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Banning words won’t make the world more just

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

#661

Post by azangru »

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…

> If an individual wants me to not refer to them as x because they find it offensive, no problem.

It's a pretty big cognitive load though, to remember what everyone finds or doesn't find offensive. This is what bothers me about the recent obsession with pronouns - I have enough trouble remembering people's names; and now I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given person? That's the complexity I don't want.

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

#662

Post by Macha »

jimbokun wrote: post #319
low_tech_love wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I think to some extent this is largely because Rowling was kept at arm's length. If Rowling was the mouthpiece for the game's story, showing up in interviews, etc., then I think more of the backlash against Rowling's personal actions would be impacting the game.

See also how Disney happily sells Pirates of the Carribean while maintaining they will never work with Johnny Depp again.

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

#663

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

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…

Slightly related: in German, a strange thing happened at the end of the last century. Disabled people used to be called "behindert" (might be translated as "impeded" or "hindered"). I think the word was a good choice, because it took the blame away from people, and just described that they had to overcome bigger obstacles because of their situation.

In the eighties or nineties, people started to use the term as a slur. School children called each other "behindert" as an expletive.

This lead to a new term being used for the disabled: "invalid". Which in my opinion is the worst word you could use, since it origins in Latin and just means "unworthy". But it seems to still be in broad use.

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

#664

Post by lynx23 »

Tzela wrote: post #606
lynx23 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hard question, because the field so diverse. In a sense, accessibility is much more then just trying to make computers useable for the blind. At a fundamental level, it is about making software flexible enough to be used in different modalities. People with very little motor capabilities are quite capable of looking at a screen, but they need help moving the mouse and perhaps a good predictive onscreen keyboard to be able to type. Blind people on the other hand are mostly quite content with a standard keyboard, but they need a totally different way of output, like tactile braille or synthesized speech. For the output part, it boils down to having an API which makes a third party app (like a screen reader) able to traverse the logical structure of what the application is presenting on-screen. That is mostly a sort of tree which reflects which widget contains what, and the different types of content. Such an API, however, is not only required for screen readers, but also very useful for things like automated testing, for instance. So a web automation or testing framework could actually be written on top of the accessibility APIs, and sometimes actually is. I am rumbling about this to get you in the right mindset. Its so hard to not see the forest because of all the trees around...

That said, if we're talking about web accessibility, the obvious recommendation is the WAI WCAG. Maybe not the best reference for learning on how to implement things, but its a good start.

Depending on the platform you're at home with, there are screen readers (NVDA, Orca, BRLTTY) which are open source and can be studied. On the user side, and on the "how is this implemented" side.

Installing NVDA on Windows and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. It might feel strange at first, but you will notice that things can actually get done this way. Its also a good way to test a website if you have no specific accessibility knowhow yet. Just try to navigate and read its contents.

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

#665

Post by PaulHoule »

karaterobot wrote: post #236
PaulHoule wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about mentality retarded -> special so that now "special" is the cruelest taunt on the schoolyard? As for "defund the police" I think I'm the only one who remembers the Reaganite "defund the left" slogan https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/11/opinion/defund-the-left.h... which "defund the police" seems to be modeled after. Thatcherism (the British strain of Reaganism that was just a bit meaner) became so ingrained th…

> which "defund the police" seems to be modeled after. I think that's probably a coincidence. I didn't get the sense at the time that the genesis of that phrase was a sly historical reference.

I don’t see it as a sly reference. I see it as a lack of imagination, cynicism, people getting carried along thoughtlessly.

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

#666

Post by worrycue »

bnralt wrote: post #264
low_tech_love wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I came to realize that this is the case with advocacy groups. These groups will never want to say, "Hey, things aren't that bad anymore. We're working on some small problems, but honestly, we solved most of the stuff we were concerned about." Everything always needs to be in perpetual crisis. Wikipedia always needs to be in danger of shutting down. Political enemies are always supposed to be one step away from destro…

Organizations tend to be self-perpetuating. People whose power is derived from the organization and people who make money from the organization will want to keep the racket going.

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

#667

Post by wonderwonder »

madaxe_again wrote: post #629
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…

I have been told in no uncertain terms that the word “minority” is offensive, as it has come to have pejorative use. No alternative term was suggested, rather that one should refer to specific groups of people with their specific terms, and never generalise. Additionally, “white knight” I have also been told off for, for the reasons you might expect. In both of these cases (actually, almost every case I can think of)…

I love the term white knight specifically because it's offensive to those I reference with it and because it does such a great job describing my view of them and ironically their unconcious view of themselves. Also the amusing thing is that they are always white.

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

#668

Post by Gareth321 »

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…

I would be pissed if anyone referred to my wife as some kind of breeding vessel. These DEI bureaucrats have lost their minds, and companies have lost their minds for allowing this layer to grow so large.

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

#669

Post by Gareth321 »

_cenw wrote: post #489
josephg wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then you threw in the (self-described!) theocratic fascist dogwhistle. Huh? What fascist dog whistle? Sounds like the person was just describing their opinion and experience. The whole idea of dogwhistling sounds like a weird conspiracy theory. I’m sure it’s happened more than 0 times, but thinking dogwhistling is everywhere sounds just as unhinged to me as any of the wacky right wing conspiracies.

"What is a woman" is the rhetorical work of Matt Walsh, who describes himself as a "theocratic fascist". The beginning of this essay explains the phrase pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAMM3l156Oo

"What is a woman" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask a legislator who refuses to acknowledge that women exist. I certainly would never vote for someone who believes that women are defined as "whatever I feel right now." I'm disappointed you think it's the people demanding acknowledgement which should be labelled "theocratic fascists" rather than the misogynists refusing to acknowledge women exist.

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

#670

Post by BrandoElFollito »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #574
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #538

I am French so the wording part did not reach us yet (we still have one word for deaf and blind, and handicapped (disabled)). What unfortunately is present is the way disabled people are perceived, intellect-wise. I can talk of two examples: a wheel-chaired guy in my team, and my wife who got progressively disabled due to MS. The way they are addressed is different from the way others are addressed; It seems that peo…

> I am French so the wording part did not reach us yet This is not true at all. The absolute trainwreck that is "écriture inclusive" is spearheading those inclusivity initiatives, and we have also incorporated a lot of the other words mentioned here in the language.

écriture inclusive is basically non-existent in France, whee did you see it except on some university pages that wanted to be "ahead of their time"? It is BTW forbidden by the ministry of education.

Which other words have we incorporated? Un handicapé is a disabled person. We do not have any "mobility challenged" words. Aveugle is blind, malvoyant is vision impaired (which is not the same, one being an extreme of the other).

There was an attempt to use iel as il+elle (he+she). The only places you can read it is in articles that debate whether it is a good thing on not. It is completely absent elsewhere.

Now - my comment was about everything except that intro line.

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