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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

#691

Post by [deleted] »

cornholio wrote: post #653
eru wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

The definitive resource on the euphemism treadmill, by a member of a previous generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

[deleted]

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

#692

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

It's bafflingly common for someone on this site to say something along the lines of "woke people should stop being woke and instead should listen to my opinions as a minority and change their ways to suit me better because I have special insight into the problems I face that they don't".

Which to most people, is what being woke is.

But I guess if you are on team non-woke and some kind of a minority then things get complicated quickly.

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

#693

Post by kenjackson »

Gareth321 wrote: post #668
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…

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.

Wait, so you’re saying words matter and you want to language police them?

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

#694

Post by mistermann »

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…

> It is so weird, because it adds yet another layer of distance between "us" and the "normal" people.

I like to call normal people "Normies", and with all the terror and hardship they've brought to the world (being the vast majority of the population), while self-righteously pointing their fingers at other people, assigning 100% of the underlying causality to them (usually based on heuristics or blindly accepting the mainstream narrative explanation) it only increases my enjoyment when I'm insulted and downvoted/rate-limited in response.

"We have met the enemy and he is us".

> Its a weird phenomenon. The longer I watch all of this, and I also mean the gender-language-hacks, I feel like this move has added to the distance between various groups, not made it smaller.

I often wonder if this is purely accidental/organic.

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

#695

Post by naasking »

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…

> It is so condescending to believe your own language-police more then the person you are talking to.

This is exactly it. They have theories that spin a narrative telling them that you just don't understand why your preferred language is oppressive. Like women who just want to be housewives and stay at home with kids are suffering from internalized misogyny, or that Hispanic people almost universally hate the term LatinX but we must keep using it because gender neutrality is way more important than pissing off almost everyone.

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

#696

Post by kenjackson »

prawn wrote: post #328
angarg12 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that one of the issues is that the (more extreme) woke culture has put the entire burden of communication on the speakers rather than the listeners. Is not enough that you intend to offend, or that you say something that offends someone, is whether something that you say could possibly offend someone, even if you didn't have the slightest intentions. On the other say the listeners are free to interpret…

I describe these scenarios to my young children as concentric circles. One person can be acting reasonably (small circle around them) or very badly (larger circle). A person nearby can be very resilient (small circle) or fragile (larger circle). Where the circles overlap, is when there is tension and there are fights, tears or anything else that requires me to intervene. Obviously very bad behaviour (large circle) is…

Love that explanation. And gives motivation to reduce your circles.

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

#697

Post by Penyngton »

hedora wrote: post #257
karaterobot wrote: post #241

This language got popular not because people thought really hard and all arrived at it independently, through cold-blooded analysis, but because they heard it was what the better class of people did now, and there was peer pressure around it. Because it never had a firm foundation, never really made sense when you thought hard about it, it can easily change to something else. In other words, it's a fashion, and fashi…

Honestly, I think it got popular for the same reason slowly backing away from the dude playing with a switchblade at a bar is popular: It’s generally better to avoid taking the bait when someone is trying to pick a fight with you.

I agree with you, but this is how bullies get their way.

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

#698

Post by kenjackson »

nine_k wrote: post #351
angarg12 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that one of the issues is that the (more extreme) woke culture has put the entire burden of communication on the speakers rather than the listeners. Is not enough that you intend to offend, or that you say something that offends someone, is whether something that you say could possibly offend someone, even if you didn't have the slightest intentions. On the other say the listeners are free to interpret…

But interpreting someone's words in the most uncharitable way possible is an ancient sport, intended to slight and annoy the opponent, when finding reasonable, material objections fails. It's just an ancient hold of wresting in the (verbal) mud. It sort of gives the party who successfully pulled it an upper hand. Now that these wrestlers found out that they can persuade the public that the most uncharitable interpret…

And to be clear, these uncharitable interpretations go far beyond word policing.

The one that actually annoys me the most is “analogy policing”. If I say “would you be ok if i stole your bike”. And then your response is “now you’re equating me to a bike thief!” Or “ you’re trivializing This to bike theft?!”

We can’t have discussions because every phrase is taken as a way to win an argument. IMO this is far worse than language policing as there is not even the intention of trying to protect a disadvantaged group.

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

#699

Post by heresie-dabord »

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…

> equity language censors took this way way too far.

In fact, they took it so far that it is now in the realm of fan fiction.

Language cannot be legislated, and meaningful change requires more than a new literay style of expression.

Social progress in real, measurable ways is possible and important. Workers' rights, pay equity, access to education, public health-care, affordable living, good care for our elderly... These are good things that measurably grow happiness in community.

Hurt-Feelings Fan Fiction is a section of the book store that I will never visit.

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

#700

Post by Nemrod67 »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #670
iLoveOncall wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Guess you never heard the joke about the Education Nationale using the term "Référentiel Bondissant" to designate balloons/balls... Quick search indicates it was used by the Grenoble academy at one point in the 2000s XD
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