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Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#311

Post by imgabe »

Wait, brown bag is subtle racism?

Somebody needs to explain this to me because I know for a fact I’ve taken lunch to school in paper bags that were literally brown and I have no idea what else this could possibly refer to.

Edit: Looked it up: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/theres-more-seattle-bro...

> "the phrase 'brown bag' does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home.

Yeesh, If someone hears a common phrase (and literal physical description) and immediately jumps to the conclusion that the speaker is referring to some obscure historical factoid in an attempt to slight them...that person needs to get a life. I refuse to believe a single person is actually offended by this rather than just stirring shit up because they crave attention. There's no way.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#312

Post by undersuit »

t344344 wrote: post #3

Is not "equity language" just another form of neocolonialism? How can "rich educated people" rename entire ethnic group (latinx) without their consent? Also there is nothing offensive about being "poor"... Equity language is just another tool to oppress people.

>How can "rich educated people" rename entire ethnic group (latinx) without their consent

I mean someone named them in the first place. The people of Latin America didn't ask to be called Latinos, it was assigned to them, purportedly by a French man.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#313

Post by jimbokun »

undersuit wrote: post #292
tastysandwich wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my partner's entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to "birthing people" Calling my wife a "birthing person" just made her feel like some gross vessel for having a baby. We purposefully chose providers that didn't use that language. "Chestfeeding" is another one that's cropping up and makes zero sense. Men have breasts, so breastfeeding is already gender-neutral. But it's seen as female-centric so out th…

[flagged]

It’s perfectly simple, until you lose track of the distinction between sex and gender.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#315

Post by undersuit »

rayiner wrote: post #301
undersuit wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It can’t be that complex if virtually every human society came up with two distinct words to express the concepts. It’s only complicated if you start from the premise that language must accord the same importance to the experience of small minorities as to the experience of the overwhelming majority.

[flagged]

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#317

Post by throwawayacc5 »

hedora wrote: post #245
HyperSane wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pregnant person is a woman.

[flagged]

>Male monkeys have brought kids to term.

That is fake news from a convicted fraudster. It was claimed but never supported by evidence [0].

"Fertility clinician Cecil Jacobson claimed to have transplanted a fertilized egg from a female baboon to the omentum in the abdominal cavity of a male baboon in the mid-1960s, which then carried the fetus for four months; however, Jacobson did not publish his claims in a scientific journal, and was subsequently convicted on several unrelated counts of fraud for ethical misconduct."

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_pregnancy

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#318

Post by suddenclarity »

crazygringo wrote: post #271
farnsworth wrote: post #230

Only tangentially related but I think it's interesting that just as we popularized the word "Ms.", and I think it makes perfect sense not to refer to women primarily by their marital status, we sort of worked around the issue by... largely just not using title/last name anymore. Right? I don't think I've referred to anyone by a title since my grade school teachers, and at least in my industry and corner of society, i…

Was there a time when adults referred to each other by Mr. and Mrs. in regular spoken conversation? Like if you were asking a work colleague where another colleague was, it was normal to say "Where is Mr. Smith?" rather than "Where is Mark?" Since in my lifetime I've only known calling everyone by their first name (except, like you say, teachers in childhood), I'm curious when the change occurred and how.

It's an exception but latest names are still somewhat common in the army, in sports teams (even at the lowest level), and doctors. No Mr before though but rather last name as a nickname. Maybe the common denominator is a disciplined authoritative environment.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#319

Post by jimbokun »

low_tech_love wrote: post #108
jurassic wrote: post #54

The pendulum is swinging back because equity language censors took this way way too far. People-first language ("enslaved people" not "slaves") makes complete sense to me, but making a big fuss about how common English idioms like being "blind to a problem" is somehow offensive is going to earn you nothing but eyerolls from nearly everyone. Some of these, like "grandfathering", cannot even be understood without deep…

This is an academic issue, ”a solution in search of a problem” as almost all the rest of academia is. As such, it never stops at a reasonable, meaningful equilibrium; it has to be kept pacing, moving forward towards more and more ridiculous extremes. An academic, in order to stay relevant, needs to keep pushing the invisible and mostly inexistent boundaries that they perceive in whatever field they are involved in. I…

It’s important to remember, however annoying they are, their side is losing.

Look at Dave Chappelle, who was the attempted target of cancellation and Netflix and people buying tickets to his shows completely ignored it.

Or JK Rowling, who has been cancelled over and over again, but the latest video game based on her IP is incredibly popular.

Twitter doesn’t reflect the real world.

Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just

#320

Post by zarzavat »

tastysandwich wrote: post #242
jurassic wrote: post #54

The pendulum is swinging back because equity language censors took this way way too far. People-first language ("enslaved people" not "slaves") makes complete sense to me, but making a big fuss about how common English idioms like being "blind to a problem" is somehow offensive is going to earn you nothing but eyerolls from nearly everyone. Some of these, like "grandfathering", cannot even be understood without deep…

> For my partner's entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to "birthing people" Calling my wife a "birthing person" just made her feel like some gross vessel for having a baby. We purposefully chose providers that didn't use that language. "Chestfeeding" is another one that's cropping up and makes zero sense. Men have breasts, so breastfeeding is already gender-neutral. But it's seen as female-centric so out th…

It's ironic because the entire concept of online language policing was invented by arch rivals the radical feminists in the 2010s (anyone remember donglegate?), but the pendulum has swung so far back in the other direction that now the very concept of women is being erased. Geez!

Of course offline language policing is as old as time, but until the late 20th century it was the domain of religions or regimes - those with actual power.

It was only in the ~90s that people realised that you don't need a power structure backing your language policing, you can just apply it anyway, taking advantage of existing status-structured organisations such as universities. In any sizeable population there's enough authoritarians who will gleefully police your linguistic regulations, simply to have power over others.

However, without a serious religious movement backing any of this, the elites will eventually tire of the current linguistic fashion and move onto another cause celebre.

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