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Banning words won’t make the world more just

theatlantic.com

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

#901

Post by bentley »

cesarb wrote: post #774
the_only_law wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these people also believe in a single continent called “Eurasia”? Hell those are mostly on the same plate, which can’t be said for the Americas.

> Do these people also believe in a single continent called “Eurasia”? It's the traditional six-continent model (America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica), which according to https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continente is the model taught in school in many places, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and all over Latin America. So no, "these people" (which includes nearly all of America outside the USA and Cana…

On the other hand, the seven‐continent model is dominant in the Anglosphere. So it seems the sensible thing to do is what in fact is already normally done: in Spanish and other such languages, use “América” to refer to North and South America, and in English, use “America” to refer to the USA and “the Americas” to refer to North and South America.

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

#903

Post by HyperSane »

flangola7 wrote: post #256
HyperSane wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pregnant person is a woman.

[flagged]

Can we not use the word car because motorcycles only have two wheels? Why do we need to change language for a few hundred people worldwide? Why do trans men get pregnant since it is the least masculine thing possible?

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

#904

Post by arp242 »

sunderw wrote: post #541
Lazare wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I suffer from a disability and so does my girlfriend. Note that our main language is French and so there is a bit of nuance to how the terms are used. Disabled is usually said "handicapé" (this word means more "incapacitated" that anything) and "person with a disability" is usually said "personne en situation de handicap" which more literally translates to "person in a disability situation" / "person currently incapa…

I'm supportive of all those goals, I just don't see how person-first language does anything for them. Does "he's a person with visual impairment" really stigmatize a person less than "he's blind"? Or does "he's blind" really one-dimensionally define a person? It seems to me that stigmas are not bourne out of language, and that a blind person is their own person seems understood and implied no matter the language that's used. If I say "sunderw's French" then it's also understood that you're more than just "French" and that your "Frenchness" does not singularly define you.

You can construct some armchair psychology arguments such as "the language explicitly acknowledges that there's more to a person", but does that really affect people's thinking in any significant way? And if it does, does it affect the thinking in the right way? Or does it trivialize the condition? No matter what language you use, being blind is a serious handicap and it really does affect what you can and can't do in this world; trying to euphemize the very real problems blind people face also isn't a good idea.

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

#905

Post by opportune »

Lazare wrote: post #415
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…

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…

Do you know many older or elderly people? I’ve met many who basically do not know, and have a very hard time understanding, all the unspoken rules about talking about things like disability (or race, religion, etc.).

I sympathize with them a bit because it really is complicated. Why is saying “the blacks” bad, and “black guy” suspicious, but “black person” fine? Why is it ok to call someone disabled but not crippled? Why does saying the word “Jew” range so much in terms of offensiveness based on context and tone?

I know, from my perspective it’s kind of silly and not that hard too. But for people who are perpetually confused about things like that, I can totally see why they lean heavily towards the side of caution to avoid offense. Then of course there are the people doing it for performative reasons, but I’d wager a lot of those people are motivated by fear of saying the wrong thing or being branded a bigot too.

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

#906

Post by opportune »

andsoitis wrote: post #765
perilunar wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English has "handicapped" which is similar and also became offensive. I thought it was a good word because it allowed for more nuance than the binary abled/disabled.

Ha, I wasn’t aware that “handicapped” is considered offensive. Is that an American thing? A British thing?

It doesn’t feel offensive so much as a little outdated, especially for physical disabilities, since the current vogue is the term “disabled.” Which taken literally is not as nice as the term handicappped, but it works better with language like “I have a disability”

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

#907

Post by eru »

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #663
Lazare wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Slightly related: in German, a strange thing happened at the end of the last century. Disabled people used to be called "behindert" (might be translated as "impeded" or "hindered"). I think the word was a good choice, because it took the blame away from people, and just described that they had to overcome bigger obstacles because of their situation. In the eighties or nineties, people started to use the term as a slu…

I thought 'invalide' was a much older term for disabled people in German? French had this term for a long time at least.

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

#908

Post by eru »

prepend wrote: post #637
psyfi wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, some people will use "people of determination" despite being more vague and non-descriptive

Is this mean someone is determined or steadfast in their constitution? I worked with someone who was really smart but annoyed me because his variable names were cartoon characters, like Tom,jerry,bugs, etc. I asked him not to do this and he said that each variable was documented so it’s better to use an arbitrary label that never needs to change should the business change it’s name (ie if you called a variable divisi…

Well, that might make sense for natural language terms, but it's still really bad coding advice: changing variable names is easy, or at least should be easy, if you have tooling worth a damn.

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

#909

Post by jasfi »

Words can have significant weight in some cultures, especially when used historically as hate speech. When that word disappears from the culture because of a ban it can have a very positive effect. Note that I'm specifically talking about hate speech, and not any word you don't happen to like.

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

#910

Post by usrbinbash »

franga2000 wrote: post #622
pancrufty wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 des…

> why not start with the places where the words actually mean the same thing

If a word describes a bad thing, that's a reason to get rid of the bad thing. It's not a reason to ban the word.

Because the latter doesn't help anyone with real problems. Wow, we banished "master" from git. Did that make the world a better place for the people described in these articles (see links)?

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/saudi0704/4.htm

https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_...

Did it positively impact any of these lives? Is it going to do so at any point in the future? If so, what specific outcomes can these people expect from it?

My point is, banishing words describing bad things, doesn't make the bad things go away.

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