Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

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As a counterpoint, why do we spend huge volumes of energy trying to change minor linguistic term that is only tenuously related to a historical issue, rather than deal with the countless real social issues that exist today?

The reason: because it was easier, it allowed corporations (especially Microsoft) to give the appearance of making social change, and because it distracted us from dealing with the real issues. In other words, laziness.

And you know what, if you're firmly on the progressive left, as I am, that's no big deal. It's annoying, maybe it alienates me from taking part in social action. But it won't, for example, change who I vote for.

However, we (the West) live in a period of history balanced on a narrow edge between social progression and social regression, with all manner of bad actors waiting on the wings to take advantage of our slipups. And this was a slipup, no matter how well meaning the people who pushed it through were. This, and many, many other small annoyances, were in all likelihood what it took to push a significant number of people to change their vote in the recent election. It's not the only reason, perhaps not even the main one. But any change is significant when you're balanced on an edge.

> distracted us from dealing with the real issues Strongly agree with this. (And this kind of moral licensing in general. Ooh, well done for switching your toilet paper to an eco friendly version you were marketed on instagram, but why haven't you changed anything else in your life that matters).

But also, small things do have to change. If nothing changes, the status quo remains, and the status quo is stacked against many people. (Because of gender, race, culture, wealth, location, etc). It's easy to say "focus on the big things" but the small things can change along the way too.

This was not a small thing to change. It was a minor thing, in itself. But the actual process of changing was huge, and took months of energy and pointless discussion from millions of people. I would guess the change could be counted in the millions of people hours.

I'm strongly in favor of progressive social change. But when even the smallest of change takes this much effort and leaves people frustrated and alienated, we should not be focusing this much effort on insignificant changes. It's like trickle down economics - hundreds of minor changes like this will not trickle down into large changes. Most likely the opposite - they'll alienate and infuriate enough people over time to cause a societal swing in the other direction.

If we're gonna put effort like this into bringing about change, let's make it meaningful, something that effects our daily lives now.

Just understand if you’re the one forcing language, hiring based on race, and forcing people to take part in medical experiments — you’re the regressive one.

There is nothing progressive about any of that.

I agree.

Nice strawmen, but I've never done or been involved in any of those things and I don't, personally, consider them progressive. I'm more inclined to think of changes like improved rights to self expression (as trans, gay, or pretty much anything else that doesn't too badly infringe on other people), social safety for poor people, more equitable sharing of generation wealth, especially related to land ownership, better care for the environment, better access to healthcare, education, and housing for all people, considering other species as sentient and according them the same rights as humans, and not viewing corporations as human as socially progressive issues.

I also recognize that in all of these things, balance and nuance are required and conflicts are common and won't always be resolved in a way that makes me, personally, satisfied.

> forcing language

This entire thread is a majority of people, on a generally quite progressive forum, arguing strongly against forced language change. I do not believe that the majority of genuinely progressive people want or believe in forced language changes, with the exception of a few specific ethnic and gender based slurs.

So you don’t believe in forced language unless it includes issues you believe should be forced language changes.

Thanks for making my point.

I think you are unfair to your leftist comrades. Yes, perhaps the problem of using disrespectful words is not very serious, and there are more important social problems. But this is not a reason to ignore them and especially to belittle the merits of people who SUCCESSFULLY solve those problems and little by little ensure social progress in our society.

> Yes, perhaps the problem of using disrespectful words is not very serious, and there are more important social problems. But this is not a reason to ignore them...

That is, in fact, a reason to ignore them. Even if you agree it's a problem (I don't), triage is important. Use your social capital on solving problems of importance, not on annoying people with solutions to minor problems.

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