idea! Put women and men on an equal footing. It's very easy to walk through a field of landmines if you don't know there's any landmines there. It's very easy to be an activist if you don't know anything at all about the world.
It's better to attack the idea than the people. Push back on that Overton window. Rename your main branch to master. Call someone a Karen.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#467It'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 don't read it as conflating, they just say these are all harmful, not that they are equally harmful. A hangnail is harmful and a car crash is harmful, I try to avoid both. I'm less put out by a hangnail and I go to great lengths to avoid a car crash.
Any list like this should be read as: "you are causing harm somewhere between a paper cut and a gunshot wound, you may not realize it. Be advised you might be causing that harm, in case knowing that would cause you to take a different course of action"
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#468Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
Oh but they will. Words like whitelist and blacklist have been banned by woke theater fiat at the bigco I work at, although I have seen no evidence they actually have anything to do with racism. I suspect our banned words list has a lot of overlap with Stanford's. Rabblerousers like to rabblerouse, and nobody wants to be the voice of reason when the people who decide your paycheck make stupid political decisions.
I actually hate whitelist and blacklist for completely non-woke reasons. I find the terms confusing, and often misleading in operational contexts. I can't tell you the number of situations I've been in when one person's "IP whitelist" was a whitelist to block IPs and another's was to specifically let IPs in. I always insist at $WORK that we use descriptive terms (an IP blocklist, an account allowlist) simply to ensure there are no mistakes and that everyone agrees on what's going on.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#469I got yelled at by a female graduate student for using the term "rule of thumb". The Standford page says: "Although no written record exists today, this phrase is attributed to an old British law that allowed men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.", which I translate as "this is bullshit, but some people have decided to be offended by it".
Used in a similar fashion in Boondock Saints.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#470> "Indian Summer" - This term infers that Indigenous people are chronically late.
I can find zero supporting evidence for this.
Also it's "imply".