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Comment by epochwolf | Hacker News Reader

How is this heteronormative? I didn't see any reference to gender in the entire article.

Also, you're really stretching the "discrimination to the mentally ill" thing to the point of silliness.

I was going to say "the equivalent of heteronormative but for mental illness" but I thought that anyone that understood what I was saying might have just let me have that one slip and interpreted the meaning rather than focus on its strict representation.

It wasn't a joke as such, at least its intention wasn't primarily humour. Just highlighting the fact that nearly everything everyone says is offensive or exclusionary to someone and that if we adopt the universal application of the principles of extreme gender-neutral language that we've seen advocated on HN and elsewhere, equally for every issue, we end up with lobotomised language†.

I think the use of 'insane' is fine. And I think the use of gendered pronouns is fine. But I am neither insane nor of a gender that is under-represented in the pronoun

† oh never mind

This article has no relevance to gender-neutral language and no one other than yourself is discussing this. It would be better to address this issue in a relevant thread instead of hijacking a random one.

Specifically the casual use of the word 'insane'. I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss the contents of the page and make references to things not contained on the page.

I think you're thinking of the word "retarded". You might as well be arguing against using the word "crazy". Insane and crazy have identical meaning in most contexts.

Ableist is the word he was looking for.

should have used a bigger </satire>...

Or perhaps waterlion should have just not made the joke. It does not relate to the article in any fashion I can find relevant nor does it add anything to the existing discussion.

I think it adds to the broader discussion that goes on on HN, specifically over the last month or so.

Could you remove that joke about the dog from your profile page please? I went there looking for serious information.

If you could tell me what you're looking for instead of what you're not looking for, I'd be happy to provide it.

I'm looking for interesting discussion with intelligent people on a range of subjects guided by user-submitted stories. I'm looking for explorations of ideas, learning new things, synthesis as well as derivative ideas. Open-mindedness and acceptance. Otherwise there's no point.

I'm not looking for pedantry and closed-mindedness (I'm not accusing you of those things).

I'm probably in the wrong place for that on HN, but the articles are interesting and often so is the discussion.

That's an odd thing to look for on my profile page.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that I would want others to extend to me and not accuse you of pedantry. But I don't think there's much steam left in this conversation.

I think </trolling>

I was not trolling by the definition I know. I just thought that it might lead to an interesting conversation.

It's just too hard to communicate on the internet, especially with people who don't share your conversational goals. I think I just found a new year's resolution.

Let's Google "trolling". Definition of the informal use of the word:

"submit a deliberately provocative posting to an online message board with the aim of inciting an angry response."

Message board? Check! Deliberately provocative? Check! Angry responses? Check! Must be trolling.

Judging by your history on this site, you've done nothing but trolling.

It's a shame you think that I'm trolling. You're welcome to go back over my comment history and look at the conversations I've engaged in. Sure my comments provoke a range of responses. It would be a boring world if everyone always agreed with everything. Maybe the writing style isn't to everyone's taste. But they're never intended to provoke anger.

My original point was that the absolute application of principles designed to bring about equality could be harmful and that we need to apply contextual understanding to language. If the expression of that idea makes you angry, that's fine, but it's not trolling.

Anyway, I'm bowing out of this thread as it doesn't look like pursuing this idea is constructive.

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