This language got popular not because people thought really hard and all arrived at it independently, through cold-blooded analysis, but because they heard it was what the better class of people did now, and there was peer pressure around it. Because it never had a firm foundation, never really made sense when you thought hard about it, it can easily change to something else. In other words, it's a fashion, and fashions change.
Banning words won’t make the world more just
241–250 of 1001 posts
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#242The 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 the door it goes.
There seems to be this weird erasure of women taking place at the moment. To the extent that it's now controversial to ask "what is a woman?"
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#243>When Latinx began to be used in advanced milieus, a poll found that a large majority of Latinos and Hispanics continued to go by the familiar terms and hadn’t heard of the newly coined, nearly unpronounceable one. There's also a practical case: these terms make you sound like a damn space alien. Unless your audience already agrees completely with you, you lose credibility by using this language. Posturing for your o…
Here is the poll, which has been repeated for a few years: https://thinknow.com/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/thin... It is not that large, but the tiny number of respondents who identify as Latinx has been stable. It's crazy that this label is still being pushed.
> It's crazy that this label is still being pushed.
This is a great example of how intellectually bankrupt some of the social mis-movements towards redefinition truly are.
First they come up with a term that is clearly not a term used by the native speakers of that group. Then they utilize that term in order to collectively identify them. Then they push it across media, education, and many other avenues to make it "a thing".
This term which originates in English, and doesn't truly relate to Latin* derived cultures but instead to a smaller subset of cultures from a specific geography, and is difficult to speak for a native speaker, and violates the grammar, is then hoisted upon them like a label to which they'd actually subscribe. As many of these cultures self-identify as uniquely distinct from one another, and are competitive, this type of collectivist label is all the more rude.
What Chutzpah!
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#244The 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…
A pregnant person is a woman.
Nobody seems to be able to define woman anymore. How can we be sure?
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#245The 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…
A pregnant person is a woman.
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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace “younger people” with “a few younger people from a particular socioeconomic class” to be more accurate. The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately. It’s not bad to say “this whole thing is just stupid”. It’s just incomplete to say…it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts) and cultural…
> The eternal outraged youth will always find a few hobby horses to ride. Sometimes they lead to good things. This is a particularly smelly one, unfortunately. Nonbinary people face real discrimination, including but not limited to the dismissal of that fight as pointless outrage. > it’s also musically ugly (language is a song of sorts) This is ridiculous. Ugly-sounding words will always exist. > and culturally insul…
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Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#247This article goes way overboard. While some of the things referenced are ridiculous, the author is really misinterpreting many of the guides here, to a point where it feels like willful misinterpretation. For instance. > If we don’t know how to end racism, we can at least call it structural. The guides want to make the ugliness of our society disappear by linguistic fiat. If anything, using the term “structural” help…
> Also, these guides aren’t targeting literature.
Considering the news that Roald Dahl's books are now being altered in precisely some of the ways described, we are very, very clearly seeing literature start to be targeted.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#248Those whose focus is on controlling language are not primarily concerned about controlling your words. They're primarily interested in controlling you . I'm old enough to remember when the word 'retard' was the politically correct term before it became "mentally handicapped" then "challenged" and so on. Same goes for 'cripple' which also accurately and concisely describes a particular class of physical impairment. Th…
They think truth is subject to power. Look at how they describe hierarchies. And as no surprise, they power hungry authoritarians. By their own description, that’s just how the world works.
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#249Is not "equity language" just another form of neocolonialism? How can "rich educated people" rename entire ethnic group (latinx) without their consent? Also there is nothing offensive about being "poor"... Equity language is just another tool to oppress people.
I love reading this stuff to figure out what new words elite white people have for me. Apparently I’m not a “minority” or a “naturalized citizen” anymore, and my kids aren’t “second generation Americans.”
Re: Banning words won’t make the world more just
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
A pregnant person is a woman.
At least, the person that birthed you is your mother. I'd question the association between mother and woman, rather than mother and birth
Many adopted people would disagree. “Biological mother” is closer, but surrogate pregnancy is a thing, so that doesn’t work reliably.