Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
itcommunity.stanford.edu
itcommunity.stanford.edu
- 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- Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite"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, if you look into their history, originally had something to do with some racist practice ("grandfather" something in)
- Words that never had anything to do with racism, but someone who was really on high alert might wonder if they ever did ("tarball" for "archive made with the tar tool")
- Anything that might be derogatory to anybody ("Karen": "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors.")
- Terms that I genuinely have no idea how anyone could view as harmful in their actual context: "user" ("it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues"), "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")
Very much an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach.
"register" - might indicate that someone has to register as a second-class citizen, enemy alien, etc.
"bit" - might imply that someone is only a 'bit player', leading to feelings of inferiority.
"tool" - an obviously offensive word meaning that someone is only fit to be used by others.
"terminal" - we need to be sensitive about words that bring up the concept of death, to avoid triggering effects.
"inheritance" - individuals are not the product of their ancestry!
"class" - we don't need a class-structured society, that's a leftover from a feudal past.
"polymorphism" - too close to hermaphrodite, must be eliminated.
Or better yet, a Being's degree. Let's not be speciesists.
Maybe the reason there are zero openly non-terran (or, preferrably, differently planeted) folks is attutides like yours. Think about it.
They are opposed to colonies wherever they might be, even lunar colonies.
Better go with huperchild.
How about huperperson?
Uh wait, that’s recursi- political correctness overflow error.
No word should ever create a mental reference to a banned word nor should a substitute word create a mental suspicion or guess of what the original offensive word was. A new vocabulary must be formed -newspeak if you will.
As such, I have no hate of other races but I'm filled with hate every time my "git push origin master" fails because the branch is now called "main".
[1] How was this word not on the list?
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Tell that to Ibram Kendi.
I mean what the fuck is a sophomore?
> From earlier sophumer, from the obsolete sophom (“sophism or dialectical exercise”), likely influenced by Ancient Greek σοφός (sophós, “wise”) + μωρός (mōrós, “fool”). Compare oxymoron (literally “sharp-dull”), a similar contradiction.
I propose renaming the institution after a more acceptable historical figure, one whom most undergraduates don't think did anything wrong: Stalin.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...
The road where on can’t lead anywhere but renaming anything just so a younger generation can claim superiority over older generations whom they are forcing to adopt their new vernacular at risk of cancellation.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” —Philip K. Dick
Taken to mean “this is going to be a really stressful day”. Probably utterly not at all that though.
All I'm saying is that this particular meaning of black/red doesn't appear to be the origins of the name "black Friday", at least according to Wikipedia, but I really don't care about this enough to investigate any further.
You got this one backwards though, the notion of “social classes” is a left-winged concept, while the conservatives are usually the one pretending they don't exist.
You do not eliminate, you disintermediate.
I will admit that this may explain some of the general public's attitude towards academia and higher learning.
There were a few things on the list I didn’t know the history of (e.g. ‘grandfathered’) that I’ll try to avoid now. I can understand why someone who comes from a different history than I do could be frustrated by them - indeed, I probably will be (mildly) now I’ve learned of the connotations. It costs me almost nothing to avoid them.
There are also a few things I find questionable - but on the whole this list is basically just ‘try to be kind to others’. It’s disappointing to see it so badly received.
Probably even things like policeman, man-in-the-middle etc are not offensive or patriarchal to the vast majority of women (especially since many such words are probably older than the current use of "man" to mean male person, and refer to the older sense of person, as in the US constitution).
I feel like that use is... complicated. Why, exactly, did "man" mean "person"? Why not "woman", then? It feels like using "man" to mean "person" -- including and especially in historic usage -- is itself patriarchal. Given the time period you reference -- the writing of the US Constitution -- I think it's even more stark, as it was written by men who were not inclined to allow women any sort of participation in the government (and I expect many of them did not feel that women were as entitled to many of the rights they were enumerating).
But really, the semantics aren't the primary issue. If a lot of women feel excluded by "man"-terms, then that's a problem. To be fair, though, I have never asked a female police officer or firefighter if she felt that "policeman" or "fireman" made her feel excluded, so I don't really know.
I think "excluded" is a better term than "offended" in some cases. "Offended" is a very squishy, subjective, imprecise, emotional term. What matters is why someone might feel offended by a particular term, and I could certainly sympathize with a woman who felt like "policeman" was implicitly telling her that she wasn't fit for the job, that women should be excluded from consideration for that job, or that women should intentionally exclude themselves from considering wanting that job.
As much as I disagree with a lot of the things on Stanford's list, I think calling words "harmful" is better and more descriptive than calling them "offensive".
"No, of course I'm not offended by being called a firewoman, why would I be? It's clearly referring to both women and men" - Jake Miller, Firewoman, Springfield Fire Department
The words man/men, at least historically, can refer either to a group of unknown composition OR to a group where every member is a man (male). Basically it is a homonym with two separate meanings, just like mouse (animal or input device) or chair (object or leader of a committee).
Point being, policeman being ambiguous doesn't mean that we would expect policewoman to be considered ambiguous as well, since woman is not a homonym.
Of course saying womankind sounds funny now because we haven’t heard it used for our whole lives. The term mankind derives from Sanskrit meaning children of Manu (a god). It’s not a sexist term and we’ve gone 2000 years without people finding it offensive, it’s only one that people with no other issues in their life need something to be offended about and decide to make a war on words.
This conflation found in early modern English uses of "man" started being seen as problematic in the early 20th century, and style guides started preferring other words to refer to people in general, thus relegating "man" to mean only male person somewhat artificially.
[0] the only remaining usage is in werewolf - though few would assume a werewolf has to be male.
[1] note that I am using "male person" only to make it clearer when I'm using the generic or specific meaning of "man". I'm not trying to conflate sex with gender or any other kind of subtle transphobia.
They just want to appear progressive and sympathetic. It's virtue signalling.
Allowing these people to police language is mass insanity.
Are they the only ones who tell you, a fellow white man, or are they the only ones who are offended? I strongly suspect (this is not meant to be insulting) that you may not have a relationship with the people who this language impacts. It takes an emotional toll to confide with someone that something is upsetting to hear, even with coworkers or casual friends, especially if you don't think they'd understand.
Also, language has the opportunity to shape and influence how we structure society, even unintentionally. Thats why there's a lot of emphasis on teaching children about what words are appropriate. Even if naming your git branch "master" won't realistically impact racism and the history of slavery, describing some bad event in your day a word that has an origin in describing people can lead to negative associations.
I mean, you do realize that 99% of black people have no idea where "grandfathered in" comes from, right? You do realize that going into etymology to find offense is something only snobby linguistics cunts that you would find at elite universities would do, right?
In society we have come to a collective understanding that “I’m not racist; some of my best friends are black” is an invalid dismissal of a person’s potential for racism.
Somehow, however, we have also decided that if someone does not have a sufficient quantity nor quality of relationships with black people, then that is a strong signal of racism.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
Labeling a word as harmful actually harms more, since most new generations are so removed from the word's origin that it carries none of the supposed harm
A blacklist, a black-hat hacker etc have nothing to do with racialized use of these terms. The color black is deeply associated with death in European cultures, and as such it has clear negative usages. Trying to make it seem like this somehow reflects negatively on black people is simply wrong, ahistorical, and encourages a kind of extreme thinking that really does seem like a slippery slope.
The logic used to even suggest these words are harmful to black people directly leads to the conclusion that dressing in black at a funeral or representing Death as a figure hooded in black should be avoided, as they perpetuate this association.
The most likely cause of death for me on the next 20 years, as a white man in his 20s, is suicide. A major part of the reasoning for that is men typically struggle to reach out and talk about issues. A contributing factor I think is growing up around phrases like "man up" or "stop being a girl". Obviously anyone who says them isn't saying "bottle up serious issues until it becomes too much" but that repeated learning does stick and despite times changing and there being far less pressure now to be an alpha head of family type guy, the issues continue to affect us.
I don't see any reason that same repeated learning from a young age wouldn't also apply to black/white language if there's an overwhelming imbalance.
Muhammad Ali famously gave a speech on exactly this, though he also covered cultural references as well which is a broader scope: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-52988605
Even more, the color black itself has many different connotations, and not all are negative. It is for example a color of formal prestige (black belt, black ribbon). It is high-contrast (the situation is black and white). It is the color of things which don't emit light (black body radiation, black hole). It is also the color of many bronze statues, and also of ebony - both often used to depict saints and Jesus himself all in black since medieval times.
Humans are perfectly capable of keeping context in mind, and connotations from one context don't actually bleed into other contexts all that much.
The missing representation of black people in European and American art is a different problem, and it is a real problem that won't be addressed by replacing black box with opaque box.
But even if it is not all that much, it's still there. A million people having a 1% shift in their views due to language adds up. That's why we're seeing groups of individuals who aren't racist/sexist somehow reach answers that statistically do appear to be.
The specifics of which uses are neutral or not is the next debate. Step 1 is acknowledging that language is something that feeds into the "nurture" side of how we think, especially since language is such a large part of our learning during early brain development. With that in mind, it's something that should be debated and selection of words should be considered.
It is up to anyone claiming such an effect exists to go and prove it with solid data, enough data to overturn hundreds of years of language use. And if such a link actually exists, and someone actually believes in it, then I would like to see them insist people don't wear black (or red, yellow, brown or whatever other color they think is racialized) to funerals.
Edit: I also want to comment on the idea that the brain's ability to generalize would apply to meaning bleeding between separate contexts that use the same words. I think this is a misunderstanding of how the brain works. Concepts used in our thought later get translated into (spoken/written) language, or back again when listening/reading. But, the concepts are not the words that they are represented by. The black of a funeral is not the same concept as the black used to refer to a black person, even though they use the same word or symbol. Just like I'm not applying anything I know about mice scurrying through my house to the mouse I'm holding in my hand while playing (even though the origin of the word is exactly that animal), there is no reason to think there is any transfer whatsoever between the various meanings of black, even if they are related.
This is where we're coming at it from different sides. I think changing language is a relatively cheap and easy thing to do, that might help fix an issue in some small way, and there's really not much reason not to. The cause and effect is plausible, if not provable on any reasonable timescale.
Metaphor, simile, pathetic fallacy are all powerful tools that really do change the way we interpret the substance of what we read. Colours too, it's not a coincidence the major tech brands have gone with various blues, those blues are deliberately designed to nudge people towards a particular emotional response that is completely unrelated to the brand itself. If word selection really did nothing to change the impression of what we read, then writers and poets would be out of a job.
We should probably just stop calling people "black" then.
This is true enough, the problem is going from the conclusion that these negative associations will have any real-world impact. Recent reviews of implicit association tests (IAT) suggest that they correlate with nothing but brain activity.
The issue with "man up" or "stop being a girl" isn't language, it's patriarchal habits having ingrained in many of us that men don't cry, men don't talk, men are strong. It's not the words used that kill you, it's the social construct.
How does the social construct get perpetuated except through words?
Hearing those words is a thing, yes. Men wearing floral perfumes will be shamed for it (patriarchy sees this as feminine). Men will receive less gentle physical touches, caresses, care, either in an expectation that it makes them weaker, or that they don't need it. Men are expected to dress a certain way.
Men don't commit suicide _just_ because they're told to man up and deal with it. They do it because of a socially enforced dreadful lack of emotional comfort. A hug doesn't need words to comfort someone, not being judged or looked at wrongly for going away from the mold doesn't need words to comfort someone. That's why it's a social construct, not a verbal construct. It permeates everything around you.
Consider that levels of affection afforded to men (or harshness they are expected to endure) vary significantly across cultures and very much between subcultures in a modern nation like the US. It’s trivial to find groups of people who are very positive about affection vs people who are very traditional within a few miles of each other.
These groups speak very differently about their ideas of masculinity (since you introduced that example) and will make different arguments about what is right. Those arguments absolutely do inform group members and newcomers alike about what is considered acceptable.
Language is of course not everything - people do learn through mimicry, but you might be surprised how easy it is to use language to get someone to try something they didn’t think was for them. Advertisers do this all the time.
I don’t really see how someone can sit there with a straight face and say language doesn’t matter because of patriarchy.
Also patriarchy doesn’t ‘see’ anything because patriarchy isn’t a person and doesn’t have eyes. Patriarchy is an academic term for a set of ideas, not a mystical being.
This is very visible in the words used for those with mental disabilities. They used to be called "idiots" by doctors. Then, as idiot became a common insult, doctors moved on to "<people with a> mental retard". When that became a common insult, they moved on to "mentally challenged" and so on. This will be a never-ending arms-race though: as long as people insist on insulting others by comparing them to those that have a mental disability, they will always pick up the current medical terminology for them and use it as an insult.
Note that I'm not saying we should be calling children with Down syndrome "idiots" or "retards". Even though the "fight" will probably be endless, it's worth it not to use known derogatory terms for your pacients. Similarly, even though racists and other bigots can express their bigotry even with perfectly neutral language, it doesn't mean we should accept the use of slurs.
But it's also important not to get a false impression that just because Richard Spencer isn't using the n-word to refer to black people (in public), it means he's not being racist. You can always use language to teach others to hate BIPOC and ask for them to be thrown out of the country, along with LGBTQIA+ people if you're at it.
I see this backwards sort of thinking elsewhere in the list. Someone once used "yellow" as a racial pejorative, but instead of simply condemning the slur they attempt to preserve it, by forbidding other, non-racialized uses of the word "yellow".
> but on the whole this list is basically just ‘try to be kind to others’. It’s disappointing to see it so badly received.
I think it's being so poorly received specifically because it doesn't come off as a "try to be kind to others" list. I do agree with quite a few of the things on their list, but many of the items are so out there and tenuous that it makes it seem like a list put together by some severely out-of-touch people who get off controlling others. Which, unfortunately, I suspect is actually the case. And I think overall it undermines the efforts of people who are trying to get others to stop using some of the legitimately harmful words on the list.
Switch to something like Lojban.
Its like requiring all new buildings be handicap accessible. No one is mandating that everyone use a wheelchair, but instead we're building new things in a way to (try to) minimize the impact on the handicap. By telling architects that stairs are hard to use, and ramps are easier, you're telling people how to build for everyone.
Similarly, by telling people what words may have negative meanings, you're empowering them to minimize their impact on others. This is a suggested language update, not a forced way of speaking, so its even weaker than the handicap accessible requirement. If you meet this list with open contempt but you don't show the same contempt for a handicap ramp... then maybe approach the list with a different perspective.
Academic institutions are increasingly places which attempt to police language (and consequently thought). It's a nigh-on puritanical drive to molly-coddle the overly sensitive and limit debate. And it's even more frustrating considering the fact that an academic institution is the place where young people should be exploring all viewpoints, not just what has been deemed acceptable by the elite or those in power. Also see: de-platforming.
It's telling that some of these are terms which have been used without issue for far longer than half a century. It's only recently that they've ever been deemed to be "harmful". I don't know, it's almost as if...the same word can have different meanings depending on its context!
You may say that this is optional and just a suggestion, but it's a short path from compiling a list of these terms to real honest-to-goodness compelled speech.
When have you last spent any significant time at a university? Debate and diversity of thought are ever present. I can’t think of a single viewpoint that is missing from my institution.
Sometimes people don’t like what you have to say and cause a stink, but that’s what tenure is for. Unless you’re consuming a steady right wing news diet, I don’t see how you could come to your conclusion.
> You may say that this is optional and just a suggestion
So what do you propose, we ban letting people make lists of words? This is just an exercise in marketing, not the slope to which your speech will be controlled. Feel free to do and say whatever you want, offend whomever you want. No one is obliging you to pay attention to the guidelines Stanford is making for themselves behind their school login; this list is not only optional for you, it’s not even meant to be read by you.
Amazingly, the strawmen keep coming. You think this is a bad list because it has bad entries in it? You must be against the very concept of lists!
You know when you are a bubble when…
I'm not a huge fan of watching baseball. Would you also assume that I want baseball to be banned just because I'm not that into it?
There are ways to gracefully respond to someone you disagree with, but suggesting that someone wants to "ban letting people make lists of words" because they disagree with the content of a single list isn't one of them. If you're going to be disingenuous at least put a little effort into it.
That someone here might believe we need to ban the making of lists like this (because they believe them to be the first step to controlled speech) is not far fetched to me, especially when they are so worked up about a list that has no conceivable power over them and their life. It’s just a list of words. If you see a problem with a list of words, what is the proposal to fix that, exactly? Short of banning lists entirely, what fixes are even possible?
Anyway, can you think of ways to engage with someone without calling them disingenuous? Why wade into this discussion if you’re just going to attack my motives? You felt like I needed to be chided even though all of the discussion in this story has died?
Humandating, please. Etymology aside, this is suggestive of men forcing people to do things, which is insensitive of ~~survivors of rape~~ people who have survived rape.
> architects
People who engage in architecture. Just as people who engage in sex work do not want to be reduced to sex workers, people who architect do not want to be reduced to their occupation. Architect also has white supremacist undertones, as it's derived from a Greek word and implies the ability of white men to impose order on physical reality.
Fine; can we ban "nail polish remover"? I'm a Pole, and this reminds me of Nazis killing millions of poles. When will someone do something about this horrific phrase?
And they’re simultaneously kink shaming!
If you've known someone with mobility issues (e.g., a limp from birth) long enough for them to be honest with you, then the term "lame" (as a slang term meaning "something shitty") that might still be a sore spot.
EDIT: you don't have to do anything. But it does mean something to some ppl, and some of these ppl do notice it being said or avoided. And after hearing that from someone you care about, if might make you want to notice more (once the surprise of realizing it's an actual concern fades away)
Yes, but that is very context-dependent. The rule of thumb is “don’t be stupid” and “don’t be a dick” (yes, offensive to eunuchs and people who think this excludes women; in which case replace with “twat”). The words you need to avoid to that effect depend on who you’re talking to and in which circumstances. Blanket bans based on lists of words someone is crusading against are counter-productive.
> And after hearing that from someone you care about
The first time can just be a mistake; people you care about do not have the exact same mindset you have. In that case, a short explanation should suffice, without implying malice. If it is a pattern, then the people you care about don’t care as much about you.
OTOH, it is unreasonable to expect a random stranger on the Internet to be aware of your sensitivities.
Why _wouldn’t_ I want to avoid using any but your last category?
Here's two almost-adjacent entries:
> hip-hip hurray, hip hip hooray > This term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods.
> Jewed > This term is based on a stereotype that people of Jewish descent are cheap and/or hoard money.
The latter is, as I said, a well-known slur that any Jew would find offensive. The former is an extremely commonplace expression which is allegedly offensive due to a history that I've never in my life heard of before, and which seems on a quick search to be quite dubiously evidenced.
Without knowing the actual context of these, one might very well be persuaded by this list that "hip, hip, hooray" was more offensive than "Jewed" - after all, a rallying cry for a genocide sounds more harmful than a mere ethnic stereotype!
The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language.
This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology. Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.
They say "we are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site", and then proceed to list a huge number of terms, some of which are almost universally viewed as discriminatory or harmful and some of which are almost universally viewed as _not_ discriminatory or harmful. They may not be explicitly claiming that these terms have equivalent negative impact, but the presentation does nothing to suggest otherwise, and in many cases neither do the explanations.
As I said in my original comment, it's an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach - as if someone had just given you a list saying "these things are illegal, don't do them" without noting that one of them can be punished by life in prison and another is so widely disregarded that it'll be viewed as odd if you never do it.
I still think my original question stands - why wouldn’t I want to avoid most of these terms? Isn’t the list useful if I would?
I object to the existence of this particular list because I think it's extremely poorly done - to the point of being actively harmful to efforts to reduce offensive language - and would be incredibly confusing to anyone who didn't already have the fairly deep linguistic and cultural competence required to know which parts to take seriously and which parts to ignore.
I don't object to the general existence of lists of this type, but I do think they're often subject to the same pathologies this one is.
> I still think my original question stands - why wouldn’t I want to avoid most of these terms? Isn’t the list useful if I would?
I think a huge section of this list is not helpful to anybody. "Red team", "yellow team", and "black box" have nothing to do with race whatsoever, for example, nor would a reasonable person think they did; eliminating them from your vocabulary would do no more to address racial injustice than eliminating "armadillo" would. And I do think there are costs to urging people to monitor their speech to greater and greater degrees for rapidly decreasing - and in many cases zero - benefit.
I wish online forums encouraged civil discussion like this more than they seem to. So much knee-jerk even here.
1. By saying certain phrases could be understood to be harmful, even when they aren't commonly understood to be and explicitly don't have racist or sexist etymologies, the list is actually reinforcing the threads of harmful stereotypes in our language. Black box is not a racist term; adding it to a list like this just associates black=bad, which is not something we should want at all.
2. Lists like this encourage black-and-white thinking about language that ignores context. It's the same sort of thinking that leads to your white uncle complaining that rappers use the n word, so why can't he? Words don't hurt; how words are used hurt.
3. Lists like this are ripe for abuse. While I have heard interesting discussions about how certain language can be harmful (The Allusionist podcast recently had an interesting discussion over terms like neuro-divergent, neuro-typical, autism and so on), it is often used in a bullying way to dismiss and discredit someone who is trying to engage in good faith rather than to educate. Consider "rule of thumb". The etymology presented is wrong, but wide spread. Maybe the fact that many people believe this is enough to avoid it, but the list doesn't present this nuance and instead perpetuates the myth.
"We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site" means literally nothing but "we shouldn't be held accountable for intermingling actual racial slurs with misinterpreted Wikipedia articles".
I don't see how trying to cover your ass at the start of an article somehow invalidates the content of the article.
Hmm, I bet they also drank water after hunting down Jews. Drinking water literally makes you a Nazi!
Seriously though, where does this stop? Don't they see the absurdity? It almost feels like absurdity is the goal.
Except that 'treadmills' were used as punishment devices in prisons, so the preferred alternative is 'euphemism exercise machine'. Except that "exercise" is ableist and so the real preferred alternative is...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hep-Hep_riots
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hip_hip_hooray
I've heard the earlier theory (that it was an acronym for "Hierosolyma est perdita" which was supposed to have been a Crusader slogan), but Wiktionary thinks this is a false etymology.
I'm Ashkenazi Jewish and have never heard any Jewish or non-Jewish person claim to have personally associated the "hip hip hooray" cheer with antisemitism. Perhaps that association, even if it's etymologically incorrect, would have been top-of-mind for many Europeans in the 1820s, but I don't think that's so today.
Which Red Army? Unless it's the Chinese Red Army (which I have no knowledge about), but rather the Russian (Soviet) Red Army, then, firstly, the battle cry of its soldiers was not "hip-hip hooray", but rather "ura" (cognate of the English "hurrah"); and, secondly, this battle cry is much older than the Red Army. It's an old word; almost certainly a borrowing into Russian; but in which century (seventeenth? sixteenth? older?), and from which language, I do not know.
Most etymologies attributed to acronyms for words pre-20th century are usually false.
You'd be incorrect, as I happen to know a Jew who some might consider "based" and knowingly says things like "...so I Jewed it..." and so on. Like, he literally just comes out and says these things in casual conversation and humour.
Pretty much no one would claim the n-word is not a slur just because some black people use it amongst each other.
"Finding something offensive" is not mutually exclusive with "doing that thing yourself".
Thing is, _you_ are free to avoid anything you want for whatever reason you want. It is when someone else (e.g. myself) who doesn't want to have his language policed is faced with a prospect of being told to change his language, that he may become upset. After all, if you recognise that language is part of a person's identity, and that identity is important (as those who champion such linguistic changes almost invariably tend to claim), it is really inconsistent then to be demanding that people change the way they talk.
Okay, but Stanford is not demanding that; this site is about words they don’t want used on their own websites and marketing materials. This isn’t a list of words they don’t want you to use, it’s a list of words they don’t want to use. The obvious solution if you don’t want to be policed by this word list is to not work at Stanford.
I'm a little confused by the transition that happened within this paragraph. You start with a language used on websites and in marketing materials, and end by saying not to work at Stanford (which I don't :-) ). But there is a long range of cases that fall in between marketing materials and total strangers. Will professors, who are neither websites nor marketing materials, be obliged (or "advised") to abide by the code? Will the students? If someone working/studying at Stanford thinks that this is stupid, is he free to ignore the advice? Or does he have to leave? If someone associated with Stanford writes a book or a paper, will he need to have the language of his manuscript checked? What about a master's or a phd thesis? What about a talk? Lots of uncertainty there.
are they free to ignore the advice? Or do they have to leave?
Remarkably, it's exactly the opposite of the public attitude towards regional dialects. Where previously it was common to correct speakers of non-prestigious dialects, it is now required to be accepting and tolerant.
I think many (most?) people hearing or reading that would make an assumption from your use of ‘he’ that you expect that professors and students are usually male. Perhaps that you believe they _should_ be male. If you really mean them to be gender-neutral, you are not communicating clearly. I would argue that this has always been true - but even if I’m wrong about that, it’s true for modern English usage.
[1] This, of course, excludes people like me, who are offended by the very existence of such lists.
I find a lot of the cultural appropriation items on this list deeply ironic because they imply English is allowed to take words from French (“beef”, “rendezvous”) and German (“welcome”, “hound”, …). But terms from non-white cultures aren’t allowed to become part of english? (“Guru”, “bury the hatchet”, and so on in this list.)
Is it just me or is that policy remarkably racist?
If you want a better example (though convoluted and still imperfect) of what that could look like for English, it would be like if a different language/culture started using the word "PhD" for anyone with some expertise. Now maybe you don't mind, but you've got to recognize that a fair amount of people would feel like it cheapens the work and expertise that goes into becoming a doctor.
Also doctors raise similar complaints when PhDs call themselves doctors.
... what do they think the "D" in PhD stands for?
The main distinction that lawyers and medical doctors have in terms of the title is that these professions talk to lay people outside their profession regularly and there needs to be a distinction between them and other people offering advice that’s not governed by the rules of the medical community and codified in law. The risk and consequence of harm would be elevated and the ability for recourse would be limited. For example, if you get bad legal advice from random Joe Schmoe, you can’t claim ineffective council (heck you can’t even do that if it’s a licensed lawyer who told you something if that isn’t your lawyer. This doesn’t happen with engineers.
Now I’m not defending or espousing any specific position here. I’m just trying to illuminate the differences and the claims. The counterpoint is that these licensing requirements don’t actually change anything, they’re over broad, they raise prices on services far more than they should, they unfairly exclude people from prestigious jobs that maybe they could do anyway even without schooling (eg an experienced paralegal for 15 years maybe doesn’t need a “lawyer’s education” for certain kinds of legal work) and they go against the principle of free speech. On the other hand, trademarks exist and inhibit free speech in similar ways. On the other hand, trademarks can’t be regular words. On the other hand the government is responsible for writing the rules of trademarks.
On the other hand, this post brought to you by Tevya the Milkman and his fiddle.
> when someone says they’re a doctor in the middle of giving medical advice, they can’t play the “but I have a PhD card” or “free speech” because the recipient of that message would reasonably assume due to common colloquial understanding that that person is a licensed medical doctor (unless the PhD somehow clarified this in a reasonable way).
I don't see why in this scenario the burden would be on the PhD to offer clarification. Again, the meaning of the "D" in PhD hasn't changed in the west since the Middle Ages.
Medical Doctor can simply state his affiliation to his licensing board; to me some organization claiming ownership of a term in common usage singe the Middle Ages screams first amendment violation.
Nah. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional
> The notion of a professional can be traced to medieval European guilds, most of which died off by the middle of the nineteenth century, the exception being the scholars guild, or university.
> With most guilds formally abolished outside of the realm of academia, establishing exclusivity and standards in a trade had to be achieved via other means such as licensing practices, of which might begin as an informal process established by voluntary professional associations, but then eventually become law due to lobbying efforts.
> (...) a significant motivation in the development of the AMA was to gain authority over unlicensed practitioners so as to minimize competition among medical practitioners, thereby enhancing the earning power and prestige of medical professionals. The licensing process Starr argues, was unnecessarily prolonged and the costs were artificially enhanced with the specific aim of deterring potential practitioners from entering the field.*
> (...) while defenders of guilds have argued that they allowed markets to function by ensuring quality standards, Sheliah Olgelvic has instead argued that markets of the Middle Ages flourished when guilds were abolished and that there is much evidence to support the notion that individuals prefer a wide variety of products of varying quality and price to being granted protections which they did not ask for, and which artificially constrain consumer options.
* on that note, https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidie...
> In America, aspiring doctors do four years of undergrad in whatever area they want (I did Philosophy), then four more years of medical school, for a total of eight years post-high school education. In Ireland, aspiring doctors go straight from high school to medical school and finish after five years.
> Americans take eight years to become doctors. Irishmen can do it in four, and achieve the same result. Each year of higher education at a good school – let’s say an Ivy, doctors don’t study at Podunk Community College – costs about $50,000. So American medical students are paying an extra $200,000 for…what?
Please don't use that term as it summons the Ghost of Racism Past.
And in any case, when a word is incorporated from another language, it's meaning is misunderstood all the time. Why is this case somehow morally offensive?
That's why they as peasants looked after the cows, but the aristocrats from France ate the beef. (Sheep/mutton, pig/pork)
Is "reverse cultural appropriation" a thing then, or do we have a better phrase for when it's no longer appropriate for a population to use words that were inserted into their language by force?
“L'anglais n'est que du français mal prononcé”
“English is little more than badly pronounced French”
-- D'Artagnan in Vingt ans après
False, it was not the French but the Normans, Vikings who had learned to speak French, who conquered England.
An England made up of Brittanic Celts who had been conquered, ruled over, and had mixed with and learned to speak the Germanic languages of the Angles, the Saxons and then the invading Danes.
French, the language of France, is derived from the Latin language of the Romans who had conquered that Gaulic Celtic place before they were in turn conquered by the Germanic Franks who switched from their lingua franca to Latin. Then the Normans settled in Normandy, just north of Brittany, still occupied by the Celts.
So there is nothing French about the Germanic Franks, nor anything Gaulic or Frankish about the language French, a language the Romans brought to Gaul and the Germanic Normans brought to Great Britain.
It was the same thing with food packaging. Land 'o Lakes literally removed the Native American woman but they kept the land! She used to be in every grocery store. Now removed.
This one was surprising to me. I always assumed Indian summer was about summer in India lasting longer.
Apparently it really is about an American phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_summer . Though I don't see the negative reading on the Wikipedia page.
I actually think Brave ("the Braves") would have been a good name to refer to Native Americans. I don't feel like "noble, courageous" is much of a slur. It's pretty honorable in fact. I don't see how calling someone brave equates them with less than a man.
I guess I can see it used in an infantalising way.
Used like you would use “warrior”.
It's an unusual usage. Fun Fact: "brave" when referring to male warriors is assumed to come from Spanish bravo which means "courageous, untamed, savage".
The association of courage and savagery comes from Spanish Renaissance culture and both meanings are meant simultaneously - that is, savages - those prone to violence -- were associated with courage and vice versa. Because English didn't have such an association, the word was repurposed to have two meanings and the second meaning fell into disuse after the 19th Century.
Now in the 21st century, unless you are reading a book written in the 1800s, when you hear "brave" you can pretty much assume it's an adjective with the primary usage.
The association of "savages" with honor and courage seems pretty universal. Like the vikings are often depicted with a strong sense of honor. Or the celtics by the romans, or the huns and mongols. Basically any tribal culture I can think of. While those living in cities / bigger civilizations are associated with corruption, deceit etc.
I suppose it's better to accept that both honor and deceit exist in all human beings, irrespective of group.
> Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends
> And he built a dream that when he grew up
> He would be a fearless warrior, Indian Chief
> Many moons passed, and more the dream grew strong
> Until tomorrow he would sing his first war song
> And fight his first battle
> But something went wrong
> Surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night
> And so castles made of sand > Melts into the sea eventually
From Jimi Hendrix's Castles Made of Sand, one of his better and more underrated tunes.
I have wondered if maybe at least some suicides are about a disconnect between what you're actually able to do, and what people expect of you.
It's obviously bad if people hate you and expect no good to come of you. But there's an additional horror when you're given an impossible task, and people expect you to do it - indeed, when they're actually genuinely disappointed in you when you can't. It's like in Kafka's "The transformation": the real horror isn't that Samsa wakes up and finds that he's turned into a giant cockroach. It's his family's reaction: how could you do this to us? How could you put us in this situation?
I'm thinking maybe that stereotypical image of the noble, brave Indian with his great wisdom, connection to nature, unbreakable spirit - something you'd want to live up to, who wouldn't? - is especially cruel in the face of the material realities of first nation communities.
I can understand a complaint like the Atlanta Braves offending someone because it’s a caricature, but still don’t think it should be changed.
Cultural appropriation is such a fucking dumb concept. It is a positive. It enriches all of us.
How very cynical and destructive does one have to be to police that? This movement is miserable.
Ableist, sexist, biologal-essentialism, so many red flags. Wait, red is a cultural appropriation as its differently used in different cultures.
Anyway, Indian Summer referring to people being late is completely made-up.
So to discuss user. User is quite often used in a slightly pejorative way, by power user, sys admin, programmer, support crowds. You can almost always replace it with the word person or someone. I take it more as a challenge, when I am about to say it, to try and find a better way to say what I was going to say. Most often than not, I can avoid the word user.
The same goes for lame. I just try not to use it, because I do use it, and I take it as a challenge to erase it from my vocabulary and use better words.
> While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain.
which seems to bizarrely ignore the fact that common words have many different meanings that are distinguished by context.
Second, I would actually argue that the techie pejorative usage of "user" is a good example of the shortcomings of this "words to watch out for" approach. "User" has an extremely common neutral meaning, and also some people who design or operate systems use it contemptuously - without even really changing what it means, just with the implication that most users aren't very smart! The problem there is not with the word at all, it's the attitude with which it's used.
I personally have made effort to not use the word user. I decided I don't like it. For me. I'm not lecturing other people not to use it.
In my experience, user has become a fill in word, when better words exist. And its pejorative use is, in my opinion, closer to the substance abuse meaning than it appears at first glance. Both basically describe someone who uses and takes advantage of something, without either mastery or self control. "Passive use" if you will. When I think of it in that context, I dont like the word.
I think your attitude around the word "user" is putting the cart before the horse, which is what the user above was getting at. The problem isn't that we use language that infantilizes users, the problem is that infantilizing users is how you get the largest market share. Google isn't going to shift their design philosophy away from "ease-of-use" because of language use, the language use would shift with the design philosophy.
> abusive relationship (The relationship doesn't commit abuse. A person does, so it is important to make that fact clear.)
> rule of thumb (Although no written record exists today, this phrase is attributed to an old British law that allowed men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.)
> trigger warning (The phrase can cause stress about what's to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person.)
> no can do (Originated from stereotypes that mocked non-native English speakers.)
> yellow team ("Yellow" is often used disparagingly against people of Asian descent.)
> survivor (Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their experiences. If the person identifies with the term, then use it.)
> preferred pronouns (The word "preferred" suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference.)
> spirit animal
> calling a spade a spade (Although the term has its origins in Greek literature, the subsequent negative connotations with the word "spade" means that the phrase should be used with caution or not at all.)
Also not really a fan of forcing ethnical identity by institutionalizing "Black" or denying individuals to own their sexual/gender/whatever-the-appropriate-word-will-be-next-year identity as a choice ("preferred pronouns")
Some of these terms were even popularized by the same movement with similar motivations and reasoning in the past few years. How many of the "Consider using" suggestions will be considered "harmful language to be eradicated" in another few years? Feels like we're getting to a place where even a person who is honestly and carefully choosing their words to be non-offensive will be chastised because they missed the memo this year. While many of the entries make perfect sense and should be avoided for the sakes of inclusiveness, respect, and compassion, the content and format makes this have the exact opposite effect of the communicated intention...
> Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community
Yeah, no, they did not do their homework on the tarball I think. To paraphrase parents other comment: This could have been good but this is executed poorly enough to be completely counterproductive.
The one technical source they quote[0] is a blog post by former CISO of UW-Madison that comes across as fundamentally more leveled and reasonable to the point where I find they (apparently unintentionally) misrepresent it.
[0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20221219233220/https://it.wisc.ed...
Yeah, many of these feel extremely "fashionable" to me, in the sense that there was already a term intended to be thoughtful and compassionate, and the latest "preferred alternative" is driven by the latest academic framework to achieve popularity rather than any change in values or the preferences of the people being addressed.
In addition to "survivor", as you highlighted, I know and know of people who would certainly prefer "sex worker" to "prostitute" but would roll their eyes at "person who engages in sex work" - and point out that it actually carries more of an assumption of stigma, since nobody would say "person who engages in office work".
At first, the initiative can easily be seen as good, after all who wouldn't want to give more consideration to disenfranchised people by making such a small effort to alter one's language but pushing this to extreme is more than a little problematic.
It's fascinating to see but it's very sad that an institution of higher learning is pushing this and ignoring logic, common sense and restraint.
Sadly, the reality seems to be that the bleeding edge of sensitive language is more often wielded combatively to try to discredit someone.
Will it really take 10 years before everyone wakes up in a collective stupor and says, "well, that really went off the rails. How about we move on?"
That's not going to happen, because these fascist nutjobs are teaching our children to think the way they do.
Democracy and freedom will die in a thunderous applause.
Eh, that'd cause children to be innoculated to these if anything.
This is a myth: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
It's been interesting to watch The Guardian tie itself in knots over the acronym BAME (and later to some extent BIPOC), which was meant to be the new, inclusive, non-offensive to the minorities it sought to describe, term for non-white (particularly in the UK), which the newspaper was much in favour of but then seemed to decide was probably bad and might even be racist. And then keep using it all over the place.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/black-...
In the mean time, outside of that particular bubble, I think most people either looked on with bemusement or had no idea of the existence of the term anyway.
Edit: Because it is really fun, in a strange way, to go through the list: Isn't chief also used to address, e.g., a chief petty officer?
Edit 2: The list is just, well, strange. Ghetto for example, in the list it is mentioned as a non-white neighborhood. Historically, it was a jewish one. Let alone to speak about the Ghettos the Nazi's put in place. Karen, bad because it insults (?) people for their behaviour, this just stands out against all the other terms on list because of negative perception around what people are. Pretty lazy list, especially for an instituation like Stanford from which I would have expected better understanding of cultural and historic context...
Edit 3: No surpise, red team is on the list. But doesn't that come from military exercises, with red being the opfor? And blue being friendlies?
Edit 4: While some things are good advice, the majority of things on this list is just rediciulous edge cases. And, on top of that, some things are on the list because racists took it over, e.g. uppity. So basically, extremists, racists and whomever has to use a term for the rest of us normal people (also on the list for whatever reason) cannot use it anymore. That alone raises the question who is in charge of words here.
Edit: I just remembered one place I've heard it: in the lyrics to the song "Everyone has AIDS" from the movie Team America. "The gays and the straights and the whites and the spades / everyone has AIDS!"
Meaning 3: "A black person"
Any list like this should be read as: "you are causing harm somewhere between a paper cut and a gunshot wound, you may not realize it. Be advised you might be causing that harm, in case knowing that would cause you to take a different course of action"
Ambiguity means I can wave off your complaints because clearly what you're complaining about is a hangnail. Ambiguity means I can punish you brutally, because how dare you not take my car crash seriously.
Harm can vary based on the person, so doing something "harmful" is person dependent. The goal is to recognize the harmful history of language when choosing words, because, thankfully all spoken words are newly spoken, so you can pick fresh each time.
All of these have very clear etymologies that don't have any offensive history whatsoever. The idea that we should avoid any term that uses the words "white", "black", "red", or "yellow" on the grounds that they once were used in some contexts to refer to people is absurd.
Your own list seems to say that exclusionary language about someone's medical condition (lame) is more acceptable than other exclusionary language, because that stigma has a different history? Or because that language is more common?
Those words can still do real harm to real people, even if they're lower down in your ranking of these words
Pretty much anything you can say that has any form of content can do harm to someone. If we want to never ever accidentally hurt someone's feelings, we need to stop talking about:
- Having kids. It's quite painful to those who can't.
- Parents. It's painful to those who don't have any, or have abusive ones.
- War. It's painful to veterans or people who fled war.
- Anything medical. It might hurt someone who's dealing with a medical issue in one way or another.
- Pets. It might be a sensitive subject to someone who just lost a pet.
- Stop asking people how they're doing. It's a sensitive subject to people dealing with burn-out or depression.
Where do we draw the line?
I've been personally affected, many times, by multiple things in my examples above, so please don't say I'm exaggerating with those examples. However, I really don't want to live in a world where we need to watch every word because it might make someone feel bad.
If anything, this type of thinking might even affect people negatively, because it pushes the idea that feelings should be repressed, in stead of dealt with.
While typing this, I realized we're there already. During summer, when talking about the temperature, people already feel the need to add their opinion about climate change to the discussion, which then becomes political.
We definitely are there already. I can't comfortably talk about weather anymore, because after either side mentions anything interesting - such as it being surprisingly cold, or hot, or snowy, or windy - I feel tempted to say something about climate change. Being risk averse, I stop myself and say nothing, but this creates an awkward pause and ends the conversation.
Aren't many of these making things worse, e.g. "calling a spade a spade" or "blackbox" by implying that any distant possible connection to 'black' makes something so horrible that its use must be suppressed? What does that imply about that color?
These lists are actively harmful, not to mention wasteful, but I guess they are good at creating demand for DEI officers and giving them work to do.
This is the reason why individuals should defend others, even if they disagree with them or think what they said was unnecessary or even malicious. Because there isn't enough time in the day to worry about language this much, and because it's Orwellian... without the literal thought police.
That's precisely the point of such obscure, arbitrary ruleset. Keep everyone obediently in line. Keep everyone on the edge, afraid of "failing" and being subjected to a Maoist style trial that they can't win. That's a tool of power and oppression, under the smart disguise of forbidding relationships of power and oppression.
One has to wonder who was ever offended by the usage of the term "whitespace". Yes, that is actually on the list under "Institutionalized Racism" because it "assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized."
I am skeptical of the entire "subconsciously racialized" idea in the first place; to the best of my knowledge there is no evidence for it. But even if we accept it for the sake of the argument, does "whitespace" assign any value connotation at all? [Insert tabs vs. spaces joke here]
I don't really have a problem with with a policy on this as such, but the issue tends to be that once you start drafting a policy you will get a committee or the like and they will search for words that that could possible maybe perhaps be considered problematic by someone, somewhere, sometimes. That's kind of the reverse of how it should work: policy should reflect real concrete problems that were encountered. "I'm black and find the usage of 'slave' problematic" is, I think, more than reasonable, and a concrete situation. But grepping the dictionary for (white|black) ... a bit less so.
Once you start looking for something you will find it. This is why studies are double blind etc.
I have a lot of issues with this list. Does "more than one way to skin a cat" really "normalize violence against animals"? Cruelty against animals – especially pets – seems one of the very few topics where everyone from the most hard-core "Stalin did nothing wrong" communist to the most hardcore "Hitler did nothing wrong" neo-Nazi can find common ground. Does a phrase like that change it? I don't see how it does. I can go on and on, but clearly this is a "dictionary grep" list and not a "let's solve concrete problems" list.
So, are people "far too easily offended today"? I'm not so sure if they are.
I don't think so. If it is, then so is being offended about 'kill' command.
Why is using a concept as a metaphor bad? Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.
Of course there are limits to what is or isn't reasonable, as I mentioned in my previous post, but I can see how people might find "master/slave" inappropriate, like I would consider "Auschwitz" inappropriate.
At the end of the day, I don't really mind adjusting a few terms here or there if people really object to it, even if I don't fully understand it, or even agree with it, just as a matter of being nice to people. I'm neither Black nor American, so who am I to judge what they can or can't find offensive? The problem with lists like this is that I don't think anyone genuinely objects to half of the items on it, if not more.
> Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.
Considering the history of the country it's not really a huge surprise. Also worth remembering it's the 3rd largest country on the planet, and the largest Western country by quite a substantial margin (Germany comes second with ~85M, vs the US ~330M).
And sure, I've been annoyed by American self-centred attitudes as well; not everything is about the US, but we also can't just always dismiss it either.
It's also not an uniquely American issue, in my own country in Europe there have been similar discussions as well.
If everyone pushed back harder, perhaps things would be different.
From what I remember, HN reacted mostly positively to someone's speculation that 'master' branch or 'blacklist' might offend black people (they weren't black themselves). Tons of comments arguing that changing it is not an issue, so we should do it.
Unless of course that is ableist against us autists.
Is there anything outdated if you talk about e.g. a hermaphroditic tree? I thought this was still the standard term in biology for species which practice sexual reproduction and normally or frequently have individuals with both kinds of reproductive organs, either simultaneously or alternately.
Although if you had say, a cat with ambiguous genitalia it wouldn't be offense to reference them as intersex.
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".
"Settler" - It actually uses this word a lot in its definitions as to why words are bad, but "Settler" itself is an offensive term used by First Nations against "whites".
"White privilege" is also missing? Again another harmful word thrown around which many consider offensive. Words which include "Everyone" are generally not good because within "white people" there is a wide range of thoughts/beliefs. I'm sure that very poor white people don't feel they have "white privilege"?
When asked to define "white privilege" the SJW's fail miserably.
At the end of the day, given Stanford is in the US and has "first amendment rights" this list itself is utter nonsense.
There is a vast difference between terms used by marginalised groups to refer to dominant ones, and terms used by dominant groups to refer to marginalised ones.
Whether or not this policy itself is effective or well-considered, the broader mission to identify ways in which historic injustice is ingrained and perpetuated through our language and try to amend it is a noble one.
There are many words throughout history that have been common place but carried so much cultural baggage that they became damaging and were thus abandoned - most terms we now consider slurs were once defended with arguments of similar merits to your own.
The process of improving our language is never going to be an easy one, no doubt many found it challenging to fully excise many of our abandoned terms from their vocabulary, but it's been done before, and will likely be done indefinitely into the future unless we ever reach a point of such equality that our language can no longer cause harm.
Political Correctness is not improving language, it's forcing people to be afraid of what they're saying, thus thinking.
> that our language can no longer cause harm.
Language does not cause harm. Emotionally immature people do.
Suggesting that women are less likely to want to be programmers? Get fired, and yelled at by the media.
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.
> "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")
In both those cases, the problem is when it applies to a person, because enslaving someone or having someone submit by force is obviously bad, but there's equally no problem with enslaving a computer or submitting a form, even if you have to force it into a jammed letterbox.
The obvious next step is banning cut, kill, brand or maim, because that's what bad people did to innocent victims; never mind that you can cut paper, kill viruses, brand a product or describe an industrial accident.
"Survivor" is on the list (as in, survivor of SA). So is "Karen" (which, IIRC, was popularized through videos of white people harassing black folks minding their own business).
I can't imagine this list should be used as anything more than an MLA style-guide type list of "these are outdated terms for formal writing"
They also focus on age being the problem with “grey beard” rather than the implication that all senior engineers are men. I’ve always been turned off by the term not because it singles out age as a proxy for experience, because they’re literally proxies for each other. You don’t have 30 years of experience without aging 20 years. But not everyone with 30 years of experience can grow a beard or has a penis. Given the gender issues in technology, which are so obvious in the statistics over time, I genuinely think language like this calcifies the gender divide.
Like you said there are a couple words used for Americans in Spanish:
Gringo, Americano, Estadounidense.
That set of words does not intersect with any words used to describe anyone from South America. This applies to slang or official sources.
Please show me an example where a Paisa from Colombia or Argentino would like to be referenced as “American”.
In fact, especially with the World Cup win, any warm blooded Argentinian would fight if called “American”.
Plus it’d be an easy fight as someone who’s pushing for “words are violence” has clearly never experienced real violence.
I too am from South America, never have I seen anyone down there assume they are “American”.
This is just a ban list, or better yet a black list to bring a 1984 dystopia.
Of course, there’s a substantial difference between annoying and offending, but it seems like there are, in fact, reasonable people who object to that usage.
Actually, no - my Mexican wife is genuinely offended when I refer to US citizens as Americans, or when I refer to the United States as America.
So I do it as often as I can.
This demonym is really unfortunate.
As far as I know, it describes a real state of things; for instance snails are hermaphrodite, and I don't think anyone ought to feel insulted by this banal fact.
The dumbest series of the list are those words containing "white" or "black" (from "blackballed" and "black hat" to "white-space") which supposedly now carry racial undertones (hint: they don't, and never did).
It looks almost like a plot by rich, progressive people to build a culture war with rich, right-wing people to prevent any serious debate on environmental collapse, class exploitation, plutocracy, etc. You could nearly believe that all those supposedly warring high-ranking people play a clever game together to actually keep the power structure as is, and make minuscule problems obfuscate real ones. Almost.
Homophones are next. "Hey Jude".
> - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"
Slave comes from "slav"[0]. So speaking of "slaves" or "slavery" is racist.
[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653
Rob : You're a total paranoid.
Alvy Singer : Well, how am I a para-? I pick up on those kind of things. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, uh, "Did you eat yet or what?" and Tom Christie said, "No, didjew?" Not, "did you", "didjew eat?" Jew? No, not "did you eat", but "Jew eat"? Jew. You get it? Jew eat?
Isn’t that precisely when it’s ok to ridicule someone? Not based on properties they cannot change (race, height, sex, etc) but indeed based on behavior they choose to engage in (religion, politics, social behavior, life choices, etc.).
If ridiculing people for their behavior is now off limits then what the hell is left? Do we just talk about the weather?
Ridicule (trait), Ridicule (behaviour), Discuss Weather
Firby nurbs!
Moving away from "slave" was reasonable (Buildbot got rid of it many years ago!), but led us down a very slippery slope.
I'll stick my head out and say "master" is fine actually.
In fact, much of this list replaces a single-word term with a longer phrase.
"Bob survived the accident but is now a paraplegic" becomes
"Bob is a person who was impacted by an accident, and he is now a person with a spinal cord injury".
Less precise and much wordier.
It wasn't, because it didn't make any sense. Using 'slave' as a metaphor doesn't imply slavery is good.
Lemon — suggests that the system is of poor quality, or substandard.
Black — racist.
Brown — also racist.
Pink — too girlie for straight male staff.
And so on.
Eventually they had to change the system because this went all the way up to the minister of education.
”They’re just colors of the rainbow Karen! No, not the gay one!”
Not that we have to also provide an alternative for people who can't use the color coding, but we can't use color coding at all.
The world is full of people with good intentions and bad ideas.
Refuse to do GUI at all - surely terminal is better for blind people.
Nobody would use "Tranny" or "Jewed" in professional conversation. It's a non-issue. But a non-controversial term like "Tribal Knowledge"?
It really reminds me of the main vs master default branch controversy where some activists really pushed a racial connotation on a term which had none [1] [2]. Of course, someone would have to be technical to be able to find the source while whining on social media is available to anyone!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
[1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441
[2] https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab...
This isn’t quite right. The term “master recording” itself refers to the master/slave dichotomy and has been used in the music industry with the explicit knowledge of that. Master recordings have also been used by the music industry as tools to assert control over artists. This practice was recently exposed in popular culture by Pharrell Williams.
If “master branch” is to derive from “master recording”, it carries the same racial baggage.
Which race? You mean white people, right?
It doesn't. Audio or video mastering means to create a reference recording that's then down sampled and used as a reference when manufacturing records [0]. It has nothing to do with race. "Remastering" something means to re-release it with a higher audio quality (typically in a different medium) by using the uncompressed source material (the master) and newer sound processing technologies. It's the reason you can watch old movies in HD on Netflix.
The idea here is that the "master" would be what would be sent to manufacturing when producing a release. It's also why many SaaS use "master" to mean the exact version of the software that's in production, because it's assumed to be the one sent for distribution. It has nothing to do with race or the idea of owning human beings.
> Master recordings have also been used by the music industry as tools to assert control over artists. This practice was recently exposed in popular culture by Pharrell Williams.
There's nothing to expose. When signing up with a producer or recording label, it's common practice to exchange a portion of the rights to the master produced in exchange for (advance) payment and promotion from the label. It's just like founders exchanging equity during fundraising. I'm surprised the practice is unknown or even controversial on a board centered around VC and startups. Black owned record labels [1][2] use the exact same deals when signing up artists.
Now, Pharrell Williams is notorious on his own. Does he need promotion from a label or an advance check for his music? Probably not. That's why he was able to re-negotiate his contracts to keep ownership of his masters. Same way a bootstrapped founder won't sell part of his equity for funding. It has nothing to do with race (but maybe Pharrell, having a large audience, tried making it about race to get leverage when negotiating...).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)
That's not what I've found in my research, which makes very explicit references to a master/slave dichotomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26497027
If what you say is true, that master recording has no relationship to a master/slave dichotomy, then why is there such a thing as a slave reel? Why do industry insiders refer to the dichotomy with a wink and nudge, as if it's a pun ("get it")? They explicitly talk about the master as representing "control" and not "quality".
> There's nothing to expose.
I said expose to popular culture. Many people did not know about this practice, and find it objectionable.
>They explicitly talk about the master as representing "control" and not "quality".
You seem to misunderstand there's a technical term (a recording master, the highest quality and original recording made in a studio) and a legal term (owning the rights to the master) in which said performance can be sold.
>Many people did not know about this practice, and find it objectionable.
I guess they object to owning stocks and shares too?
> You seem to misunderstand
Had you read the link I provided, you’d have seen I quote a source that says exactly what you’re saying. So no, I am aware there are two usages. However, both refer to the master/slave dichotomy in the recording industry:
> there's a technical term (a recording master, the highest quality and original recording made in a studio)
Right, and this is the one from which “slave reels” are made. So the “master/slave” dichotomy exists there. If the name we’re about quality they wouldn’t call the derivatives “slaves”.
> a legal term (owning the rights to the master) in which said performance can be sold.
Which is also part of a master/slave dichotomy because it is about control. The book I link to explicitly refers to the master/slave dichotomy in that particular context.
> I guess they object to owning stocks and shares too?
They are against the exploitive aspects surrounding the practice. I’m not sure how owning stocks and shares could be considered exploitation.
I've never heard the term "slave reels" and git doesn't have the concept nor the term slave anywhere in the codebase afaik.
The term is very much about quality; in the analog days it was way harder and sometimes even impossible to make a perfect copy. Hence the importance of the master being the highest quality (and often recorded on a different, much more expensive medium).
> They are against the exploitive aspects surrounding the practice. I’m not sure how owning stocks and shares could be considered exploitation.
As explained, it's the same model as raising funds for a startup. The record label claims a percentage, or the whole master in exchange for advance payment and promotion. This isn't a race thing.
Well now you have, and I've shown you plenty of evidence that the term has been used even in "the analog days". You may keep insisting that the term is very much about quality, but the sources I've linked suggest the opposite. If you can provide some sources aside from the wiki on "Mastering (audio)" I'm willing to look at them and integrate them into my perspective. Otherwise it's your insistence against the references I've already found.
> and git doesn't have the concept nor the term slave anywhere in the codebase afaik.
That's the whole point of this thread. The original contention was that a "master" branch is a reference to a master/slave dichotomy. The retort is that "no, it actually derives from the term "master recording" in the audio industry, which has nothing to do with a master/slave dichotomy." I've show references that in fact, the "master" in "master recording" is an explicit reference to the master/slave dichotomy.
> As explained, it's the same model as raising funds for a startup.
VC funding is also a pretty dubious imo. But that's neither here nor there.
> This isn't a race thing.
I hear you saying that, but I've also heard others who've shown me evidence that it is. We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm willing to split the difference and accept it can be a little of both, but you can't hide from the term "slave reels". Even if you want to say it's very much about quality, it's clear there is a race component, and maybe you can admit that too? Either way I'll still be defaulting my repos to "main" and teaching my students that way.
When you say "it's clear there is a race component", which race are you referring to?
I am white, and my white great-grandfather died as a slave in a concentration camp at the hands of white Nazi masters as a consequence of white-on-white ethnic persecution.
So do I understand correctly that when you say "it's clear there is a race component", you are referring to white people?
I'm sorry for your grandfather, mine died as well at the hands of Nazis.
By "race component" I'm making reference to racial relations in America, which to a large extent, revolve around the fallout from hundreds of years of chattel slavery of Black people. This country was built on the backs of black slaves, and that still has repercussions in society today. This conflict has deep roots, and many aspects of American life that may seem benign have a context in that history. If you don't know the history then you may not feel one way or another about it. If you do know the history, then it colors things differently (depending on who you are).
Misappropriating and subsequently weaponizing commonly used words is a trash move, imo, and it plainly exposes the lack of moral integrity of the persecutors. I find it very difficult to believe that such behavior is made in good faith.
Why is that touchy? It doesn't make any value judgements about slavery. It's just referencing the concept. If referencing the concept is bad, then I guess schools shouldn't teach it anymore? Let's all pretend there never was any slavery!
I wonder when someone will find a problem with 'kill' command.
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 bike from speeding cars on my street. Language isn't going to fill the dams in a drier and drier California. Language isn't going to do jackshit about 400+ ppm CO2 levels. And on and on.
These language policing idiots, and I am choosing my language here, are fucking clueless about the real challenges we face as individuals and as a society. Even worse, they are redirecting valuable resources to stupider and stupider bullshit.
How do we close this Pandora's box? How do we go back to debating meaningful problems and solutions and tell these language policing idiots to do something useful?
https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/news/poc-it-2022-progress-a...
"EHLI Scans In addition to the educational website, EHLI involves scanning Stanford University domains and sites to determine where and how identified harmful language is being used. The end goal is to help individuals and units eliminate harmful language that could be perpetuating stereotypes, inequality, violence, and racism.
Seven web domains authorized by the CIOC were scanned in a pilot phase to test the process of receiving, analyzing, and addressing scan results. This pilot phase led to a change in how terms are categorized from the scans, using these three priority levels:
Most egregious terms that need to be addressed immediately Terms we do not expect to find on our sites but will scan for due diligence Terms that can be used in a non-harmful way, generating many false positive results For the seven domains in the pilot, baseline scans have been recorded, and scan results are now recorded monthly. The process for working with content owners for remediation is still in a planning phase. Additional domains to be included in the scanning process are being evaluated, in close partnership with the CIOC."
I'm sorry, that term is now racist: grasping at threads.
I'm sorry, that term is now sexist: grasping at leaves.
Ad infinium.
Best seen with the transformation of terms around disability, where even transformations as late as differently abled are now derogatory and to be avoided.
I'm not against changing how we use language, but perhaps there are deeper issues that could be dealt with to avoid having to retcon our dictionary in the first place.
we kinda have lost the plot when calling out people for being intentionally disrespectful became calling out any form of language that the disrespectful people used, in a form of guilty-by-association game.
if we could be back calling out specific instances of offensiveness and evaluate it case by case it be grand. it doesn't scale, but justice never was intended to be scalable -by design-
This is spot on. They are cultural parasites who siphon resources and attention from their host.
Becoming able to control someone's thoughts is very, very powerful and sought after, and what are thoughts composed of? Language. Define the language and you define how people think.
Define people of latin origin should be referred to by "latinx" and nothing else and congratulations: An entire collection of cultures was removed of their identity and subjugated.
Define all environmental concerns as "global warming" and later "climate change" and congratulations: You just invalidated swaths of inventions and solutions created by our forefathers and turned entire fields of science into a handy little political tool to fling around for profit.
Define science as something to be unconditionally trusted and congratulations: You just turned science into a religion and gained one of the biggest religious forces known to man to use for profit.
The people behind all this are very ingenious and very dangerous; he who controls language owns the human world.
Precisely.
It's an attempt by some groups to have others jump through hoops that they define. The end goal is never language, but the ability to control what others do and be the one calling the shots.
I can't remember the book it came from, but there was an author who wrote about his time growing up in an Eastern European communist country. During "Independence Days" his dad had to put a flag up in his store window. It wasn't optional. If he didn't do it, the police would stop by and ask why he didn't have a flag in his window.
If he refused, he's be on the "naughty list" with the authorities which could impact his employment, his housing, his kids schooling.
Putting the flag in the window was never the goal of the government. The goal was to show citizens they had no choice. The author talks about how capitulating the demand was dehumanizing and just ground down any resistance to authority that may have existed. "If I don't have the choice as to fly a flag or not, what choice did I have with more important aspects of my life?"
It's like putting stars of David on Jews in Germany. It wasn't just to identify them in public (though that was a goal) it was also to show them "who was in charge".
Nicely put. Living in a Eastern European country we've just swapped a word "communism/socialism" with "democracy", so in effect very little changed. Ironically, not putting the flag out in towns an villages will now brand you as a anti-Croat and a communist sympathizer which can have very serious consequences if you ever want to get employed by the local government (usually the only source of employment in a lot of places).
Slightly related to the control of languange. One of the first editions of the National Geographic Magazine in Croatia (in Croatian language) featured a big article about a deadly disease spreading mostly in Africa, and how you could be born infected and it was terrible and everything. I've read that article and the disease was called "kopnica". I've never heard about it before, but it sure did seem nasty.
A month later (or could be two, doesn't matter), there was an angry letter to the editor which accused the magazine's proofreader of inventing a new word for AIDS (a word which everyone on the planet knows about). That proofreader in the reply thinly accused the reader of harbouring anti-national thoughts and some other horrible sentiments. I was shocked and wowed never to buy NGM in Croatia ever again.
Similar thing happened in IT magazines over here which started to "translate" English words by means of just inventing Croatian sounding ones. That made no sense to me, but it did make some proofreader's and academia careers.
Once I was on a public consultation "conference" about drone regulation in my country and had some polite technical questions on the end of one talk. The government official berated me for "using foreign words [english] when we have such nice [newly invented] Croatian words" and then didn't bother to answer any of my questions. Half of the audience laughed how clever the official sounded. Also it was a bit sad that consultation was just a formality, but thats a different story.
So you're completely right. Language can be molded into small hoops for your enemy to jump through first. In general, a set of rules you create, and your enemy has to abide with making the communication asymetrical easing the control one has over the other.
That seems like the greengrocer from V. Havel's essay 'The Power of the Powerless': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless
In your example of "Latinx" for example, if you are a white person who doesn't speak Spanish but you really want to help improve society, it probably sounds like a great idea! Put women and men on an equal footing. It's very easy to walk through a field of landmines if you don't know there's any landmines there. It's very easy to be an activist if you don't know anything at all about the world.
It's better to attack the idea than the people. Push back on that Overton window. Rename your main branch to master. Call someone a Karen.
My generous take is that whoever wants to go this deep towards language policing has experienced real trauma that has debilitated them. That's something I can view compassionately.
But perhaps in having been traumatized and victimized, they view their identity as primarily a victim, because they don't know how to move on from or get over or heal from the trauma. And in an attempt to "redeem" their past, they want to create a landscape in which they can use their victimhood to accrue, wield, and exercise power, via guilt-tripping others, shaming others, and using their traumas and sufferings (again, something I can relate and sympathize and empathize with) as "street-cred" to flex on others who are all part of those who are "contributing to the traumatic systems that have harmed people like them."
On the flipside, though, are people who refuse to acknowledge their traumas, because they've bought into a false belief system that to be hurt by life means you're weak, and to be weak means you don't deserve respect and the rewards of society and that you're somehow inferior to those who haven't been traumatized or taken advantage of, etc.
I feel like both are two sides of the same coin. One becomes all-consumed with their traumas. The other sticks their head in the sand. The former wants to police and control everyone by using their traumas as a means to jockey for power over others. The latter often shits on people who talk about any and all trauma – even in healthy ways – because to admit it in themselves means they're somehow lesser-than and inferior, weak and unworthy.
That seems to be the extreme ends of this whole thing. But healing from traumas seems to be kind of the third way, so to speak, and an uncomfortable journey that upends both extremes, without being a "meeting in the middle" type of proposed solution.
Just sharing some thoughts.
The villagers burning 'witches' were motivated to do good (protect the village, and incidentally get their neighbours lands / jobs ... hmmm)
The students in the Cultural Revolution in China were motivated to do good (bring us forward into the utopia ... hmmm).
There is a nice saying, present in many languages: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
And while I think intention does actually matter (vs. the a frequent claim by the woke), results matter more. (Intention matters because, e.g., it influences how you treat the action.)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - Orwell
I wonder if there’s another framing for this. One of the top educational institutions in the world is formalising a communications approach that doesn’t casually evoke, reference, and cause suffering. This dynamic might only be present in a small percentage of their audience—in fact it affects quite a significant majority—but in either case it’s a win worth pursuing on the scale of their operations.
The antidote to the fear and hysteria of change is transparency — and what a marvellous gesture of transparency here, from Stanford. (Remember the Byzantine episode from ICLR?)
Context matters. Each of the guidelines linked here has some. It’s a gift: you can now use that language more precisely.
And he who better controls his own language, better controls his world.
I don't see an end to this, I think it's getting worse. It looks like a revolution picking up speed. The places that stopped revolutions did it with very heavy measures. If there is a way to stop this that is not that, I don't know what it is.
I don't think this guide is meant to prevent harm. It almost seems like this kind of language policing is like a shibboleth to identify the in from the out group. It forces you to join the in group or suffer the immediate consequences of being in the out group. So like instant career suicide if you disobey the rules. If you don't comply, you are now in the same camp as the most evil people on the planet. No one wants that association so they comply. It's extremely effective. So I don't see it going away.
This story is not unique. We've seen it in WWII Germany and communist regimes around thew world. This language list by Stanford is just a modern reincarnation of the same thing. The language list isn't actually about making people feel safer. It's a means of power and control.
The founding fathers of the United States were well aware of this human behavior. The freedom of speech. The presumption of innocence. Right to a jury. Right to privacy. Are all principles enshrined into law to serve as a countermeasure to our proclivities of mob rule and hysteria. These are all effective. But we now live in an age of social media. Mob rule has returned. But it's now all virtual. Do we need to formulate a new list of rights to counteract virtual mob rule?
Well, they do this thing where they form a mob and harass people.
The thing is, their ingroup is relatively small, about 8%. If sizeable chunk of the outgroup started using their tactics against them...
We can't right now. We could have done it 15 years ago, as I remember being able to openly talk about it at work (master vs main) but everybody who agreed with me could not be bothered to take a stand. Right now I would be terminated instantly for arguing "tarball" can not be harmful, such is the environment.
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.
Let's put things in perspective. Stanford, on its own website, behind a Stanford login, posted a list of words they want to try to avoid using on their own websites and code. That's it. For this great offense, you suggest:
> 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.
Really. To reiterate, these people who you say should be driven "out of decent society" aren't even imposing that you shouldn't say these words. It's just for them. And for this you want to encourage their banishment at a societal level? You suppose they are the authoritarians, though? You, as always, are free to do whatever you want. Say all the words on the list in a row if you want. No one will stop you.
Your comment is very dissonant for me, because it seems to be anti-woke, yet pro cancel culture. I feel like this must be evidence for Horseshoe Theory.
It was only put behind a login wall after this made the rounds on social media on Monday, according to the WSJ. [1]
1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...
[1]: https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/news/poc-it-2022-progress-a...
You don't seem to understand how academic departments are organized. I can't see any content on the link you provided (it just has a header that reads "News"), but faculty are not subject to the style guidelines of the IT department, especially if they are tenured. Faculty hire/fire decisions are made by the Chair and Dean of the respective departments, and they aren't bound by these kinds of lists either.
Feel free to criticize and ridicule as much as you want, using whatever words you want. No one will stop you, especially Stanford. But the fear you articulate here regarding faculty freedom of thought is baseless.
The url indeed seems to be dead right now but it originally had described an initiative which would periodically scan everything which is hosted on Stanford domains, which naturally would include faculty pages. It previously stated as follows:
"EHLI Scans In addition to the educational website, EHLI involves scanning Stanford University domains and sites to determine where and how identified harmful language is being used. The end goal is to help individuals and units eliminate harmful language that could be perpetuating stereotypes, inequality, violence, and racism.
Seven web domains authorized by the CIOC were scanned in a pilot phase to test the process of receiving, analyzing, and addressing scan results. This pilot phase led to a change in how terms are categorized from the scans, using these three priority levels:
Most egregious terms that need to be addressed immediately Terms we do not expect to find on our sites but will scan for due diligence Terms that can be used in a non-harmful way, generating many false positive results For the seven domains in the pilot, baseline scans have been recorded, and scan results are now recorded monthly. The process for working with content owners for remediation is still in a planning phase. Additional domains to be included in the scanning process are being evaluated, in close partnership with the CIOC."
> But the fear you articulate here regarding faculty freedom of thought is baseless.
It absolutely is not. The coded language of "Harmful Language" which is constantly morphing and changing to continuously include more and more benign words such as "User" and "American" will absolutely be used to full effect against Faculty.
Indeed, the content from the link which is dead doesn’t support your point. They said they scanned for content and found egregiously harmful examples, along with many “false positives”, meaning there is a process here. So it’s not just “you used the word American, therefore you’re disciplined.” No, it’s nothing like that whatsoever.
It’s more like you posted the word “jewed” somewhere on your personal faculty page and they’d prefer to get rid of that. But if you posted “jewed” in an academic context, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that usage.
I don’t think I need to explain why Stanford doesn’t need a list of words or scanning tools to discipline employees for using racial slurs on company property, so what’s the problem?
As for the list, the problem is the clear attempts to obfuscate and grow the number of wrong think words wile trying to equate their usage as harmful. Purposeful and clearly overtly racist words such as "jewed" are right along side words like "grandfathered", "user", is a pretty clear attempt to mix the two. There certainly will be a process, but your kidding yourself thinking that academics will not be told under no uncertain terms that they are permitted to express "Harmful Language".
> your kidding yourself thinking that academics will not be told under no uncertain terms that they are permitted to express "Harmful Language".
And you're kidding yourself if you think academics will care. Wake me when something actually happens.
You are woefully uninformed, or willfully misrepresenting things if you don't think using such lists to punish people aren't already being used today. It's not harmless, and it seems dishonest to me to paint it as such.
Also I'm in academia so I'm not woefully uninformed about what goes on in academia and how it works. I think the SV tech workers here on HN are the ones who are uninformed about how academia works.
> Isn't it Berkeley where 80% of applications for faculty positions are filtered on their diversity statement
Have you ever read such a statement? They are very important for academia, because classrooms are very diverse. It's important for applicants to state their philosophy on teaching people with different (dis)abilities, because that's the nature of the job. As an instructor, you will face the range of disabilities in students from mild dyslexia all the way to students who are bound to a wheelchair and communicate through a computer voice system. How does the instructor handle those situations? What techniques or practices do they employ?
Also, classroom conflicts do exist. For CS there aren't so many, but in other classes that touch on contentious issues, the question for the instructor is: how do they balance the views of all students in a constructive way that is conducive to learning? It's not easy, and so requires some explanation on the part of the applicant.
Filtering on diversity statements means advancing candidates who have put genuine thought into these issues, because again, they are important for the job.
The other part of the diversity statement plays is that is forces the candidate to reflect on their community service work. Did you know that service is part of the job description of a professor? The job is research, teaching, and service. We ask them for a research and a teaching statement, so what's wrong with asking for a diversity statement? Would you rather it be called a "service" statement?
The filtering process selects for candidates who are serious about service and who have thought deeply about how to teach a diverse classroom (because that's the job). I don't see a problem with that; even if you disagree with DEI initiatives, you still have to teach a diverse classroom. This whole idea that we can't ask job candidates how they handle situations which will arise on the job to which they're applying is strange to me.
> Or consider Stuart Reges being disciplined by UW for not putting the boilerplate land acknowledgement on his course's syllabus.
This is a misrepresentation. The land acknowledgement for UW is in fact optional on the course syllabus. What Stuart Reges did was put his own land acknowledgement statement on the syllabus which veered from factual statements and was a political statement.
So he was using his platform in an engineering course to push his own personal political agenda. A syllabus in particular is regarded as a contract, sometimes binding, between student and professor. It's not the place for off-the-cuff political statements. If Stuart Reges is allowed to put his political statements on his syllabus, that opens up the door for all professors, which makes the syllabus a political platform. Apparently he was very vocal about the land statements outside of the syllabus and that is fine for UW, but it just didn't belong in the syllabus.
I don't see a problem with that, do you? If you want to include the UW land statement, that's fine. If you don't want to include the statement, that's fine. But what's not fine including your own statement because you're personally politically against land statements or what the UW statement has to say. I mean, if you take a course, do you care to see it colored with political statements from your instructor that are wholly unrelated to the course content?
As for how he was disciplined... what happened to him exactly? They asked him to take down the statement, he refused. Yet his salary was uninterrupted and he still works at UW to this day: https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/reges. So the sum total of his discipline was what, exactly?
According to the lawsuit Reges filed, he didn't even claim material damages. His lawsuit was about being butthurt because he felt like a pariah, which reading the situation, is as much his fault as anyone else's. In fact, the party that was materially impacted was the department; they had to open another section of the course because he was so acerbic to the students. That costs serious money and time from all of his colleagues. Honestly for that alone I would have fired him, but I guess UW is more forgiving than me.
Now also taxpayers, because of debt cancellation. It's subsidized now.
So, in your opinion, if Neo-Nazis try to impose a speech code among those young people who they seek to indoctrinate into their "ethos", that is okay, as long as it is "just for them" and they don't try to impose it on society at large?
>And for this you want to encourage their banishment at a societal level?
Yes.
> You, as always, are free to do whatever you want. Say all the words on the list in a row if you want. No one will stop you.
Just like Neo-Nazis and self-appointed cultural hall-monitors at Stanford are free to do whatever they want. And the rest of us are free to drive these worthless people out of decent society because they have no place here and are detrimental to free and open discourse among decent, reasonable people.
Yea, I’m supportive of the first amendment rights afforded to all Americans, including neo-Nazis, with whom I disagree. Crucially, they already do this. Use too many words that neo-Nazis don’t like to hear and they’re likely to reject you from their group, which is also their right.
> Yes.
Great, thank you for admitting you are in fact an authoritarian in this context. It clarifies the rest of your comment.
You can't tweak this nor will they self-correct. This is a monster to forcefully remove, but nobody dares to do that.
Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on their performance review that they removed exclusive language from Stanford web pages.
next thing you know, master is now main, blacklist and whitelist are allowlist and denylist, and so on
Obvious nonsense, and the person who she complimented agreed. But when an administrator doesn't like someone, and needs to find a reason to cause them problems, this sort of list is a very useful tool. Maybe you don't even have to say it - "Professor X was found in repeated violation of our racial safety standards, and we just can't have racist staff".
I'll add that I don't have an issue with removing racist/bigoted language - but this list largely consists of obvious slurs that nobody needs a ruleset to avoid, or mundane words where no person would even begin to feel racist/offended outside of an administrator finding excuses to make more rules.
Words like whitelist and blacklist have been banned by woke theater fiat at the bigco I work at, although I have seen no evidence they actually have anything to do with racism. I suspect our banned words list has a lot of overlap with Stanford's.
Rabblerousers like to rabblerouse, and nobody wants to be the voice of reason when the people who decide your paycheck make stupid political decisions.
This is true, but also probably an indication that the term "whitelist" isn't as universally understood [by developers] as the "how dare you suggest using allowlist!" crowd suggest...
In particular, this idea that giving a negative connotation to the color black and darkness in general, and a positive connotation to the color white and lightness in general, implies some kid of racial bias is absurd, ahistorical, and frankly disturbing (since it creates controversy retroactively out of nothing).
It's not even that I mind adjusting my language if people object to it; but there's a world of difference between "I really don't like it when you use the phrase [...]" and "you're being racist when you use the phrase [...]".
Context: I am from a place where both darker-colored people and lighter-colored people exist. Here in my country, lighter-colored people are considered better than darker-colored people. I am a darker-skinned person.
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't really trust those universities selection process anymore. I certainly lost any respect for those universities, and I graduated from one of those.
I wonder. Could be that they don't want to be ostracised.
This happens in companies as well. In mine, we have a similar list of words to avoid. I'm pretty sure 95% of my colleagues think it's bullshit but we never discuss it openly. Mostly it's a thing from the US youth, some of them seem to be actively tracking anything that could be remotely considered unfair to minorities and are very vocal about it.
Particularly stuff like this, they are demarcating an in-group and an out group. The primary reason people come up with this sort of silly list of magic words is to start discriminating against the out-group.
It's not that I'm dismissing the possibility of sinister cultural signifiers. It's just this one attempt to establish them inorganically seems to me like it will obviously fail.
But git branch names now say "main".
But thanks for supporting the people who ruined years of muscle memory for typing "git push origin master" over imagined and non-existent harms.
The amount of time people have spent on this change fixing broken tools and workflows makes it a stupid change all by itself.
90% of HN seem to think banning these words are at best silly, yet seem to be ambivalent about stopping it.
These aren't laws of nature other people just like you made these rules.
So apparently a Stanford M.S., M.A. or M.F.A. degree may be said to denote mastery of a subject, but its holder cannot claim to have mastered the subject. So many ways to get it wrong...
For some early examples, see: the Iliad
Misspelling turf wars as "terf" while writing about wokism is just too funny a coincidence to not mention.
I actually subscribe to the idea that the words of choice can be harmful but this practice of constantly trying hard find words to ban is ridiculous. When the culture evolves and certain words start hurting people, sure let's be more careful about it. No need for an institutional directive for word, people themselves change their language as the culture changes.
At current stage it definitely feels like someone who doesn't have something to do invents a job.
However, the arguments for this renaming are absurd, and i think that absolutely matters.
And note that I actually think renouncing the use of master/slave in favor of primary/secondary or something similar is actually warranted. But extending this to master branch, when many of the people doing the change had a Master of Science title probably, is annoying and arbitrary.
The thing I don't understand is, even if it had something to do with slavery, why is that harmlful?
That is, the attitudes of the staff are downstream of the students.
This is also reinforced by the fact that (entry-level) staff at universities are often recent humanities graduates from that university.
It will, like banning "master" repositories, and other examples have already happened.
Quoting Orwell in all irony: "It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
Perhaps not, but every year this rhetoric grows more and more aggressive - and thanks to social media - is now leaking into our everyday vernacular.
At what point do we say “this is enough” rather than hand-waving it away as yet another excess of academia?
There will never be enough, because "enough" has not been defined. They have no interest in doing so. Even if they did, the "end goal" would never be reached, because they have too much of a seated interest in preserving their grievances.
That point will never happen, because those who stand up will be righteously cut down. An acquaintance is seeking a faculty position and they are being asked ideologically filtering questions in interviews, with the pretty overt suggestion that the wrong answer to any would disqualify them as a candidate.
If this kind of thinking is tolerated without pushback, it will become the default. Advocates of this thinking are dedicated radicals who care more about implementing it than most people like you (not meaning offense) who would just chuckle and do nothing, thinking it is silly.
This is Stanford University. This is a prestigious engineering university, not UMass Amherst.
---
edit to add: The thing that absolutists don't appreciate, whether they are far-woke speech warriors like this submission, or far-right conservatives worried about any shift in the status-quo, is that *there is a line, somewhere in the middle, for all things*. We need to be thoughtful about some speech, but this list is the logical extreme of it. We need to understand systemic racism exists in the US, but we don't need to make every single aspect of society revolve around race. We need to support the poor and the uneducated and the unemployed more than we do today, but we don't need to give them blank checks or have completely open borders.
In American discussion today, there seems to be little room for nuance like this, for "practical lines" like this, because each side either wants or is afraid of an idea being taken to its logical extreme.
It is up to people who agree with this to understand that there is a line, and as such, one needs to *hold that line*. Radicals will try to push it too far, and we need to stop them vocally. "c"onservatives will try never to move the line, and we need to make them budge.
It is not feasible to "just ignore" any large organization looking to move the line too far. It has to be actively challenged.
1300+ comments on something that has hardly anything to do with technology. Really?
To me, this is a dumb and actually kind of funny list, due to some ridiculous notions (e.g. "stand up meeting" is ablelist?) that seem poorly put together with zero thought for context. It's as if someone got an assignment to put this together and tried to really, really stretch any possible connection they could into this. Like you said, a "bullshit time-consuming initiative".
That's all it is. I don't get why people are paying attention to it. It's not worth much thought at all.
And Stanford has a certain amount of cachet, or influence, or reach, or whatever, even into tech circles and tech companies. So this nonsense may be coming soon to the company you or I work at. So, yeah, we care. We take it seriously, because it impacts us.
In Canada, the professional regulators who control whether you're allowed to to call yourself an engineer and whether your company is allowed to do engineering, are also making this kind of thing mandatory. They are considering it a part of workplace safety, akin to preventing oil spills and lethal accidents: an engineer's top priority, lest they lose their license.
Then again, the country has taxpayer funded university positions reserved for minority candidates (because apparently that's legal over there?).
No other reason is needed, but "principle" is being violated here. Bad ideas need to be pushed back on. I think that's true whether or not rules achieve "de facto" status, because a society's dysfunction is proportional to the degree it that lets bad rules slide "because they'll never be enforced". In this case these bad rules lay bare an ignorant and bigoted world-view that is fundamentally anti-human. It is teaching students and teachers all the wrong lessons, and ironically is not even helping the people it's claiming to want to help. It is pure and overt thought policing and Stanford, and anyone who cares about the school and its legacy, needs to clean house yesterday.
But the secretive reporting system will make people paranoid and when dealing with administration commissars and academic boards, I imagine the rules will be used to weed out opponents and anyone they believe does not comply with their goals.
And yes it is stupid. There are even words I am surprised they did not include like "fat". Oops, I used the word stupid.
In order to think, you must risk being offensive, in order to learn you must risk being offended. In either case, you must have the freedom to do either, and compulsion is evil.
By compelling speech like that, you are indoctrinating future generations, and doing so along a path where they will be at a disadvantage and won't think because they have been brought up in an environment where the priority given is that it is more important to say the politically correct/right thing than it is to risk being offensive or do anything. If you can't question anything, can you even form a basis for real thought?
Do you have any value as a person if all you do is parrot what someone else says?
Not only that, but it also shares some of the same philosophy that lead to the deaths under Mao.
This makes me fear for the future because Stanford people are supposed to be intelligent, and yet this is just so utterly... stupid, borderline brainwashing, and it likely violates core institutional mandates/ethos.
That this is even getting any traction, you have to wonder wtf is going on up there. Clearly someone, more likely many need to be fired. Unbelievable.
And these people will not only be the leaders of tomorrow but also the ones that control worldwide communications from their offices in Silicon Valley. They will shape the entire world.
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."
Well, how reassuring!
There's this:
> The strong form of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis claims that people from different cultures think differently because of differences in their languages. ... Few sociolinguists would accept such a strong claim, but most accept the weaker claim of linguistic relativity, that language influences perceptions, thought, and, at least potentially, behavior.
And this:
> Linguistic relativity proposals are sometimes characterized as equivalent to linguistic determinism, that is the view that all thought is strictly determined by language. Such characterizations of the language–thought linkage bear little resemblance to the proposals of Sapir or Whorf, who spoke in more general terms about language influencing habitual patterns of thought, especially at the conceptual level. Indeed, no serious scholar working on the linguistic relativity problem as such has subscribed to a strict determinism.
My sense has long been that Sapir-Whorf is "debunked" in the popular consciousness but not among actual linguists, in part because of the confusion of linguistic determinism with linguistic relativity. Pop-sci sources characterize Sapir-Whorf as wholly deterministic, which it isn't and never was.
In the end, I'll trust my own gut on Sapir-Whorf over what the academy comes up with anyway, because there's a strong incentive to "disprove" it because it doesn't align with their current political values. My gut says that for linguistic relativity to not be true, language would have to be unique among all of our environmental stimulae in not influencing our thought patterns, and the odds of something so fundamental to our species being the lone exception are pretty darn slim.
All words that have lost meaning at this point.
If there's any way in which word usage influences our thoughts, there's not much evidence of it. E.g., there are ungendered languages, but the societies that use them are absolutely not more feminist than those where a gendered language is spoken. And suppressing slurs usually leads to substitution by other words, showing that the thought very much stays alive, independent of the word.
Does this not support at least the weak hypothesis?
There can be other influences that lead to misogyny and other biases, and language may adapt to give expression to those thought patterns. But language also can influence thought patterns. For it not to do so it would have to be the lone exception among all of the stimulae we take in, which is extremely unlikely.
> the idea that language has an influence on your thought patterns.
What does language even mean in that statement? You can weaken it down all you want, but in the context of this topic, language means: word usage, and thoughts mean: racist, sexist, etc. opinions. Do these opinions get influenced by e.g. the food you eat? The sunset? The temperature of your living room? Those are stimuli, or at least external influences. Language is not a stimulus, but more of a skill. It's encoded in your brain, and it allows you to communicate.
To put it bluntly: is there any evidence that people who are forced to use "black" instead of "African-American" become less racist?
> Red team: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups.
> Blackbox: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.
> Brave (do not use): This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man.
This is the pseudo-intellectual equivalent banning any word that contains "ass" because "ass" is a bad word.
Anyone involved in the production of this document should be embarrassed and ashamed.
Hopefully we don't find anything troubling in the pasts of Adelson-Velsky and Landis, or AVL trees will also be on the chopping block.
At least they'll probably be able to lecture about treaps.
there's some game whose word filter censors the "ass" in the name "Nasser"
the result is "N***er"
<script<script></script>>alert("hax")</script<script></script>>
<script>alert("hax")</script>
The way I think about something being 'blackbox' is neither positive or negative. It's just not knowing. Looking into a dark room and not seeing what mechanism is inside it, merely knowing there's a door with a key and something comes out of it when I open the door.
I think speech is important, but most of these seem generated by chatgpt.
tarball [use instead: tar archive] While the term refers to an archive that has been created with the tar command, it can be negatively associated with the pejorative term tarbaby.
whitespace [use instead: empty space] Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized.
Hispanic [use instead: Latinx, use country of origin] Although widely used to describe people from Spanish-speaking countries outside of Spain, its roots lie in Spain's colonization of South American countries.
immigrant [use instead: person who has immigrated, non-citizen] Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their characteristics.
They forgot Central American countries :(
> Spanish Florida (Spanish: La Florida) was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery.
Spain also lost Florida in part, by conquest (to Andrew Jackson). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminole_Wars
> The Seminole Wars were the longest and most expensive, in both human and financial cost to the United States, of the American Indian Wars.
Thought ultimately Congress did buy Florida as a sort of fait accompli when it became clear they couldn't hold it. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams%E2%80%93On%C3%ADs_Treaty
> The Adams–Onís Treaty [is] a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain.
Interestingly, less than half a year later, Mexico finally (re-)gained its independence from Spain.
Lots of Spain colonization efforts unraveled in a relatively short amount of time, historically.
They jumped the shark(tm) on tarball.
(Y’all should really stop conflating tar with asphalt though. The terms are related but not always interchangeable.)
Whitespace is pathetic. Even the article itself has a white background. In any case, in a lot of modern programmer usage, whitespace is not empty. Saying that empty space is significant in some file format would be rather silly. White_space is part of the Unicode standard, TYVM.
Reminds me of that woman who forced the change of master branch into main at github while posing as a "programmer" or "security researcher". I looked into her profile, only PRs for typos in documentation or cruft like that. No serious contribution. Only hate.
For people so obsessed with language, it seems pretty silly to so readily conflate "definition" with "classification".
I give it 1-2 more years before being put out to pasture with "African American".
[Edit: Also, WTF? Indigenous people from the US are supposed to be called Latinx now?]
The vast, vast majority of people who present as male wish to be referred to as "he". Many of them would be offended or confused if you used "they" as a term of reference. Many listeners would also be confused if you referred to a person who appears to be a typical male as a "they".
If 99% of men go by "he", why should we use "they" as a term of reference by default? This is the tail wagging the dog, to say the least.
1: the list also says we are not to refer to "preferred pronouns" anymore. They are just "pronouns" now.
This is a non-issue for almost every person on the planet except for maybe the most easily offended.
I know it will probably feel less odd as time goes on.
They at first sounded weird being repurposed this way, but I think now it works better than any of the list above. Once you start using it for people who's gender you don't know, it's a pretty small step to use for someone's gender you don't want to assume.
Well that's the question, isn't it? How often do I have occasion to talk about someone whose gender I don't want to assume? In virtually every case, I am able to correctly ascertain the gender identity of a person I am going to talk about.
The Stanford rules would have me pretend as if I just have no idea, and use "they" instead of "he" or "she". This is utter foolishness. It ignores the offense and confusion that will result from "they-ing" someone who goes by "he" or "she". And it ignores the fact that it is generally very easy to deduce someone's gender identity.
"Someone ate the last slice of cake. I wish they had considered me!"
"Phone for you" "What do they want?"
It's a big and bizarre step to throw out 'he' and 'she' completely for all known men and women until such time as they confirm that yes they indeed are men and women, just to satisfy the miniscule proportion of them who are not. The exceptional ones should be the ones to point it out and then we can just say 'oh ok sure sorry' and move on.
> someone's gender you don't want to assume
Unless they look like someone who 'might not want their gender assumed', I'm perfectly happy assuming peoples gender, because it will be correct in the vast vast vast majority of cases.
What really irks me (as a result I suppose) is the sort of passive aggressive use of 'she' for gender unknown, as though righting some wrong or making some sort of point that we don't know it's 'he' either - true, that would be wrong too!
Matt Levine does it an awful lot, recently-ish I even noticed one was actually a man; he was just using it in the general sense not having checked who the specific person was in the role that he was talking about - 'they' would have been fine, but 'she' was more incorrect than usual, a factual error.
"Someone is knocking at the door, can you let them in?"
Nobody would say "let him in", unless they knew a man was behind the door. This is utterly uncontroversial and boring.
That is not a good example since there is presumably only 1 person knocking ("someone"), but there could be multiple people ("them") at the door waiting to come in.
Since you don't know the amount of people waiting to come in, using them would be appropriate.
using him sounds silly when there's a 50% chance it's you mother doesn't it?
I think the better example would be when you know there is only one person. Person 1: "I went to the movies with a friend". Person 2: "Did they like the movie?"
This still has the issue about talking about somebody who is not present. Many people are advocating for using they/them when the person is right in front of you.
It's almost as if reality, facts, logic, consistency don't matter. Which is postmodernism. A power struggle.
And they act the way they think. Their speech is all about power, not about truth. That's why their claims are so absurd and nonsensical - because it's not about the truth of the claims. It's about them asserting power over you.
The only reasonable response, then, is to not accept their assertion of power. No. Just no. (Or "no" with as many profane modifiers as you feel is appropriate.) No, we don't agree. No, you're ridiculous. No, we aren't going to get in a debate with your ridiculousness. And most of all, no, we aren't going to follow your stupid rules. No. Get lost. Go away.
"Bob went to the store and they bought some beer" is completely parsable by everyone - nobody is getting confused unless they are trying to be.
That this is considered "okay" by certain people proves that they do not care about (1) or (2), only (3).
"He" -> "they" further implies that there's something wrong about "he", a defect not present in "they". Otherwise the opposite replacement would also be acceptable. It is morally despicable.
But this demonstrates real evil that hides behind compassion and empathy, because preventing harm is not the real goal. The real goal is the assertion of power to police speech. Once you have that, you can do whatever you want with it to build a utopia where people aren't allowed to say things you don't think should be said. Even SJWs have to decide: what's worse, letting people say "lets bury the hatchet" without realizing they are "appropriating native culture", or putting an arbitrary group of unaccountable people in charge of what everyone says, in full knowledge of how that power can and will be abused?
Good heavens this whole thing is astonishingly stupid.
Personally, I miss the days when the Jewish-led ACLU would come to bat for neo Nazis when local police would violate their free speech rights. This is correct. We must give people the right to be bad people, and say bad things, because no-one can unambiguously define good or bad. This disciplined, principled approach to a notion of freedom seems to have disappeared completely, and within my lifetime! That makes me feel incredibly guilty because, right now, my kids have a much harder road ahead than I did, my son in particular.
Instead, I think it’s just a group of busywork, incompetent administrators who have been hired to “come up with ideas”. The number of administrators in academia has absolutely exploded in the past few decades, and this is the kind of dumb stuff they do.
For example, say, the people involved got four weeks to do this -- and they were done in a day, but then continued adding more and more words anyway to fill the time. Or because more words would give a more serious / competent impression.
I'd like to assume good intentions or incompetence / laziness / selfishness & don't-care, rather than giant conspiracy theories
Don't we have the same problem with in house lawyers and designers, who, if idle, want to sue someone, or want to redesign a "perfect" app and just make it worse
Or software devs who add pointless stuff to the tech stack
Maybe Parkinsons law should be amended:
> "work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion [with pointless things you'd be better off without]"
Hitler did not start off with a mastermind plot to become the sole decisionmaker in Germany either. "There is no conspiracy, they're just acting in typical self-serving ways" is a counterproductive and even subversive objection when the enemy is demonstrably at the gates.
It’s derived from the noun “guy”, which is indeed often gendered. But etymology doesn’t determine meaning. Otherwise we would have to conclude that “woman” is male-gendered because it etymologically derives from “man”.
Making “you guys” taboo seems to be a cultural phenomenon specific to certain industries. I’ve asked several of my friends, and never encountered one outside of tech or academia who thought “you guys” was problematic at all. In fact, the vast majority had never even heard of the issue or imagined that it could be controversial.
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 change.
1. You assume that “guys” is the male equivalent of “gals”. It’s not — the latter is much more strongly gendered. Your argument is circular, because you assume that “guys” is gendered as one of your axioms.
2. You are talking about “hey guys”, whereas I was talking about “you guys”. The whole point of my post was that you can’t understand the meaning of “you guys” simply by referencing the meaning of “guys”. They are completely different words, and their only relationship is historical, even though one is a substring of the other. Even if “hey guys” is mildly gendered (which I’m not sure of, but I’m at least willing to believe it’s possible), “you guys” absolutely isn’t, empirically.
And because it's used by everyone, I submit this is true in the court of public opinion.
Are you a native speaker? I’m genuinely curious because I can’t imagine this not seeming ubiquitous to a person that’s grown up in American English.
No elevation is happening. There is only inclusion and gathering together all members of the group regardless of gender. "Guys" performs this function effortlessly, without harm.
Gals always = girls. Guys does not always equal boys. That's language at work, an evolution which shouldn't be policed by language activists, instructing us what words are permitted.
If "leader" is part of the origin of "guy", that makes it even more suitable to gender neutral use in modern times. It's healthy when language is allowed to evolve and operate in varying contexts. Gatekeeping and policing words is to create problems and tension.
He/she/it They/they/they Guys/gals/guys
(Unfortunately, incorrectly using "it" to refer to a human is considered derogatory. All the other cells I listed were considered fine 20-30 years ago, and generally still are.)
> I could not see the person; [he,she,they, not "it"] was/were hidden in shadow.
Even the wokest wokes have their limits.
Man was not gendered when "woman" originated. In Old English, the words for men and women were "wer" and "wif", while "mann" described any person. Over time, wifmann became woman, and for whatever reason, wermann didn't end up becoming a word.
Other examples of trouble through etymology might include "virtue" and "world", which both derive from "wer".
Godspeed.
> Instead of: trigger warning
> Consider using: content note
> Context: The phrase can cause stress about what's to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person.
So the examples are not sarcasm, they are literal.
Please use the phrase: "Words that describe subsequent words may follow this disclaimer."
(Except "follow" could have negative religious connotations.)
The term "surprising" has a lot of connotations too.
Safer to just not speak
Or maybe it already happened.
Also there is a high turnover of PC words - every few years the “correct” word changes to something else, because reasons.
No, the discourse about the problematic nature of the “trigger warning” as a flag for advisories of potentially-offensive content and the way it (and some other related terminology adopted around the same time) was grounded in a misapplication of terminology and concepts surrounding PTSD in specific and trauma in general began very shortly after the term began popular and had nothing to do with the insensitive dismissal of what the term is a label for (in fact, it is largely diametrically opposed, which is why that the kind of people who dismiss the need for the concerns about content have embraced the misapplication of “trigger” that it involves for their own attacks.)
When people can (and have) lost their livelihoods by using the wrong language, being in charge of new language is a powerful thing indeed.
They are like the Star Bellied Sneetches. Except instead of applying and removing stars from their bellies until no one knows who is in or out or good or bad, they include and exclude by ever more tortured use of language.
But their position has been that gender is socially constructed and thus malleable, so it follows that pronouns would be too.
The woke shibboleth to discriminatory slur pipeline is real.
Having thick skin is a good thing. Actively showing off your fragility isn't.
Treating people charitably is a good thing. Actively looking for gotchas isn't.
This is about controlling speech and revisionism, while using sensitive people as an excuse for it. Why? Because it makes you more relevant, if you set the agenda. You get to choose who is good or bad in this absurd moral system where words, not their meaning or your actions, is the basis for judgment. Ironically, this is about good old self-interest and power.
Moralism seems to be inherent in humans, there are always those who self-select to police the behavior of other people. What’s scary with this stuff is that this particular flavor of it has a blind spot (apologies for ableist language, 10 lashes for me) among our current intellectual gate keeping class – most of them just let this pass through and even think it’s a good idea. That’s the only reason this BS can get amplified in influential institutions.
> become adept in
> Historically, masters enslaved people, didn't consider them human and didn't allow them to express free will, so this term should generally be avoided.
I assume Stanford now hands out an Adept Degree at the end of grad school.
Actually, journeyperchild.
- refreshing fluid needed to biologically function.
- used to drown witches in
I mean, how long do we want this list to be? Thank god (or any deity of your chosing) we can outsource language to AI soon.
Being familiar with the various meanings of the word, it completely baffled me that anybody would ever try to link “master branch” to slavery. It makes absolutely no sense…
If she yelled at you, please complain about her.
- "Consider using 'devoted' instead of 'addicted.'" I'm sorry but you don't develop a physical devotion to heroin. It's an addiction.
- They say the phrase "committed suicide" is problematic because it "trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions" and I'm not sure how in the world you can come to that conclusion unless you're using a completely different (and wrong) definition of "committed" as in being committed to a mental hospital.
- Every word that contains "man" or "woman" as part of it just lazily replaces it with "person." I'm sorry, but "congressperson" is never going to be a word and nobody is ever going to use it in any serious context. "Member of Congress" has been around for a couple hundred years but mention of that completely acceptable alternative.
- Nobody has ever said "landlady"
- "Latinx" is used almost exclusively by the type of person who comes up with this list in the first place.
This list reads like ChatGPT trained exclusively on social justice parody.
I have heard it in exactly one place, and that place is the movie Kung-fu Hustle.
Who is throwing handles?
But I also had a landlady for several years in SF. And that's how I referred to her. I didn't think it too strange.
I feel vaguely like that was a sendup of a trope that is like: a landlady who kind of harries the main character but isn’t taken very seriously because she’s a woman. But that idea doesn’t resonate as much anymore (which is good!), so the sendup loses some grounding.
Committed vs. died by suicide: It's the association with "committing" an act as something negative. You commit a crime, you don't commit an achievement. Again, it's a stretch and a waste of time. Whoever wrote this needs to go make sandwiches for the homeless for a while.
I think the page or it's authors agree with you. But you (probably) aren't addicted to video games and that's the use that trivializes real addictions. If the article isn't clear that's a different criticism that the one you're making
Err, do they mean that these words shouldn’t be used at all, or that they don’t want them used as expressions outside the correct context? Like it is not that uncommon to hear something like “I’m addicted to this new game” or “I’m addicted to that new Poke Bowl place” or whatever, that usage could be seen as trivializing and… I mean some people will disagree but it is at least a coherent position. Similar for “committed suicide” although that comes up less often (but like “I was so embarrassed I wanted to kill myself!” could clearly be seen as pretty trivializing — I think this expression is currently falling out of the lexicon for that very reason).
> Every word that contains "man" or "woman" as part of it just lazily replaces it with "person." I'm sorry, but "congressperson" is never going to be a word and nobody is ever going to use it in any serious context. "Member of Congress" has been around for a couple hundred years but mention of that completely acceptable alternative.
I think “congressperson” or “congress-member” in my head. The word congressman would typically not occur to me first. I wonder if this is a regional thing or something? I’m not that young, (30s) but I did grow up in a pretty progressive area.
> Nobody has ever said "landlady"
This one does seem a little odd to me, I’m sure “lord” has a gendered etymology but it is pretty neutral feeling in modern English, right? Maybe I’m showing some ignorance here.
Landlady is definitely a phrase that’s been used right? But it seems a little dated and weirdly gendered nowadays, IMO…
They have, though not nearly as often as landlord. It was way more popular in the 19th century but it seems to be making a recent comeback. [0]
[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=landlady%2Clan...
It was replaced by "mental retardation". We all know how that term evolved in kind.
Many people now use "disabled" (including this list's suggestions), but that is now often seen replaced by "differently abled". If I were a betting man, I'd say that in 5 years even "differently abled" will be co-opted by the crude and become offensive.
It is an endless treadmill.
>'Retarded' used to be a medical term, now it's a 4chan term, so it needs canning.
That's exactly Doug's point. Soon enough terms like "neurodivergent" might become offensive when it's co-opted by people in general, e.g., "you're such a neurodivergent", "you're a neury", etc
I mean, this list already did a 180 on:
> Instead of African-American
> Consider using Black
I didn't think it would actually happen, but the endless treadmill is being proven again and again. I would also bet that "differently abled" is absolutely considered offensive by the end of this decade.
Another poster pointed out that “non verbal, non vocal” is actually a better burn than the one it’s replacing.
Obligatory Louis CK reference:
I already encountered it in this way
Ableist and privileged, magic words to bring anything down.
You can also get more specific. For example, we all know that white people suck. When white people do a good thing, they're white saviors. Or center themselves. When they're quiet, it's white silence. When they get angry, white fragility. When they learn about other cultures, cultural appropriation. Even when being bloody on time for a meeting that's "whiteness".
It's a divisive, anti-progress, hateful, cynical death cult.
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
The professional managerial class was also identified and studied quite a bit earlier. James Burnham wrote about it extensively in 1941 in The Managerial Revolution, and that was based (in part) on ideas from Vilfredo Pareto in the early 1900s about "elite theory."
To be fair to the woke, sincerely, their hearts really are in the right place generally speaking.They are trying out the ancient idea that language changes thought, and if people speak only correctly they will think only correctly. Of course, it never has worked, will never work, and introduces bad unintended consequences, but the motivation is kind at core.
There's a fundamental asymmetry at work here: the DEI bureaucrats have all of the time and incentives in the world to make more of this and ram it through the right channels. This is their paycheck. Supporting this is perceived as virtuous in many circles regardless of validity. And who is pushing back? Not anybody in a position where their opinion would matter. Instead all we get is a WSJ article and a few dozen anonymous posters on web boards. Doesn't bode well.
Lots of analogies here with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
People are tired of openly racist organizations lecturing everyone else about how racism is such a problem — such as Harvard who has been griping for a decade… and argued they have a right to be racist to Asians in October.
As a Millennial, everyone I know is focused on the economy and over the whole “woke”.
Tangential to this topic, the New Yorker did an article on Clarance Thomas' views on race. He used to align with radical black nationalism before his views grew more conservative. It's a very interesting article.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-rad...
These particular quotes stuck with me: "Thomas came to believe that, for the white liberal, offering help to black people was a way to express the combined privileges of race and class...The second way affirmative action continues white supremacy is by elevating whites to the status of benefactors, doling out scarce privileges to those black people they deem worthy...Put simply, Thomas believes that affirmative action is a white program for white people."
This is just insane. What is wrong with 'handicap parking'? 'Accessible parking' is objectively less descriptive. Its only accessible for the handicapped!
This is the perfect example of the euphemism treadmill. We started with terms like 'invalid' and 'cripple'. But over time, these labels are perceived negatively. So we move to 'handicap'. And now 'handicap' is offensive, so we come up with a new label. As if agonizing over what to label handicapped people makes their condition any better.
Totally bonkers.
This is the nature of language. Any one word or image you use to represent something necessarily loses some nuance.
Not everyone who needs a handicapped spot is in a wheelchair, but the wheelchair symbol is a clear, obvious way to communicate that a spot is for handicapped people.
You're not supposed to bring all your brothers and sisters into the "family" restroom with you. Most people can look beyond the literal words on a sign and comprehend the meaning that is being conveyed.
The article is not about tweaking language to be more precise, its about banning _harmful_ language. The assertion that using the phrase "handicapped parking" is _harmful_ is absurd.
It doesn't. A guy in an ankle cast with a fracture is neither "handicapped" nor "disabled." However, he does have a problem involving "access," hence the usefulness of a term like "accessibility."
> The article is not about tweaking language to be more precise, its about banning _harmful_ language.
Right, but your understandable reaction to that agenda is, in my view, blinding you to the fact that they accidentally snuck in a good recommendation and "accessible" is actually an improvement. Unlike the authors of the Stanford list I'm not going to castigate you for your disagreement, but I really think 'Accessible parking' is objectively less descriptive. is simply untrue.
The most common cases of accessibility refer to accommodations made for deaf and blind people within day-2-day interfaces. Guess which 2 have no need for accessible parking ? -> Deaf and blind people.
We should start harvesting George Carlin's grave. It could power the entire world with how fast he's turning in it.
If you're going to comment, please make sure you're up on the site guidelines and that your comment is within them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I mean, the whole """Latinx""" thing is just non Latino whites replacing a Spanish word (Latino) with an English word, then telling the demographic it refers to to use this English word to refer to themselves
I have no idea how this dynamic doesn't manage to piss off more people
It's very much the same sort of situation that we've used words like "mankind" and "peace on Earth, good will towards men" and women have always understood that "men" included them implicitly. It's only recently that women have chosen to take linguistic offense and rise up and complicate the language in search of manufactured equity.
Your girlfriend's attitude generally reflects those of Hispanics in the US, most of whom prefer to be referred to as "Hispanic". The rationale behind Latinx is that it covers both Latino and Latina, while also acknowledging the trans/nonbinary/genderqueer contingent. But I think the term "Hispanic" covers everybody as well...
"Latinx" was so obviously created by an English-primary speaker.
Edit: Wikipedia traces "womxn" back to the 1970s, but it seems unlike "womyn" it didn't get much currency in ordinary feminist usage, only finding purchase when the queer angle was added.
Latinx is much better. It (1) avoids acknowledging that Spain was once a world power, (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions and (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
Let’s rewind 900 more years to the 5th/6th century and play madlibs: “English (demonym) is offensive because it focuses on the subjugation of the Romano-British people by the Angles.” Does this example still fit, or is it too far back in history to be offensive?
So as soon as you have to discuss what they speak, you're bringing in Spain.
As opposed to... checks notes the Holy Roman Empire?
> (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp
That's just how the linguistics do. This is the same drivel that tries to argue chop chop and long time no see are somehow offensive, instead of just loanphrases from Chinese pidjin.
> (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions
No, again this demonstrates a profound ignorance of how language actually works in practice. -o does not imply "default male" in Spanish. There's tomes on this stuff. Grammatical gender is not social gender. A mesa doesn't identify as female.
> (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
Again, Latin/[aoex]?/ is better in this regard how exactly?
The real rationale is one of imperialism: everyone should use a non gendered language. Like English, things would be so much more simple if everyone used English.
So going for latinx to erase part of a gendered language is a sneaky first attack on this language.
Another one is "man-in-the-middle" which is often used to describe MITM attacks. Sure "person in the middle attack" might de-gender the phrase, but everyone know the MITM acronym and putting PITM instead would only confuse a reader.
And that last one is "submit" should be changed to "process", well those things are totally different when talking about a server that you "submit" things to and that then "processes" the thing.
My guess is all they have is an arts degree in gender studies.
The term "Hispanic" is already very broad to refer to people from a large collection of polities with several cultural spheres in it, but at least the concept of "hispanoamérica" exists in it, and the word isn't a novel take on the Spanish language coming from the US.
Don't.
It's just an effing word.
I will make an effort to use whatever term people prefer, but it's impossible to know which that is when the loudest voices don't agree.
Well it's great that Stanford thinks "Person with Autism" is synonymous with "Retard".
Given the specific target audience of this IT department, the nomenclature "Person with Autism" is especially controversial and likely to cause offence and the phrasing "Autistic Person" would be preferable (See [1] for more details). So the language they're suggesting in a reference is a poor choice.
The person who authored this really hasn't meaningfully consulted with the relevant groups in question enough. They would be well served reading the better style guides which already exist such as [1] which by comparison give actually useful guidance which evidently Stanford failed to find during its research [2]. Notice how this guide, which only covers one section of what Stanford was trying to cover, is longer than Stanford's entire guide. Notice also how this is presented as a GUIDE, as suggestions, rather than simply decrying certain terms as harmful.
I will note that this appears to be an internal IT department effort, so I would try to keep into context this is likely the work of some busybody who likely had no reason to anticipate international social media scrutiny. I do have to admit though, this effort simply isn't well executed enough to be advisable, and the tone is way too hardline.
[1] https://ncdj.org/style-guide/#Autism [2] https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/ehli#footnote-3
To use one of the examples, Filipinos didn’t get together and campaign to eliminate “the Philippine Islands” from the lexicon. A bunch of white Americans—the people who run Stanford—did that, in order to increase their own power. Maybe some Filipinos assimilated into the white power structure of Stanford contributed, but in no way does that imply any organic demand by Filipino Americans in general.
Specifically, I'm the "parse everything hyperliterally unless I consciously try not to" type, which means I do not see the problem with many of these, and just have to remember a list of words I can't use professionally.
Amusingly, most of the list of words I'd always been told I couldn't use professionally get used all the fucking time.
You can't use the word brave anymore? What in the hell is going on with academics?
Why don't they ever consult the people about what words should make it on the list? I bet you most of the terms on that list are not even found offensive by those who they allegedly describe.
This is a violation and implies that all of the C++ language is the same which may be offensive to users of a specific standard such as ISO/IEC 14882:2017. Referring to C++ generically ignores any differences between specifications.
Instead, referring to a specific standard, for example, C++11 is more appropriate to members of the ISO/IEC 14882 community.
Note: I am a member of the C++ community and therefore have the credentials necessary to make fun of my culture. If you make fun of the C++ culture without being part of it then you are clearly in violation of new speak and a woke certified person will try to cancel you.
I've only heard of basket case from the context of barely ridable motorcycle in a constant state of repair with its random parts in a basket.
I wish it was my job to make this sort of document. I'd make up all sorts of crazy backstories for slang no one has ever heard of.
Apparently according to one source the basket case origin was a result of rumor telephone and loss of context. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/08/basket-case.html
A discussion between Niall Ferguson and Lex Fridman [1] captures the first signs of this new separation. The discuss the introduction of a new university coming to Austin.
- The vast majority of Hispanic people don't like "Latinx"
- "Latinx" was invented to avoid gendered words like "Latino", and "Hispanic" isn't gendered
- It's listed under "imprecise language", but "Latinx" isn't any more precise.
It's so ironic that "colonialism" has now come to mean anything progressive academics don't like, but telling a minority group what they must call themselves because "we know what's best for you" is considered totally fine.
Kublai was on this train 700 years ago: https://youtu.be/FJUueJzLr54?t=169
"Equis" is a word we use when talking about something or someone irrelevant. Like the x in an algebra formula.
https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=equ...
Geez.
Definitely no colonial undertone to this dynamic whatsoever
Does the modern definition of colonizer include mixed ancestry descendants too?
should I prefer the use of the term "pendejex" to be gender inclusive in Spanish?
Just look for a different term that is already gender inclusive. Maybe one day us Spanish speakers will agree on gender-inclusive inflections, but currently -e is not really having any traction outside dedicated LGBT circles, and -x or -ex even less. I admit I hesitate to speak to the odd person expecting -e and I'm supposed to benefit from it catching on!
Grammatical gender just sits in a similar position to closed class words: you can't just add new gendered inflections to a language and expect speakers to still be able to speak it without effort, specially when it propagates to adjectives through linguistic agreement. Imagine if someone asked you to use tay instead of singular the or something similar.
I can't comment on pendejo/a as it isn't part of my dialect, so I'm not sure what would be equivalent with similar nuance, but I doubt anyone cares about being inclusive when insulting.
Specifically, Hispanic relates to Spain and the Spanish speaking world, whereas Latino indicates Latin America which includes Brazil, but not Portugal.
My guess as to why we call the continent "Latin America" is because for a long time Argentina dominated, being one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, even giving birth to the expression "As rich as an Argentine". It is is still very important even today, but I don't want to get my Brazilian friends upset with me.
There are not many Argentines in the US, so the distinction rarely comes up.
It's worse than that. The majority of Hispanic people (around 75%) haven't even heard of it [1]. Only about 3% use it. Even among the demographic that it has the most recognition in (ages 18-29) only 42% of heard of it, and only 7% use it.
Many also find it offensive [2].
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin...
BTW, GringX is pronounced as GriguEquis.
Maybe they should ask actual OCD sufferers whether the term offends them when used to mean “detail oriented” because if they had asked me, a bona fide obsessive-compulsive patient, I would have responded with “meh.” My OCD has caused me untold misery, wrecked relationships, and made work difficult, but we all have a subtle sense about when people mean us harm or are just using a term as a shortcut. Almost never is “OCD” meant to cause personal distress, nor should it.
I'm queer, I would never presume to say that another queer person's challenges or trauma were the same as mine.
There's the problem, right there. A lot of these affronts are imagined, without actually getting input from people. A perfect example is the use of Latinx, which many Hispanic people have spoken out against, yet keeps getting tossed around because people _imagine_ that the word "hispanic" is offensive.
Go read some Vonnegut.
Treat people with respect is always my default stance. If I make an assumption about someone and call them 'he' while they want to be called 'she' - that's fine. Tell me and I'll do that from now on. Don't see the big issue, and I don't think 99% of people who desire such things (e.g. trans people) will try to cancel you for making a mistake. It's always the extremists that put others in a bad daylight and that's a shame.
The only place I have noticed this is in the workplace. They allowed a small group ( < 10 people) to force everyone intro various DEI groups and meetings and events on a regular basis. As soon as the ringleaders left the company (just regular job switching, nothing dramatic) all of the DEI groups died. I'm onboard with most of this stuff because people deserve respect - but it is 100% a small vocal minority that makes all of this get way more airtime than it actually needs and than the majority want to give it.
You wouldn't see activism in normal everyday discussions, though, due to people being rather agreeable in real-life face-to-face conversations. Political undertones, no matter how strong, are always in the background, not forefront, of conversations anyway. You wouldn't expect people to proactively discuss Putin with you if you went to Russia, for instance.
And yet, if the general public either agrees with or is neutral towards ideals which DON'T conform to real reason, those ideals can be weaponized in the fringes. And they indeed are.
(Note: Below, I'm using the term 'fascism' to describe the societal phenomenon. I'm NOT referencing nazism nor saying that the current political atmosphere is anywhere close to it.)
Westerners are conditioned to think about fascism as originating from one well-defined party, mainly due to the fact that autocracies of the world do indeed operate that way, but fascism is just the blind power-hunger and violence of the human condition enabled by any group of people and accepted by the majority. The hallmark of fascism is that it is never hostile to the majority, but continuously extremely violent to whoever happens to be the edge case at the time. It guides the general discourse through these edge cases, not the center. Thus, if you are in the center, you don't really see anything bad happen to you - as long as you course-correct every once or twice from the edge cases.
In their minds, because in real life this just doesn’t exist.
The real issue is it turns some spaces into a bit of a knife fight situation, and it is very tempting to call others out for slip ups when you need to press an advantage or discredit a politically inconvenient perspective. But then there’s a whole prostration/apology dance that maybe neutralizes things?
If you’re good at bullshit it doesn’t matter, but it can really grate on some people.
Separately, at work, I had to add code to maintain a relationship between an owning context and child nodes. I’ve been stressed about it because I worry that “owner” might be one of the racist programming words, so tomorrow I’m probably going to do a commit to change to “originatingContext”. Not a big deal but add that up a few tens of thousands of times and you’re talking real dead weight loss for the economy. See GitHub changing from master to main. Not really problematic but also a cost without benefit.
Productive professors and administrators are very busy with doing research, teaching and taking care the students and try to avoid political bullshit like the plague. That leaves busybody with nothing better to do plenty of time to come up with such initiatives.
Autism is not the same as mental retardation. That's really offensive Stanford.
Shouldn't we really pinpoint exact people & groups who push for these kind of things? We need to put faces on this ideology. Who exactly is responsible for this?
A basic axiom of linguistics is that language evolves to suitably convey what people wish to convey. The “harm” in harmful language lies not in the words themselves, but the intent behind them and the context of their usage.
BTW “Balls to the wall” has nothing to do with anatomy, it’s a reference to a WWII fighter plane which had ball shaped handles on the throttle levers, when preparing to take off you would push the levers all the way forward until they almost touched the instrument panel - a mnemonic device, not something you ask for on the third date - looking at you Stanford, very disappointed your mind went there. tisk tisk.
I do think the general impulse to try and create a kinder language is worthwhile, even if in practice it can spiral out of control due to virtue signaling and people with too much time on their hands.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmsV1TuESrc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmsV1TuESrc&t=309s
Coming from French, it's already weird enough that you're allowed to say "n word" or "s word" but not the actual words, as if it was some loophole. That's just not done in French, at least in Quebec. In Quebec, you say the word, you don't or for swear words people use a slightly transformed version of the swear word (like saying shout instead of shit or Oh my gosh instead of Oh my god), but mentioning the word indirectly just isn't a thing.
You're considered evil if you refer to a non-binary person by he or she... but in French there is literally no polite non-gendered pronoun. Our "they" is also gendered. The result is you're seen as mean for thinking in French and just translating as you go. You basically have to think in English to be politically correct, which is pretty hard to do.
Or even the fact that in English black people can say the n word but not white people. Or the fact you can call Australians Aussies and New-Zealanders kiwis, but calling Japanese people Japs is super racist. I haven't ever seen seen something like that in French so it gets really confusing.
I feel like keeping track of all these intricate rules is basically harder than learning English itself and by adding even more, they're accentuating a class divide between native and non-native speakers.
Possibly even a class divide amongst native speakers: those with the time to ponder and research acceptable terminology and those without. I suspect the typical rejoinder there is something along the lines of "Well, society should be made more equal to prevent those without", conveniently ignoring the near geologic time it will take to get there.
> Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized.
How exactly is whitespace good? It's like they pick out every word where "white" is used and say "but wait1!!!11! you can't use this because you're reinforcing the dynamic that white=good"
It's like they're telling people "don't think of the white elephant" with this white=good thing. Nobody was thinking about it before they brought it up, now we're thinking about it
In order for anyone to "get the message" of this and be able to create their own rules, they have to internalize the idea of white=good. Wasn't this the exact reason for creating the rules in the first place, that is to say not telling people white=good?
edit: I don't think the point of this is to come up with a system that makes sense, the point is to come up with a system that doesn't make sense. The point is to be as contradictory and annoying as possible in order to get as much attention as possible. If stupid people in academia want to be annoying and act like children, they should just be ignored and treated like the children they are. We're in the wrong here even giving these people attention to begin with
Context: "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors."
Consider using: "demanding or entitled White woman"
This example is truly a tell all for this movement. To redefine language from a position of moral superiority where they can make no mis judgment.
Had to get to #6 (committed suicide - I worked delivering technology for the blind and visually impaired, no one is offended by "I see" or "I'm going in blind") before thinking "ok, this makes sense" since that framing implies a crime. But that's not their re-interpretation, which again doesn't make sense.
I had an old British colleague who used to say "what you Yanks need is a good old land war to set you straight again". I think he might be right
But I would recoil at the idea of these being hard and fast rules considered for everyday speech. And the idea that casual, every day speech must be as equitable as possible doesn't sit right with me either. I would push back on any notion that use of these words/phrases would necessarily constitute a micro-aggression (they may in context, but not universally). For example, they have "straight" listed as a word that should be replaced by "heterosexual". Okay -- I get how this recommendation might make sense in a social worker setting, but the word "straight" by itself it not a micro-aggression ("the plane flew in a straight line").
If you're speaking publicly or on behalf of an organization - be careful, considerate, and deliberate with your language. If you're having a quick huddle with the 3 or 5 folks on your product team about today's activities -- always be considerate, but there's a lot more leeway. And hopefully you know the folks close to you well enough that there's mutual respect, even if a word used might not be ideal.
I think with some comment sense applied, this list is good guidance. As something to be applied with draconian enforcement, this would be nightmarish.
Like nobody is gonna string you up not following the guidelines but in my own writing I follow these pretty much naturally because, yeah, it’s kinda weird that we describe things with limited or reduced functionality as crippled.
The reason language has to constantly evolve for certain topics is that every time people come up with new words that don't carry stigma people invariably start using them in everyday language; so $word that was coined specifically to be neutral becomes $word (pejorative). So for example if people would just stop using whatever word is used to describe people with intellectual disabilities as an insult the vocabulary wouldn't have to keep changing.
* "What are you blind (pejorative)?"
* "What are you deaf (pejorative)?"
* "They're delusional (pejorative)!"
* "They're deranged (pejorative)!"
* "She's hysterical (pejorative)."
* "He's demented (pejorative)."
* "They're absolutely mental (pejorative)."
* "She kind of a skitso (pejorative)."
* "They're special (pejorative)."
* "What, do you need a handicap (pejorative)?"
I don't think it's a good idea to use those words even after they fall out of fashion. It just seems cruel for no reason and it's easy enough to just say something different.
As soon as you ban any word, both pejorative and intended use, the similar next one will be used in a pejorative way, which will give you the same problem later on
Seems unnecessary effort to ban most of the language because some people don't use it correctly. Especially because people are not born knowing those stigmas. So they naturally disappear
You just typed out how that secondary meaning came into being.
It’s _never_ a “micro aggression” under any context. I think I’d slap one of these Stanford wankers if they spoke to me like this doc dictates.
For example, if it was politically possible guarantee schools in poor neighbourhoods were funded just as well as schools in wealthy neighbourhoods, do you people would organize around education equality, or would they organize to change language?
Also the website doesn't work in Firefox.
Per student, or total? Legitimately asking, because this is surprising to me.
Of course then some public school has to be the one to attempt to educate these people.
$17,626 Per pupil funding (2022-23 School Year)
NYC averages for public schools: $32,757 per pupil
The only reason there aren't more charter schools is because there is a cap on the number of them.
We should attach the funding to the pupil and their needs, and then let the parents choose the school for them to attend. This is commonly referred to funding students and not systems, or backpack funding.
There will alway be problems with education - challenges with parents, children, faculty, curriculum.
The state can provide funding and provide testing, let the parents choose the school that they want.
For 16,937 students, Stanford lists 2,288 faculty and 15,750 administrative staff.
I have a physical disability and several mental conditions that are considered disabling and I'm here to tell you they're all both abnormal and negative!
Also, all the best from my heart in dealing with your conditions.
(incidentally, not _all_ of the list is ridiculous, but most of it clearly is)
1: https://www.thefire.org/news/just-released-2022-2023-college...
2: https://heterodoxacademy.org/library/10-colleges-where-you-w...
I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case. Schools with high acceptance of conservative speakers trend lower on the list. The highest ranking schools are typically the ones close to the middle. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, so "people of color" should be avoided and "BIPOC" used instead? Even though the "POC" in "BIPOC" is literally "people of color"?
That didn't last long. The Euphemism Treadmill ( http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-th... ) seems to be moving faster and faster.
I won’t bother criticizing the term—such criticisms practically write themselves.
How many starving children have died who would instead be saved by that same collective value?
I want to say millions because I truly believe it would be close to billions(assuming that many could be saved).
Instead we encourage replacement words which over time become just as offensive. Of course, insults don't need to be limited to just English words either. Thus proving the entire endeavor is impossible since aggressors control more word choices than moderators.
Save a child. The UN says that is going to cost you about $160USD on average. (Based on 6.6B for 42M and please don't turn this into a dingbat/secondcoming thread)
Harm is a serious thing: It represents the line where my rights end at yours. If using an inappropriate but common cultural idiom harms someone as opposed to being simply rude, that has a potentially revolutionary significance.
That's the only definition of harm you think is valid?
— George Carlin on Soft Language (https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY)
lmao what? I am 100% sure I've never met anyone who has a positive or negative opinion of whitespace. Maybe of whether or not it should be syntactically important but most people seem to think it shouldn't be anyways.
> balls to the wall | accelerate efforts | Attributes personality traits to anatomy.
I've always thought this term had nothing to do with anatomy; am I incorrect here?
From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall
> First attested in the 1960s in the context of aviation, in reference to ball-shaped grips on an aircraft's joystick and throttle. Pushing the "balls to the wall" would put the plane into a maximum-speed dive > Not related to the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”).
Even just something like "blacklist", "whitelist"; it has nothing to do with the modern black skin white skin world of racism - literally every culture on this planet has similar associations with the colours white/black...
It's almost like primitive cultures could only observe the Sun and our planet's day/night cycle and based it all of daytime = safe, nighttime = unsafe.
Also: was the page always behind a login? Or was it moved behind one once it created controversy?
Man = "This term reinforces male-dominated language." ahaha, for a university they should study a little more: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mann#Old_English.
Also checking this list, and as a gay man myself, they've missed a whole class of people in their silly list.
So "sanity", "crazy" and "handicapped" are offensive language, but "mad" is a preferred alternative for something else?
> victim - person who has experienced..., person who has been impacted by...
Person who has been impacted by murder? Many of those suggestions are so verbose and impersonal.
Those alternatives would just become the new slurs, just like people are called Karen nowadays this list would make people call others "boring" instead of retard. And then we have one problem more: how do you then call something boring without sounding offensive? I find this list very unenlightened.
From an anthropological perspective, it’s fascinating how the weakest and most sensitive people possible are now the ones in charge of policing language. Talib was right about this, on a long enough timeline most things do become a dictatorship of the small minority.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Or even the existence of languages with gendered nouns. Why are we coddling xenophobes who are afraid of Spanish grammar rules? IMO that's not a fear that is healthy or rational.
"Brave", oh wow, and no alternatives either. "Geronimo", ok, I can kinda get behind that one: I mean, we don't want someone using "Gandalf" or "Gandhi" in similar vein, I suppose. "For god & country, gandhi, gandhi, gandhi" would be kinda weird (chuckled softly).
"Guru" -- :O -- I have always felt we diminished the weight of this word in the western, English speaking world. "Pundit"/"Pandit" & "Guru" have the same connotations as "sir" in my home country but when I came to the US I was mildly disappointed they had very different connotations than "sir" did -- even outside formal contexts.
Then it hit me: Oh snap! Now I get it! I get why someone else may feel the same way about "Geronimo" or "Brave" or "Bury the hatchet". Those are words that _I_ obviously discovered through Western/English-speaking cultures. Perhaps, if the medium was not-English then those words wouldn't carry with them the same connotations that didn't originate from the rightful heirs of that culture.
[The point]: I literally went from thinking "oh, great, more policing of words", when I read the headline, to "Hm, I get it" / "I support this effort". I'm seeing a lot of HN comments tend to lean on the side of taking issue with the post & the effort. I hope sharing my (contrasting) perspective helps.
And then there are more examples of absolute stupidity than there are legitimate grievances. The policing of color references due to "perceived superiority" is ridiculous.
It is a net harm to make people think this way, especially when the penalties for getting it wrong are immediate apologies, lest you be run out of your profession.
There was an article yesterday in the New York Times where some people took issue with the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope because he headed NASA when there was a government-wide policy against homosexuals.
A well-credentialed and respected black man wrote an article saying "No, JW did not actively participate in purges of gay employees and in fact may have dragged the feet of NASA in any implementations of such policies" (I am paraphrasing). He also expressed frustration toward an unnamed scientist who “propagated unsubstantiated false information" regarding James Webb.
The rebuttal from said scientist, a self-proclaimed left wing activist and cosmologist? “The leader of a professional society and a senior scientist,” she wrote, is “going out of his way to justify historic homophobia” and “attack a junior queer Black woman professor.”
---
For some people, they only have their perception of their own persecution to lean on. She didn't argue the merits. She makes anyone who disagrees with her out to be someone who abuses power dynamics, hates LGBT people, black people, women, and women in high professions.
---
The point: Even if some of this makes sense in a lab setting, it is a net harm on the discourse, and those who would champion it wholeheartedly are the kinds of people who live their lives as perpetually persecuted, and are willing to ruin careers and lives if you do not consent to their total authority over language.
I fundamentally disagree.
>It is a net harm to make people think this way, especially when the penalties for getting it wrong are immediate apologies, lest you be run out of your profession.
I will concede to you that society must de-pressurize the situation to make people not feel like apologies are immediately necessary or job-threatening consequences await for getting it wrong. The existence of this list from Stanford doesn't necessarily make the situation worse.
This list is a starting point. It's an acknowledgement of past mistakes and an attempt to begin reparations. It is laudable.
Detail oriented is just that, you care about details. Like someone who paints your house can go fast on the large surfaces, but you get the detail-oriented person to do your window trims in a different color without it splattering over the white facade.
I wonder how many people Stanford has working on this. Much of this is disconnection from reality. Something an educational institution should not be pushing. As an alum, I'm embarrassed.
Alternatively, let culture exist and evolve. Call shitheads out as shitheads, including shitheads [0] who grandstand by tone policing. Assume good faith [1]. Endeavor to punch up. Accept mistakes, both by others and your own.
Also, I have to hope there is growing dissent to this nonsense by normal society, that doesn't devolve into beating the "woke" strawman and other societally-destructive spite. That's the ultimate rub with this hyperpolarized off-in-the-weeds online-driven nonsense culture - as a person who generally wants to be left alone, I don't want to sign up for either the blue or red flavored cults of idiotic memes.
[0] Sorry, I've realized that was offensive to those with feces in their head, that don't have a head, feces, and feces enthusiasts. I promise that I've paid for an indulgence.
[1] Someone will inevitably call this out as contradictory with the previous sentence. The world is full of contradictions. Embrace them.
I'm skeptical of the concept of "punching up" in general. It seems to assume a single sorting criterion. As a counter-example, suppose someone high up in an organization is from a historically disenfranchised ethnicity. Is attacking them "punching up" or "punching down"?
Ultimately, it's not about the person, but rather what you're attacking. Are you attacking their position and policies, or are you attacking their ethnicity? The former is punching up, the latter is punching down.
If you're attacking their ethnicity because you don't like their policies, that's essentially still punching down, and makes for a terribly ineffective criticism of their policies.
If you're attacking their policies because you don't like their ethnicity, you could be trying to punch down while cloaking it in an aura of punching up. But your criticism would still need to be evaluated on its own merits regardless. It's likely that your criticism of the policies won't be that great, and people will see right through them.
The suggested replacement for 'manmade' is 'made by hand'.
Surely 'made by hand' is ableist.
Fuck that.
-------
">Instead of: Philippine Islands
>Consider using: Philippines or the Republic of the Philippines
>Context: The term is politically incorrect and denotes colonialism. Some people of Filipino heritage might use the term, though."
---------
">Instead of: "preferred" pronouns
>Consider using: pronouns
>Context: The word "preferred" suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference."
---------
">Instead of: Karen
>Consider using: demanding or entitled White woman
>Context: This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors."
(Have we landed in backwards land? So "white" is ok to use here?)
---------
">Instead of: blackbox
>Consider using: hidden, mystery box, opaque box, flight recorder
>Context: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term."
---------
">Instead of: red team
>Consider using: cyber offense team
>Context: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups."
---------
">Instead of: war room
>Consider using: situation room
>Context: Unneccesary use of violent language."
----------
Baffled by this inclusion, never in my life have I made that association. I'm also hugely against sports teams naming themselves after Native American stereotypes, but here it's literally just a color.
>Karen
Totally agree with your points, in what world is white okay to use there when they're arguing against "blackbox". Also, Karen has a lot more connotations beyond just race, there's a class/aspirational class connotation. There's a reason it's not "Madelynn". Not saying it's okay, but it's part of a trend in this list of not understanding connotation and context, and a general lack of thought in their alternatives.
We should say: Bob used to think of neural networks as flight recorders, but now he's working on figuring out how they actually work.
That obviously has the exact same meaning /s
>Consider using: Philippines or the Republic of the Philippines
>Context: The term is politically incorrect and denotes colonialism. Some people of Filipino heritage might use the term, though."
First of all, they're using "denotes" to mean "connotes", so we shouldn't expect a subtle understanding of English.
But second, what "Philippine Islands" does is center geography instead of nationhood or identity. What it connotes is that political boundaries are historically-contingent. Similarly, the "British isles" will always be there, barring geological catastrophe, regardless of whether the United Kingdom ceases to exist, say because Scotland and Wales secede.
If you want to work hard at it, you could make an argument that geography-centering language is "colonialist", because, precisely by revealing that borders are contingent, it might suggest that some more powerful actor, an Empire, might reshape them arbitrarily. However, it also undermines nationalism, and many people would consider that to be a good thing. For example, it's a key sentiment behind liberal immigration policies.
It's insane that this is one of the most explicitly racist examples and it's in the "Consider using" column...
You have no chance to survive, make your time, ha ha ha ha...
I appreciate that you want certain pronouns to be used. But why does your preference trump mine? I.e., why must I submit to you?
Edit: I realized my comment's tone seems a bit harsh. Just to clarify, my intention is to debate your proposal, not bash on you as a person.
If you think this is militant behavior, it is, but I submit that you do the same thing and don't realize it. Consider how you would behave if the shoes were on the other feet.
Actually they don't address you. They refer to you. A term of address is "you". Pronouns are terms of reference.
This is one of the things that people misunderstand about pronouns like him/her. If I'm talking about someone, I get to choose how to do it. I can refer to someone as a fool, as "that tall blonde girl", or as "the guy with the huge beard from the grocery store". None of these people get to police my speech about them.
Things are somewhat different if I am referring to someone and am in their presence. In that case I would just use the person's first or last name. But some people are now taking issue with talking around preferred pronouns by using a person's name. For me, that is a bridge too far.
I was curious about the legal situation w.r.t. forcing use of preferred pronouns. Apparently the U.S. government currently cannot do that [0], but Ireland is the opposite [1].
I'm unclear what the current situation is regarding employer-enforced pronoun usage, particularly in at-will-employment states. IIUC (and that's a big "if"), it's a messy legal topic because of competing protected classes.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/the-6th-circuit-r...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-ireland-teacher/fa...
Thank you for stating this plainly!
I think that, very often, debates on these topics are hamstrung by one/both sides assuming that the other is being disingenuous.
I think our best hope of making progress on these things is to have an honest, shared understanding of everyone's positions and goals. I'm so grateful that you were willing to do that.
Instead of "committed suicide" Use "died by suicide" Reason: "Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions."
...
How does "committed" trivialize the experience? If anything saying "by suicide" obfuscates and weakens the message.
This _reeks_ of a bureaucracy doing busywork and then burdening the rest of the institution with further valueless processes.
Sadly, the US is being strangled by bureaucracies in all sides. University admins, government officials, and even the big tech companies are all showing signs of middle-managers sucking the air out of the institution.
With that said, I think it's all hair splitting in the first place. Whether someone says died by suicide or committed suicide. It's a tragic act and a tragic event and it makes me sad that it happens.
Makes it seem like free will has been thoroughly debunked and language should be adjusted appropriately.
Some of it reads like bad satire.
"Died by suicide" is somehow LESS trivial than "committed suicide"? "Blind studies" are somehow bad things now, rather than admirable things?
And some of it reeks of linguistic arrogance. People aren't going to say "relationship with an abusive person" when "abusive relationship" is both much shorter and IDENTICAL.
And the IRONY in not only wanting to police content with trigger warnings, but to police the usage of the phrase "trigger warning" itself. How is this NOT satire?
This is not a serious publication.
I'm not American and even I am scared of how un-American such flagrant policing of language is. Some of the examples are shockingly benign, with invisible lines drawn and imaginary people invented to manufacture offense.
With the Twitter Files showing how the US government has colluded with a web of companies to violate the 1st Amendment, I wonder if any lines will end up being drawn between anomalous actions like Stanford's and the US government. Even as a non-American, I'm confused how this doesn't violate the very thing that being American is -> freedom.
This all reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
Circling back to why the First Amendment is absolute. I appreciate it is this way because it compensates for the fact that composing a list of what shouldn't or cannot be said is impossible to compose. And any attempts to do so will only lead to tyranny and undermine the point of the amendment itself.
And the First Amendment explicitly doesn't prevent private citizens or organizations like Stanford from regulating speech themselves. It only prevents the government from doing so, with exceptions as mentioned.
And the premise that this could somehow lead to a dystopian future in which you are thrown in jail simply for uttering the phrase "master branch" is absurd. Even granting the slippery slope, that isn't a realistic fear.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
You only have to see recent occurences with well-known online personas that saying the wrong thing can get your bank account frozen, internet access restricted, and use of a multitude of services denied.
When institutions and companies get so centralized, large, and act homogenously, a "pseudo-government" capable of restricting your freedom emerges.
This idea of "First Amendment doesn't apply because not government" is IMHO an incredibly poisonous one. An idea that, by way of disclosures like the Twitter Files, we have found out the US government has exploited by using a complex web of companies and agencies to police speech on platforms like Twitter.
Institutions like Stanford policing language is effectively indistinguishable from the government doing it in a multitude of ways. Yes you don't get charged with a crime, but you will end up unable to get higher education there. What if Harvard does the same?
If you allow this seed to take, then you quickly slip down the "First They Came..." slope. First they came for schools. Then for tech platforms. Where do you think it ends? Just there?
This is essentially a long definition of the (quite polarizing and controversial) term "woke mind virus", since it spreads from company to company and institution to institution until there is nobody left, and through no "technical" violation of the First Amendment, you have effectly not got it any more.
> Consider using: Black
Was this previously the other way around?
[0] https://2.bp.blogspot.com/3DPJBMraNogoZ4jNUjGALP_eaVRdd0RroT...
According to this article, it was various political/social leaders who pushed for new words.
https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2010/octo...
There is no logically consistency.
I was raised with the philosophy that calling a person Black was offensive and that I should always use the term African-American. I always respected this. But apparently this changed in the matter of two years. So not only are we faced with a logical inconsistency, but we are also on a language treadmill. It's creating landmines everywhere in general discourse.
No, it was never right in the first place, it didn’t change in 2 years. Racial labels have always been a matter where there are a variety of strong preferences shaped by different personal experiences.
The actual rule is listen to abd be respectful of your specific audience; being aware of the general discourse and issues (of which, any particular author's preferred terminology alone is the least important bit) is part of doing that for general or new audiences.
> This is a slur and should not be used to address an Indigenous woman unless that is her actual name.
How dare they assume this name is exclusive to people who choose she/her/hers pronouns.
They already conflict with their own rules below!
> she
> Unless you know the person you're addressing uses "she" as their pronoun, it is better to use "they" or to ask the person which pronouns they use.
It's astounding how little effort was taken to put a word or an idiom that millions use on this huge list to be eliminated. This elimination project was as lazy and sloppy as much as its intended impact is vast and invasive.
The future of tyranny is a shadow committee of ignorant, sloppy woke moralists controlling our free expression with a few lazy keystrokes.
I'm sorry, but I'm aghast (is that term okay, or is it too close to "ghost", which suggests "death", which might be triggering for somebody who knows somebody who died?) that somebody was able to type this out - a suggestion of a "more sensitive" term for a child involved in prostitution, ostensibly to "not define people by just one of their characteristics" - and wasn't immediately shocked into deleting it right away.
"People first" language is a concept I'm actually a fan of; here it's used arbitrarily in the most ridiculous ways.
This type of thing just sets back progress towards an actually inclusive culture. And ignores the reality of how language and the meanings of words change over time.
"Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace."
It's not going well so far.
That is my inclination as well, but truth be told something feels very unsettling and insidious about this document. I can get on board with some word choice changes if they seem reasonable. However just about everything in this list seems unjustifiable and purely driven by some neo-puritanical moralism.
One day I can envision this list being codified into the grammar and spell check programs we use for word processing and email.
If people don’t speak up, this will end up becoming something that gets enforced. Not legally enforced, mind you, but first it will become mandatory in academia, then in journalism, then in the business word, and eventually new generations will speak it natively.
The problem is: it never ends. There will be new words and phrases next year, and the year after.
What about blind people, you can't talk about light! This page is terribly insensitive, borderline offensive!
Wow. "No can do" is out, replaced with "I can't do it". OMG.
"Prisoner" replaced with "person who is incarcerated". It goes without saying that "prisoner" is someone with many characteristics, who happens to be in prison - a significant life situation. When released, they are no longer prisoners.
In regards to "blackbox", the meaning is about absence of light, not "black is bad". The Stanford list is embarrassing, and I would argue harmful.
One on the list I agree with is "stand-up meeting". Literally standing up in a meeting doesn't improve the quality of the meeting. Happy to see that go. Inviting someone in a wheelchair to a "stand-up" would be a low point for everyone involved. This is an exception on the list. Things like "sanity-check" are not the equivalent because "sanity" is very broad, not as clear-cut or narrow as "sit/stand".
I remember at a job orientation a year or so ago, the HR people and management spent a long time talking at us about DEI shit. They asked for questions and one of the people in the audience brought up unconscious bias (which wasn't in their presentation for some convenient reason). They got kind of shitty with the guy. Not in any sort of non-plausibly-deniable way, they just changed the subject really fast
This is DEI in practice: it's some upper management head game where anyone who doesn't answer "I MOST CERTAINLY AGREE!!!1!1!" is doing it wrong
The real solution imo is DEI accelerationism: just crank the wokeness to the absolute maximum, to the point where management starts to reconsider opening their mouths about it. You can be a ridiculous asshole, just make sure you're on the woke side and there's very little they can do to retaliate
I’ve seen this used where there is an anti-productive person who makes other people waste time. When there’s one of these on a project, it can be a real drain. But if there’s two, you can plug them into each other and they’ll sort of create a perpetual motion machine of stupidity of important sounding make work.
It’s important to set a task so it doesn’t suck in others. But forming a committee on conference room naming or something might work.
Cynically, I suspect I’ve been out on these types of tasks. So any time I’m stuck on a Sisyphean task, I try to step back and see if I’ve been stuck on ark ship B [0].
[0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...
I was surprised by the fact I actually agreed with much more of the list than I thought I would. Maybe a bit over half.
The worst of the list (as in, the one I agree the most and which irks me the most) is OCD.
Probably because I have slight OCD but it’s still the extremely specific medical term why use it for when you like pink post-its?
Maybe it's the same for so many other terms when the people are actually affected?
Stop trying to make latinx a thing. Any latino or latin american would be horrified by that term.
Ridiculous nonsense!
Guess my mum was lying when she told me as a kid that sticks and stones could break my bones but words could never hurt me. Looks like words are worse than torture, the way things are going. No need to pull out fingernails in secret black sites, just say some naughty words and see how long they last! Haha.
What has led academia in particular to drive decontextualization of language like this? How have we, in just a few years, completely started to disregard contextual meaning of languange? Surely this has to be an active research field as well.
Oh never mind, forgot I was not supposed to say "using" anymore...
Some, I admit, have merit. (Senile, grey-beard etc.) To me they are common sense. Perhaps, the rest of the terms were common sense to the authors.
Several suggestions about cultural appropriation are hypocritical. People of all cultures say the Lord's name in vain all the time. But saying guru or totem pole or spirit animal is an infringement. Why?
There are many turns of phrase where the offensive implication is not even implicit. "Bury the hatchet", "take a shot", "rule of thumb". Does anyone have to do mental labor to separate the violence in the words from their meaning?
Some replacements are suggested to prevent a word from singularly describing a person, because people have multiple characteristics. Yet the verbosity makes the attempt more conspicuous. "Immigrant -> person who immigrated". Why?
Speak for yourself.
To me "grey beard" is a word which refers to someone with great authority on a subject, whose experience is certain to exceed anyone else.
If someone were to refer to me as a gray beard, I would consider that a sign of respect.
E.g. Don't say that you're addicted to CheezePuffs(tm) say you're ... devoted. Uh well not the best but you get my point. The motivation for that one is to avoid conflating something someone likes a lot with heroin like addiction.
"Preclinical evidence has demonstrated that marked increases in the expression of ΔFosB through repetitive and excessive exposure to a natural reward induces the same behavioral effects and neuroplasticity as occurs in a drug addiction."
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction#Behavioral_addiction)
The way I see it, it is literally harmful to try to make it seem like "behavioral addictions" are any less dangerous than (or significantly different from) "substance addictions", because they are not.
Ah but then I read this (first line in the article):
The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford.
So this is just a restrained group of people. Not sure why is this posted here anyway.
I grew up in a society that used words like "disabled" left and right, as an insult. As a child I never saw ramps for the wheelchairs, and seldom saw people on a wheelchair (only in hospitals). That was part of the culture of ostracising "different people" and making sure "normal" people don't see them.
It's still the case for mental issues though, and I have friends with kids at different levels of ASD who are literally prohibited to enter cafes so they "don't scare normal people". Using "autist" as an insult is still widespread in my country.
And I'm glad to see how this is changing. Accessibility becomes a topic of discussion and a new norm. I was glad to learn to use "people with disabilities" instead of "disabled". Somehow I felt like I'm a part of this change, undoing wrongs that were common in our society towards that group of people.
I have the same feeling towards gender pronounces. When I use "person-hours" instead of "man-hours", even if it sounds the same to me, I feel like my communication becomes a little bit better and respectful to everyone. I have no troubles learning doing something in a new way.
I also embraced "master" to "main" default branch naming switch at Github, and I like it. Main is shorter and makes more sense. Branch renaming is not painful, so why not, if it makes someone's experience a bit more pleasant.
In figure skating, for example, almost century old names of "Choctaw" and "Mohawk" steps where renamed recently to S-step and C-step, because the history of those names where rooted in the history of oppression of Indian tribes in North America. I then read a reddit comment from one of the indigenous people from skating community in Canada sharing her experience and feelings about this change - in short, she was extremely happy. There are 1.6 million people like her in Canada alone. And guess what, many coaches reported that kids where super happy too, because making sense and remembering words like "choctaw" and "mohawk" was difficult for them. "S-step" and "C-step", instead, make a lot of sense, because those steps looks exactly like S and C on the ice (hence the naming). Those names were never good.
So to me changing language is a reflection of changes in society. I understand that sometimes it can go too far, but I disagree with majority of comments here that this list is something "absolutely disgusting". I think it's fine, and serves a good purpose as a recommendation.
US had ramps long before wokeness infected the minds. You might be saying that wokeness leaking to other countries helps them become more accessible, but this could be a spurious correlation.
> Branch renaming is not painful, so why not, if it makes someone's experience a bit more pleasant.
How do you know it's not painful and that pros outweigh the cons? All the polls I've seen were overwhelmingly against rename.
The only way to be offended by "master" branch is to choose to be offended. Nobody means anything offensive, but I can twist their words to pretend I'm hurt and make them feel bad for my own benefit. That's a disgusting manipulative behavior, and I have absolutely no respect for people who do that. Accommodating those narcissists is harmful for society.
This is not a "change in culture" or describing people voluntarily changing their views. This is fascism in new clothes - "Kauft nicht bei Juden!".
The reason for authoring documents like the discussed is not to better yourself, it's to ostracise those who do not abide. Get them fired from their jobs, burn down their homes and cars, slander them so they may never ever dare to call someone obviously male "Mister". This is getting completely out of hand, and it will end bloody I presume.
I rename every git main back to master in my projects, I use blacklists, I will not give one foot to the batshit insane.
Do you suggest that people read recommendations from Stanford and start burning your home, because you disagree with those? Stanford really has that level of control over people minds? Impressive if yes.
> This is getting completely out of hand
Whose hand?
>client state. A state that is economically, politically and/or militarily dependent on another, more powerful state
I think "client" falls under their colonialism category and should be avoided as well. "Customer" then?
No. Albeit obsolete, that used to be slang for "lewd woman" or... consults table "person who engages in sex work".
How about "human"?
> convict…person who is/was incarcerated
> senile…person suffering from senility
Before I hit send I try to make my writing clear, concise, and full of meaning. I do it in the hope that the folks on the other end read and understand me.
Swapping one term for a slightly longer one won’t be a breaking point, but sentences like:
> I went to visit the incarcerated person suffering from senility
build up cruft that you don’t get with something shorter.
> I went to visit the senile convict.
Maybe they should punctuate the article as Orwell did in his rules for writing:
> Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous
There are hundreds of other good schools around the world that don't institute crazy policies such as these - it's time for parents and their children to start pushing back and letting schools with agendas know that this is not okay and there will unfortunately have to be negative consequences for their students who "just go along" with it for the prestige of going to Stanford. These power-crazed schools are becoming indoctrination camps.
I thought so at first too, but no. It's use the words we tell you to use. Have the opinions we tell you to have. Otherwise it's harmful and you're a bad person.
This initiative is what is meant by “woke” and ones similar to it. It's a dangerous totalitarianism that presents itself with exactly this kind of empathetic language and emotional blackmail. It's intolerance disguised as tolerance.
No, this is institutional PR by an institution that is very much the antithesis of woke; it may be trying to avoid criticism from people who are woke, but it’s interests are served just as well by discrediting the entire idea (which reduces pressure on it the same way as accommodation does, and more durably), and its actions reflect that.
There’s physical and psychological harm, clearly it’s not physical so it’s saying that people are being harmed in a psychological way from a certain type of language.
Ok, so are they developing disorders, or what kind of harm are we talking about? My understanding is that we’re talking about language that causes offense, discomfort, things of that nature.
So if you’re going to pursue this line of thought, where do you draw the line? Whose discomfort do you take into account, what offense is enough?
> to call something what it is / calling something what it is
> Although the term has its origins in Greek literature, the subsequent negative connotations with the word "spade" means that the phrase should be used with caution or not at all.
I have no idea what this is referring to.
.
> white paper
> position paper
> Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized.
Whitepapers are considered good now? I thought they were vendor marketing material.
.
> whitespace
> empty space
> Assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized.
If they'd said it discriminates against dark-mode users they might almost have a point.
"White space" is treating white as good? You're replacing white with "empty", no content, meaningless, and you think white is being used to indicate good? Nope. You (Stanford, not the parent) just took a list of phrases and grepped for "white", but didn't actually think.
So, Perl?
This is entirely something that English speakers have made up for Spanish speakers. My wife, who works in healthcare for the state, and largely with farm workers, regales me constantly with stories that essentially have the punchline “Que es Latinx?” in which she has to explain to them that this means them and that it was made up (perhaps at Stanford) out of some crazy attempt to remove -a and -o endings FROM THEIR LANGUAGE because it hurts their English ears.
To be more precise, usually white liberal English speakers from the US.
The difference is that someone using "mail" instead of "courriel" in France goes unnoticed because everyone understands that some orgs in the administration sometimes have to pretend to work.
Projects like this are doomed, because they fundamentally ignore how language works, how language evolves, and how humans work.
My favourite example is "idiot". Once upon a time it was a clinical diagnosis used by physicians to describe people. This word of course turned into a slur, so the diagnosis word had to be changed, and people at that time chose "retard". ...Which promptly became a slur, forcing people to yet again pick a new word. Is "mentally handicapped" ok these days? This list suggest "people who have a cognitive disability", that sure rolls easily off the tongue.
But it's interesting to note that even though this list calls out "retard", it doesn't call out "idiot". Because the time that word was replaced by its politically correct replacement is so long ago that the people who made this list aren't aware of it and therefore think it has always been a slur, and that it's therefore, somehow, magically not disparaging towards the cognitively disabled.
Another great example of idiocy (!) from this list is "basket case". They're claiming you shouldn't use it because it's offensive to quadriplegics, because that's what it originally meant.
WHEN?!? IN THE 1800's?!? That expression hasn't meant or referenced quadriplegics in a long, long time. But apparently someone with a stick up their ass dug up the etymology of it and decided to include it in the list. But forgot about "idiot".
This is white-knighting feel-good slacktivism at its finest. You haven't accomplished anything by putting together this list.
Don’t you realize what “a stick up their ass” originally meant?!
Moron (from Wikipedia): --- It was once applied to people with an IQ of 51–70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26–50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0–25). The word moron, along with others including "idiotic", "imbecilic", "stupid", and "feeble-minded", was formerly considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, but it is now deprecated in use by psychologists. ---
Similarly cretin as someone with congenital iodine deficiency syndrome, but now far less polite and just generically dumb.
The list misses huge numbers of terms. It feels very much like a small group of people sat down and brainstormed for 5 minutes writing out the things that bothered them individually, or knew about individually, and that was it.
You can't stop the euphemism treadmill.
Mabye you're right, more syllables, less catchy.
This is not to say that there aren’t changes to language that have real effects, but most of these banned words are not intrinsically different from their replacements.
Rather than progressive, it is regressive. It politically alienates a growing group of people in the center, center-left, independents. It's like a perfect recruitment movement for the right-wing, which is on the rise everywhere.
Progressives should stop this nonsense and return to the basics, which is to improve access to livable wages, good education, healthcare. For ALL, regardless of identity. Further, the explosive growth of the administrative function in these institutes needs to be dialed back. Always follow the money. It looks to me like right now, we're paying through the nose for anti-progress.
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 injured, i.e. "maybe somone will hear the word tarball and think of tarbaby and then they'll feel bad" despite the fact that this has never once happened in recorded history.
This way you can search for infractions and more expeditiously accuse and eject your rivals (people whose work is better than yours).
Sure, we're not expecting every single word on these lists to have any random person go cry in the corner, but those are pretty long lists and I could totally see specific people getting hit at the right angle and be affected enough to warrant consideration.
If someone hits me with a bat with sufficient force, I have no control over whether my bones break or not. If someone says a mean thing, or something that could theoretically be interpreted as mean if you completely ignore their intent and context, I 100% have control over how I feel about that.
You do, that's great, sincerely, I mostly agree with you, but I feel it lacks a bit of nuance. Adults should have control over how they interpret reality, but not everyone does, and some people want to use perceived offense (Oppression Olympics) as a means for some sort of change, even if it's just padding their wallet.
Some folks are immature, some folks have PTSD or some other condition and/or problem which makes it harder for them to have the discipline you have. Can we acknowledge both that words are interpreted by the listener, and that the listener might not be able to handle them?
I try to not be affected by things, why should I respect someone who's trying to insult me, and if I don't respect them why should I care at all about what they are saying? It boils down to self preservation ultimately I think. Ostracism might not be the death sentence it used to be, but it still can be seriously deleterious.
They wouldn't, and they don't. The insult is purely imagined by people who write these lists.
If we follow your argument, you do have control over whether you let the pain affect you. Pain is just a mental state after all. And who cares about broken bones if you could just will the pain away?
I obviously think this is a bit silly and could be used to justify just about anything.
Even if you could ignore the pain, you wouldn't physically be able to move your arm well if the bone is broken, which would be an inconvenience for most people that they would care quite a bit about.
Well i suppose that really depends on their mental fortitude, how much they let it affect them.
Someone who's decided that the mental and physical pains and debilitations are wholly separate, especially here, will probably want cited studies and actual scientific evidence that the psychological community no longer believes that. Until that is presented no amount of semantics is gonna work.
Up to a point. You can't control your genes or your upbringing completely, merely suppress it.
Otherwise we wouldn't have trigger words. For sure you have one, too.
Sure, everyone has some. I probably have some too - I don't keep track of them, but I know mocking some of the things that I hold dear will definitely unsettle me.
That said, one of the core part of growing up, of becoming an adult, is learning not to get triggered, and in the rare cases you still are, learning to calm yourself down. It's a prerequisite for participating in and contributing to a healthy society.
Nobody could possibly keep track of the list of trigger words for everyone they could come into contact with. The list itself would cover so many phrases across so many topics as to prevent communication. Even if we could keep track of all of this (scary thought: for the first time in history, this may become possible, thanks to computers), erring on the side of avoiding any and all trigger words would be a security vulnerability, easily abused by people trying to gain power over others (arguably, the very list we're discussing is an example of this).
The point is, we can make some concessions for words or phrases that are intended to harm or known to negatively affect a lot of people - which is what cultures have been doing throughout the recorded history. Beyond those few concessions, it's up to individual to handle their own triggers, in a way that doesn't disturb everyone else's ability to communicate effectively.
This is incorrect, and flies in the face of the current literature in psychology and neuroscience. A cursory glance at some very rational people who are quick to anger and how we cry after losing a loved one should rid you of this notion.
In neither case are the words the cause of distress, but rather some event, belief or threat that's communicated or implied through those words. The way humans communicate, individual words are only loosely correlated with the message they're employed to carry.
How have we arrived at a point where we have to make such defensive statements when no offense was ever intended? Isn't it upon those wanting to change the language to defend their arguments and bring forward thorough evidence that the intended changes will justify the costs (along with an analysis of what the real costs are)? And do we believe that we can create a language that can still work for meaningful communication while simultaneously ensuring that no one can possibly ever be offended?
No. It isn't anymore. Because the loud minority now has the means to globally and publicly destroy you if you say something they dislike. You might lose your job or even your personal safety because of a statement that can be interpreted in some way that someone doesn't like.
I am pretty sure that an employee insisting not to abide by this mandate would be reprimanded and even fired if they don't stop.
0: https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spirale...
You don't have to. Just say what you need to and ignore the quetching.
The question is, will they be affected by word itself or the composition of words? Because I can probably make an offensive sentence using most of the words in this list (except tarball, I'm not that creative). But I can also do the same avoiding words from the list and still hurt specific people. So having this list doesn't solve the problem, but it can be used to harm people. You don't like some argument, lets check if we can find a harmful word in it and use that!
I think the tarball thing is rediculous, but the opposite extreme of no words can be hurtful is also rediculous.
I don't think most people need to be told that "jewed" or "retard" are not appropriate professional words. Certainly not anyone who works at Stanford, just like nobody needed to be told not to say any of the other slurs that aren't on the list.
I also don't think anyone is arguing that the authors of this list intended it to be exhaustive.
You can’t be the one deciding if people are hurt or not, it’s their call.
Wether them being hurt justify such and such action is another issue.
Are you trying to suggest that this is a dichotomy? It seems to me that the common-sense position is (used to be?) that neither the person performing an action nor the person at the receiving end can be considered impartial and trusted to make that call.
Either way, the idea that "being hurt" is a state that the individual has full discretion to declare themselves as being in seems incompatible with our existing widespread moral intuition that A hurting B results in a moral and potentially legal claim to redress from B towards A; otherwise, anyone could trivially claim constantly being hurt by everyone and therefore entitle themselves to an arbitrary amount of restitution. One of the two therefore has to go for society to function: either you don't get to make the call if you are hurt, or it's a priori morally neutral to hurt you.
This would be the part where differ. I understand the argument, but as you point out it would lead us to a dead end.
IMHO someone being hurt doesn’t mean they need reparation. As an example, people mourning are deeply hurt, and they will also be extra sensible to specific words that are mundane but resonate differently to them. We can both recognize they’re hurt, some words hit them differently, and have no redressment to them outside of sympathy perhaps.
That’s an extreme example, but I would see a lot of steps on the spectrum, including for instance my boss hurting my feelings by coldly and factually pointing out how bad of a job I did.
I get to decide if I’m hurt or not, but that doesn’t automatically make me a victim entitled to reparations.
There needs to be some kind of end, some kind of closure to hurt - otherwise we have a positive feedback loop that amplifies suffering and eventually turns violent.
> As an example, people mourning are deeply hurt, and they will also be extra sensible to specific words that are mundane but resonate differently to them.
In this and similar cases (bad breakup, loss of health or future prospects or sentimental property, etc.), other people are making a time-limited concession to let the grieving person process their experience. Beyond that time limit, one should not expect others to keep carefully controlling their language for one's sake. One should especially not count on making those concessions permanent.
> That’s an extreme example, but I would see a lot of steps on the spectrum, including for instance my boss hurting my feelings by coldly and factually pointing out how bad of a job I did.
Happened to me the other day, and while I did suffer internally, not for a second I thought they should've been prohibited from saying what they said, or from saying it the way they did. It's not the words that hurt me, but awareness that I'm seen as less reliable in the eyes of the other (coupled with anxiety/fear related to the prospects of my future employment).
I don't see why the end can't be education on the part of the person saying those words. The reasonable response to someone saying they're impacted negatively by a phrase is to find a way to rephrase it, maybe this isn't always possible, but 90% of the time it is and doing so will result in a more positive outcome for both parties pretty much always.
In specific cases it can, and is, what happens. But in general case it cannot - for the reason '4bpp already phrased well upthread:
> One of the two therefore has to go for society to function: either you don't get to make the call if you are hurt, or it's a priori morally neutral to hurt you.
Or, put another way: you can't both 1) be able to unilaterally declare you're being hurt, and 2) expect any moral or practical response from others to you being hurt. It's either one or the other - because allowing someone to have both means giving them power to easily control and hurt others without consequence.
If they're hurt by words, maybe it's irrational that they're hurt by them, but they still are. Assuming that they're being honest, "you weren't actually hurt by that" is a nonsensical statement - the person saying that has absolutely 0 evidence to make that call, and the hurt person has perfect knowledge.
I think tying it up into legal language of restitution is a mistake, no one is advocating for legal liability or even any real punishment here.
The kid, despite having perfect knowledge, has incorrectly judged the severity of the situation. This happens with kids, because they don't have enough experience or emotional maturity to appropriately gauge their emotional responses, much like the people who write lists like this.
> I think tying it up into legal language of restitution is a mistake, no one is advocating for legal liability or even any real punishment here.
What exactly is a "real punishment"? It seems like there are certainly calls for extrajudicial liability, insofar as there is no shortage of examples where people call for damage to be done to those who "engage in harmful behaviours" (referring to hurtful words) that is in excess of what would be necessary to stop the "harmful behaviours" and more seems to be aimed at causing disutility to someone who is taken to deserve it. I assume that a Stanford employee, in any capacity, who refuses to abide by this guideline and draws any amount of attention in the process would find themselves at the receiving end of the actions of a large number of people who would try to get them fired rather quickly. Is this not a real punishment?
Civilization runs on grace, removing the ability to express yourself freely removes some of that grace, and lessens all of us.
In casual conversation with people you have the context on, it's probably fine.
As a wording for official documents and dispkay that will sit prominently on public/semi-public places it might have wider effects: some people might not want to use it because of the naming, while it was set aside for them. Some people will be more aggressive towards user of this space if they feel they don't deserve it (not visibly handicapped enough) etc.
Signaling disabilities or special conditions is a real minefield to navigate properly. And thing is, you're putting time and effort yo have the widest acceptance possible, so what people think is kinda central.
I'll accept this premise for the sake of discussion. How does replacing the word 'handicapped' fix any of these issues? Lets say we re-print all the signs to say 'accessible parking' and all the hangtags to say 'requires accessible parking'.
People still may potentially get upset that a seemingly able-bodied person used the special parking spot. People who require the special parking spot may still potentially feel bad about it and choose a regular spot.
Playing games with the labels does nothing to help people, and serves only to satisfy the self-righteous people writing the new labels.
The effect to my eyes was that when a car is parked, there was no wheelchair mark in sight, and no prominent “disability” wording (it’s still there, just not the “in your face” type), and people caring enough still had the small prints to explain it’s not just people in wheelchairs.
I agree with you that it won’t stop everyone for getting upset, I mean some people don’t need any excuse to get upset, so will always be edge cases. But I also think urban design has an effect, even on the people using it.
I have elder parents that can barely walk anymore, but they won’t use priority seats in the buses because they don’t want the “disabled” label sticking to them. Instead they skip buses after buses at the stop until normal seats seem available from the outside. It’s stupid, so stupid, but that’s how they think. Changing labeling can feel like a dirty hack, but if 10% more elderly people would use them as a result, I see it as a win.
It’s to me the equivalent of making the “delete” button red on a page, it’s good design taking into account the average user psychology.
I'm just disagreeing with the idea that people who do experience actual negative impacts should put up with it in the name of being "graceful". That puts all the responsibility of societal grace on them.
This is a man-in-the-middle attack on the English language, and my American identity... but oooh... that's offensive too.
To quote General McAuliffe's response to a German call for the surrender of the 101st Airborne troops defending Bastogne
NUTS!
All these new terms are going to be discriminatory in a few years as the bullies learn to use them. Telling someone that they are uncool will have as much sting as retarded, because it will mean exactly the same thing if the word retarded leaves the lexicon.
> You can’t be the one deciding if people are hurt or not, it’s their call.
I've spent a huge amount of time, literal years, learning to think in a flexible way so that I can wind my mind away from taking offence. It takes a lot of practice to develop that sort of engulfing calm. Also very rewarding, I recommend the practice. Good for a comfortable life and all that.
Sure they can make the call that they are offended, but I am conciously making the call that I am not offended. Is it really fair that after all that effort I have to contort my speech to avoid setting people off? I'm already worrying about my own offended-ness and now I'm supposed to be working around theirs as well. What are they going to do to balance all that effort out?
It is better if we all worry about our own emotions and work with what other people say. We all have responsibilities to civil discourse. Those responsibilities include tolerant listening. Getting antsy because someone runs a blind study is a long way from tolerant listening and an academic setting deserves better than that.
On being hurt or not…I think your efforts will mostly benefit you, and not being easily hurt should make it that much easier for you to reach your goals I’d assume.
I’d compare it to physical fitness, being able to avoid people’s punches is an advantage in itself, you wouldn’t feel unfair that the others are getting hit in the face as they haven’t worked as hard.
This is called the euphemism treadmill. Soon, lots of the recommended new phrases in this list will be considered offensive and harmful.
Well that's precisely the problem isn't it? Anyone can get offended over anything, and the solution is not to try and compile a list to make sure no one gets offended ever again.
It’s stated clearly that the initiative applies to “Stanford websites and code.”, so they’re not declaring new rules for the world, they’re telling their very select community to avoid a set of words in writing.
To answer your point, no, I don’t think they’re trying to make sure no one gets offended ever again.
I also kinda see why a company wouldn’t want a “dummy message” popup accidentally appearing in production when someone forgot to remove the debug code before the release.
In all my workplaces, these kind of productivity impacting initiatives had a consulting and consensus taking period to make sure we’d either be on board or at least understanding of the underlying logic and why it’s put in place. If you still feel it’s a dumb move going in the wrong direction, I feel for you for the potential stream of decisions that as you point out, won’t probably go in the direction you wish for.
If you dig a bit deeper it is likely the bully has very low self worth and attacks others to try and have control in their lives which they feel is out of control. Ultimately both the victim and the bully deserve our sympathy because they are both hurting.
Your comment is harming me. It's my call, and I say so. Therefore you should be banned.
Feeling offended is not harm
If a stranger on the internet uses some controversial word, you can decide it's no big deal.
But now imagine your boss is using terms like "jewed down" or some other thing thing that applies to you, specifically. Are you harmed? It's very possible that you are harmed in a very literal sense; your career path is intertwined with a person that seems to think cheapness and haggling is synonymous with your people.
(It is also worth noting that this list of harmful language is targeted specifically at the "Stanford IT Community" which is a workplace. This is not their attempt to regulate the speech of the world at large.)
Now, having said that, I also understand the flip side of things. Some of the entries such as "tarball" struck me as absurd.
And on a personal note, I'm partially blind and I don't give a rat's ass about terms like "blind studies" and so forth. In fact, the phrase "keep an eye on things" always makes me chuckle since I'm blind in one eye: if you tell me to keep an eye on things, I'm likely to ask you "which one" because you're going to get a very different level of attention depending on which eye we choose. I also don't mind that we as a society have decided that "see" is a synonym for "understand."
You would harmed by the prejudicial actions taken against you, like skipping you for advancement, but not by the use of the word specifically. If anything, letting people use the word makes it easier to gather evidence of any prejudice against you, so making the word taboo makes such prejudice easier to hide.
You would harmed by the prejudicial actions taken
against you, like skipping you for advancement,
but not by the use of the word specifically
Words can reinforce attitudes and actions. When your boss uses the term "jewed down" they are also sending the message that it's okay to stereotype people.
I do not support some kind of zero-tolerance approach to language. (After all, "tolerance" is the goal!) However, I do find quite a few of these changes worthwhile.
For example, a recently disabled friend pointed out how it kind of sucks for her to hear words like "lame" used as a synonym for "bad." So I've tried to weed that one out. Is it going to solve all of her problems? Is that even in her top 100 problems in life? No and no. But I mean, like why not try and make a little change like that?
Yes, but the only problem with stereotypes is, again, the actions that result. You can think whatever you want in the privacy of your own mind as long as you don't let it influence your actions in the performance of your duties. Maintain an understanding of the difference between belief and knowledge; stereotypes are clearly only beliefs.
> For example, a recently disabled friend pointed out how it kind of sucks for her to hear words like "lame" used as a synonym for "bad."
Understandable, although I wouldn't say lame is a synonym for "bad" so much as "undesirable". I'm not sure anyone actually desires the restricted movements of disabled limbs, so that doesn't seem like a technically improper use.
> But I mean, like why not try and make a little change like that?
Sure, we make all kinds of allowances for fellow humans, even irrational allowances, particularly for friends and family. That's etiquette.
Describing words as "harmful language" is an attempt to raise certain rules of etiquette to the level of ethics, which is a much stricter set of norms that we enforce on each other. Violating etiquette might get you called an asshole, but otherwise has no consequences; by contrast, violations of ethical rules have serious consequences.
Like you, I don't think the suggested changes are all bad as a matter of etiquette, but I'm not at all convinced that they've met the bar for enshrining them as ethics.
Yes, but the only problem with stereotypes is,
again, the actions that result.
Is this okay as long as he doesn't actually do any of those things? After all, only actions matter... right?
No. Clearly there is a line across which speech alone is rotten enough that we don't allow it. [1]
If you think that repeatedly equating "Jewishness" to "being a greedy money-grubber" doesn't cross that line, fine.
But don't pretend the line doesn't exist. It's disingenuous at best.
___
[1] Of course, context matters. Suppose your job is music producer, and your coworker sings/raps about heinous things as a part of their art. That's probably okay! Or suppose some "offensive" thing was a slip of the tongue, or an honest mistake made through ignorance. I've been "that guy" more than once.
I've found that various American courses and certifications are very explicit, a lot more than non-American ones, for example European ones.
Then someone told me: they're afraid that if they don't include the absolute basics, someone will complain/sue/whatever about having been presented the basic concept, so that's why their education is incomplete or why they failed their certification exam.
This basically aligns with the same logic, saying this as an outside observer.
The US is <<full>> of defensive behavior, if you look at it as an outsider.
Yeah. Like people getting sued for swimming pools because parents can't be bothered to teach their kids how to swim or to not go on private property unauthorized, or people being forced to file lawsuits against close relatives because they have no other way of recouping healthcare expenses... so many of the horror stories we Europeans read from across the pond leave us with a plain "WTF, are these guys nuts?" feeling.
That's mostly due to decades worth of brainwashing and propaganda ("American Exceptionalism"), as well as a factor of just how big the US actually is. Here in Europe? In like two or three hours worth of driving time from Munich, one can reach half a dozen other countries and see a complete contrast: other languages, other ways of organizing society, other activities, other sports, other varieties of alcohol, other political parties. We actually have competition here.
Real, professional example from the automotive world: 'the knock sensor can retard the ignition timing'
Is that still okay to say?
https://forward.com/culture/522179/jew-you-down-antisemitic-...
Depending on who's mouth they come out of they kind of are acceptable.
Which is kind of a glaring example of why this whole policing words bullshit is in fact bullshit. It's not the words that do harm. It's the context in which they are used.
Does this make sense to you?
Imbecile, special needs, oligophrenic, whatever, something associated with intellectual disability will be used instead.
They are not trying to ban "harmful language" from being said or written, they are trying to have you suppress "harmful thoughts", or ideally render you incapable of harbouring them.
Do you want Stanford (or anyone else) to dictate what you can think?
Just laughing can be incredibly offensive.
So an aggressor has infinite words to use and is effectively impossible to censor.
I hesitate to mention SouthPark, but they do an episode where Cartman is especially cruel using laughter as his weapon. It's quite effective and obviously offensive. Unlike the list in the article.
You can see this happening in the Stanford list itself - some of the terms listed, particularly in the "Ableist" section, are clearly second or third iteration through the euphemism treadmill.
In fact, some could be about to complete another one - for example, my self-preservation instinct on the Internet tells me I shouldn't use "disabled" as an adjective, despite it being listed as a proper alternative to "crippled". I fully expect "disabled" to land in the left column of this or similar list in a couple of years.
It's as if a choice of words can change the unfortunate fact that losing a leg sucks.
I worked for a company that sold medical supplies and we got a phone call about a disabled user message on our website.
And if people still need a list or a class to be taught that e.g. the N word is offensive, they have no place in Stanford.
The only thing more insane would be the expectation that insults of any kind, for any reason, no longer be tolerated (some do suggest this, which is at least consistent).
I really don't understand this thread or threads like this. Suddenly people are all about using exact lists of acceptable discourse and following Rules and the like.
Nobody has ever been genuinely harmed by hearing the word "retard." It's made up outrage.
Note: being butthurt is not being harmed.
It was used as a slur, the way any term can be used as a slur: by saying it to insult someone. The intend made it a slur, not the term.
In fact, in the case of insulting, it was primarily used against people who don't have that condition (mind developmental problems). "See what you've done? Are you a r...?", etc. For the people actually having such condition, it was just the medical term the literature, and their own doctors used to describe their condition.
Replacing the term doesn't change the mindset. Any new term adopted can equally be used with malice, it's just a BS arms race, focusing on words, when it should have focused on the bullying and attitude. But that would actually make sense - and have an actual effect, so why not take the easier path?
This is sometimes used maliciously though - like how a contraction about being against facism somehow got a bad connotation (antifa), or how being aware of social injustices is bandied about by right-wing outlets (woke).
I think I'm getting the hang of it ...
But you know why it is really a bad thing? The actual loss of this weird focus on controlling language?
It is us. I am about to start a volunteer position with mentoring kids from underprivileged backgrounds and after the interview with the organization, I am genuinely considering dropping despite very clear positive impact this would have on the kids ( which is why I am preparing for it to begin with ). Thing will be virtual ( and recorded ), I was given a speech about white supremacy ( and asked how I feel about it ) and now I am worried that any bad word may result in career sanctions ( in other words, it is a net negative for me ).
This is just one example. It is suddenly possible that I can't pass on any real knowledge for fear of fucking myself and my family over.
<< This is sometimes used maliciously though - like how a contraction about being against facism somehow got a bad connotation (antifa), or how being aware of social injustices is bandied about by right-wing outlets (woke).
Those outlets certainly amplify it, but are you saying there is no objective reason for it happening ( for example, "being against fascism" often is being accompanied by 'punch a nazi' -- is that ok )? It is a real question and I am curious about your answer.
The only thing this list does is give credence to Tucker Carlson and co's complaints about performative wokeism.
~ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Their primary purpose is for deciding if you want to view material in the first place.
Example from university: One of my media classes was going to show a clip of “Passion of the Christ”. We got a handout explaining the content of the movie and purpose of showing it and were told to opt out if we weren’t conformable. It all handled perfectly reasonably.
This list is not a reasonable way to handle this. It lacks nuance.
It reminds me of NIMBY activists using land acknowledgements while blocking anything that would allow someone who isn’t high caste from actually moving to and living in San Francisco in a proper dwelling.
>You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded.
No one said words can't be hurtful. If you work or attend Stanford you know these words. This document is apparently about harm reduction though, and that harm would be mitigated far more effectively if Stanford admitted more people like the ones these words supposedly trivialize.
It is particularly bad when the given replacement is nowhere near synonymous. The first one that really got my eyes rolling was 'detail-oriented' for OCD: being detail-oriented is an aspect of safety in a number of areas, and this is nothing like OCD, which has a clinical definition.
If one cares about something, don't make it easy to ridicule and dismiss.
(I agree that the document is silly but I don't think it's quite as bad as your interpretation.)
"Thing that is not violence is violence."
Also, the assault example may be valid in your jurisdiction, but in mine it isn't assault but threats of violence. additionally, the threat must be made in a way that is threatening.
Your example, using my local laws, doesn't make sense.
I really wish people would address the content of a discussion instead of what they want to be discussing.
I don't know what laws you are talking about because do not define them, nor your locality.
Regardless, there is a 'for instance' in my reply, and you addressed that specific notion instead of the core.
don't hate the player, we're all going to play with the same rules. If you or those DIE people with nothing to do get to declare words violence and subject other people to censorship based on your emotions, other people should be able to do it to you.
It's not a logical framework, its an ideological weapon used to shutdown competing ideas with nonsense like these blacklists. The question is if have the capacity to recognize that about your own reasoning when you get it lobbed back at you, or if you will simply declare it as the specious noise making of the 'anti woke crew' because it invalidates your position without any chance at coming to an agreement, because it immediately classifies any contradictory thinking as violent and evil without having to make a logical argument.
Weird how that works.
If you think that's unreasonable maybe judge you own behaviour - your words can be violence and every time you open your mouth to declare other people' words violence, you open the door for it to happen to you. so I did it, and you had nothing to say except to declare it bad faith, which I agree with, except I think your argument about assault is also in bad faith, and treat you the same.
You talk about plans like I control you or other people. I don't. I can only show you a mirror of yourself and hope you snap yourself out of the anti discourse patterns you exhibit but dislike in others. The plan is only to treat people who decry words as violence the same way they treat others and hope they learn the error of their way by having to contend with their own ideological weapons turned against them.
If words are violence why does anyone need to listen to anyone? I didn't kill discussion - your opinion decries discussion as violence. How can we have reasonable conversation in a framework where one side decries the other side's words as violence? It's not possible. It's not a framework for conversation, its just a tool to shut up people who you disagree with.
You keep going on about how I am doing something to make words into violence yet you have not addressed that I asked you for any example of my doing anything like this.
Your stonewalling is absolutely shutting down discussion and if that is your tactic you have succeeded. I really do hope you have a plan because at the end of this if you and the other extremes have their way we will be stuck on two sides with no way to have any kind of productive talk at all about anything.
Acting like toddlers doesn't solve problems.
the first post of yours I replied to has a false equivalence between assault without violence (basically uttering threats) and words being violence. I referenced it in my last post - how I thought it was an outright argument in bad faith because it ignores the details of what that means.
> I really do hope you have a plan because at the end of this if you and the other extremes have their way we will be stuck on two sides with no way to have any kind of productive talk at all about anything.
I just live in the world I don't dictate it. If you want to argue words are violence and then say I'm the toddler because I treat you like you propose treating others, we're now in the same 'you lack the ability to self reflect' stage we were when this started.
dont declare discourse violence and then act offended when people don't take you as a good faith participant in discourse. You're the one who can't handle other people's words effects on your emotions, so declared words violence. Who is the toddler there?
I responded to "Thing that is not violence is violence." by stating that words can be considered violent in some cases, for instance assault requires no physical contact. You take that to mean whatever you want, but don't accuse me of a false equivalence when what I said was literally true.
> I just live in the world I don't dictate it.
You are in total control of how you respond to things. And you stuck to a bad tactic because you refuse to acknowledge that it doesn't do anything but shut down rational communication, then accuse me of lack of self-awareness. The irony is palpable.
Anyway, I can tell you are the type of person that even if you know you are standing on a bad position you will not back down, so I will go ahead and let you have the last word, which I am sure is going to be some kind of re-affirmation that it is my fault for making you act like this. Good day.
they can be considered assault under very specific circumstances but not violence, which has a meaning.
>but don't accuse me of a false equivalence when what I said was literally true.
your false equivelance is to equate the idea that some specific circumstances speech can be considered assault, therefore we must consider the idea that any words can be violence. it is on its face a false equivalence.
Similarly one can declare that buying illegal goods can be a crime in specific circumstances, therefore a list of which items to not buy in a grocery store might reasonably also stop you from committing crimes, right? So now we can restrict what you can purchase anywhere because we can imagine a tangential and unrelated situation where exchanging money for a good might be illegal.
And that is even a stronger case than one you made, because it at least says that illegal acts are illegal, rather than saying 'falls under the statute of assault in some jurisdictions' rather than actually arguing whether it is violence or not.
It's a ridiculous false equivalence
>Anyway, I can tell you are the type of person that even if you know you are standing on a bad position you will not back down, so I will go ahead and let you have the last word, which I am sure is going to be some kind of re-affirmation that it is my fault for making you act like this. Good day.
I'm not acting like anything. I'm merely using your 'logic' on you. if speech can be violence in any case because it might be assault in a specific case, your speech can be violence, and you might make me a victim with your utterances and false equivalence. In fact your speech itself might not matter - only my feeling of fear from hearing it.
Yes, language is evolving, and dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. But the idea that you can use words in whichever way you want, and any misunderstanding is the listener's problem, is just shitting at the idea of communication, and nothing but a thinly veiled power grab.
The reality is that when you're in power, you can use words in whichever way you want. This is what power means. Only now has is become so obvious that people can't help but notice.
Without strict controls over who is and isn’t allowed in our culture we’re left with a “at your feet or at your throat” predicament. Subversive individuals are death to a culture (the thing Popper was referring to in the paradox of tolerance - you have to draw the line at life or death, not simply because you disagree). Trust is everything.
Popper was an idiot and his "Paradox Of Tolerance" can only lead to tolerance becoming the only permissible value and therefore decline, since tolerance is the absence of values. His university colleagues held him in such disregard that they threatened to quit unless he was cast out. Truly the patron saint of midwits and leftist.
It's a topic very dear to our hairy little monkey hearts.
Note: as a non-native speaker, I have no idea what is problematic about the word "spade". I have only ever seen it to mean either a tool for digging or a type of sword, but I will take them at their word that it does have some other meaning.
Or maybe it's that it's homophonous with 'spayed', language resists easy categorization.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-anthony-fauci-sen...
"Up until recently, the NIH website had a section that discussed gain of function research, providing a broad definition of 'a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers new or enhanced activity to that agent.'
On Oct. 20, the NIH removed that section from its website, replacing it with one that discusses 'enhanced potential pandemic pathogen' research, which it defined as 'research that may be reasonably anticipated to create, transfer or use potential pandemic pathogens resulting from the enhancement of a pathogen’s transmissibility and/or virulence in humans.'"
The research funded was forbidden under the old definition, and so they just changed the definition after they did the research.
I suppose this resource could be used to more effectively sanction individuals who consistently demonstrate behavior harmful to those around them. It could be referenced early and often, so that repeat offenses more quickly lead to dismissal. Even so, I don't see this as good or bad. At least the word list and rationale is explicit. A wrongful dismissal can challenged, or even litigated, no?
Cannot this reference be used to better defend someone who uses a poor choice of words as their sole offense? There are so many words and phrases enumerated, it aptly demonstrates just how challenging and context dependent things are. That quadriplegic, for example, is listed tends to undermine the validity of listing actually offensive phrases. Conversely, the explanation of "basket case" and "spaz" were quite informative to me; I don't use these words, but, it's useful to better understand why they could be offensive.
Addendum: I think this particular document is inappropriately broad, including phrases that have no business being here. That said, the same text with a conservative scope seems it could be helpful, at least for educating authors who may not be aware of the nuances some of these phrases have. For example, "going off the reservation" is quite offensive once you understand the history of this phrase. People may use phrases like this without knowing its ugly reference, when a better fitting phrase could be used.
Have you ever seen this argument work?
The whole point of "arson, murder, jaywalking", of "motte and bailey" argument style, of mixing obvious cases together with the things you want to make otherwise indefensible claims about, is because it makes the argument work only in one direction.
The only valid counter is to fight the inclusion of "jaywalking" on the same list as "arson" and "murder", but once it's your company's HR department quoting a Stanford-published list of "bad words", it's too late.
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?
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.
If I had a limp resulting from a car crash, would this be a fault of my own? If I were driving? If I struck another car from behind? If I drove off a bridge? If my name were Thelma?
'Just asking questions' as they say on TV.
>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”
I disagree with your contention. I also see "cripple" as a statement of fact. Others may see "addict" as pejorative. "Addict" is certainly pejorative when Tucker Carlson uses it. Not pejorative when the leader of the local AA chapter does.
"Idiot" was, supposedly, a medical term at some point. Then, it was probably a heavy slur the way "retarded" is now. Currently, "idiot" is pretty tame. Certainly would generally be considered more acceptable than "retarded."
In other words: language is a slippery beast, something that has no fixed interpretation. Much of meaning is super contextual. Just as one is advised against assuming someone's pronouns, why are we assuming people's intent with lists like this?
We should be able to look at how we are using language and identify that it is problematic without requiring a list of words.
Yup! I think that humans are so heterogeneous that basically everything requires a context to derive the full meaning of a thing. The same language, wielded in two different occasions, can have vastly different meanings.
As a linguistics professor once mentioned:
"Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like an apple, although if the play is bad enough, even fruit flies like an arrow."
If they did, they would know the list is more harmful than good.
Evidence? The content I am replying to.
Nitpick, there are two kinds of "flopping" in sports, which you can both observe e.g. in soccer.
One is to simulate a made-up foul as you say, basically trying to mislead the referee into giving an unjustified penalty. This is clearly illegal and constitutes a foul itself.
However, often players flop to highlight fouls that actually happened but were so subtle or hard to see that the referee missed them.
The results are still ridiculous - Ronaldo rolling in pain on the grass because the other player had briefly pulled his jersey - but the greater strategy here is valid: If small, subtle fouls went unpunished, they'd be an easy way to gain an unfair advantage for your team. So the game would very quickly turn into a contest of how to hide fouls best from the referee. By highlighting fouls to a ridiculous degree, players are counteracting this.
Only in soccer, and even then only with particular types of players... I don't know how to describe them without using any of these words...
> committed suicide > died by suicide > Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.
I had a friend commit suicide, and one of my mum's colleagues - also an acquiantance of mine, who I'd chat with in the pub semi-regularly - also committed suicide many years ago. I've suffered with depression for much of my life since my teenage years (undiagnosed until I was well into my twenties), and I have a close family member who's spent maybe a quarter of their life over the last 20 years institutionalised, with much of the rest of the time in close contact with mental health authorities. I've had many friends and colleagues over the years who've suffered with mental health issues.
But apparently "committed suicide" is "ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions."
No.
It isn't.
It is a brutal term that aptly captures the daily visceral struggle of both those with mental health issues who are battling suicidal thoughts, and those who are left behind after a friend or relative does commit suicide. It very well captures the trauma and impact of such an event. It also avoids the final indignity of stripping the unwell person of their agency, and therefore their humanity. It is 100% certified appropriate (were such a certification to exist).
The only thing harmful about this list is that it exists and that somebody, or some group, got paid actual money (presumably as part of their day job) to compile it. In 200 years time, if somebody authors a book called, "The hideous and shameful annals of bullshit jobs in the early 21st Century" I have no doubt at all that this will rank very highly.
Let's call this list what it is: thought policing. Whoever is behind it sits somewhere on the same spectrum as the real world Morality Police of Iran, or the fictional Thought Police (and the Ministry of Truth, who control language - and in particular are replacing it with Newspeak) in George Orwell's 1984.
The word toxic has become heavily overused, but this list is an absolute examplar of it: it is a product of deeply warped and corrupted thinking. Some terms on the list (which I don't think need repeating here - racial slurs, and the like) are considered pretty universally offensive but that does not justify the presence of the rest.
Overall what we have is a pretty transparent and unsophisticated attempt to control people by those too stupid to understand the negative impacts of their actions on wider society.
I would have hoped for a lot better from an institution such as Stanford with a rich history of valuable contributions (including to hacker culture).
It begs the question: can we represent this thing (somebody ends their own life) in precisely the right way? No, language is insufficient. All cases are different.
When I went to school and learned about linguistics and cultural analysis etc the appropriate way to deal with this insufficiency of language was to use many descriptions and ambiguities. So that you create a general field of meaning around the inexpressible thing.
Apparently we were all wrong; we just lacked the proper wording.
It's not just people with diagnosed issues and actual pathologies that have huge problems in their life - or that commit suicide. "Able" people commit suicide all the time.
This list is 95% absolutely ridiculous and I’m what you’d probably consider a proponent of social justice.
It’s deeply funny, but also tragic because while there should be an attempt to make language inclusive, lists like this make the movement look like a joke.
But hot damn some are terrible. I'd even go as far to say that some are worse insult as original, calling someone "non-vocal, non-verbal" instead of just "dumb" sounds like a better burn than original.
"This proposition was clearly written by someone neither vocal nor verbal"
If your intent is to describe someone as non-vocal, you can use inoffensive language; you'll sound more cleverer, too.
Btw it looks like Stanford has thrown up a login wall on the site, which is … amusing.
Welcome to the basket of deplorables!
Some of them are just simple language.
>> user
>> While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain.
Seriously?
> It’s deeply funny, but also tragic because while there should be an attempt to make language inclusive, lists like this make the movement look like a joke.
Unfortunately, they can't notice because they lack a sense of humor.
Context matters in that case. I don't believe its intent is to remove the word "user" from vocabulary, but only when referencing people who peruse substances.
That aside, it's also wrong in some cases. For example, under "Gender" they have the phrase "balls to the wall", explaining that it's not to be used because "Attributes personality traits to anatomy." That's just incorrect; I haven't been able to find even one source suggesting it's anything other than a term pilots used. Wiktionary reflects this:
> Perhaps coined by pilots whose throttle levers had round, ball-like tops, and for whom putting the "balls to the wall" (the firewall of the aircraft) meant making the aircraft fly as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, I feel like some terms really do originate in mistreatment of folks, and no one seems to care. So we end up banning terms like "blacklist" (which has little or nothing to do with race as far as I can tell) and keep around terms like "grandfathered-in", which really do have roots in oppression:
> Originally referred to a clause added to the constitutions of some Southern US states that exempted people with relatives that had voted before 1867 from strict new voting requirements, in effect disproportionately limiting the ability of African Americans to vote.
FWIW, they included that one on the list.
I’m trying to imagine how this could be used when referring to male anatomy, but I’m drawing a blank. Why would you ever put you balls to the wall? Much less in a hurry.
But words change over time and therefore nit-picking by declaring a particular past meaning of a word or phrase as the only meaning is incorrect.
For example "basket case" is common usage and hardly means today what it once may have.
Nonetheless the entire idea of using such a list to censor speech is absurd.
These "purity" movements will eventually come for everybody.
I don't think it is even fair to call what these "far left" people are doing "far left" because they're not actually pushing any new position and if anything are drifting to the right on a number of economic issues that were previously center stage. They are just employing extremist tactics on already broadly accepted positions, and looking for opportunities to edge lord.
Institutional efforts at managing the internal environment and PR by notable right-wing institution Stanford University (home of the Hoover Institution) are not being done by people that are, claim to be, or are assumed by anyone else to be “far left”.
Well that is my point.
> ...claim to be, or are assumed by anyone else
Gotta disagree there, in 2021 the self-identified breakdown was:
60.6% Democrat, 21.6% Independent, 9.1% Socialist, 4.9% Republican, 3.8% Other
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/16r96A47pFcXQF2Z2Ei7ZvoXyBe8...)
You just have to ride the wave, take stock, take a break and then someday keep fighting the good fight once your mental health recovers.
And be thankful nobody has guns.
It's not from reading such words once. But if you hear them many many times, they can cause harm because they create subtle biases, prejudices, change one's self-image, etc.
The stories we tell ourselves matter, and I don't see why everyone has to tell the most pessimistic, helpless story possible when these words come up by believing that harm is inevitable for each word on this (or any) list.
If we really need to police (sorry, regulate) language this much an alternative narrative would be that "these words are embarrassing for the speaker because they may appear old fashioned or niche".
The more of this we normalize for children, the worse it'll get as they grow up and do the same.
And what irks me, is that I feel that we've seen this before (or at least read about it): even if it's not the same, it rhymes with what's been happening around the world for most of the 20th century. The methods of psychologically forcing people to eschew logic and rational thought, and submit to a half-baked ideology instead, are pretty much the same - even if it's not state-sponsored and nobody is pulling guns just yet.
I don't think people pushing this insanity (err, wild thing) realize how close they are in methods to the historical groups and present-day boogeypeople they claim to oppose.
https://careerservices.upenn.edu/application-materials-for-t...
Tbf this seems baked in to human development, some children just love enforcing authorities' rules and tattling on other children
We've had bubble over the past 20 years where big tech companies and news organizations have indulged the silliness internally to reduce friction for the graduates they hire but that is drying up with the economic downturn. We're reverting to the mean.
Instead of insulting someone for an opinion, maybe try making a counter point thats on topic and relevant to the comment? I know its tiring to have a conversation on the issue and its easier to attack people but thats how discussion goes.
There has been extensive research into PTSD and other trauma syndromes. If what you are saying is true, then surely some psychological research has at least explored the possibility of the phenomena.
I'm basing my assertions on my experience with Meditation, Cognitive behavioral therapy, and similar things. From my understanding, mental health is severely damaged by negative internal narratives, and CBT and meditation attack (sorry, treat) these negative internal associations and narratives directly, and produce reliable positive interventions for PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. Check out Happiness Hypothesis for a thorough grounding on all these statements.
In this case, I'm suggesting that by focusing on harm, and introducing new harmful associations with otherwise benign words, we're circumventing the intent of the speaker, and introducing the negative narrative. It's like reverse CBT.
Here's info on CBT:
https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cog...
(Seriously, look at that page and tell me that "identifying all possible negative associations, cataloging them, and relying on collective authority to minimize harm to self" is a helpful psychological strategy)
And yes, there has been research that trigger warnings (sorry, content warnings) have the opposite effect -- they almost encourage people to feel anxiety over the content that follows. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/harvard-pr...
That is why I believe that the story we tell ourselves about an event is actually more harmful than the event itself in most cases.
But we accepted it, updated our tooling, retrained our muscle memory from git checkout master to git checkout main to appease them. We gave them a taste of power and they're going to keep exercising it until meeting sufficient resistance.
Enough people need to call it out and say No. It shouldn't be that hard. This is a small power drunk group that's colonizing the language. Point it out. No one gets to dictate our language from the top down.
I'm the "CI/CD guy" (sorry, person) and so far I'd guess I've spent about 40 hours fixing builds as a result of this change, pretty much always unexpectedly. Every time this happens I feel burned again.
Good: what you call bullying is what people from an older generation would have called the start of a robust and healthy conversation about why playing along with PC crap is bad for everyone.
This is straight out of totalitarian regimes' playbook.
It's not only taking social justice too far, I'd say it's a betrayal of the ideal of a just, inclusive and safe society.
<insert "Always Has Been" meme here>
This has been quite obvious for at least a decade now; that's when the term "social justice" started to gain pejorative associations, and it did so for a reason.
I remember back in ~2010-2012 when this was seen as an exciting, new, positive development. That was back when we were talking about 4chan trolling Scientology <insert "Oh Fuck The Internet Is Here" meme here>, and the Arab Spring (back before it became apparent it wasn't just Twitter vs. authoritarian governments, and that people didn't come out of it better off). I remember cheering to a TED talk that talked up decentralized activism, comparing it to "murmurations", complete with video of starlings flying to "Pachelbel - Canon In D Major".
A decade later, I don't find it inspiring or exciting anymore. I find it utterly terrifying. Yes, even back then, I had the thought on the back of my mind, that this "unorganized mob" could be abused (something the TV show Continuum later reminded me of), and is capable of pushing for both the right and wrong thing. But there was this sense of optimism that it'll "arc towards justice". Oh how very wrong we were back then.
> And this is why I disagree with Elon, I don't think the wokes are any more dangerous than any other performative religion or subculture. They are annoying but have no real goals other than winning the virtue signaling game.
I don't know what Elon Musk has to say about this, but I disagree with what you wrote here, for two reasons.
1. They've already proven to be much more dangerous than "other performative religion or subculture". Other religions and subcultures didn't manage to make people afraid of speaking their mind on the Internet. Other religions and subcultures didn't manage to change hiring policies, standardize all kinds of weird trainings in corporations, or make a well-known university publish an absurd list of "bad words".
2. If anything I was taught about late 19th and early 20th century was accurate, socialism and communism started with decentralized, organic movements popping up all around the world. Those movements were then quickly co-opted by competing political upstarts, who first started to fight another - until, after a lot of bloodshed, one group emerged victorious, took power from the incumbents, and became a defining force of 20th century history.
My point being, decentralized, distributed mobs with no real goals but lots of pent up energy are a resource to political schemers. They are thus dangerous in the same way spilled gasoline is: on its own it just smells bad, but it creates an environment where a single spark can lead to a lot of devastation.
Have you ever heard of gamergate? Do you have any idea what it's like to be a woman on the internet?
Yes. It's what arguably started (this iteration of) this insanity. And it's very much "the wokes" GP was referring to, not "other religions and subcultures".
> Do you have any idea what it's like to be a woman on the internet?
No. I have some idea based on what I've been told by women close to me, but it's obviously a small sample limited by age and geography.
It's mostly white, mostly affluent people, competing in the political sensitivity olympics, probably without even realising they're harming the very causes they claim to fight for.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin...
If you don't feel uncomfortable for any of these words or phrases, then consider yourself fortunate; it does not apply to you. But don't dismiss it because you're not offended for any of the words, just be fortunate it's not a problem you have.
This list is in itself offensive. Multiple entries try to force words into negative territory. This includes words previously used to be inclusive and presumably words from this list of "alternatives" will be in a future list.
People, all people, need to stop being offended on "my behalf." Especially people with a job that entitles them to work on something full of self-realizable hypocrisies like: "Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person."
For those curious: I have worked all my life to see my "off-center brain chemistry" in a positive light. I do not under any circumstances want some person telling me OCD is offensive.
Take half your paycheck and save some lives. Have a reason to actually feel good about yourself.
But I happen to be from Bosnia and even when I first immigrated to Canada in the late 90s, I was amused at my Canadian friends constantly getting offended on my behalf. A joke or reference that somebody would make that I would find funny or agree with, would send my friends in a whirl and a twirl. I focused on intent - these particular people in these particular circumstances neither wanted nor did offend the relevant party.
I fear if we treat words themselves as "offensive", making lists with no consideration of intent, circumstance, relationship, and actual impact, it's at best a pointless and at worst a divisive and Orwellian exercise.
Edit : some suggestions are genuinely useful and thoughtful, and I think conversation rather than lists is where we should focus, as even the very second line on the list - "replace addicted with hooked" - isn't it obvious that next iteration of the list will include "hooked"??
The gist is that anyone can joke about anything, but jokes from outside an experience tend to be quite boring. Like the American reactionary love of The One Joke[0]. Calling them offensive gives the jokes way too much credit. Nothing they come up with holds a candle to what an actual trans or nonbinary person can think up. Some people think making "offensive" jokes prevents them from being a hack.
This is an absolutely absurd take.
The initiative is to remove words from official websites, not about making sure people never hear them. If you see negative language about your race/gender on your school website, you don’t think that’s gonna cause some anxiety? You don’t think that’s gonna make you wonder if you belong there? You don’t think that doubt will impair your ability to fully participate in that institution?
> This way you can search for infractions and more expeditiously accuse and eject your rivals (people whose work is better than yours).
How are you gonna play bully and victim in the same post? Pick a lane!
I have no doubt that you could find an actual victim/target/member of a marginalized group to claim to be bothered by any of these phrases in the first person. But I'm also certain that members of such groups enjoy telling other people what to do just as much (on average) as all of humankind at large, which is to say a lot, and so a better standard of evidence is needed.
I've struggled to envision what such evidence would look like, but I think it will have to be someone who is better at devising experiments than me.
Also, if anyone from Stanford is reading, “balls to the wall” refers to the operation of a centrifugal governor. It is not a reference to male anatomy.
> Lose their name to one constituent
> Where were we when the U.S. went
> And took the word American away
> But to be fair to them
> Their other name options
> Like U.S.A.ers and United Statesians
> Were pretty bad
It seems to me like a simple cultural/language difference related to how we count the continents. In the Anglosphere (not just the USA) children are brought up thinking of seven continents, including North and South America, while in Spanish‐speaking countries they think of six, including simply America. Neither is really right or wrong, because there’s no formal definition of what a continent is—it’s merely convention. (Some people consider Eurasia a single continent, some people don’t consider Antarctica a continent…)
Because of this difference in convention, the word “América” in Spanish is more accurately translated to English as “the Americas” than “America.”
Is this actually a problem that needs fixing in English? Is it a problem at all? Are there any Canadians out there offended at not being called Americans despite making up a major part of [North] America?
The suggested alternative of using “United States” to refer to America‐the‐country overlooks that there is another country (even another North American country!) with that name: Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
The United States of America is the only country in the world with the word "America" in its name.
What I would really like to know, however, is if people from various backgrounds have been consulted. If not, the authors of that list have fallen to the very same fallacy I described: only a person of background X should have the right to decide whether an expression is hateful or otherwise undesirable towards group X. If this is not the case, we get this [2] kind of hypocrisy.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias 2. https://mooseyanon.medium.com/github-f-ck-your-name-change-d...
Similar to this, Stanford has a huge endowment. They could actually help poor & marginalized black n brown communities. But instead they will continue to destroy neighborhoods(e.g. University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago). Harvard will continue to put out machine economists and lawyers that incarcerate people.
People want to come together to 'help', which is cool, but I think they are fking retard#d about what real help looks like. Probably not like authoritarianism.
Isn't hand made ableist? What about the people with no hands? Can't they create things without the usage of hands?
This is a never ending rabbithole of idiocy.
And I was surprised Stanford still invited Peter Thiel for their Conference last month.
Suicide is a self-inflicted act; committed suicide is correct - and I say this as a man living on the edge.
To diminish that is to refuse to accept the underlying cause, which is a bad fucking way to stop it from happening again (or at least to someone else).
This whole damned list is retarded.
Most of the elements aren't even accurate; they're euphemisms.
Someone with OCD isn't 'detail-oriented' they're detail obsessed.
> walk-in: Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with disabilities.
Come on. Seriously? Anyone who is offended by that is offended for a hobby.
> ballsy: Attributes personality traits to anatomy.
The balls literally produce testosterone, which literally increases risk taking behaviour.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Fucked bodies - but they have to be tough as nails mentally.
(And stop doing scrum.)
Oh no, it's worse. They're offended as a job.
Ridding academia of pseudoscience goes beyond fixing p-hacking. These academic fringes are intellectually defective and have large real-world influence. Academia tolerates pseudoscience far too much, and that should be addressed.
Stanford is about as influential an institution as we have. When tarball and gray hat are seen as racist there are no bounds.
The bold black aggressive lettering on a white background on that Stanford page is next. I am surprised no one noticed that actually.
It's impossible to address the true root cause, at least, not in a politically correct way. Some people are simply incapable of producing good quality research that is repeatable. Or just can't quite cut it in technical fields [0]. These initiatives around "inclusive language" and "bias" are just a way for these folks to keep the academic grift going on longer.
It's political suicide to talk against these people or question the validity of their research because they won't hesitate to band against someone to "cancel" him or her [1] (and it's essential for their survival; since there's no proof of what they are pushing, it's impossible to defend otherwise!).
[0] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
[1] https://www.boston.com/news/college/2021/10/07/chicago-profe...
Thank goodness, there's still a chance they can come to their senses.
The term "dad" in "dad joke" excludes anyone who doesn't, is incapable, or chooses not to have children (procreating?) and who also identifies (explicitly or implicitly) as a member of the category "male" (a vestigial term from the sex-assigned binary heterodoxy).
I don't think calling "dad jokes" just "jokes" is precise enough language because people typically are trying to refer to a genre of joke when they use the term.
Maybe "cringe funnies?" Although "cringe" is more of a slang term from the internet and isn't robust enough to survive into perpetuity...
I'm actually serious... What are some good alternatives?
In a dad joke the punchline is apparent.
If you ask my kids, a good alternative would be for me to just not tell any jokes.
(See what I did there? That's a dad joke, and I'm proud of it.)
homogenising all communication and making strict formal guidelines makes it much easier to make a competing platform that scales.
Stanford is doing the transition from a learning platform based in identity to one based I scalability.
My guess, however, is that it is to their detriment.
This garbage was obviously not written by a person with any significant technical background. How else would they come up with equating `user` and `client`?
The people who are actually responsible for the greatest inequities in our societies are neither talking of listening to you or I in the first place.
There are words like "slave" that actually cause offense to real people when used in a trivialising way. Accordingly, terminology around databases and the like has changed, and that's a good thing.
A laundry list of terms to be "eliminated", some of which are completely harmless makes a joke of real problems and is the opposite of helpful.
Not one step back, or they will rip us apart.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative#Pejoration_and_me...
Also, they either don’t understand the difference between ‘imply’ and ‘infer’, or they are intentionally misusing the word ‘infer’.
Thoughts on what replacement they’d prefer? I also suspect though that they wouldn't want to be identified as a group at all. What do you do when there's group that doesn't want to be referred to as a group?
Has anyone ever (let alone "often") heard the word "yellow" used in this manner?
Orwell wrote that this politispeak was used to make palatable the most disturbing actions. We see it more and more every day.
Therefore step 1 in any "public battle of words" is to spin the narrative to cast yourself as the victim.
And if you can't manage that then find or invent a victim and rush to his defense. Because whoever defends the victim is also morally superior.
(I wonder who's the more morally superior, the victim or the defender-of-victim. I'm thinking the defender. There is an implied authority.)
https://quotefancy.com/quote/1909496/Christopher-Hitchens-Wh...
[EDIT]: Better source:
"Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you."
Correct. And I hereby reject to allow Stanford power over my speech.
Hrmph. It's not April 1st.
They must be serious.
Also, what degree does one get in Stanford after a BSc?
Even Orwell couldn't picture the animals as the timid cowards that they truly were.
First they came for freedom of speech, and I did not speak out. Then they came for freedom of thought, and I did not speak out. Then they came for all, and there was nothing left to speak for.
IDK what's going on in US and I barely speak English, so often people here can't understand me. Sorry about that that sentence, it implies I am the chief and you white people have to make and effort to vaguely making out an idea of what I'm saying. Despite my bad English.
<<Circle the wagons>>, that's the King's Indian Defense opening. I often using it when I'm black and my opponent are failing to install his London System. Sorry about that wording. It implies I am the King, or at least, someone is the King and someone is the Indian, the indigenous people who obey and defend the Empire. Well it's just a bishop, you know, that I left in a diagonal. Bishop, obispo, implies I am not an Anglican I guess, I don't mean it. And really really I am not black enough, but you know the rules: one time you are white, then you are black.
<<Indian summer>>. That's interesting. Did not Kant said time is a synthetic a priori knowledge? I'm disagree Mr. Time is a thing we teach each other. My parents struggle hard with my perceiving of time when I was a child, I guess. I wonder how time is like to people like Messi. In my corner of the world we often refers to <<paraguayan hour>> meaning it's expecting you late.
<<User>>. You all know how 'boring' they are. And no, they are no clients, clients are often smart and, I'm thinking of Betterbird, crisps.
<<Too many chiefs, not enough indians>> thanks for the phrase. I like that. Even is a kind of metaphor that for and instant suggests white people, or some people, are indians or indigenous and other are chiefs, you know leaders of people who are born in a certain place.
But, I'm a <<survivor>> and gonna make it.
But this was 50 years ago, could not imagine what would happen today. Judging by Youtube-videos bodily harm would be almost certain.
"I saw your girlfriend. It was buying something at the corner store."
Is approximately as bad as "The bitch was at the corner store."
Because "it" is reserved for animals and inanimate objects.
If you have an obvious accent, people will generally understand the "it" was a grammatical error.
I have a hard time believing someone in their right mind could come up with a list like this unless tongue-in-cheek.
I was considering trying to send my offspring there, I am now entirely reconsidering, don't want them to be subjected to that kind of political brainwashing.
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.
Agree with the list or not it at least tries to explain the reasoning for everything on it.
Stanford hiding their page indicates that they understand their approach is not universally accepted.
The vast majority of cases presented here are changes I've learned over the past 20+ years. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s,almost all of the negative cases on here were normal ways to talk. Some individual cases are debatable--and it would probably be better to refer to more nuance, since there is not unanimous agreement on all of them--but on the whole, I think it's a useful catalog, with mostly good rationale.
I think there are wrong ways to use such a catalog. Using it to be punitive or demanding 100% compliance would be counterproductive, I think. Nothing is absolute. However, using it as a guide for small, teachable moments is really useful.
Honestly, it's simply about being respectful and making an effort. Considering my language use is a small, but useful step to improving my practice of empathy, on the whole.
Likely because the list itself is the product of class bias
"White space" is offensive but "white trash" isn't?
This list is embarrassing, and not worthy of bearing the name of Stanford.
Well that went full circle
This list is the result of work done by People of Color in Technology (POC-IT).
So they shouldn't be using their own name.
Utter madness.
An ivory tower council of privileged white men and women should never claim the authority to represent unprivileged minorities.
> user
> While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain.
How exactly is this confusing? What other country uses American as a demonym?
> The word "preferred" suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice or a preference."
Is it not? I identify as a very confused motherfucker on this particular shambolyee
While some are understandable, others feel like they were scrapped off The Onion (or similar).
Which is racist & sexist.
You’re a Karen if you disagree.
I recently joined an engineering team where there's a cultural norm of not using the word "guys" to address a group. When I first heard this, I kinda rolled my eyes but got on board.
It took a tremendous amount of mental effort to weed that word out of my vocabulary, but it's had a tangible effect on my mentality. It has completely reaffirmed my belief in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis--our language influences how we think.
Intentionally changing the words and phrases we use is one of the most powerful tools we have for changing our behavior, and correcting both logical and social biases.
If what you're saying is true, that also has the implication that manipulating language at a societal scale is a great way to manipulate society into thinking the way you want. Is that really what we want? To have a minority manipulate our language in order to influence our thoughts?
What tangible effects did it have on your mentality?
this requires elaboration because without further context it is impossible to understand what demonstrable benefits you have achieved by altering your language use thusly, aside from getting along with your team better, due to your compliance with their language-use mandate.
I partially agree. Some of the suggestions for changes are good in some contexts, but there are also many problems with this list, too.
(There are also some things I would suggest to change to be improved even though the existing words are not "racist", but they tend to ignore such things; nevertheless, I think they can sometimes be helpful, too (e.g. I think "megagram" is better than "tonne").)
> It has completely reaffirmed my belief in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis--our language influences how we think.
Of course it does affect it at least partially, but it seems that the language has a greater effect on the ability to communicate than it does on the ability to think; some things you can think of but not communicate very well, due to the language being in use.
> Intentionally changing the words and phrases we use is one of the most powerful tools we have for changing our behavior, and correcting both logical and social biases.
It can help, if it makes it clearer and more precise. Sometimes that is the case, but sometimes not. (And, sometimes, using more words just makes it too long, rather than actually being good.)
However, bias is not only due to words (although it does have an effect, especially when communicating), and using different words can ahve different bias, so it does not truly completely avoid a bias.
(Hope this very comment abides by EHLI)
Is it me or someone over there thinks this may have something to do with testicles?
> This term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods.
I don’t know, might have been used that way. Wikipedia says it originated from different militaries using it as a rallying cry, while hip actually comes from the English word.
As a German, I would not use it today, because it‘s rather old fashioned, but I have no negative connotation with it. Did not even know, that it originated in the military.
If this expression reminds you of the Holocaust, you might as well be reminded by every German word and therefore avoid it, which might be difficult speaking a Germanic language like English.
There's no way whatsoever that it is tied to the Holocaust. If we take that path, I guess books will be banned next, so they can no longer be burned.
Don't use "brave," you might be invoking the spirit of the msuline
I can find zero supporting evidence for this.
Also it's "imply".
Ableist
Ageism
Colonialism
Culturally Appropriative
Gender-Based
Imprecise Language
Institutionalized Racism
Person-First
Violent
Additional Considerations
The outrage against this is going to be a festival of mansplaining, 'splained by people who have never been talked over in a meeting by a woman, nor pulled over for driving while black. OK, that's not your lived experience, but that's why empathy is so valuable to arriving at the right answer. Without it, it's right only for you.
I wonder if they keep this title. Fits right in with
> Unneccesary use of violent language
This identify and grievance based social leftism does very little to materially improve the conditions of people, very little to change actual power structures which harm the everyday family, and does very much to divide people by making individual identity/attributes the most important thing about a person. Community goes out the window, free expression is ridiculed.
Economic leftism and social democracy is the key to pushing politics leftward in the United States. It prioritizes economic security for people and families. It wants to take away free markets and profit motive from those industries where it is harmful or objectively immoral, such as health insurance and prisons. It wants to lift all people of all races and identities, to get everyone a decent education, housing, healthcare, and work in order to secure a person's ability to live day to day without fear bankruptcy or homelessness.
This kind of divisive, satirical, Newspeak bullshit will do more to keep the far right in power in the United States.
Should we get rid of bravo then as well? I assume people making these lists have good intentions, but efforts like this really get lost in the sauce. They are effectively parodying themselves.
Lol, if only stand-ups were actually quick
When I was younger I used the word retard disparagingly, and someone who was the father of someone who was suffered from a disability was visibly hurt. The world doesn't need that.
I agree with the reasoning behind capitalizing the b in Black but not the w in White when referring to people.
But holy cow, this article is nuts. There is some serious group think going on in these academic groups, and despite a desire to do the right thing, this article is going to have the opposite effect. The fact this was published shows a serious lack of critical review, a lack of academic rigor, and an extreme rejection of pragmatism in the face of idealism which is exactly how liberalism fails.
The actual reason is activist pettiness, though.
A lot of the reason to be afraid of the modern times, though, is that many more or less left-lib people have lost sight of why anything the activist class wants might be bad. People increasingly just have no understanding for why these kinds of word redefinitions or any activist program like trying to erase the contributions of assholes from projects and products might be damaging. It's not necessarily that they're actively onboard. It's not that they're actively pushing for more silliness, but there's just a new blindness as to what they're doing.
It's similar to how in during the pandemic a lot of people were really into the idea of forcibly relocating unvaccinated people, and it just didn't occur to them that their policy might be monstrous.
this is what these people want to take from you
How is hooked 'better'? They both mean the same?!?
But what are we supposed to say instead of Mexican American or Asian American? AFAIK there is not an adjective in English that means "from the United States", aside from "American".
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with referring to yourself as American.
There’s something very wrong with trying to create a problem from it. Probably something uniquely…American.
edit: ... we already live in.
It was used because other people thought Slavic people were the ideal slaves and Europeans enslaved the Slavs.
So because everyone thought Slavs were the best slaves, they just morphed to slave.
It is highly offensive to me that people use the word "slave" because this means that they are automatically saying that I am naturally fit to be a slave and not a human being.
"The oldest written history of the Slavs can be shortly summarised -- myriads of slave hunts and the enthralment of entire peoples. The Slav was the most prized of human goods. With increased strength outside his marshy land of origin, hardened to the utmost against all privation, industrious, content with little, good-humoured, and cheerful, he filled the slave markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It must be remembered that for every Slavonic slave who reached his destination, at least ten succumbed to inhuman treatment during transport and to the heat of the climate."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave
Because of this, Slavs are still seen as inferior throughout the Middle Ages, and even now, as seen by dumb Polack jokes. By the 1800s, Slavs were subjected to expulsions and massacres by Germanic groups. This anti-Slavic sentiment followed the predictable trajectory of Germanic racism and, a century later, reached its natural conclusion: almost 11 million Slavs were murdered in Hitler’s long list of murdered “subhumans.”
Why were Slavs targeted by the Nazis? They were seen as intellectually inferior and invaders who were living on stolen Germanic land. The German's plan was to eliminate 30 million (!!) Slavs, create room for the expanding Aryan race in the Eastern territories, and enslave the remaining Slavic population
So.....is everyone here, and especially the wokish people, going to immediately and forever stop using the world "slave?" So, that's right...you cannot describe black people brought to the USA as "slaves." Never use the world "slave" as it is known by me as the s-word, and makes me exceptionally angry, just like the n-word for black people. Use another word for the s-word, I don't care what it is, and it's not my job to find one.
I fail to see how someone unfamiliar with that history could be conveying that meaning.
It was meant both reasons you give, but come on - it is simple to understand. You know exactly what I mean, and I do find it offensive. But it still is sarcastic at the same time. Things can mean two things at the same time.
But really, what it comes down to, is if someone finds something offensive, you don't use it. 100% it is derogatory word indicating Slavs are equivalent to slaves. If you disagree, you are just being willfully unseeing.
What on Earth? If I bring lunch in a brown bag, am I allowed to refer to it? Am I not allowed to bring lunch in a brown bag? Can I bring other things in a brown bag?
If I racially discriminate my mid day meeting using a white bag, is that ok?
Those that think the language needs to be changed in order to prevent harm are not going to be content with these suggestions merely being optional. Activists will push for this to become a new criterion for proper writing, probably on the same level as style guides.
There is a reason why "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy. If Stanford ever proposed to enforce this, then that is an easy off-ramp to the slippery slope.
Censorship, no. But I’ll be upfront and say that I think the vast majority of the suggestions in this guide are unjustified, unnecessary, and serve to provide a chilling effect on how people are allowed to speak about the world. I do believe the ultimate goal is not just to police language, but to police how people think. A cursory look at the rationale behind each suggestion supports this.
Therefore, I hope likeminded people speak out about how this guide should not be followed. And that people vociferously oppose that this document be referenced in any official guidelines.
Just as there is no legal requirement to write using Chicago or AP style, they have become de facto requirements. So I worry that just having it be “voluntary” will lead to academics pushing it as a soft requirement that eventually becomes a hard one that is voluntary in name only.
By the way, I find the word "Elimination" very violent. It should have a non-harmful alternative.
For example "balls to the wall" comes from aviation (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall) and not from human anatomy. Even when the source of that expression is well attributed, later on the list goes on to call out "rule of thumb" even though it says it is unable to attribute the source of that expression (and, yes, maybe there is a violent past to it, but also: a person's thumb is about an inch, a useful way of measuring things of that size scale). And of course, they suggest instead of rule of thumb "standard rule," even though the etymology of "standard" involved "stand" - which elsewhere seems something the list would consider ableist.
Man in some context means an adult human male, but sometimes it just means any human (see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/man). When Neal Armstrong said "... one giant leap for mankind," he was not speaking on behalf of the species. Some groups of Christians have a prayer that reads in part "for us men..." which is prayed equally by the female members of the congregation. There are plenty of cases where the word "men" is equally clear that we're referring to all members of the human species.
And the word "guys" is routinely used to refer to a group that is not just men. People use it all the time, everyone knows what we mean, it does not cause offense, and in using it to refer to a group you are no more implying that the group is all male as you are implying that the group is composed of clones of Guy Fawkes (from whom the term originated).
Besides ones where just facts are getting in the way, there are also many that just seem ineffectual. For example, "the use of person-first language" - In English, adjectives come first. Sometimes English makes use of substantives, either directly or as lone words from other languages. When you put the word "person" first, you aren't magically changing how people construe that sentence - if someone wants to be uncharitable and define someone entirely by a characteristic, they probably will, and the rest of us will go on understanding that each of us can be described in multiple ways depending on the context.
The "Latinx" also needs to go. Every poll I've seen indicates that the people whom it was meant to describe don't care for it, and find it disrespectful of their linguistic heritage.
But.. disability is abnormal and negative? How tortured of a definition of 'normal' must one use to make blindness normal? And I suspect if the author of that sentence were offered, say, $100,000 to undergo a painless but irreversible blinding surgery, they would very quickly admit blindness is a negative - a greater negative than missing out on $100,000. In fact I suspect most people wouldn't accept that offer even if it had many more zeros.
But still we must pretend?
> Instead of "committed suicide", consider using "died by suicide". Context: Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.
And with this they tip their hand. The mental contortions required to conclude that "committed suicide" trivializes something, but "died by suicide" doesn't, are so extreme that I cannot believe anyone honestly holds that opinion. That leaves as the most likely conclusion that this document is not an honest effort to eliminate 'harm', but a mine-field, a list of sins and prohibitions, to be used as ammo against opponents.
And some people still consider that Orwell wrote fiction.
I think the notion is that "committed suicide" is like "committed a crime" and harkens back to the Christian notion that suicide is a crime (against God). And so it's moralizing language that blames the person for killing themselves.
You can verify that this is a common notion among people who work in the field by Googling. For example, the first hit when I search for "why shouldn't we say committed suicide" is https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/language-mat... which says:
> For example, the phrase "committed suicide" is frowned on because it harks back to an era when suicide was considered a sin or a crime. Think about the times when we use the word "commit": "commit adultery" or "commit murder."
> That leaves as the most likely conclusion that this document is not an honest effort to eliminate 'harm', but a mine-field, a list of sins and prohibitions, to be used as ammo against opponents.
It's interesting that you arrived at this conclusion before doing a minimal amount of research!
I hope.
Seriously, ignore political correctness for a bit. The “master” branch is generally not in charge of anything. It’s not like a master recording of which everything else is a copy. It has no special rights and isn’t even necessary more important.
It made a limited sort of sense in Linux where torvalds/linux.git’s master branch is the branch that everyone else’s development eventually follows, but my git clone of that is not any sort of master despite being called “master”.
It's so easy. Almost every word has positive and negative connotations. Find such a word in your opponent's vocabulary, claim they intended the negative connotations, and thus declare him a sinner. Reference this Stanford document to support your accusation.
"Died by suicide" implies passivity. It just happened to them.
Like "Officer involved shootings."
In the olden days, a news report would say "A suspect was fatally shot by a police officer."
Now, they'll only say "A suspect was fatally injured during an officer-involved shooting."
Which is like, yeah no kidding the officer was "involved" -- he pulled the trigger!
I’ve got a friend who was recently homeless. Thinking of him as a “homeless person” isn’t really so helpful.
That said, I think developing a thick skin should be a curricular objective for all people.
I don't think either is any more an identity than the other.
And I'd rather people engage with the problem, rather than virtue signaling by using the 'correct' terminology, whatever that is this week.
I'm sure weve all had an issue with a company, and in their communications, theyve been polite and used the 'right' words, but in the end you know they are basically fobbing you off, and refusing to sort the problem. the issue isn't the words, the issue is the attitude.
for me the issues would come in around how they perceive me. you could say that language used is indicative of that, but I disagree, polite words are often used to be very impolite. It takes very little time to assess someones perception, so I really don't see the utility in making people use 'correct' words.
For me though, I simply see being offbeat phrasing as being stigmatizing in practice, it ends up drawing more attention to whatever was being described.
As you can verify with some Googling, there are many Deaf people who choose not to undergo surgery to gain the ability to hear. (This isn't a universal preference by any means, but it's also not fringe.)
Capital-D Deaf culture does not as a rule view their lack of hearing as a horrible wrong that needs to be corrected for them to live a “normal” life. They believe that they are living a normal life, and screw you for suggesting otherwise, and many would tell you that they do not want to speak your inferior language anyways, because it is broadly technically inferior due to its inherent one-dimensionality: you describe things with a scalar pressure varying with time only, their language describes things with motions in three dimensions of space as well as in time.
This means that in the 95% case, the dominant attitude is not “I’m afraid,” it's “those folks are assholes half the time, why would I want to join them if I don't have to?”. It's a cultural objection rather than a physiological one.
"The grapes are sour anyway." I'd bet the rate of assholes among the deaf is probably about equal to the non-deaf.
I don't know the specifics of this claim, so I won't talk about the argument that I assume you're trying to make. However, the argument you're actually making here is completely untrue. Almost all deaf people understand and can communicate through language. In fact, if you put a group of deaf people together for long enough, they may well spontaneously generate a language. Sign languages are real languages with almost all of the features of spoken languages (and with additional features of their own). The idea that someone can only understand "language" if they are and to hear is completely wrong.
I assume what you're trying to say is that if you can't hear by this age, you will not be able to decipher sounds into language - I have no idea if this is the case. But this is an important semantic distinction (understanding language versus understanding language from sounds alone), and the fact that you seem to have inadvertently confused them seems relevant to the issue at hand: it is very easy for us to accept spoken language as a universal standard, when in practice, spoken language is just one (more common) variant of many different forms of language.
I'd be more interested in the source for their claim, than being pedantic about them missing "spoken" in where they clearly meant that.
It's not that different from refusing to use someone's pronouns. I think that both are a mean way to respond to a fellow human.
Maybe that's the bigger question here. Should language be precise, or nice? Or, to the extremes we're seeing here, should language be formed to make certain types of subjects difficult or impossible to present themselves? Maybe freedom of thought, and the ugliness beyond, is something that should only be allowed in ones own head?
I don't think that asking people to say "died by suicide" rather than "committed suicide" is a question of precision vs niceness. Both are plenty precise, we agree they describe exactly the same IRL event.
I also don't think that asking people to say "died by suicide" rather than "committed suicide" is an affront to freedom of thought, for the same reason.
That said, sure, yes, my parents always told me to "think before you speak" and sometimes "you can think it but don't say it". We all think things that we shouldn't say, usually because saying those things will hurt someone. If you insist on saying something after being informed that it hurts someone (e.g., not using their pronouns, or referring to a painful moment in their life [e.g. the suicide of a loved one] in a way that hurts them) then, yeah, that's kind of the thing my parents tried to teach me not to do.
As a consequence, getting an implant as an adult, or allowing your deaf newborn to be implanted, touches issues of social status and identity and politics within the Deaf community.
It doesn't take long for a culturally Deaf person to do a little thought experiment. What if the hearing can one day "solve" deafness in say 98% of children at birth? The cultural Deaf community may well face extinction under those circumstances. There would be no more children learning sign language as their native language, the chain of cultural transmission from deaf parent to deaf child would be broken. It is quite literally the end of their distinct culture and way of life, which they do not view as impaired or lesser.
You can even take this argument a step further. If mainstream society starts pushing and not simply offering cochlear implants to deaf children -- such as by creating a narrative that the Deaf are lesser or impaired in some way -- then that may well constitute a form of cultural genocide, taking the children of a particular culture judged as less or inferior, mutilating them, and forcing them to be raised in a different culture.
I'm not particularly convinced by the more extreme form of the argument, but it has been made, and the argument as a whole in all its various forms, I don't think can be fully dismissed easily. There is a point there.
If this is serious, I've now read the dumbest thing I may ever read in my life. People who've been traumatized by rape affirm their lives as rape survivors. Yet, we don't consider preventing rape an attempt at cultural genocide of the rape survivor culture and community. Likewise, combat veterans have their own culture and community. We don't consider preventing war as cultural genocide of veterans.
Call it culture if you'd like, it arises from being injured in some way, or not having an ability. Restoring this ability and preventing the injury is an absolutely good thing. Reframing the community of the disenfranchised as a 'culture' so you can call this benefit 'cultural genocide' is nonsense semantics. Deaf 'culture' dying is as good as people being born with functional hearing.
Article from 2017: https://bioedge.org/enhancement/will-curing-the-deaf-lead-to...
I'm here to explore the ideas around this, not trash nor proselytize any particular idea for the sake of it. You won't get very far by starting with comparing deafness to having been raped or having your leg blown off. Rape survivors are not a distinct cultural group.
Take deafness and ability entirely out of the equation for now.
People who speak sign language as a native language are a distinct cultural group with a long and separate heritage from the hearing world. For example, American Sign Language is related to French Sign Language and the speakers of each can understand each other somewhat. While British Sign Language is totally different and American and British deaf people can't even easily speak to each other in sign, only in writing. There's a whole cultural world there, as vibrant and functional as hearing ones.
They get along fairly well. People born deaf and raised in a deaf community generally have better outcomes socially and economically compared to deaf people raised in isolation in hearing culture. Yes, they cannot hear, but they don't feel they're missing anything and, functionally speaking, they'd survive on their own just fine without hearing.
I was born quite hard of hearing, and I am going deaf as I get older. I was raised hearing. Bitterly ironically, I'm musically talented and it is one of my great pleasures. I am also linguistically talented, particularly with phonetics. (Taught myself in my teens to improve my speech and it became a fascination.) And yet I am losing the capacity to sense those things.
Trust me. I get it. I get it very well. The deaf have no idea what they're missing.
And yet Deaf culture is a precious thing that also deserves to exist.
It is an impasse and a seeming paradox and I don't have an answer. Raise every child hearing and allowing sign and the culture to die out is undesirable just as people who could hear music and speech being unable to hear them is.
Being deaf is an inherently negative aspect. You either have the ability to hear, or you do not. If you do not, it is a dis-ability. No one wants to lose an ability to do something.
Someone who lives an extensive period of time without an ability may have learned how to live without this ability. They learn to cope and affirm their life with its faults in their current state. Offering the ability they lost and have learned to live without may be declined because of the affirmation of their life as it is. It could be declined because the transition is uncomfortable as well. Either way, being deaf is still negative, they've just psychologically coped well.
If you had the choice, would you choose that your child be deaf or not? That you be deaf or not? If one isn't deaf, would they choose to become deaf or not? This entire argument results from academic nonsense that anyone outside that context can see through.
Regarding culture, culture is defined as "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.". A social group of veterans (injured or not) absolutely can be considered equivalent as your usage. Preventing war is a cultural genocide if you consider it that way. You're saying that a culture which arises from suffering, injury, evil and so on deserves preservation by refusing to prevent the evil that causes them. Alcoholics Anonymous has a culture, Gamblers Anonymous, etc.
Yes, it is academic nonsense based on semantics. It doesn't matter if they don't feel they're missing anything - what you've never had you cannot miss. What you've had, lost and coped with you've learned not to miss. No one buys into this pedantry but academics with too much time on their hands.
EDIT: I apologize for "proselytizing" and "trashing" that view. My sister is an ASL teacher and she's made the same points you have to me, so I'm aware of the debate, and so have strong views on the matter. I have heard and considered everything you've said beforehand. I believe this sentiment comes from empathy and affirmation of deaf people as taught by those who are close with that community. Yet, I also believe this view is nonsense that someone outside that context can clearly see.
By this logic, would a cure for cancer be a bad thing too, since then cancer patients would be extinct?
However, GP expanded upon a sociological dimension to disabilities and chronic illnesses that isn't usually discussed and considered. When asking "How do they cure it", an important question to consider is "Do they/ Would they ever want a cure and under what corcumstances?"
It's quite the coincidence that deafness was the example used, because the scenario GP describes actually happened once before:
https://www.icphs2019.org/the-marthas-vineyard-deaf-communit...
Someone who lives an extensive period of time without an ability may have learned how to live without this ability. They learn to cope and affirm their life with its faults in their current state. Offering the ability they lost and have learned to live without may be declined because of the affirmation of their life as it is. It could be declined because the transition is uncomfortable as well. Either way, being deaf is still negative, they've just psychologically coped well.
If you had the choice, would you choose that your child be deaf or not? That you be deaf or not? If one isn't deaf, would they choose to become deaf or not? This entire argument results from academic nonsense that anyone outside that context can see through.
This is true, though strictly speaking there are people obsessed with the idea that they eg. have too many limbs and suffer body dysmorphia related to that. They often amputate their own limbs in an attempt to feel right.
I have mixed feelings about the things in this list. E.g. part of my disability experience involves my mental health and, when you’re talking about me, anyway, I don’t mind the term “mentally ill”.
On the other hand, it sort of irritates me when people who are well describe others as “crazy”.
Regarding your comment on disability being “abnormal and negative”, though, I have to disagree. I would not have survived the last few years if I had characterized my impairments as being abnormal and negative.
There’s an approach out there called the “social model” of disability where impairment is regarded as a neutral (neither good nor bad) experience and the good or bad experience is how the impairment changes interaction with society. It’s worth reading at least the introduction on the Wikipedia page, so I’ll link it.
Happy to answer any questions if you have ‘em!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability
Edit: To be clear, I’m just thinking about the list of words, not any sort of policy about what one can and can’t say. That’s a whole other can of worms!
That’s why you call them impairments. (From Late Latin peiorare "make worse”.)
Why not? I have several traits I consider abnormal, and some I consider negative (i.e. unlike the merely abnormal ones, I wish to overcome them. And some cannot be overcome but are very normal - e.g. mortality.) - why should that characterization impair my effort or desire to survive and thrive? Or rather, why does it impair yours?
> There’s an approach out there called the “social model” of disability where impairment is regarded as a neutral (neither good nor bad) experience and the good or bad experience is how the impairment changes interaction with society.
If I may speculate, is this the answer? You want to be seen as good and desirable by society, so if any of the multiple meanings of a word used to describe you carry negative implications, that results in a reduction of your self-worth? Even when a word is merely objective description, used without moral baggage, its mere proximity to alternate meanings taints it?
A jerk is going to be a jerk regardless of the specific syllables used so why trip up well meaning people.
It was my impression the word latinx was generally mocked by people it's supposed to represent.
Latine:
- Lah-teen … rhymes white latrine
- Lat-ein-e … normal “lat”, Germanic pronunciation of “ein”, like the number one or Einstein, “e” pronounced either “ee” or “eh”
- Latin-e … latin-ee, rhymes with matinee,
- lat-tine … lah-tine as in the tines of a fork.
Or my favourite
- Latin-e … just “latin” but spelled with a silent “e”.
This is less than ideal… outside of using mispronunciation as a shibboleth, you normally want a group identifying word to be clearly identified and picked up by any possible group members regardless of if they have heard someone speak it. You want such words to be easily used by the people who identify with it, also crucially it’s self-adoption by the group that is being identified that matters… If no one you would call latine likes you calling them latine, or latinx, or Latino or Latina or Latin… you probably should just ask them what they want and call them that instead, that’s just my opinion from over in Australia where this particular identity/word fight appears to have mostly gone unnoticed against our own local issues.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/latine#Pronunciation_3
Admittedly the question of how to pronounce a Spanish word in English is non-trivial and subsumes the question of how to pronounce Spanish and the question of how to pronounce English ... but apart from that no special case is required for the word "latine"!
It's not the "correct" term, and almost nobody I know of takes it seriously outside of really, really narrow little social media woke bubbles. If someone is a woman and of latin american origin, they will almost universally refer to themselves as latina and not care if others do. What idiotic nonsense to assume that something else is "correct" despite it going against the grain of a vast majority's word use.
I live in Latin America and have latin american family of all kinds. This aside from many friendships of both sexes and variable gender identifications too.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-81be-dee4-a5ff-efbe7...
I suffer from mental illness as well (a disability), and I certainly don’t consider myself normal. I’ve overcome my issues, and I’m perfectly happy talking about my experience at/in appropriate times/places. I just acknowledge that the average person within the realm of normal can’t relate to my experience.
Coincidentally, I get the most relatable feedback doing inspirational speaking at homeless shelters; there’s nothing about my life today that would indicate they consider me normal in their sphere. I’m all for learning to use the right language when talking to folks with disabilities, and your comment here seems insightful. I’m just not making the connection you’re trying to build.
Fundamentals: the social model essentially places the onus of accommodating disability on society as a whole rather than the disabled individual. A simple example is the difference between asking a person who cannot walk to climb stairs vs providing a ramp. The stairs represent the typical medical model (the disabled individual must adapt to how society works) and the ramp is the social model (society should adapt to how disabled people work).
It’s not so much about being normal as it is about _feeling_ normal. Viewing the world through the lens of the social model allows me to say, “this situation could be better” rather than “I could be better”. This is important became sometime the latter is impossible — there are features of my body that cannot be improved.
I’m pragmatic about this, BTW. I don’t think we should rebuild every aspect of society to accommodate the minutia of disability. I think it should be an aspirational value that we hold and act on when we can.
Does that help? I can talk about mental health in this context as well, it’s just a lot to put into a single post. :-)
Example: chronic pain messes with your ability to recall. These days I have more trouble recalling facts than I used to. This makes programming hard, as much as programming is about intuition and problem solving, it also depends on memorizing a lot of facts (what was that built-in function called again…?)
I started using Copilot a few months ago and, while I almost always reject Copilot’s suggestions, it’s been amazing for remembering names of things. For me it’s been much better than an IDE (for example) because it presents the things I have trouble remembering with some context code.
The good news is that after middle age, my immune systems seems to have mellowed, so now I actually can do normal things my condition precluded me from, like eating avocados or shrimps, for example.
Such recommendations reflect the authors own prejudices.
Some forms of blinding like "Blind auditions" are literal and are largely indistinguishable from how blind people normally conduct auditions. "Blindness" is a symbol of justice and fairness and non-prejudice.
Blindness is also one of the easiest disabilities to achieve, temporarily or permanently. If blindness is at least neutral state of being, nothing stops one from wandering about with a blindfold. Somebody who fails to do so while talking about how blindness isn't a negative is insincere and all talk.
Blindness is perhaps somewhat negative in how it makes you vulnerable to some of the society's shortcomings, but then again aren't we all to some extent?
Consider people who are blind since birth vs people who are otherwise disadvantaged say because they will encounter more racism. Both can be shortcomings compared to the mode but does it make sense to talk of them as "negative"?
The biggest problem with the guide on the point of blindness is it prescribes the correct attitude to have towards blindness, but people have all sorts of feelings about blindness, for all sorts of different and valid reasons. I think you’ve lost the plot to some extent when you start insisting that ANY disability shouldn’t be portrayed in a negative light, because the reality is people have many negative experiences with disability, there are positive experiences as well, but negative feelings are a big part of disability (even if you don’t feel them presently you’re probably felt them at some point), and not just for reasons of culture.
The blindfold example is a bit facetious, but if being blind is just as good as not being blind, why do people go to such lengths to stay sighted? Glasses are an entire industry. Why don’t people just live without sight? A theory about the world which cannot answer such questions is incomplete.
However, it still makes more sense to use "anonymous review" instead of "blind review", because the reviewer is not necessarily unable to see the review (or the document being reviewed), although it is anonymous, so "anonymous review" makes sense, and is better descriptive.
There are many problems with this list, although some of the things mentioned are sensible, at least in some contexts (the suggested alternatives are not always appropriate).
And anonymous could be seen as being disrespectful to unidentified bodies.
This is the problem, once you go down the route of banning words that could possibly be problematic, then where do you stop, because any word can be problematic.
The list suggests hooked instead of addicted, which to me still has the same connotations, so even the author can't avoid all problematic words.
In that case, it would seem that "blind review" would be a contradiction, isn't it?
> This is the problem, once you go down the route of banning words that could possibly be problematic, then where do you stop, because any word can be problematic.
Of course, you are right.
But to me, my intention isn't about being disrespectful or not, but rather, to be clear and accurate.
Yes I suppose it is. But that's just more evidence that we shouldn't take parts of a phrase and start interpreting them out of context.
I agree, but I still think that it is better to use more descriptive and clear words; "anonymous review" seems more descriptive and clear to me than "blind review" does.
(I also don't like the words "metric ton" and "tonne"; I think "megagram" is more descriptive and clear, so it is better.)
You don't get to say they should not feel that way.
Why not take it on good faith that this work was guided by research thar asked more blind people than you have? Once you accept thar you can then decide on whether you care or not and act accordingly.
All political correctness boils down to is politeness and not upsetting other people. If you don't care how they feel, crack on with this sort of rage posting.
> If you don't care how they feel, crack on with this sort of rage posting.
Your post may be politically correct, but it is not polite. In fact you come off as quite rude compared to the person you are replying to.
> You don't get to say they should not feel that way.
If GP were to say how they should feel, clearly they would be caring how they feel. Also, why not? People discuss how one should feel in a particular situations quite often. In fact the page being discussed here seems to concern itself a great deal with what should upset people, even though most of the groups on whose behalf it appears to be judging what is offensive to them could have probably pointed these things out themselves - and I'm not sure everyone appreciates being paternalized this way (see "Latinx").
Since they propose to replace Hispanic with Latinx, a term that most Hispanics reject [1], such faith is unwarranted.
> You can either care about how blind people feel through your usage of language or not care.
I propose an alternative dichotomy: I can prioritize truth, or I can prioritize the asserted feelings of the loudest complainers.
And as a commenter pointed out, "blind" in "blind review" is a positive, not a negative! A blind review is objectively better and more socially desirable than a non-blind one (and, correct me if I'm wrong, but is becoming prevalent in academia, so it is also normal instead of abnormal). We have more than enough evidence to conclude this document is insincere.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
edit: typo
We’ll see less of this as shops and institutions find the need to focus on ROI, products, innovation, and shareholders once again now that the fairytale of free money and unlimited free labor is expiring. The people who do the actual work to build and teach and innovate at the periphery of their chosen industry will devour the hall monitors.
Even if we were to accept that disabilities were not negative, a blind review is a good thing - it’s a review that’s more fair than a non-blind review. So if there’s nothing wrong with being blind, why would you want to stop people from using the term “blind” to describe a blind review? How does calling it a blind review imply that being blind is negative?
This is one thing I don't get about modern woke politics. We are supposed to be accepting of each other, but need to ignore the things we are supposed to accept.
People are different, people are abnormal, why can't that be celebrated?
You can describe somebody is abnormally intelligent for example and it's a positive in this light.
But I really doubt you're gonna find a group of people that want to celebrate the idea that they are unable to see, in that context vision impairment is a negative abnormal trait.
If I could hazard a guess, this document was probably the result of an uncomfortable compromise between some folks of varying levels of assertiveness, obsessiveness, and linguistic myopia[2]. Likely not intended to be a minefield by some/most of its authors, but would be treated as one by small but frustratingly vocal segments of both its staunchest defenders and most enraged critics.
It would be really nice if both all of us could maybe just (figuratively) go out and touch some grass, instead of letting isolated personal frustrations turn into pet peeves and then into poorly-justified prescriptivism.
[1] This also reminds me of the alleged distinction between “transwoman” and “trans woman”. (German speakers and the like might find it particularly superfluous.)
[2] Speaking as a person with severe near-sightedness. (Edit: typo)
I will not blindly follow these nonsensical rules. They're so lame. I may start a fatwa against them. I will only bury the hatchet if they agree to scrap these rules and never speak of them again.
Also, I'd like to visit the Philippine Islands someday soon.
Share these sorts of guides with the worst people around - ethnic supremacists, fascists, etc. They're not allowed to use certain words/phrases in polite society, such as "retard". Thankfully academia has come to their aid, and now they can just call that person "neurodivergent" instead. We all know what they really mean.