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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

#711

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#712

Post by skeeter2020 »

xg15 wrote: post #622
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…

> This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Nitpick, there are two kinds of "flopping" in sports, which you can both observe e.g. in soccer. One is to simulate a made-up foul as you say, basically trying to mislead the referee into giving an unjustified penalty. This is clearly illegal and constitutes a foul itself. However, often players flop t…

>> If small, subtle fouls went unpunished, they'd be an easy way to gain an unfair advantage for your team. So the game would very quickly turn into a contest of how to hide fouls best from the referee.

Only in soccer, and even then only with particular types of players... I don't know how to describe them without using any of these words...

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

#713

Post by LegitShady »

amelius wrote: post #667
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…

> I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". It's not from reading such words once. But if you hear them many many times, they can cause harm because they create subtle biases, prejudices, change one's self-image, etc.

no

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

#714

Post by oldgradstudent »

antihero wrote: post #628
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…

Some of them are deliberate slurs but most of them are just colourful language. This list is 95% absolutely ridiculous and I’m what you’d probably consider a proponent of social justice. It’s deeply funny, but also tragic because while there should be an attempt to make language inclusive, lists like this make the movement look like a joke.

> Some of them are deliberate slurs but most of them are just colourful language.

Some of them are just simple language.

>> user

>> While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain.

Seriously?

> It’s deeply funny, but also tragic because while there should be an attempt to make language inclusive, lists like this make the movement look like a joke.

Unfortunately, they can't notice because they lack a sense of humor.

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

#715

Post by TexanFeller »

midasz wrote: post #532

Serious question, and maybe this is ignorant because I do not have an academic background but: Are these people not just a vocal minority? And if so, who cares? It seems like the internet is always up in arms about woke-ism but I honestly don't notice much of it in my daily life. At work, sure there are rules and regulations, but they make sense. Treat people with respect is always my default stance. If I make an ass…

You'd be wrong to assume people are reasonable about this. I work at a place that is a bit progressive, but much less so than SV bigcos...also this is in Texas. I interviewed a person whose resume had a clearly female name, appeared more feminine than many tomboy type women I know, and otherwise gave no signals to us about gender identity(they went by a nickname which was gender neutral, which in hindsight is a signal, but subtle, not at all clear). Turns out they considered themselves nonbinary. During the round table afterwards I got called out for writing "she" in my summary of their interview and had to listen to someone grandstand for a couple of minutes about respecting nonbinary persons' pronouns in front of about a dozen senior people in the company. The interview panel leader advised us all to always say "the candidate" and never use pronouns in the future. Funny thing is "the candidate" seemed like a chill person that probably wouldn't have taken offense anyway.

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

#717

Post by IceHegel »

javajosh wrote: post #710

An excellent illustration of the beginnings of an SJW dystopia. Not just the list itself, but the general feeling of fear they want you to feel while speaking. One can draw a link between any word and a possible harm - something that a few comments have hilariously shown with some examples. So if the goal was protecting anyone from every possible harmful word, the list fails. But this demonstrates real evil that hide…

The general feeling of fear is the point.

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

#719

Post by jvanderbot »

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…

My issue with the list is that we're increasing the harm associated with the words in the list. If we perpetuate the story that people are harmed, and introduce new harmful associations that most people don't have, then we're broadening the blast radius ( oh sorry sphere of effect ).

The stories we tell ourselves matter, and I don't see why everyone has to tell the most pessimistic, helpless story possible when these words come up by believing that harm is inevitable for each word on this (or any) list.

If we really need to police (sorry, regulate) language this much an alternative narrative would be that "these words are embarrassing for the speaker because they may appear old fashioned or niche".

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

#720

Post by fnordpiglet »

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,…

Surely “American” is the most absurd. Literally no one is offended that people in the United States of America are referred to as American, even if there are 42 other countries in the Americas. The technical fact is it’s correct - anyone in the americas could be called an American correctly. But only one has “America” in the country name. But by including this it sparks a patriotic and nationalist response in most Americans and makes the whole “wokeism is against us” meme have teeth. It’s the political football that speaks to many people, especially immigrants who are proud to be called an American and not merely a U.S. citizen - which frankly has more nativist connotations and is used to separate natural born citizens from naturalized.

They also focus on age being the problem with “grey beard” rather than the implication that all senior engineers are men. I’ve always been turned off by the term not because it singles out age as a proxy for experience, because they’re literally proxies for each other. You don’t have 30 years of experience without aging 20 years. But not everyone with 30 years of experience can grow a beard or has a penis. Given the gender issues in technology, which are so obvious in the statistics over time, I genuinely think language like this calcifies the gender divide.

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