Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

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

#751

Post by jraph »

meany wrote: post #746
jraph wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the intention is to divide us Who actually has this intention and why?

In general, creating division between classes, races, religious groups presents opportunities for individuals to gather power by taking up the cause for one group. By establishing an “other” you have an enemy to rally support for your leadership. This is the basis of power for every demagogue from the Cleon in Athens to Joe McCarthy and the American Red Scare. This is also a core theme in Orwell’s 1984. In the contex…

Still not buying this in the current context but interested if you have any concrete example.

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

#752

Post by goatlover »

DeathArrow wrote: post #584

>When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors replaces felon with justice-involved person, it is making an ideological claim—that there is something illegitimate about laws, courts, and prisons. Wouldn't it be more appropriate, thoughtful and sensible to use the term "justice oppressed person instead"?

I'm going to guess this wasn't done for the benefit of felons, who would probably laugh and roll there eyes, or get pissed at the thought that changing a word to a phrase helps their situation in any sort of way. In general with this sort of thing, how is a phrase preferable to a word? You're increasing the cognitive load and time to write it out.

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

#753

Post by lumb63 »

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…

This is the idea behind TERFs, right? How can women have equal rights if “women” don’t even exist? I’m honestly surprised more feminists don’t have strong anti-transgender sentiment.

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

#754

Post by kenjackson »

account42 wrote: post #744
kenjackson wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line is probably smaller than it may appear. The reason much of this language policing started is because of the dominant group using language to reinforce the inferiority of a less powerful group. It’s always easier for the dominant group to say “it’s just words — no one cares” since the words are never at their expense.

Which dominant group isn't subject to slurs?

Everyone is subject to slurs. That’s not what I’m referencing.

I’m talking about the use of language where you use the less-dominant group as a negative reference point. For example “retarded”. Or “fag”. You apply those terms to people who are neither as a way of disparaging them.

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

#755

Post by biorach »

bilvar wrote: post #688
randomdata wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve taken lunch to school in paper bags that were literally brown Are you sure they weren't a certain shade of orange?

I'm colourblind so I'd posit that the people who banned the term brown-bag are ableist.

> i'm colourblind so I'd posit that the people who banned the term brown-bag are ableist

Upvoted on the optimistic assumption that this was a joke

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

#756

Post by cedilla »

slingnow wrote: post #730
Arainach wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way language and respectful culture evolve. Something can both be an improvement over previous terms and imperfect and thus replaced by something more preferable later.

What made the first term imperfect? Who decided what was preferable later?

No one and everyone. Language changes as our world and societies change.

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

#757

Post by cesarb »

crazygringo wrote: post #258
awesome_dude wrote: post #50

They're right to drop "American" but not for the reasons outlined. An "American" is by definition is someone from the American continents (North and South America). Further a "North American" is someone from Mexico, USA, and Canada. It gets worse when people have "Black Americans", "Italian Americans", "Asian Americans" because that means that "Americans" is only referring to one group of people from the USA.

Not by common usage of the word. Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group. It's just not a label that's useful for much of anything. "North or South American" isn't a particularly meaningful or relevant concept at all. In contrast with e.g. "Latin American" which is very useful/meaningful. And if…

> Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group.

That's the thing: for many people, it's a single continent, called just "America", which can be further subdivided into "North America", "Central America", and "South America" (but these three are not continents, they're subdivisions within a single continent; another common subdivision is "Latin America", which corresponds to the countries colonized by Spain or Portugal).

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

#759

Post by the_only_law »

cesarb wrote: post #757
crazygringo wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by common usage of the word. Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group. It's just not a label that's useful for much of anything. "North or South American" isn't a particularly meaningful or relevant concept at all. In contrast with e.g. "Latin American" which is very useful/meaningful. And if…

> Particularly because I'm not sure I've ever come across a case in my life when a speaker or writer wanted to include people from both continents as a single group. That's the thing: for many people, it's a single continent, called just "America", which can be further subdivided into "North America", "Central America", and "South America" (but these three are not continents, they're subdivisions within a single cont…

Do these people also believe in a single continent called “Eurasia”? Hell those are mostly on the same plate, which can’t be said for the Americas.

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

#760

Post by andsoitis »

wonderwonder wrote: post #667
madaxe_again wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they are always white

Might it be because they think they know best?

Post reply on HN