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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

#791

Post by pflanze »

lynx23 wrote: post #664
Tzela wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm currently debating with myself whether I should create GUI programs (with the main code written in Rust) using Qt or Tauri. Tauri is a Rust based GUI framework based on a webview, similar to Electron, although it can use the OS's native web renderer [1]. Do you think one would be better than the other with regards to accessibility? Or is it mostly a question of how I, as a programmer, make use of the tools? For context, those are currently just small tools and utilities I make on my own and provide as Open Source.

I don't currently have Windows. Is there a good way for me to test accessibility on Linux? As a fallback, I will get myself Windows once I port the tools to Windows, so I could test accessibility then.

[1] https://crates.io/crates/tauri

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

#792

Post by AlexandrB »

naasking wrote: post #706
_cenw wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> That's a lot of moral panic about a very small group of people that don't generally win more often (and even your typical examples like Lia Thomas also regularly get beaten by cis women, so the advantage could not be that extradordinary) and mostly compete in college-level sports. I'm not sure why you think permission to compete should be the default position over denial until we have more robust studies for compet…

> I'm not sure why you think permission to compete should be the default position over denial until we have more robust studies for competitive advantage. We already know testosterone and male puberty conveys inherent advantage, so the default should be to prove no advantage exists before permitting competition.

There are a lot of genetic factors that convey an inherent advantage. Do we control for all of them or is this one special? I think this video does a good job of highlighting the contradictions inherent in framing this as an issue of fairness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ9YAFYIBOU

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

#793

Post by slackdog »

Y_Y wrote: post #422
pizza234 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same dynamic that happens with comedy. When a comedian offends a group, it's typically not people from that group who complain - it's third parties who step in to represent that group. 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. Fun (in a sad way) fact: a friend of mine collaborates with an…

A single person shouldn't be able to be diverse on their own! That's a property of groups. You can try to define a "default person" and then say you want each individual to differ from that in your favourite characteristics, but that's a different game and provides none of the benefits of actual diversity.

I think you could reasonably describe a single person as 'diverse' in the 'diverse set of skills or experiences' sense. Like a jack-of-all-trades handyman. Or maybe for somebody that has a wide array of personalities which they reveal in different social contexts.

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

#794

Post by ladyattis »

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 am 100% blind, and guess what, I prefer the term blind because it is pretty descriptive and relatively short.

Have you ever listened to the tv show Avatar the last air bender? There's a character who's blind named Toph and she always goofs on her friends who aren't blind throughout the series. It's quite amusing since it's not done in a manner that insults her for being blind but that they sometimes say things which might be insensitive which she makes fun of in her own way.

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

#795

Post by slackdog »

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.

Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcze7EGorOk

In the examples you list, AFAIK, people from those countries are happy to use those names when speaking in English. At least, I've never met a German who insists on calling their country Deutschland when conversing in English. If they did, maybe things would be different. That's the way it is with Istanbul/Constantinople, and also Bombay/Mumbai.

Incidentally, Germany has a startlingly large array of names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany

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

#796

Post by xkcd-sucks »

jimbokun wrote: post #305
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…

Hard to miss the similarities with Orwell’s Newspeak. The attempt to make certain thoughts unthinkable by removing the words that denote those ideas.

The "justice-involved person" one is especially gross and disingenuous depending on context: Through repetition it strengthens the assertion that a conviction is justice, and it erases the power imbalance between convict and court employees/cops. Plus, it's a transparent euphemism - Nobody will refer to a judge as a JAP for example

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

#797

Post by Jorengarenar »

jraph wrote: post #711
azangru wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 perso…

> 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…

You just like that assumed their native language?

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

#798

Post by Der_Einzige »

crazygringo wrote: post #271
farnsworth wrote: post #230

Only tangentially related but I think it's interesting that just as we popularized the word "Ms.", and I think it makes perfect sense not to refer to women primarily by their marital status, we sort of worked around the issue by... largely just not using title/last name anymore. Right? I don't think I've referred to anyone by a title since my grade school teachers, and at least in my industry and corner of society, i…

Was there a time when adults referred to each other by Mr. and Mrs. in regular spoken conversation? Like if you were asking a work colleague where another colleague was, it was normal to say "Where is Mr. Smith?" rather than "Where is Mark?" Since in my lifetime I've only known calling everyone by their first name (except, like you say, teachers in childhood), I'm curious when the change occurred and how.

I can tell HN users mostly don't live in the south by the fact that they think it's so foreign to use "mr" or "ms".

Please go drive through and visit Louisiana or Alabama at some point in your life. You'll find America has a lot of variance in it's cultural norms.

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

#799

Post by wonderwonder »

samastur wrote: post #772
wholinator2 wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like, Materially Unencumbered Birth Gives of Reduced Melanin, is approaching an actual usable acronym for the typical pejorative, Karen. I bet chatgpt could bridge the gap

I don't see white women standing out in their behaviour, but they sure will always remain an acceptable group to beat up on without losing your progressive or otherwise credentials. Karen at this point is always pejorative and pretty much just not well hidden sexism at best.

That's been the most impactful change of the entire progressive movement. It's now ok to be sexist and racist against white women. It's feminism stood on its head. The reduction of white women to a meme has been incredible to watch. No idea why anyone would be for this.

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

#800

Post by AlexandrB »

bandie91 wrote: post #576
kergonath wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now that we're saying "birthing people" instead of "women", it's time to acknowledge that abortion is not actually a "women's issue". Which is partly right, to be fair. It’s a fundamental human right issue about who can force things on your body. The consequences also affect whole families, not all men are arseholes who vanish when their girlfriend gets pregnant. Framing this as only women’s issue is part of a dang…

1. the embryo/fetus inside the mother's body is not the mother's body. 2. it is not the mother's body, but it's completely dependent on it to live. 3. parents have and have to have natural responsibility over their offspring. 4. the society establishment (both secular and religious) are there to protect society's norm. 5. not killing innocent humans is a social norm. 6. the embryo/fetus is a human. 7. saying that som…

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