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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

#601

Post by eru »

lynx23 wrote: post #581
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…

Web accessibility is indeed a very important thing for people like me. I am aware we are a very small minority with rather special needs in this regard, but believe me, investing in accessibility and therefore allowing people with visual and motor disabilities to interact with the digital world can have unexpectedly wonderful consequences for those benefiting from it. It is not often that I manage to pull tech people…

I'm only colour-blind, but I am too, benefitting from accessibility work meant primarily for blind people.

And so do the elderly. Which will be all of us in the future (except those who plan to live fast and die young). Humanity is getting older and older on average, too.

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

#602

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #592
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People-first language ("enslaved people" not "slaves") makes complete sense to me Why is that? I’m genuinely curious. Who should be offended by the word slave ? Is it I, the Slav? The etymology of the word concerns my heritage, and yet I’m not offended. It’s not as though people toying with language today is going to bring back my relatives who died as slaves, nor will it undo the suffering they endured.

Wait, it means slavery implies whites.

Slavery doesn’t imply any particular race. Some people hold the belief that it does, or that one needs to be of a particular race to take a position on or claim victimhood of slavery, but this, quite frankly, is racist.

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

#603

Post by msla »

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 have a similar story:

When I was a child, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. This is now malady non grata: For one thing, it's been folded into autism spectrum disorder, the DSM-5 being more on the lumper end of things than previous DSMs were, and, for another, it has a checkered history, with Hans Asperger using his position as a doctor in Vienna during the Second World War to choose which children were saved and which were murdered in camps. His collaboration with the Nazis and odious views have resulted in a backlash against the diagnosis.

Later still, the very word "Autism" seems to have faded out of polite speech, with people like me being referred to as "on the spectrum" with no explicit mention of which spectrum. This is, as far as I'm concerned, a straight-up euphemism treadmill: The DSM-5's lumping of Asperger's into autism spectrum disorder is something that can be defended on its scientific merits, but moving away from any mention of autism is purely down to the word's use as an insult. OK, so be it. The treadmill rolls on.

The final point is person-first language and why I don't use it: I am an autistic person. I don't say I'm a person with autism because I can't possibly be without autism. Is someone who identifies as a man a "person with gender" or is anyone a "person with race" or "person with ethnicity"? No. Some things are fundamental enough to how we experience the world that saying we're a person with that thing, which implies we could be without it, is wrong.

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

#604

Post by coldtea »

wonderwonder wrote: post #451
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 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…

>It's treating the people they are relabeling as children that need the kind progressives to step in and save them.

It also help give the later a role, some power over others (policing various such language and issues, using it against their enemies -out of good nature of course, sure), and sometimes, a full career...

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

#605

Post by gdy »

scotty79 wrote: post #575
psyfi wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 di…

> 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" But saying "I'm starving!" when you are just hungry is a bit different. It's fine where there are no starving people around. It's just a exaggeration then. But if one of your friends starved last week while you are still fat…

The problem is that you let your friend starve, not that you used a wrong word. The humanity allocates too little money to medical research.

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

#606

Post by Tzela »

lynx23 wrote: post #581
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…

Web accessibility is indeed a very important thing for people like me. I am aware we are a very small minority with rather special needs in this regard, but believe me, investing in accessibility and therefore allowing people with visual and motor disabilities to interact with the digital world can have unexpectedly wonderful consequences for those benefiting from it. It is not often that I manage to pull tech people…

I'm interested as well. I run a small science club for kids, mainly coding and electronics. Accessibility and being more inclusive is a very old bullet point on my long list of things to do, but I never found a place to start. Do you have any recommendation on where to learn this?

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

#608

Post by eru »

Lazare wrote: post #415
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…

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…

Of course, 'disabled' is just the euphemism you grew up with, so it feels neutral enough.

The euphemism treadmill has a long history. At some point cripple used to be the neutral term for many kinds of disabled. It's long been deemed offensive. Similar with idiot or retard.

Give it a few decades, and all of the 'people first language' will perhaps turn into neutral and then offensive, too.

(I am writing the above dispassionately. But given the generation I grew up in, I share your sensibilities about the words. 'Disabled' feels fairly neutral to me as well, and 'idiot' or 'cripple' feel somewhat offensive.

But I recognise that this is just an artifact of exactly when in time I grew up. And old people complaining about shifts in language and culture is an even older trope than the euphemism treadmill.)

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

#610

Post by coldtea »

hutzlibu wrote: post #593
recuter wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So your family members would have rejected the help of Schindler and co while under occupation and in direct death threat? Or would have rejected the allies when they came liberating the camps? Seriously? As far as I know, the jews and all other surpressed minorities of europe were making great risks, to get information (like from a hidden radio) about the advance of the allies. Because this was the main thing bringi…

>So your family members would have rejected the help of Schindler and co while under occupation and in direct death threat?

They would have accepted it out of necessity. Doesn't mean depending on "white knights" is desirable or effective. Didn't work out of several other million, for starters.

Even less desirable when there is no "direct death threat", and the victims are perfectly capable of having opinions and speaking for themselves, as opposed to others co-opting and/or hijacking their concerns.

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