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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

#381

Post by ShredKazoo »

lynx23 wrote: post #363

What was it, 10 to 20 years ago, people started to be noticeably nervous when they were coming near a description of my disability. It used to be so simple. I am 100% blind, and guess what, I prefer the term blind because it is pretty descriptive and relatively short. But all of a sudden, people external to the community started to fumble around with "visually challenged", and all the nonsense variations of that in m…

Interesting, thanks for chiming in. I wonder if the best way to push back against language policing is to simply poll various groups, see which language they prefer, and publish the results. The deltas could be interesting as well, e.g. even if most blind people dislike the term "blind", it would still be interesting if they are more likely to prefer the term "blind" than a member of the general population.

I think public opinion polling might actually solve the problem, because the actual group has greater moral authority than language police activists. I suspect people might not cite this Atlantic article during a discussion of whether their organization should adopt language policing for fear of coming across as a reactionary old fogey. But if you were citing a poll of the group in question, that's a level of moral authority that's hard for a language police activist to argue against.

Basically the hypothesis to test here is that a latinx-type reaction is fairly common, it just doesn't generally reach public consciousness the way it did in the case of latinx.

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

#382

Post by recuter »

lynx23 wrote: post #363

What was it, 10 to 20 years ago, people started to be noticeably nervous when they were coming near a description of my disability. It used to be so simple. I am 100% blind, and guess what, I prefer the term blind because it is pretty descriptive and relatively short. But all of a sudden, people external to the community started to fumble around with "visually challenged", and all the nonsense variations of that in m…

I was going to recommend a masterpiece of cinema to you called Blind Fury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Fury

The realization that it would be pointless, alas, came to me too late. Let me just give you a taste:

  While serving in Vietnam, American soldier Nick Parker was blinded by a mortar explosion. Rescued by local villagers, he recovered his health and, though he remains blind, was trained to master his other senses and becomes an expert swordsman.
So, he wears 80s sunglasses and wields a goddamn katana. He is also a hobo. Like Caine from Kong Fu he roams the earth and lowlifes always pick fights with him because they underestimate his... err... blind fury.

There is an "adorable" little kid aptly named Billy, and one dimensional baddies, 'etc. The character is masterfully portrayed by one of the best b-movie actors of all time -- Rutger Hauer (best known for the best bit of Blade Runner).

Anyway I think it is a shame woke imbeciles who run movie studios would refuse to make such a thing today because when I saw it as a kid it made me realize being blind is really not the end of the world. Here you are posting on HN and your insights about society are more astute than the majority of the population. So I just wanted to say that you certainly see what is going on accurately.

P.S. - if you wish to visualize the language police people, they typically look like vogons and pull ugly faces when they speak.

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

#383

Post by throwawayacc5 »

Nicksil wrote: post #369
throwawayacc5 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 scientif…

[flagged]

Is this a bot?

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

#384

Post by dimva »

echelon wrote: post #287
dimva wrote: post #277

The ever-changing euphemistic language seems to me like mostly just a new way to be a hipster. The new vocabulary is a shibboleth to distinguish people who got the right sort of education from the right sort of places. Your knowledge of all the proper euphemisms to use sets you apart from the uneducated rubes. The problem is, it sets you apart from the people you're allegedly trying to help, given that the marginaliz…

> shibboleth to distinguish people who got the right sort of education from the right sort of places I don't think you're right. We're being told our words are wrong on a daily basis. I think that this started with Tumblr in the early 2010's and has grown into a movement sometime during the Trump presidency.

Does this fundamentally disagree with anything I wrote? Before Tumblr became a place where some people showed off their inscrutable social justice terminology, it was mostly a place where hipsters showed off their inscrutably cool aesthetics.

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

#385

Post by imgabe »

randomdata wrote: post #337
imgabe wrote: post #311

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 understa…

> I’ve taken lunch to school in paper bags that were literally brown Are you sure they weren't a certain shade of orange?

I'm no graphic designer or artist, they look brown to me. They still sell them at Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Self-Standing-Lunch-B...

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

#386

Post by ShredKazoo »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #380
ShredKazoo wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely sure how to parse your comment. Did you notice this section? >Equity-language guides are proliferating among some of the country’s leading institutions, particularly nonprofits. The American Cancer Society has one. So do the American Heart Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Recreation and Park Association, the Columbia University School…

I would ask you to consider where the mass of everyday people get their information. Consider the edifices from which actual powers spring. Now read that list again and see if it seems important.

Fair point, but on the other hand, if language policing leads the American Medical Association to make decisions which decrease the quality of medical care, I'm not enthusiastic about that. The relative importance of the opinions of everyday people vs these associations is not obvious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35006303

Re: "the edifices from which actual powers spring" -- if you want a high-paying job as a doctor, maybe you'll be best served by adopting their language guidelines. I could see the trend spreading through the general population because playing the language game becomes the best way to achieve "actual powers".

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

#387

Post by bcrosby95 »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #359
sirmarksalot wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take any equity language guides with a grain of salt, but how people respond to them speaks volumes about who they are. Obviously there are problems with it. It's largely performative, it can distract from bigger advocacy work, and it's often a lazy attempt by a large organization or corporation to avoid having to make meaningful changes. The thing is, when you add terms like "victimhood culture" to your response,…

It’s an exercise of power by a wealthy ($30k/yr is rich in most world), western, educated, native English speaking elite over the unprivileged. Someone who studied English in high school in rural India does not have access to the latest equity terminology nor the western cultural context to understand it. Changing language is a great tool to privilege the non working academic class with access and time to study the l…

Hell, most of it originates in the US, where we practice our cultural imperialism and force everyone else to bow to our ever evolving norms and sensibilities based upon our own country's fucked up history.

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

#388

Post by tomp »

undersuit wrote: post #314
jimbokun wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Human female.

And if you’re looking for a scientific definition of female, it’s

”an organism that in sexual maturity produces ova (large gametes (reproductive cells))”

(Therefore, sex is binary. Also, there is no sensible, consistent definition of gender, making it nonsense.)

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

#389

Post by slackdog »

zmgsabst wrote: post #269
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…

Our entire group of animals is named after tits: Mammals. How can referring to the fact people have what our entire branch of the tree of life is named after be offensive?

Incidentally not all mammals have nipples. Male kangaroos don't.

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

#390

Post by jimbokun »

QuercusMax wrote: post #44
scarmig wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including it would distract from the main point (though IIRC there was no point at which it wasn't a slur; replacing non-slurs with novel non-slurs is a different category). That said, I think it supports my point. How effective has tabooing that slur been at eliminating racism in the USA?

I'm the furthest thing from N-word apologist, but it's pronounced the same as the Latin word meaning "black" (modulo vowel pronunciation shifts), and spelled nearly the same. It's clearly derived from a word which did not originally have any meaning as a slur, and I bet you could find early usages in English which were merely descriptive. There's no reason to use it now, but understanding the fact that was originally…

There have been a few kerfuffles in soccer where a Spanish speaking person used the Spanish word for black person in an English speaking country…and were charged with making a racial slur.
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