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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

#561

Post by wadd1e »

jamilton wrote: post #463
kergonath wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my partner's entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to "birthing people" because of some tiny number of trans men that exist and also want to give birth. I completely understand the “gender is social and not biological” concept, and I believe it is true to a large degree. But this is not the case: if you are able to bear a child, then by definition you are female and a woman in the biological sense.

Why does it become purely biological and not social in this case? Applying this definition strictly means woman who aren't able to bear children are not women.

> Applying this definition strictly means woman who aren't able to bear children are not women.

Not quite sure what the commentor you are replying to means by the social part but they didn't state that giving birth => woman is a 2 way implication.

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

#562

Post by pancrufty »

usrbinbash wrote: post #448

Whaaaat? I thought so many lives were improved by making devteams replace all usages of "black/whitelist" with "block/allowlist". Well, except for the lives of the users, on-call engineers, 1st and 2nd level tech support, the product owners, and everyone else who had to deal with sudden, unexpected, hard to track bugs resulting from such BS changes. Oh, ofc I apologise for my use of the word "list", which may be hist…

As a non-American, the dumbest change that affects me daily, is the renaming of the master branch. Master means teacher in romance languages and its variations are part of daily usage. In git there's no "slave" part so it always meant "main" and not "owner"

It affects me daily because "look on master" became "look on the main branch" for no advantage to absolutely anyone.

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

#563

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

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…

I'm probably be downvoted to death for that but, while I have nothing against transgenderism - do whatever you want people, I don't care - it baffles me that the subject takes so much space in the political discourse. It's like 1.6% of the population by applying the broadest critieria available.

Sometimes I wonder if some interests are not all too happy to see people fight about who they might have to share a public bathroom one day in their entire life rather than issues actually affecting them.

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

#564

Post by psyfi »

sunderw wrote: post #541
Lazare wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner is disabled, and by chance and via support groups she is a member of, she has many friends annd acquaintences who are as well. And while it's by no means universal, she and all her disabled friends absolutely loathe the "people first language" currently in vogue (ie, "person with a disability" over "disabled"). And it's odd! Because while there are certainly disabled people who prefer one form over another…

I suffer from a disability and so does my girlfriend. Note that our main language is French and so there is a bit of nuance to how the terms are used. Disabled is usually said "handicapé" (this word means more "incapacitated" that anything) and "person with a disability" is usually said "personne en situation de handicap" which more literally translates to "person in a disability situation" / "person currently incapa…

> If you break your legs and spend a few months in a wheelchair, you might not feel legitimate to use the term "disabled" in comparison to someone who has never been able to walk and suffers more from it.

I would say "I am hungry" even if I have food in the fridge, I do not need to compare myself to poor starving people and decide to say "I am currently hungry" or "I am in a situation of hunger"

> Not letting that disabilty define you as a person. I am not disabled, I am Sunderw, a complicated person with many different aspects.

also I am still a complicated person and hungry does not define my personality.

> Including more person means reducing stigma and reducing the gap between abled/disabled.

Actually, taking too many steps to think of how to describe a person with a certain medical situation already increases the stigma, I would feel more bad if people try to avoid calling me "sick" so I don't feel bad about being sick, this is even worse.

Imagine calling a midget "A person with less height" or some nonsense like that.

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

#565

Post by LangIsAllWeNeed »

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…

The continuing to dissent aspect and persisting to use the “nice” words is dark to me. It represents to me the inescapable self referential pathway of all altruistic behaviors.

That which makes cooperation and altruism possible also causes some strange glitches that sometimes reveals the motivating emotions are always self referential.

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

#566

Post by b112 »

imoverclocked wrote: post #445
Sunspark wrote: post #360

In my life, I have been deaf, hearing impaired, hard of hearing, hearing challenged. I suppose at some point I will be acoustically disadvantaged. You know what? At the end of the day, I'm still deaf. It's true. I have limitations that others take for granted. If I can't see someone speaking or if I'm out of batteries, we aren't going to be communicating well. That's pretty deaf. I won't be offended, it's just realit…

> Character and intent is what matters. This. I recently ran up against a filter on Reddit where I used a phrase that I was completely unaware of. My account was flagged for hate speech. The comment had no ill-intent. The problem with language is that we want individual words to have inherent meaning but as people adopt phrases to identify a movement, those meanings get carried along for the ride. eg: until recently,…

"It's ok to be _____" but learned that it's actually a dark dog whistle thanks to Scott Adams.

The fact that someone can be labeled something, because they use a phrase which is currently, out of the blue, a big deal? And you can only know if you obsessively read all sorts of popculture websites, or fluff news stories daily?

That's very sad.

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

#567

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

jamilton wrote: post #463
kergonath wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my partner's entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to "birthing people" because of some tiny number of trans men that exist and also want to give birth. I completely understand the “gender is social and not biological” concept, and I believe it is true to a large degree. But this is not the case: if you are able to bear a child, then by definition you are female and a woman in the biological sense.

Why does it become purely biological and not social in this case? Applying this definition strictly means woman who aren't able to bear children are not women.

No. What GP is saying is merely that being capable of childbearing obviously requires female biological sex. But the implication doesn't have to go in the opposite direction for it to be true.

Another example: the only vertebrates that can fly are birds(ignoring squirrels and weird fish). That's not equivalent to saying that the ostrich is not a bird.

Flying vertebrate => bird

Bird =/> flying vertebrate

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

#568

Post by rocketbop »

Veen wrote: post #546
hardlytrueisit wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I didn’t know the British had manufactured potato blight. That’s quite advanced tech for the time.

Parent doesn’t say that they manufactured blight but that they manufactured famine.

This is also incorrect although they did preside over one and were reluctant to intervene for a variety of reasons, some economic and some philosophical.

Edit: and just to add, it was certainly not an attempt at genocide.

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

#569

Post by cutemonster »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #543
wonderwonder wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as unintentional discrimination. It's treating the people they are relabeling as children that need the kind progressives to step in and save them. It's so condescending. Minorities don't need white Knights to save them, neither do the disabled. If an individual wants me to not refer to them as x because they find it offensive, no problem. But a group of academics should not be able to sit around and decide…

Identity politics is not unintentional. Those indoctrinated into it may be unaware but the intention is to divide us.

I think that's not the only reason, sometimes not a reason at all.

Instead, 1, sometimes, someone is looking to make a career, or get a job, make money. And then, in identity politics, they might see an opportunity. Career, status, money then being a goal, and any division a side effect.

And, 2, I'm not saying that identity politics is or would always be bad or anything like that. So many unfairness in the world, to try to correct.

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

#570

Post by xupybd »

lynx23 wrote: post #412
recuter wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not self conscious at all my dude (I'm not one of those insensitive woke people who get off on making everybody feel like shit to try and elevate themselves at all costs), glad I made you chuckle. How do you consume movies? I didn't know that the ̶a̶c̶c̶u̶r̶s̶e̶d̶ "visually impaired" do that. Dope. Don't know why I'm surprised. I bet blind fury would watch movies somehow too. Also, you should obviously change your us…

Regarding how to "watch" movies: Its actually as simple as turning the TV on and listening to what comes out the speakers... In the 80s, movies were actually much more story-driven then today. Even if you missed something happening because you didnt see the visuals, you would get it typically a few seconds or minutes afterwards, because somebody was refering to the event and therefore uncovering the riddle. Something…

Off topic but have you noticed a trend in modern movies that it's harder to hear dialogue?

I find the music and background noise is so loud in modern movies that I struggle to hear some of the characters talk.

I thought I was just getting old but recently watched some older movies and found they were much easier to hear.

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