Banning words won’t make the world more just • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by franga2000 » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:12 AM UTC

pancrufty wrote: post #430

usrbinbash wrote: post #349

Whaaaat? I thought so many lives were improved by making devteams replace all usages of "black/whitelist" with "block/allowlist". Well, except for the lives of the users, on-call engineers, 1st and 2nd level tech support, the product owners, and everyone else who had to deal with sudden, unexpected, hard to track bugs resulting from such BS changes. Oh, ofc I apologise for my use of the word "list", which may be hist…

As a non-American, the dumbest change that affects me daily, is the renaming of the master branch. Master means teacher in romance languages and its variations are part of daily usage. In git there's no "slave" part so it always meant "main" and not "owner" It affects me daily because "look on master" became "look on the main branch" for no advantage to absolutely anyone.

The strangest thing about the git branch controversy is that "master" was clearly used in a master/copy sense, just like you used to have a master music record that was then copied, but at the same time, basically every embedded communication protocol and many distributed computing systems still use terms like "bus master" and straight up "master-slave" configuration. Sure, for many protocols it's a very accurate description, but if we're going to try and remove such language from tech, why not start with the places where the words actually mean the same thing, not just happen to be homographs.

(I do support the master-main change in git for other reasons tho: it's much easier to translate and more natural to say. "Master record" is a term that never got translated into many languages, or at least not in a way that still makes sense for git)

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

#472

Post by spiralx » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #138

Animats wrote: post #23

Is this going anywhere outside the US? The "pronouns" thing went nowhere in France. It was considered damaging to the French language. > The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color. Also, the shift from moron to mentally defective to retarded to whatever. This is such a sideshow. First, conservatism lost its way. Then liberalism lost its way. If o…

How about mentality retarded -> special so that now "special" is the cruelest taunt on the schoolyard? As for "defund the police" I think I'm the only one who remembers the Reaganite "defund the left" slogan https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/11/opinion/defund-the-left.h... which "defund the police" seems to be modeled after. Thatcherism (the British strain of Reaganism that was just a bit meaner) became so ingrained th…

"Defund Planned Parenthood" has been a Republican rallying cry for abolishing PP for almost two decades and is but one of many "Defund" bills they've introduced going back years:

• Defund EcoHealth Alliance Act (2023)

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2023

• Defund Cities that Defund the Police Act of 2021

• Defund Federal Vaccine Mandates Act (2021)

• Defund National Endowment for the Humanities Act of 2021

• Defund Davos Act (2022)

• Defund Putin Act (2022)

• Defund the Ministry of Truth Act of 2022

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act (2021)

• Defund de Blasio’s Injection Sites Act of 2021

• Defunding Abortion Transportation Act (2022)

• Defund the People’s Liberation Army Act

• Defund the Wuhan Institute of Virology Act

• Defund Cities that Defund the Police Act of 2020

• Defund National Endowment for the Humanities Act of 2019

• Defund Executive Orders that Suppress Free Speech Act

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2019

• Defunding United Nations Act of 2017

• Defund National Endowment for the Humanities Act of 2018

• Defunding the Corrupt and Incompetent United Nations Act (2017)

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2017

• Defund the Syrian Refugee Resettlement Program Act of 2015

• Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015

• Defund Amnesty Act of 2015

• Defund Obamacare Act of 2013

• Defund United States Assistance to Pakistan Act of 2011

• Defund Libya Act (2011)

• Defund the Individual Mandate Act (2011)

• Defund the Crooks Act (2010)

• Defund ACORN Act (2010)

All of these introduced by Republicans.

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

#473

Post by eru » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

oboes wrote: post #397

jurassic wrote: post #50

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…

> Some of these, like "grandfathering", cannot even be understood without deep diving on etymology to discover the racist origins. That one in particular, I was almost offended when I learnt during a DEI training that it could be construed as insensitive/racist of me to use that idiom. English is not my native language, and is not an official language of my country. I work for a local branch of a large US tech compan…

I briefly worked for Facebook in Singapore. I felt a similar disconnect with their concern about African-Americans. (I think it might have been 'black history month' or perhaps the 'black lives matter' riots were ongoing. I can't remember.)

Singapore has its own problems and groups of people that aren't doing so well. A focus on African-Americans felt extremely tone-deaf to me. Almost like it was designed to mock the whole DEI enterprise.

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

#474

Post by zirgs » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:17 AM UTC

strangattractor wrote: post #277

angarg12 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that one of the issues is that the (more extreme) woke culture has put the entire burden of communication on the speakers rather than the listeners. Is not enough that you intend to offend, or that you say something that offends someone, is whether something that you say could possibly offend someone, even if you didn't have the slightest intentions. On the other say the listeners are free to interpret…

I personally believe that 2 things have greatly affected P2P communications. Anonymity and attempting to hold meaningful conversation strictly through text. When we communicate with text we cut off non-verbal communications that are a major source of interpreting the intent of the speaker and the receptiveness of the listener. In-person conversations are constantly adjusting what and how things are said depending on…

Not even anonymity. I've seen people posting insane shit on social networks using their real names.

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

#475

Post by madaxe_again » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:24 AM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #352

lynx23 wrote: post #289

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 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) my language was being policed by, um, materially unencumbered birthgivers of reduced melanin.

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

#476

Post by SyzygistSix » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:25 AM UTC

variant wrote: post #34

Can we just all start operating from the perspective that we're not trying to offend each other? Do away with all these rules that serve no purpose other than to slot each other into buckets of enlightened and evil. It's a sign that we have things way too good.

>It's a sign that we have things way too good.

That is not the case though.

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

#477

Post by RobotToaster » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:27 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #320

lynx23 wrote: post #289

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…

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…

Ironically it's the opposite in the autism community, the white Knights insist it should be "autistic people" for some reason.

None of this is going to change anyone's material conditions, it's just a distraction invented by well paid "diversity consultants".

At least the fad for "differently abled" seems to have died.

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

#478

Post by sva_ » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:28 AM UTC

lynx23 wrote: post #289

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 once had an injury in both of my legs after a long hike. It caused my legs to be so swollen that I had very limited mobility, but I could still walk - though it probably looked very awkward.

In school, children get taught that when someone looks disabled, you shouldn't look at them, because staring at them is some kind of discrimination or so. I couldn't disagree more.

When I had that injury, and was kind of crip-walking, people would intuitively stare at me for a second, then -very obviously- force themselves to look away.

The injury wasn't that bad and went away after a week or two. But the way people forced themselves to look away, was much worse. I can't imagine dealing with that every day.

I'd argue that the people who make up these kind of "rules" probably aren't themselves affected by it.

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

#479

Post by SyzygistSix » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:33 AM UTC

messe wrote: post #406

diedead wrote: post #175

Some very fun ones relating to the IT/tech industry (To me, some of these are reasonable, but "whitespace" and "brown-bag", seriously??) https://itconnect.uw.edu/guides-by-topic/identity-diversity-... https://www.it.northwestern.edu/about/it-projects/dei/glossa...

"Sanity check" is flagged there as well. That's a first for me.

I recently had a comment on another site flagged by a bot for using ableist language when I used the world "insane". It was a first for me as well. Will go with "batshit" next time.

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

#480

Post by op00to » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 11:34 AM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #349

Whaaaat? I thought so many lives were improved by making devteams replace all usages of "black/whitelist" with "block/allowlist". Well, except for the lives of the users, on-call engineers, 1st and 2nd level tech support, the product owners, and everyone else who had to deal with sudden, unexpected, hard to track bugs resulting from such BS changes. Oh, ofc I apologise for my use of the word "list", which may be hist…

Using inclusive language never bothered me. Never saw a bug related to inclusive language, and I worked on software I am confident everyone on HN uses.