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

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

#701

Post by naasking » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

JenrHywy wrote: post #286

tastysandwich wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

> There seems to be this weird erasure of women taking place at the moment. This is the crazy thing. After a century of legitimate struggle for equality, women are having the language of feminism turned on them to deny the existence of femininity. Honestly, I thought the lines would have been drawn with sport, but that fact that it's leaking into medicine is pure insanity. I've been somewhat worried about there not b…

Feminism has always been about eradicating gender roles, and that's usually fine because the gender stereotypes that existed were almost all factually incorrect. It's definitely going in directions people never expected though.

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

#702

Post by bombcar » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

lynx23 wrote: post #412

recuter wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not self conscious at all my dude (I'm not one of those insensitive woke people who get off on making everybody feel like shit to try and elevate themselves at all costs), glad I made you chuckle. How do you consume movies? I didn't know that the ̶a̶c̶c̶u̶r̶s̶e̶d̶ "visually impaired" do that. Dope. Don't know why I'm surprised. I bet blind fury would watch movies somehow too. Also, you should obviously change your us…

Regarding how to "watch" movies: Its actually as simple as turning the TV on and listening to what comes out the speakers... In the 80s, movies were actually much more story-driven then today. Even if you missed something happening because you didnt see the visuals, you would get it typically a few seconds or minutes afterwards, because somebody was refering to the event and therefore uncovering the riddle. Something…

The “subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing” on modern videos are a wonder and amazing. We regularly use subtitles because it can be hard to hear the movie over the kids, but SDH is great if you are mainly listening. Highly recommend everyone try it sometime.

Sometimes it is even a separate “language track” that describes what’s happening.

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

#703

Post by jen20 » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

kristianbrigman wrote: post #307

crazygringo wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there a time when adults referred to each other by Mr. and Mrs. in regular spoken conversation? Like if you were asking a work colleague where another colleague was, it was normal to say "Where is Mr. Smith?" rather than "Where is Mark?" Since in my lifetime I've only known calling everyone by their first name (except, like you say, teachers in childhood), I'm curious when the change occurred and how.

Not sure, but people certainly talk that way in Victorian novels (does anyone actually know Mr. Darcy’s first name? :)

Fitzwilliam.

But yes, that notwithstanding, any period drama (Downtown Abbey) will give a good indication of this.

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

#704

Post by Nemrod67 » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

corbulo wrote: post #438

pwinnski wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that kindness never goes out of style. Negative words can change meaning or severity over time, in both directions, but if you aim for clear expression and avoid insults, it is unlikely anything you say or write will be judged badly in the future.

Why do you need freedom of speech? Just be nice! This might be the most British comment ive ever replied to

Oï MATE!

You got a license for that joke!?

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

#705

Post by Aidevah » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

>Traditionally, Prescriptivists tend to be political conservatives and Descriptivists tend to be liberals. But today’s most powerful influence on the norms of public English is actually a stern and exacting form of liberal Prescriptivism. I refer here to Politically Correct English (PCE), under whose conventions failing students become “high-potential” students and poor people “economically disadvantaged” and people in wheelchairs “differently abled” and a sentence like “White English and Black English are different, and you better learn White English or you’re not going to get good grades” is not blunt but “insensitive.” Although it’s common to make jokes about PCE (referring to ugly people as “aesthetically challenged” and so on), be advised that Politically Correct English’s various pre- and proscriptions are taken very seriously indeed by colleges and corporations and government agencies, whose institutional dialects now evolve under the beady scrutiny of a whole new kind of Language Police.

>From one perspective, the rise of PCE evinces a kind of Lenin-to-Stalinesque irony. That is, the same ideological principles that informed the original Descriptivist revolution — namely, the rejections of traditional authority (born of Vietnam) and of traditional inequality (born of the civil rights movement) — have now actually produced a far more inflexible Prescriptivism, one largely unencumbered by tradition or complexity and backed by the threat of real-world sanctions (termination, litigation) for those who fail to conform. This is funny in a dark way, maybe, and it’s true that most criticisms of PCE seem to consist in making fun of its trendiness or vapidity. This reviewer’s own opinion is that prescriptive PCE is not just silly but ideologically confused and harmful to its own cause.

- David Foster Wallace, Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage, 2001

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...

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

#706

Post by naasking » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

_cenw wrote: post #486

JenrHywy wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There seems to be this weird erasure of women taking place at the moment. This is the crazy thing. After a century of legitimate struggle for equality, women are having the language of feminism turned on them to deny the existence of femininity. Honestly, I thought the lines would have been drawn with sport, but that fact that it's leaking into medicine is pure insanity. I've been somewhat worried about there not b…

[flagged]

> That's a lot of moral panic about a very small group of people that don't generally win more often (and even your typical examples like Lia Thomas also regularly get beaten by cis women, so the advantage could not be that extradordinary) and mostly compete in college-level sports.

I'm not sure why you think permission to compete should be the default position over denial until we have more robust studies for competitive advantage. We already know testosterone and male puberty conveys inherent advantage, so the default should be to prove no advantage exists before permitting competition.

Only recently has it become clear that about 2 years of HRT eliminates competitive advantage for endurance sports, but that no amount of HRT seems to erase the competitive advantage in power sports of trans women who have gone through male puberty (MMA, power lifting, etc.).

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

#707

Post by bombcar » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

sva_ wrote: post #632

lynx23 wrote: post #363

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-w…

I kind of feel the euphemism treadmill is the language version of “looking away”.

Blind is stark; powerful; forces me to contemplate the lack of vision - I can’t escape it.

But if I start using “visually challenged” then it’s softer, sounds like a game, challenges can be overcome, this isn’t something I need to worry about.

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

#708

Post by LooseMarmoset » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:40 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #519

fidgewidge wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can only name a handful of people who survived full frontal attacks (for now) indicates that this is more than merely annoying. The ranks of the cancelled far outnumber them and we should recognize the disturbing historical parallels too. This type of language editing was a key plot point in 1984 because it is the habit of extremely dangerous far left regimes. I feel like the west is in danger of ex…

There’s a cute story I read the other day about an “Offensiveness consultant” who teaches companies how to be just offensive enough on Twitter to make sure woke people don’t want to work at your company. The story is written for comedy - but the more I think about it, the more I wonder might be something people actively do, for all the reasons you’re talking about. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/even-more-bay-…

That story is really great - I can honestly imagine a Silicon Valley startup party going exactly like the story describes.

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

#709

Post by bombcar » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

YeBanKo wrote: post #492

lynx23 wrote: post #363

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…

From non-native speaker perspective, it sounds like it also obscured the truth: visually challenged can still consume visual info, blind - can’t. For the former larger fonts, adapted color palette, simplified graphics, etc can be useful, for the latter no amount of adaptations will work and you have to completely switch to audio or tactile mode of communication.

It’s complicated by “legally blind” being a term that includes people who can see “somewhat”.

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

#710

Post by pas » Fri, Mar 03, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #543

wonderwonder wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Identity politics is not unintentional. Those indoctrinated into it may be unaware but the intention is to divide us.

Well, it's a newish power niche that's getting exploited.

(One (postmodern) interpretation is that it's yet another "society of control" in crisis. Basically, the old tools that provided stability (social conventions, morals, beliefs/prejudices) all used to look like big formalish institutions, from family-school-factory-military-prison, and you were either in the system or completely out of it. But as this system of systems post-WWII has "eaten the world" it's now bound to face its own limitations, hence the crisis. Hence all the reforms, real and so-called ones.)

The niche is (was) that most people has (had) only a super basic over-simplistic belief about language, which could be summed up as "something something the n-word". Instead of the more correct "when talking to/about someone it's very disrespectful to call them names they don't like".