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Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

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

#841
I clicked on the link thinking: "sigh, another woke propaganda campaign".

"Brave", oh wow, and no alternatives either. "Geronimo", ok, I can kinda get behind that one: I mean, we don't want someone using "Gandalf" or "Gandhi" in similar vein, I suppose. "For god & country, gandhi, gandhi, gandhi" would be kinda weird (chuckled softly).

"Guru" -- :O -- I have always felt we diminished the weight of this word in the western, English speaking world. "Pundit"/"Pandit" & "Guru" have the same connotations as "sir" in my home country but when I came to the US I was mildly disappointed they had very different connotations than "sir" did -- even outside formal contexts.

Then it hit me: Oh snap! Now I get it! I get why someone else may feel the same way about "Geronimo" or "Brave" or "Bury the hatchet". Those are words that _I_ obviously discovered through Western/English-speaking cultures. Perhaps, if the medium was not-English then those words wouldn't carry with them the same connotations that didn't originate from the rightful heirs of that culture.

[The point]: I literally went from thinking "oh, great, more policing of words", when I read the headline, to "Hm, I get it" / "I support this effort". I'm seeing a lot of HN comments tend to lean on the side of taking issue with the post & the effort. I hope sharing my (contrasting) perspective helps.

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

#842

Is there a list of universities that don't do this kind of thing? I wouldn't want to send my kids to a university that published this, I want them to think for themselves. I certainly will strongly discourage them from applying to Stanford. Are there others I should be wary of? (incidentally, not _all_ of the list is ridiculous, but most of it clearly is)

Check out ratings by FIRE [1] and the Heterodox Academy [2].

1: https://www.thefire.org/news/just-released-2022-2023-college...

2: https://heterodoxacademy.org/library/10-colleges-where-you-w...

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

#843
I try not to question the intelligence of others that I don't know, but this might be a case where that's merited. Leaving aside whether words can cause harm (which - I don't know, maybe they can), there are a fair number of logical inconsistencies and standards for what makes the list, as well as just factual errors.

For example "balls to the wall" comes from aviation (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall) and not from human anatomy. Even when the source of that expression is well attributed, later on the list goes on to call out "rule of thumb" even though it says it is unable to attribute the source of that expression (and, yes, maybe there is a violent past to it, but also: a person's thumb is about an inch, a useful way of measuring things of that size scale). And of course, they suggest instead of rule of thumb "standard rule," even though the etymology of "standard" involved "stand" - which elsewhere seems something the list would consider ableist.

Man in some context means an adult human male, but sometimes it just means any human (see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/man). When Neal Armstrong said "... one giant leap for mankind," he was not speaking on behalf of the species. Some groups of Christians have a prayer that reads in part "for us men..." which is prayed equally by the female members of the congregation. There are plenty of cases where the word "men" is equally clear that we're referring to all members of the human species.

And the word "guys" is routinely used to refer to a group that is not just men. People use it all the time, everyone knows what we mean, it does not cause offense, and in using it to refer to a group you are no more implying that the group is all male as you are implying that the group is composed of clones of Guy Fawkes (from whom the term originated).

Besides ones where just facts are getting in the way, there are also many that just seem ineffectual. For example, "the use of person-first language" - In English, adjectives come first. Sometimes English makes use of substantives, either directly or as lone words from other languages. When you put the word "person" first, you aren't magically changing how people construe that sentence - if someone wants to be uncharitable and define someone entirely by a characteristic, they probably will, and the rest of us will go on understanding that each of us can be described in multiple ways depending on the context.

The "Latinx" also needs to go. Every poll I've seen indicates that the people whom it was meant to describe don't care for it, and find it disrespectful of their linguistic heritage.

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

#845
> child prostitute, child who has been trafficked, Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their characteristics.

I'm sorry, but I'm aghast (is that term okay, or is it too close to "ghost", which suggests "death", which might be triggering for somebody who knows somebody who died?) that somebody was able to type this out - a suggestion of a "more sensitive" term for a child involved in prostitution, ostensibly to "not define people by just one of their characteristics" - and wasn't immediately shocked into deleting it right away.

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

#846

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,…

> - Well-known slurs like "Jewed"

Homophones are next. "Hey Jude".

> - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"

Slave comes from "slav"[0]. So speaking of "slaves" or "slavery" is racist.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653

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

#847

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,…

If you were trying to help people be more inclusive with their language, categorizing them like this seems counter to your goals Your own list seems to say that exclusionary language about someone's medical condition (lame) is more acceptable than other exclusionary language, because that stigma has a different history? Or because that language is more common? Those words can still do real harm to real people, even i…

What does "real harm" even mean in this context? Someone will be offended? Their feelings will be hurt? Is that something we need to avoid at all cost in society?

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

#848

They 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…

That's the clever thing about this setup. You can't stop it because any pushback makes you a "fascist" or any other "ist". It's shielded from any type of criticism by shame and mob justice.

You can't tweak this nor will they self-correct. This is a monster to forcefully remove, but nobody dares to do that.

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

#849

Oh wow there was "latinx" there. People from Latin America take a lot of umbrage at having this little exonym pushed on us, believe me. It feels like colonialism. The term "Hispanic" is already very broad to refer to people from a large collection of polities with several cultural spheres in it, but at least the concept of "hispanoamérica" exists in it, and the word isn't a novel take on the Spanish language coming f…

> People from Latin America take a lot of umbrage at having this little exonym pushed on us

Don't.

It's just an effing word.

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

#850

I clicked on the link thinking: "sigh, another woke propaganda campaign". "Brave", oh wow, and no alternatives either. "Geronimo", ok, I can kinda get behind that one: I mean, we don't want someone using "Gandalf" or "Gandhi" in similar vein, I suppose. "For god & country, gandhi, gandhi, gandhi" would be kinda weird (chuckled softly). "Guru" -- :O -- I have always felt we diminished the weight of this word in the we…

Pundit can mean the same thing as in English, it's just that it's not the primary meaning
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