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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

#631

Post by huevosabio »

Looked at the list and..

Instead of "committed suicide" Use "died by suicide" Reason: "Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions."

...

How does "committed" trivialize the experience? If anything saying "by suicide" obfuscates and weakens the message.

This _reeks_ of a bureaucracy doing busywork and then burdening the rest of the institution with further valueless processes.

Sadly, the US is being strangled by bureaucracies in all sides. University admins, government officials, and even the big tech companies are all showing signs of middle-managers sucking the air out of the institution.

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

#632

Post by tgv »

flakeoil wrote: post #545

Can we please change the name "Stanford" to something else? It offends me. "Stan" looks like "Satan" and "ford" is an automobile brand which makes me think of combustion engines and global warming. I cannot stand it anymore...

It's much worse. Stanford, the actual founder, was a vile person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford#Native_America...

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

#633

Post by OJFord »

lbwtaylor wrote: post #530
crackercrews wrote: post #424

It is hard to choose which of these is silliest, but my vote goes to the replacement of "he" with [name] or "they", until you know the person's preferred pronouns. [1] The vast, vast majority of people who present as male wish to be referred to as "he". Many of them would be offended or confused if you used "they" as a term of reference. Many listeners would also be confused if you referred to a person who appears to…

Until 'they' got pulled into duty, English didn't have a non gendered pronoun, so if you were referring to someone where you didn't know the gender, you had a choice of defaulting to "he", randomly choosing "he" or " she", or using "he or she" or "the [descriptor like 'programmer']* They at first sounded weird being repurposed this way, but I think now it works better than any of the list above. Once you start using…

That's not true at all, it was always ('always') 'they' when unknown. I was taught as much in school well before all this.

It's a big and bizarre step to throw out 'he' and 'she' completely for all known men and women until such time as they confirm that yes they indeed are men and women, just to satisfy the miniscule proportion of them who are not. The exceptional ones should be the ones to point it out and then we can just say 'oh ok sure sorry' and move on.

> someone's gender you don't want to assume

Unless they look like someone who 'might not want their gender assumed', I'm perfectly happy assuming peoples gender, because it will be correct in the vast vast vast majority of cases.

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

#634

Post by marcus0x62 »

Many of the suggested entries are no different than the allegedly problematic word and phrases. What is the difference, practical or otherwise, between “committed suicide” and “died by suicide”?

Also, if anyone from Stanford is reading, “balls to the wall” refers to the operation of a centrifugal governor. It is not a reference to male anatomy.

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

#635

Post by clcaev »

narrator wrote: post #607
imgabe wrote: post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

The reason these kinds of rules are showing up everywhere is to get control of organizations by inventing grievances that can be deployed at any time to remove inconvenient people and quickly take over the organizations they've built. A variant of this is the WEF's Stakeholder Capitalism where outside groups can infiltrate corporations and then use invented grievances to quickly take control of these organizations.

I see this initiative differently, as a way to educate people how their choice of words can affect those around them. I don't see any hard "rules" here, so much as describing phrases that could be harmful, in context. I just now learned quite a bit from just reading words from the Abelist category.

I suppose this resource could be used to more effectively sanction individuals who consistently demonstrate behavior harmful to those around them. It could be referenced early and often, so that repeat offenses more quickly lead to dismissal. Even so, I don't see this as good or bad. At least the word list and rationale is explicit. A wrongful dismissal can challenged, or even litigated, no?

Cannot this reference be used to better defend someone who uses a poor choice of words as their sole offense? There are so many words and phrases enumerated, it aptly demonstrates just how challenging and context dependent things are. That quadriplegic, for example, is listed tends to undermine the validity of listing actually offensive phrases. Conversely, the explanation of "basket case" and "spaz" were quite informative to me; I don't use these words, but, it's useful to better understand why they could be offensive.

Addendum: I think this particular document is inappropriately broad, including phrases that have no business being here. That said, the same text with a conservative scope seems it could be helpful, at least for educating authors who may not be aware of the nuances some of these phrases have. For example, "going off the reservation" is quite offensive once you understand the history of this phrase. People may use phrases like this without knowing its ugly reference, when a better fitting phrase could be used.

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

#637

Post by mettamage »

huevosabio wrote: post #631

Looked at the list and.. Instead of "committed suicide" Use "died by suicide" Reason: "Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions." ... How does "committed" trivialize the experience? If anything saying "by suicide" obfuscates and weakens the message. This _reeks_ of a bureaucracy doing busywork and then burdening the rest of the institution with further valueless…

IMO "died by suicide" trivializes it more than "committed suicide" because when you commit to something it shows intention. It shows the committer decided to kill themselves. I don't understand how that can be interpreted as trivial. By saying "died by suicide" it comes across as if they didn't have agency, it's as if their were a victim of certain circumstances, had no choice in the matter and that it was a foregone conclusion that they'd kill themselves.

With that said, I think it's all hair splitting in the first place. Whether someone says died by suicide or committed suicide. It's a tragic act and a tragic event and it makes me sad that it happens.

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

#638

Post by Lazare »

thomasahle wrote: post #408
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,…

> Indian summer | late summer | This term infers that Indigenous people are chronically late. While it may be innocently used to describe a beautiful time of year, it could have an unintended negative impact on those who hear it. This one was surprising to me. I always assumed Indian summer was about summer in India lasting longer. Apparently it really is about an American phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I…

They got the etymology wrong. There is no negative connotation.

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

#639

Post by tgv »

allendoerfer wrote: post #579

> hip-hip hurray, hip hip hooray > This term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods. I don’t know, might have been used that way. Wikipedia says it originated from different militaries using it as a rallying cry, while hip actually comes from the English word. As a German, I would not use it today, because it‘s ra…

The Dutch historical dictionary (we say "hiep hiep hoera") says it might stem from Prussian soldiers, but that an older reference exists about use by English sailors, and there was a considerable linguistic exchange between seamen. Another option it cites is that it came via the French houra from the Russian "urá", a transcription of a Kozak war cry.

There's no way whatsoever that it is tied to the Holocaust. If we take that path, I guess books will be banned next, so they can no longer be burned.

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

#640

Post by AustinDev »

Ekaros wrote: post #131
DerSaidin wrote: post #65

> Instead of: African-American > Consider using: Black Was this previously the other way around?

I'm waiting for the time we go back to some variant of the Latin word for colour black. At this point, it might be possible.

You‘ve got a point we’re almost back to ‘colored’ with all this talk about ‘people of color’
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