Hacker News Reader

Comment by ugjka | Hacker News Reader

>As it turns out, a lot of people choose to be inclusive and non-inflammatory.

No, they just don't want to get fired

No. I can't get fired, and I actively choose to try to make my coworkers feel comfortable. Is things like flagging "landlord" a big goofy? Maybe. But there's a ton of unconscious biases that go into language, and I'm always happy to have things flagged so I can make a decision via an opt-in feature.

If you think people are only being inclusive and non-inflammatory to not get fired, I think maybe you simply just don't understand that some people are genuinely caring and empathetic.

Aren't you an owner and not an employee? Co-Workers in this context are employees that could sue.

You probably generally care but if you didn't it would be foolish and perhaps costly to not play the game. Your situation re-enforces the need to.

Only if you buy into “microaggression” philosophy.

You've taken the stance that people who do not use inclusive language are not genuinely caring and empathetic. People I know who are minorities in tech seem to not care very much. Most have more pressing issues like handling the practical implications of mat-leave or pushing for equitable resume reviews. The people I know who care the most about this are also universally not minorities.

It's bizarre to me that strong sapir-wharf seems to be the dominant thought in 2022.

I've found there is a world of difference between virtue signalers and people who actually want to help with real problems. The virtue signalers only care when they can look good or bludgeon others over the head. Actual help is tiring.

How would you feel about a suggestion to use y’all instead of you guys? folx instead of folks?

A quick search of my emails suggests that while I commonly use "everyone" and "y'all", I haven't used "you guys" in a business communication in...years

I don't think "folx" is going to be one of the recommendations, it isn't synonymous with folks anyway, so the replacement would be rarely make sense unless you were explicitly talking about particular queer or marginalized communities.

In several English-speaking countries "guys" is not at all gendered (used universally by people of any gender to refer to groups of people of any gender), while "y'all" and "folks" are basically just not in the language at all and would just get you confused looks. I have no idea what "folx" means as this is the first time I've ever seen it.

"You guys" is just the most common form of the 2nd-person plural in American English. "Y'all" is strongly dialectal, and it sounds forced when someone who doesn't actually speak the dialect says it.

People who speak with the thickest appalachin and thickest black english dialects (two pick two ends of the spectrum) can barely communicate with each other and "y'all" sounds perfectly natural from either of them.

It's a class thing. Which is why it sounds forced when a CEO who doesn't have a preexisting american accent of some sort says it.

Extremely negatively

I feel it's retarded.

> Y'all

As a Texan it sounds jarring and wrong when said by a non-Southerner. A bit like a lily white person suddenly dropping into AAVE. It's just cringe-inducing and I would like people who do it as an affectation (rather than something they grew up saying) to not do it.

Some people are genuinely trying to make other people feel included. Some people just do it because of social pressure. One way or another this does feel like a force for the better.

And that's great, but why do they force the issue and report you to HR for using "landlord" or "master/slave protocol" in a powerpoint presentation?

Has this actually happened to you?

How is that relevant? People are concerned about bad things that might happen to them but haven't happened to them yet. Just because it hasn't happened to them specifically doesn't mean their concerns are invalid.

Because the frequency of an occurrence is valuable data relating to its likelihood, just like knowing whether your house is in a floodplain is valuable data in making a decision as to whether you should worry about your house flooding.

I mean, how many times has this happened to anyone, let alone the individual in question?

If they are using those terms in a way that is trying to stir up trouble, it makes sense to report them. If they did it without any intent to cause trouble, there wouldn't be an issue.

I don't call Japanese customers Japs even though that used to be a valid English term because it is now widely considered offensive. These are terms that some groups find offensive and more may find offensive in the future. It makes sense to stay ahead of the game and not cause offense if it costs me nothing to do it, and it makes sense for Google to help people who are trying not to offend people do so easily.

Eh, yes. PowerPoint was about how to do interviewing in ways that eliminated bias. A week later I'm having a conversation with my boss, who's telling me that I was reported to HR for misogyny and sexism because the presentation was about how to ensure that people don't hand out jobs based on sex or race. The logic seemed to be that if people are trained to eliminate bias in hiring, the the results will be sexist because not enough token women would be hired.

I told said boss exactly how many times the complainant should be fired but needless to say, their identity was protected and nothing happened. If you believe that can't happen you're not really aware of how these people think. The next step is an admin/site-level setting that allows "uninclusive" language to force-disable sharing. You wait and see.

"The logic seemed to be that if people are trained to eliminate bias in hiring, the the results will be sexist because not enough token women would be hired."

If this was implicit in your presentation, then I think I can see why you were reported to HR.

But, look, maybe you didn't deserve to be reported. Anyone can report anything to HR.

Did you mean to write explicit? The presentation wasn't actually about gender representation or affirmative action and didn't mention those things, it just had a slide or two where it pointed out that working out a fixed interview plan before doing an interview was a good way to avoid bias of various kinds, and mentioned age/gender bias as examples.

Obviously, if you're teaching people how to eliminate bias in an interview process then people who believe that absence of pro-female bias is "sexism" will consider it implicitly sexist, regardless of intent. But that's a nonsensical inversion of basic English and morality. People who report others to HR for that would be fired in any competent company (this one wasn't).

I've been DM'd with passive aggressive "concern" when questioning the parameters of a workplace inclusive language push.

i was called out (in private, , by a coworker, not in my current company) for using "he" to reference an user instead of singular "they".

Has it happened to me? Nope, did it happen to a co-worker, yes it did. Luckily they all worked it out and my friend didn't get fired.

Great straw man.

I don't see how underlining words like "brown bag", "landlord" and "master" are for the better in any sense.

This is virtue signaling - a no cost action meant to make you feel like you are helping people without actually helping people.

It's not virtue signaling. Virtue signaling would be putting a decal on your car which says "I support the police". You're signaling to the police officer who pulls you over that you're a good police-supporting person, and they should let you off with a warning.

No, it's simply a hint that your message might be better received if you change your word usage to something which is more current, more inclusive, or less triggering. For example, in the U.S. the word "master" might be triggering, given that black people were enslaved, tortured, and murdered for hundreds of years in this country. I'm OK to avoid it. If you want to use it, you can ignore the squiggle, but none of this has anything to do with "virtue signaling".

I really feel your usage of "enslaved" and "tortured" are not very inclusive. There are people whose ancestors experienced such things, and words like that might be triggering and make them uncomfortable.

Maybe you could use friendlier words like "not free" or "hurt"?

What’s wrong with what GP just said? They were speaking in a historical relevant context where the words were used in their literal meaning rather than the figurative one that would devalue its meaning outside of pure figurative works.

This is a form of reductio ad absurdum.

If a word like "landlord" can be "triggering" then we can't even discuss actual historical events like slavery or torture, etc (one would at least presume torture to be more triggering than landlord).

> For example, in the U.S. the word "master" might be triggering

Before a few years ago, I seriously doubt that innocuous uses of the word "master" were triggering to anyone beyond a very small group of political activists. It's a common word that is used in many contexts completely unrelated to slavery. Nobody with their head soundly on their shoulders was triggered when they heard phrases like "master chef," "master bedroom" or "master's degree."

There's a difference between avoiding language that actually does have strongly negative or prejudicial associations and actively seeking out reasons to be upset about completely innocuous common phrases. There are words that really do become polluted (like "Führer" in German, which used to be a normal word for "leader," but which now is strongly associated with a certain someone), but there are also words that are completely harmless that people work to try to make an issue out of for ideological reasons (e.g., "whitelist").

There's a certain strain of politics in the US which does actively seek out and attempt to remove "problematic" language. You may agree with that politics. But a lot of people (myself included) don't think that "problematizing" innocuous phrases like "master chef" is actually helping anyone, and rather see it as a form of bullying.

I get the feeling that the controversy around the use of the word master started with the master-slave terminology used in hard drive technology (which was problematic) which then just spiralled out of control.

Call me suspicious, but I’m not convinced that the arguments extending the debate to all use of the word master are entirely made in good faith. In fact, it seems a lot like controversy for controversies sake and I can’t help but wonder if some troll isn’t out there fanning the flames.

>words like "brown bag"

Hold up, what's wrong with "brown bag" now?

> No, they just don't want to get fired

This is exactly right.

But why would people get fired for being uninclusive and inflammatory?

You need to follow your logic one or two steps farther to understand the incentives at work.

Because “uninclusive” and “inflammatory” are just how these folks say “heresy”, and violations of orthodoxy must be punished if ideological doctrine is to be successfully enforced.

Could you give some examples?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com