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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

#691

Post by coldtea »

bartread wrote: post #624
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…

Here's one of many such egregious examples: > committed suicide > died by suicide > Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions. I had a friend commit suicide, and one of my mum's colleagues - also an acquiantance of mine, who I'd chat with in the pub semi-regularly - also committed suicide many years ago. I've suffered with depression for much of my life since my…

If anything, their term "ableist language" trivializes the trials and tribulations of the so-called abled people.

It's not just people with diagnosed issues and actual pathologies that have huge problems in their life - or that commit suicide. "Able" people commit suicide all the time.

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

#693

Post by curiousllama »

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It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want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,…

It's also intresting that some of these terms were, initially at least, meant to be anti-racist.

"Survivor" is on the list (as in, survivor of SA). So is "Karen" (which, IIRC, was popularized through videos of white people harassing black folks minding their own business).

I can't imagine this list should be used as anything more than an MLA style-guide type list of "these are outdated terms for formal writing"

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

#694

Post by himinlomax »

4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote: post #229

Looking at it from a different angle, I don’t like the more wordy suggestions. > convict…person who is/was incarcerated > senile…person suffering from senility Before I hit send I try to make my writing clear, concise, and full of meaning. I do it in the hope that the folks on the other end read and understand me. Swapping one term for a slightly longer one won’t be a breaking point, but sentences like: > I went to v…

It's also wrong, because someone can have been incarcerated without having been convicted.

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

#695

Post by readerbaza »

seydor wrote: post #615

Who do i contact to add a few thousand terms to the list? It's kind of urgent please, starting with the word byzantine BTW isn't "Elimination" kind of vionent as a term? I wish they used a less upsetting name. In any case, by upvoting this you are providing visibility to nonsense.

They see elimination in a positive light, because they won't apply it to themselves.

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

#698

Post by coldtea »

bawolff wrote: post #570
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…

Although a lot of this list seems silly, it also has slurs like "retard" and "jewed" on it, which i think are very reasonably considered offensive. I think the tarball thing is rediculous, but the opposite extreme of no words can be hurtful is also rediculous.

Retard was not a slur. It was a medical term, "mental retardation" (it's still actually used in some of the literature).

It was used as a slur, the way any term can be used as a slur: by saying it to insult someone. The intend made it a slur, not the term.

In fact, in the case of insulting, it was primarily used against people who don't have that condition (mind developmental problems). "See what you've done? Are you a r...?", etc. For the people actually having such condition, it was just the medical term the literature, and their own doctors used to describe their condition.

Replacing the term doesn't change the mindset. Any new term adopted can equally be used with malice, it's just a BS arms race, focusing on words, when it should have focused on the bullying and attitude. But that would actually make sense - and have an actual effect, so why not take the easier path?

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

#699

Post by [deleted] »

Manuel_D wrote: post #271

Some of these seem like legitimate improvements. A lot are inconsequential (e.g. "homeless person" vs "a person without a home"). But some are genuinely degrading our ability to communicate. E.g. "paraplegic" and "quadriplegic" should both be replaced with: "person with a spinal cord injury, person who is paralyzed" But this lacks the old term that distinguished paralysis below the waist with paralysis below the neck…

[deleted]

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

#700

Post by prepend »

This doesn’t seem real. Maybe it’s a distraction to engage people who spend a lot of time on things like this so they don’t get involved in real activities and gum up the works.

I’ve seen this used where there is an anti-productive person who makes other people waste time. When there’s one of these on a project, it can be a real drain. But if there’s two, you can plug them into each other and they’ll sort of create a perpetual motion machine of stupidity of important sounding make work.

It’s important to set a task so it doesn’t suck in others. But forming a committee on conference room naming or something might work.

Cynically, I suspect I’ve been out on these types of tasks. So any time I’m stuck on a Sisyphean task, I try to step back and see if I’ve been stuck on ark ship B [0].

[0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...

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