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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

#971

Post by DangitBobby »

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)…

Is materially unencumbered rich or poor?

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

#972

Post by DangitBobby »

cedilla wrote: post #756
slingnow wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

IDK documents such as TFA kind of make it seem like it's not exactly "everyone" making these decisions for us.

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

#973

Post by JenrHywy »

lukeramsden wrote: post #497
JenrHywy wrote: post #362

My 11yo came home from school today: "Dad! We can't get rid of any of our Roald Dahl books. They're changing the words in them. My class talked about it and we all think it's stupid". A few months back, my 16yo was telling me about a class conversation about their futures, and what everyone wanted most was a stable relationship, a job they enjoyed and to be able to afford a modest house. It's reassuring that in a see…

> and what everyone wanted most was a stable relationship, a job they enjoyed and to be able to afford a modest house. > It's reassuring that in a seemingly insane world, the kids who are coming up seem have their heads screwed on straight. One might say that the reason is because this is seemingly becoming harder than ever in Western countries.

That's certainly part of it, but also I think that, in the face of infinite gender/relationship/careers possibilities, they're (rather sensibly) leaning on tradition for guidance.

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

#974

Post by 1shooner »

lynx23 wrote: post #581
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…

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…

After reading Ian Hickson's proposal[1] to kill HTML and replace it with proprietary, binary content structure, I'm starting to think accessibility APIs might end up being the future of open, interoperable web publishing.

1.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...

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

#975

Post by faeriechangling »

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…

Got to love scrubbing the culture of positive references to blindness in the service of inclusiveness simply because bunch of scientists are uncomfortable with disability.

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

#976

Post by theonlybutlet »

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…

Why would you need to know someone's pronouns just to speak to them. This is what I do not get, these pronouns refer to someone in the 3rd person and do not affect your conversation with them in anyway. They could easily be referring to you in all sorts of derogatory manner, worse than that of the wrong pronoun, "Dickhead Dave". etc. etc.

I myself have a name that's most used with the opposite gender, I am reminded of this atleast on a weekly basis by others in society. Them accidentally referring to me as the wrong gender does not bother me in the slightest, firstly they did not know/it's not out of disrespect and secondly, why should it matter? What is wrong with being a woman if I am a man and vice versa?

Unless someone is publishing something about someone, there is very little need to know this upfront. If interactions are frequent, you can tell them if they didn't already know as your bond would be deeper. And if it's an issue you can tell them.

It's much like the whole idea of cultural misappropriation, a twisted idea that basically encourages segregation/apartheid. It's as simple as don't be a dickhead about someone's culture (don't demean it) is the common sense, age old and correct solution, not that new thing.

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

#977

Post by faeriechangling »

parineum wrote: post #496
makeitdouble wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficult part of this being, some of the 100% blind people effectively don’t like the word and don’t want to be called blind. Then some people are ‘only’ 80% blind, and don’t want to be called blind. Then some family members of blind people don’t want the word to be used. I think it’s pretty common phenomenon, like the people who call themselves “black”, those who are called “black” but hate it, and everyone in…

The answer is for people to make their preferences known and not hold it against people what is not done with malice. It's pretty simple.

Pretty simple if you don’t have to deal with the logistics of this. How can you judge if something was done with malice or not in the first place especially when we’re talking about disabilities which impair being able to read between the lines fairly often? People can make their preferences clear but how does one meet the preferences of many people in a mass communication?

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

#978

Post by klabb3 »

1shooner wrote: post #974
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…

After reading Ian Hickson's proposal[1] to kill HTML and replace it with proprietary, binary content structure, I'm starting to think accessibility APIs might end up being the future of open, interoperable web publishing. 1. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...

One way to look at accessibility is that it’s a side effect of a well designed data exchange format. The same type of semantic document structure that let screen readers work, or increasing font size, is allowing all kinds of advantages to the user, such as adblocking and customizations. Every year that the state of software and apps deteriorate further, I am more and more impressed how the initial web struck such an incredible balance of all facets of a healthy software ecosystem. It stands as one of the marvels of the world, imo, that it remains virtually the same today, surviving the most vicious attacks on openness by both mega corps and governments alike.

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

#980

Post by AbrahamParangi »

tptacek wrote: post #953
nhchris wrote: post #948

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very few companies have DEI programs. Please don't lie to me: "I have surveyed the programming of every Fortune 100 company and have confirmed that all of them have now adopted so-called DEI programs." - https://www.city-journal.org/the-diversity-equity-and-inclus... Though I'm sure if you look at all companies, including every corner store, hair salon, and taco shop, the proportion of DEI initiatives and HR depart…

That's obviously false. There are over 1.7MM corporations in the US and over 7MM partnerships and sole proprietorships, and you've attempted to characterize all of them by a sample of the 100 hugest of them. There are all sorts of things the F100 has that the median company doesn't, almost none of them owing to legal peril.

Hold on, that sample is a sample of the biggest ones! That’s a fair sample! Amazon having a DEI program and mom and pop hardware store not having one do not weigh equally on the scale!
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