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Banning words won’t make the world more just
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#982Earlier quoted context omitted.
Groups don't have homogeneous opinions on this stuff. The prime example these days being Latinx. If people aren't called what they prefer, as long as they weren't called a slur, a simple correction is fine. Or, if you're never going to see them again, just let it go.
The challenge is when there is no single term that doesn’t offend everyone. So you can call a group “Latinx” and offend some and call a group “Latinos” and offend some and call a group “Latinos/Latinas” and offend some. I want to offend the fewest people with my speech. I would like to use opinion polling to both offend fewest as well as signal that I’m working to offend the fewest. What’s annoying and frustrating to…
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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#983Earlier quoted context omitted.
By your logic, then, we are all children, because at one time we all experienced childhood. While "felon" may be useful in some cases, like describing someone who is currently serving time for a felony, it's a lot less useful as time goes on. And this goes for a lot of language that is used to describe a transitory state but ends up labeling the individual and making a separate class of them. This is why you see the…
It's crazy to me that you're arguing about the definitions of common, useful, specific words, for some kind of virtue signaling I suppose? The word "child" and the word "felon" both have easy-to-find definitions: https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+child https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+felon
The argument has nothing to do with the definitions, but whether the term should be used. The N-word had a definition, too, but that doesn't mean it should have continued in common usage.
I understand the reluctance to make these changes---if you have the habit of using a word for a something all your life, it's going to seem irritating to change it if you have no idea why, or if you see the benefit for others but don't care since it doesn't benefit you personally.
So why is "felon" a label for life, and not "child"? Simply giving the definitions doesn't answer that question.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#984Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's crazy to me that you're arguing about the definitions of common, useful, specific words, for some kind of virtue signaling I suppose? The word "child" and the word "felon" both have easy-to-find definitions: https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+child https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+felon
The argument has nothing to do with the definitions, but whether the term should be used. The N-word had a definition, too, but that doesn't mean it should have continued in common usage. I understand the reluctance to make these changes---if you have the habit of using a word for a something all your life, it's going to seem irritating to change it if you have no idea why, or if you see the benefit for others but do…
Child specifically describes a person actively in childhood.
Just like prisoner describes someone actively in prison.
Felon has a legal definition, and it means someone who has been convicted of a felony.
The desire to sanitize language 1984 style is baffling... If you were to change the definition of "felon" the way you want to, or ban its use to prevent thoughtcrime, a new equivalent word would be invented with the same definition: a person who has committed a felony. Because that is a useful word.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#985https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Probably off topic
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#986Earlier 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…
I suffer from a disability and so does my girlfriend. Note that our main language is French and so there is a bit of nuance to how the terms are used. Disabled is usually said "handicapé" (this word means more "incapacitated" that anything) and "person with a disability" is usually said "personne en situation de handicap" which more literally translates to "person in a disability situation" / "person currently incapa…
> - Not letting that disabilty define you as a person. I am not disabled, I am Sunderw, a complicated person with many different aspects.
The flip side of this is that it allows / encourages others to see your disability as a mere "inconvenience" or something that should be able to be separated from you. I find at least for people I know with mental health disabilities they feel "person with X" tends to lead very quickly into "I know you have X but why can't you just be/do/deal with Y". In fact, I have a general theory (untested) that where someone with a disability falls on the "I am a person with X" vs "I am X" is probably directly proportional to how much X is a strong defining factor in their lives. I notice this particularly in ADHD and Autism spectrum disorders, where being on the "less support needs" side of the spectrum tends to be described as "I have ADHD / Autism" but being on the side of the spectrum that requires more suppoed "I am ADHD / Autistic" is more common. And for those I know who prefer the "I am X" format, part of that is because, paraphrased "this is a major part of my life that fundamentally alters how I live and interact with the world and I need people to understand that about me"
Obviously to a large degree this depends on your language having an adjective form in the first place e.g. we have yet to come up with "I am cancered", though in a related way we often. see "I am a cancer survivor" / "I am fighting cancer", but it's still relatively common even for bad cases to be "I have cancer".
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#987Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't there is an actual difference between blind and visually impaired tho? The way I understood it blind people are a subset of visually impaired people, but not all visually impaired people are blind in a medical sense. So the reasoning behind such language might be to include people who are not technically blind, but still require similar consideration, assistence, infrastructure and so on. Language is odd here.…
I myself, as someone with ADHD, absolutely despise the term “neurodivergent” (and also “neurotypical”). I hate how it’s used to lump everyone with different neurological, mental, and learning conditions under one umbrella. I hate how it is used to separate us from the “neurotypical” who don’t have these conditions. And I hate how offensive it sounds (“neurodivergent” sounds like some C-tier, crazed, antisocial comic…
To be frank, I was unhappy with that word while I wrote that text as well, but got stuck in thinking about alternatives.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#988Humans are incapable of learning from history.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I don't spend my days bookmarking videos on Twitter to share with people who are interested just enough to criticize these claims with strawmen / other fallacies, but too disinterested to seek the evidence readily available to them from news sources they've written off entirely. I can't help you there. Now, I don't mean to assume you fall within the category I described above, but that's usually the cas…
So no evidence - gotcha.
Not every online discussion has to be a formal debate with months of preparation. Sorry I didn't "have my papers" handy.
If you're interested, you'll go looking on Twitter, Telegram, etc. on your own accord. If you're not, you'll resort to gaslighting and smug nonsense. Simple.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize that the terminology is meant for transmen right? It's weird you're complaining about terminology used for transmen, and then linking it to transwomen in sports.
Why it is weird? In both cases, as the GP said, the concept of womanhood is being erased.
Neither are erasing womanhood. That's like saying gay marriage is erasing hetero marriage.