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Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

itcommunity.stanford.edu

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Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#191

Post by JimTheMan »

School-Cotton wrote: post #60

“You guys” is the plural form of “you” for most speakers of colloquial American English, and is completely ungendered, in an empirical sense: if you observe native speakers speaking naturally and colloquially, you will find that everyone who uses it (regardless of gender) uses it consistently to address groups of multiple people (regardless of gender). It’s derived from the noun “guy”, which is indeed often gendered.…

I was thinking about this the other day.

You can approach a group of women and say " hey guys", that is fine.

To a group of men," hey gals", and that is not fine.

"Hey guys" to a mixed group, why... You've now 'elevated' the women to men so everyone is ok with it.

It all implies that being a woman is somehow lesser. And so that is why I'm going to stick to everyone or folks.

Although I don't begrudge or ask anyone to change.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#192

Post by alar44 »

yarg wrote: post #107
concinds wrote: post #66

All this stuff comes from "critical discourse analysis", a pseudointellectual and almost cult-like movement within academic research, which is receiving no pushback because no one knows about it. People are too busy focusing on the end-product (this Stanford webpage, or some politicians' tweets, or a Smithsonian exhibit) rather than the root cause. Ridding academia of pseudoscience goes beyond fixing p-hacking. These…

There's no pushback because it's career suicide.

Woah woah woah, career death, please be considerate. /s

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#193

Post by KMag »

richbell wrote: post #137

> Grandfather: This term has its roots in the "grandfather clause" adopted by Southern states to deny voting rights to Blacks. > Red team: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups. > Blackbox: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term. > Brave (do not use): This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "no…

Someone's going to go ballistic when they run into lecture notes on red-black trees. Skip lists are also ableist.

Hopefully we don't find anything troubling in the pasts of Adelson-Velsky and Landis, or AVL trees will also be on the chopping block.

At least they'll probably be able to lecture about treaps.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#194

Post by School-Cotton »

JimTheMan wrote: post #191
School-Cotton wrote: post #60

“You guys” is the plural form of “you” for most speakers of colloquial American English, and is completely ungendered, in an empirical sense: if you observe native speakers speaking naturally and colloquially, you will find that everyone who uses it (regardless of gender) uses it consistently to address groups of multiple people (regardless of gender). It’s derived from the noun “guy”, which is indeed often gendered.…

I was thinking about this the other day. You can approach a group of women and say " hey guys", that is fine. To a group of men," hey gals", and that is not fine. "Hey guys" to a mixed group, why... You've now 'elevated' the women to men so everyone is ok with it. It all implies that being a woman is somehow lesser. And so that is why I'm going to stick to everyone or folks. Although I don't begrudge or ask anyone to…

Your argument is dubious for two reasons:

1. You assume that “guys” is the male equivalent of “gals”. It’s not — the latter is much more strongly gendered. Your argument is circular, because you assume that “guys” is gendered as one of your axioms.

2. You are talking about “hey guys”, whereas I was talking about “you guys”. The whole point of my post was that you can’t understand the meaning of “you guys” simply by referencing the meaning of “guys”. They are completely different words, and their only relationship is historical, even though one is a substring of the other. Even if “hey guys” is mildly gendered (which I’m not sure of, but I’m at least willing to believe it’s possible), “you guys” absolutely isn’t, empirically.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#195

Post by School-Cotton »

el-salvador wrote: post #151
kgwgk wrote: post #69

I don’t think I had seen those before: tarball [use instead: tar archive] While the term refers to an archive that has been created with the tar command, it can be negatively associated with the pejorative term tarbaby. whitespace [use instead: empty space] Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized. Some of the “solutions” are funny: Hispanic [use instead: Lat…

> its roots lie in Spain's colonization of South American countries. They forgot Central American countries :(

And North American ones (Mexico and the Caribbean).

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#196

Post by somewhereoutth »

nfw2 wrote: post #77

The inclusion of "Hispanic => Latinx" is staggering because: - The vast majority of Hispanic people don't like "Latinx" - "Latinx" was invented to avoid gendered words like "Latino", and "Hispanic" isn't gendered - It's listed under "imprecise language", but "Latinx" isn't any more precise. It's so ironic that "colonialism" has now come to mean anything progressive academics don't like, but telling a minority group w…

Furthermore, Hispanic != Latino (or even Latinx)

Specifically, Hispanic relates to Spain and the Spanish speaking world, whereas Latino indicates Latin America which includes Brazil, but not Portugal.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#197

Post by layer8 »

kgwgk wrote: post #69

I don’t think I had seen those before: tarball [use instead: tar archive] While the term refers to an archive that has been created with the tar command, it can be negatively associated with the pejorative term tarbaby. whitespace [use instead: empty space] Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized. Some of the “solutions” are funny: Hispanic [use instead: Lat…

I also don’t see how “person who has immigrated” constitutes defining people by multiple characteristics.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#200

Post by alphachloride »

There are too many suggested replacements that I find are overly prescriptive, contextually blind, and needlessly aggrandizing.

Some, I admit, have merit. (Senile, grey-beard etc.) To me they are common sense. Perhaps, the rest of the terms were common sense to the authors.

Several suggestions about cultural appropriation are hypocritical. People of all cultures say the Lord's name in vain all the time. But saying guru or totem pole or spirit animal is an infringement. Why?

There are many turns of phrase where the offensive implication is not even implicit. "Bury the hatchet", "take a shot", "rule of thumb". Does anyone have to do mental labor to separate the violence in the words from their meaning?

Some replacements are suggested to prevent a word from singularly describing a person, because people have multiple characteristics. Yet the verbosity makes the attempt more conspicuous. "Immigrant -> person who immigrated". Why?

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