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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

#731

Post by 0dayz »

I'm actually a bit torn on this. On the one hand it does seem to be very silly but also ironically enough excluding certain groups (religious and social outcasts).

On the other I think there is a valid point in looking over how language is used and what implications it has.

But to try and over correct it with new words is like trying to add another layer of paper to make the boat not leak. Since instead of saying you are a retard, now you just say: person with mental challenges.

It has the same result when used as an insult, it stigmatizes people with "retardation" and it still insults the other person.

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

#732

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #558
golemotron wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO the purpose of language changing is not to improve the world; instead, it's to give the feeling of changing the world without putting any real effort. It's worse than that. It's a way of signaling. When I started to read the article I hoped that it would mention Steven Pinker's Euphemism Treadmill. I was disappointed. The short story is that changing language is a quick way of differentiating an in-group from a…

> Kiev to Kyiv Why is this an instance of the phenomenon? Isn't Kyiv closer to what a Ukrainian would say?

But it's still Moscow, Russia and not Moskva, Rossiya. It's Tokyo, Japan not Toukyou, Nippon and Germany and not Deutschland. If you're going to drop exonyms, you should at least do it consistently, rather than only for currently-trending locations.

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

#733

Post by pas »

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…

... but ... are "group of academics [..] sit around and decide that a group as a whole needs saving"? (Yes, probably some are, academia always has a few truly crazy people.)

Mostly they parrot the same "old tautologies" (like language matters, structural issues are real, people's personal prejudices manifest in many ways, etc) in various new forms, shapes, phrasings.

However, that doesn't mean they are wrong. (Nor that they are automatically right.)

white knights are not academics, they are usually the walking-talking examples of severe Dunning-Kruger phenomena.

... I'm writing all this, because your post uses very broad and general terms like progressives and academics, and I think that's bad. (Because it forces my ego to reconsider the `progressive` label, that I used to apply to myself. Naturally without doing anything good/bad progressive really. :| )

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

#734

Post by jraph »

wonderwonder wrote: post #719
jraph wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given person? No? Same grammar regardless of who is near, just need to remember which pronouns to designate which people, which: - is the intuitive one for most people - the asked pronoun for the few people who have pronouns that don't match your intuition. (I also have troubles with remembering names, but pronouns are fine) And f…

I work with maybe 100 people on a consistent basis. I probably know 25 of their names. Many of these interactions are random one offs, large meetings, etc. Many of them are foreign (to me) compounding my difficulty with their names. In addition I'm remote so can't associate names and faces, everyone is just white text on a black background. If any portion of this group started requesting I use varied pronouns I would…

You situation doesn't seem very healthy regardless of the topic at hand. I hope you'll be able to find a way to get a lighter workload.

Remote too, but I met most people in person at least once, we use avatars, and definitely don't work with 100 people.

That said I know a few trans people, the number of people I know with pronouns that don't match the name is 0. The number of people wanting the equivalent of they in my language is so small I can remember it easily.

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

#735

Post by andrewclunn »

Look into the entomology of the word "retarded." They keep changing the word, but whatever they replace it with becomes a pejorative, because the thing it's describing is intuitively understood to be negative. Preying upon people's sense of justice to promote censorship in the name of justice is... oh what's the word...

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

#736

Post by throwaway618052 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #332
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> your statement is incorrect because trans men exist and they can get pregnant So that’s an edge case. They can call themselves a mother or father or birthing person or pink elephant. That shouldn’t mean someone else can’t identify as a mother or father or whatnot. This isn’t even a novel delineation; adoption and surrogacy have long dealt with the separation of parenting and reproductive roles. Besides, history’s f…

The person you replied to (shrimp_emoji) was responding to the statement "a pregnant person is a woman".

"A pregnant person is a woman" doesn't say anything about what people are allowed to call themselves, but rather makes an absolute statement that all pregnant people can be called "women". It doesn't take into account the edge cases you mentioned, and that's what shrimp_emoji took offense to.

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

#737

Post by regularfry »

RobotToaster wrote: post #631
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…

Ironically it's the opposite in the autism community, the white Knights insist it should be "autistic people" for some reason. None of this is going to change anyone's material conditions, it's just a distraction invented by well paid "diversity consultants". At least the fad for "differently abled" seems to have died.

"People with autism" carries a connotation that the person and the autism are separable. Given the deep, dark, nasty history of autism "cures" that's a very raw nerve, and stamping out that type of thinking will materially improve conditions.

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

#738

Post by dagw »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #732
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kiev to Kyiv Why is this an instance of the phenomenon? Isn't Kyiv closer to what a Ukrainian would say?

But it's still Moscow, Russia and not Moskva, Rossiya. It's Tokyo, Japan not Toukyou, Nippon and Germany and not Deutschland. If you're going to drop exonyms, you should at least do it consistently, rather than only for currently-trending locations.

The main difference is that the request to change the English spelling from Kiev to Kyiv came from the Ukrainian government. As far as I know Japanese or German government haven't requested that we stop writing "Japan" and "Germany".

The closest current example going on right now is the Turkish government wanting to change the English spelling of their country from "Turkey" to "Turkiye".

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

#739

Post by wholinator2 »

yosito wrote: post #557
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What if we all just stopped for a second and realized that no matter what "side" we're on, we're all just human beings? Namaste.

I mean, this sets off my satire alarms but wouldn't that be a worthy goal? We can cynically deride all attempts to connect humanity as worthless hippy mumbo jumbo, and while I think perfect adherence would be impossible, I think a step or two in that direction is both possible and beneficial for us. This cynical attitude (assuming satire) is exactly the type of thing preventing us from making that kind of progress.

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

#740

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

KielFisch wrote: post #680
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…

Recently I came across a discussion on Twitter where a selection of scientists were arguing that the long-used term "blind peer review" (i.e. where the authors do not know the identities of the reviewers, and vice versa) could be construed as able-ist and should be referred to as "anonymous peer review". I'm all in favour of using inclusive language, but at the time this discussion struck me as odd because I've never…

Wiktionary has attestations for use of 'blind' to mean 'concealed' or 'not visible' going all the way back to the 16th century, and if you follow the etymology it becomes likely that that was the original sense of the word, with 'sightless' coming later. This same disingenuous reasoning was used with Twitch with the phrase 'blind playthrough' (to mean 'playing a game without having seen any of it before').
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