Use 'egg-producing' not 'female', call to phase out binary language | Hacker News Reader

Use 'egg-producing' not 'female', call to phase out binary language

telegraph.co.uk

9 pointssaturn5k15 comments

I'm not sure why the Telegraph thinks I should care about this. If some scientists think that "egg-producing" is more precise than "female," or that "survival of the fittest" is a misleading phrase, or that "citizen science" is insensitive to non-citizens, then they are entitled to that opinion and can edit their writings accordingly.

When one becomes more focused on what to call something because that thing might be offensive or "exclusive", one has lost the entire point.

This seems over the top in the same vein as the Stanford "Elimination of Harmful Language" initiative.

Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816 (1800 comments, 2 months ago)

Direct archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20221219160303/https://itcommunit...

I'm all for being inclusive and am happy to use whatever pronoun you want, but TFA's proposal is excessive to the point of confusion and distraction. The world has a lot bigger equity and inclusivity challenges than words like "man" or "woman".

To make it more concrete, here are a few examples of issues affecting 10s of millions of people every day in the USA alone:

* Access to medical care (that won't put economically disadvantaged folks into bankruptcy)

* Mental health services (for both houses and unhoused)

* Ensure home ownership is realistically attainable for the next generation

* Ensure opportunities for education are abundant and efficient

Consider homeless people: these human beings are literally excluded from participating in most of society. Is it really their personal failings alone, or is it a combination of factors including the failure of government and communities to take care of those around them? Why do places like Texas bus homeless and former inmates to San Francisco with impunity? It's literally throwing a problem over the fence into someone else's yard. An utterly and absurdly low-empathy / bad-actor move.

I'm sad to have written all this, because what's another dumb post on HN going to accomplish. Nothing significant. I'm sorry for that.

> The world has a lot bigger equity problems than words like "man" or "woman".

Yes...but if you are a zealous-enough ideologue in your little web bubble of linguistic one-upmanship, then you can get away with doing nothing actually useful about real-world problems.

Thanks for the call-out. I kept editing and arrived at the same conclusion.

My only qualm is the amount of attention given to pronouns compared to the larger problems affecting more people.

And forbidding the term "survival of the fittest" as able-ist.. give me a break.

"I see" -> able-ist against the blind

"I understand" -> able-ist against low intellect individuals

Where should the line be drawn?

You need to stop using any sort of written, signed, or spoken language - out of basic respect for those who are not able to do so, or who make the personal choice not to do so.

I can't imagine that being called an 'egg-producer' is going to feel great considering the revocation of abortion rights. Really doesn't dispell the 'you're just a baby factory' point.

There is a lot of mysoginy behind the underlying movement

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t all egg cells present in a human body produced before birth? If so, “egg-producing” technically should refer to unborn XX individuals.

I'm not totally convinced that this isn't satire. It's hard to tell these days.

"Mother" being considered an obscene word was predicted in "Brave New World" in 1932.

JS-free archive link:

https://archive.today/k1qj6

Our world is insane.

It would appear that they don't believe poly-genotypical people are human. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chimera )

And they're using written language, which is blatantly biased against both the vision-impaired and the dyslexic.

Clearly they need to cancel themselves.

If you, as a scientist, feel harmed, uncomfortable, and/or excluded by scientific language, then science is not the place for you. Science is about objectively provable facts, not your subjective experiences.

It begins the summary with "Experts say..." so already a warning sign, but this does read like satire.

If you start saying "egg-producing" instead of "female", someone who isn't egg-producing is going to insist you are being insensitive to non-egg-producing folk who identify as egg-producing.

There's no end game here except us all going full primate battle fury mode with sticks and stones.

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