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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

#611

Post by School-Cotton »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #294
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.…

Out of all of these, y’all rolls most readily off the tongue.

That’s entirely subjective.

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

#612

Post by rmak »

cipheredStones wrote: post #332

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…

Totally ok to use "incel" but not Karen.

Notice how they are fine with using words like "gunman", "conman" but not the positive masculine words like man-made, mankind ...

Also no issues with "motherboard" or "mother nature".

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

#613

Post by jojobas »

cipheredStones wrote: post #332

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…

All these categories have something in common - their use can be seen as rude in a particular setting, the rest is bullshit. You can be rude using the most refined vocabulary.

You won't exterminate rudeness by banning a set of words, nor should you be trying to.

By giving people an option to be rude you can see people that choose not to. And then I'll rather choose a rude vulgar teacher who knows his stuff than a milquetoast who doesn't.

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

#614

Post by StanislavPetrov »

testfoobar wrote: post #258

They apparently spider and scan their own websites for "harmful" language: I just find this wild. How and when did language itself become so dangerous to this degree? Along with most adults in my social circle, I care and think about my health, my family, my friends, my work, my dog, my environment, my community, etc. I could not give a flying fuck about language policing. Language isn't going to protect me on my bik…

> How do we go back to debating meaningful problems and solutions and tell these language policing idiots to do something useful?

By refusing to placate emotional cripples and authoritarians. By refusing to accept the false assertion that everyone is innately entitled to respect. Respect is something that is earned. Those who seek to police our language due to imaginary harms that they assert someone may suffer are not entitled to respect - quite the opposite. It is long past time we as a society started actively disrespecting these people. We should heap scorn and ridicule on the people who came up with this ridiculous blacklist of commonly used words and drive them out of decent society. We should actively disrespect the self-appointed hall monitors that claim the power to decide the acceptable parameters of public discourse. The fact that such petty, small-minded people have filled the halls of power in most of most powerful institutions, from academia to government, is a withering indictment on our society.

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

#615

Post by seydor »

Who do i contact to add a few thousand terms to the list? It's kind of urgent please, starting with the word byzantine

BTW isn't "Elimination" kind of vionent as a term? I wish they used a less upsetting name.

In any case, by upvoting this you are providing visibility to nonsense.

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

#616

Post by rmak »

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…

so what should we use instead of the word "mother nature"? This implies fathers as lesser people, right?

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

#617

Post by [deleted] »

cm2187 wrote: post #442
yunwal wrote: post #371

Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…

You seem to assume that this is applied against the will of the academic staff. It seems to me that most of the professors are fully on board with this program. In the end it will be all self correcting. Those woke universities reputation is melting like ice cream in the sun. I remember Brian Armstrong mentioning in an interview that he starts to see companies adding basic skill tests in their recrutment as they don'…

[deleted]

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

#618

Post by ZeroGravitas »

imgabe wrote: post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

Does this apply to those with abnormalities and defects like ADHD and autism?

Are they just faking being crazy in order to get an advantage? Like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Or are they secretly trying to oppress us by forcing us normal people to live by their stupid, made up and malicious rules? Like in that Harrison Bergerson story.

Why would they do something so evil, so corrupting to society? Is sociopathy a common symptom of these mental disorders? Is that why they're all potential school shooters? Or are most of them harmless freaks but the accomodations put in place for the rare genuine basket case are being exploited by a whole bunch of sociopaths that aren't even defective just lazy and they're playing the system to disavantage normal people who are just literally better at basic tasks than they are?

Where will it end. "Oh look at me, I can't concentrate in an open office because someone might make smalltalk or eye contact with me. I'm so triggered we all have to work from home and have less meetings".

What are they plotting to do once they have reduced as all down to their pathetic level?

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

#619

Post by AustinDev »

flakeoil wrote: post #545

Can we please change the name "Stanford" to something else? It offends me. "Stan" looks like "Satan" and "ford" is an automobile brand which makes me think of combustion engines and global warming. I cannot stand it anymore...

I think you can work on this a bit. Henry Ford was an accomplished anti-Semite.

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

#620

Post by antihero »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #618
imgabe wrote: post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

Does this apply to those with abnormalities and defects like ADHD and autism? Are they just faking being crazy in order to get an advantage? Like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Or are they secretly trying to oppress us by forcing us normal people to live by their stupid, made up and malicious rules? Like in that Harrison Bergerson story. Why would they do something so evil, so corrupting to society? Is sociopath…

What in the hell are you talking about? A society that does reasonable things to difficulties that some people have through no fault of their own is a healthy one. It’s all a question of balance and one could argue that colleges have got that balance very wrong, but they’ve always been places with more intense politics than the rest of society. People leave university and get more life experience and hopefully mature a bit, thankfully. This is how it’s always been.

If you want to know where I, a mental cunt with ADHD strikes the balance, regarding this list, some of the words make sense as their current meaning is pejorative and derogatory e.g. “cripple”, however some are simply a statement of fact and thus ridiculous e.g. “addict”.

Personally I think I have thicker skin than most and whilst it would be great if everyone was at that stage we have to extend some level of compassion, not just out of altruism but also because how using certain language affects how we ourselves are portrayed and received when trying to achieve a goal with our words.

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