I guess I’m not seeing the line line you drew between your complaints about the Brandeis thing and your other complaints about people and groups trying to influence other people’s word choices.
Not that I plan to get back into it with anyone, I’ve said my piece, but a coincidence just popped up. I was reading NEA’s Facebook post about teachers being censored. The comments are getting swarmed by rightwingers. And what should pop up, but McWhorter explaining the difference between equity and equality.
Maybe he’s not a reactionary conservative, but he sure is appealing to them.
I’m sure he is. But I don’t agree with him on this. As I said earlier,
I didn’t agree with him then, and I don’t agree with him now.
Not being a subscriber to any social media, I can’t see the conversation there. But what you say doesn’t surprise me. McWhorter believes, in essence, that “equity” is a sneaky euphemism for the practice of using equality as cover for the objective of achieving a particular target demographic in the employee population, an objective that may involve hiring practices like quotas and affirmative action to achieve it. It’s no surprise that right-wingers are all over this.
But surely we’re not going down the path of “wrong about one thing, therefore wrong about everything”?
How Orwellian of those evil pointers and laughers!
Well, AFAICT the full original list isn’t available, but some of its suggestions for reconsidering language use that I’ve seen seemed perfectly reasonable to me. From here:
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Using more gender-inclusive expressions like “Hello all” instead of “ladies and gentleman”, defaulting to “police officer” and “postal carrier” instead of “policeman” and “mailman”, and “first-year” instead of “freshman”? I’m on board with all of those, and I think anybody calling them “nonsense” is really carrying a torch for unnecessary exclusiveness in language.
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Not appropriating disability terms like “ADD” and “PTSD” when you don’t actually have such conditions, and all you mean is that, say, you’re feeling disorganized and distracted, or you find a certain topic upsetting? Also perfectly reasonable.
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Not using words like “gypped”, “jewed”, or “Indian-giver” to refer to transactional dishonesty? You think that suggestion is “nonsense”, wolfpup? Are you fucking kidding me?
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Saying “Person who’s been impacted by X” or “experienced X” instead of “victim of X” or “survivor of X”? A more minor issue, ISTM, but not necessarily a bad idea. Especially since the authors themselves acknowledged there are different valid opinions on the subject:
And so on down the list. Some of the suggestions I view as more tentative, optional, or debatable than others, but nowhere am I seeing any kind of draconian insistence on imposing language change.
If that’s the kind of stuff that McWhorter’s bothered by or considers “nonsense”, then McWhorter is, to use a classic offensively pejorative term, a jackass. Or, more generously, he’s just clickbaiting his audience because stirring the shit about alleged “woke excesses” gets him profitable attention.
Don’t you think there may be a reason why sources like Maher and RW media (sure, Maher isn’t RW, but on this issue he buys what they sell hook, line, and sinker) left out that context?
Exactly. Somebody here is definitely making their own ideological stance a laughingstock because of their combination of overreaction and gross ignorance regarding purported abuses of language, but it ain’t Brandeis PARC.
I know, right? Right down the memory hole!
The gender-neutral stuff is uncontroversial and most of it has been in use for a long time. As I said before, “chairperson” has been in widespread use for more than 50 years and officially entered the dictionary circa 1970-75.
I might be kidding you if I had ever called criticism of those words “nonsense”. Did I? No, I did not. The words or terms I highlighted as silly to criticize were things like “rule of thumb, victim, survivor, trigger warning, African-American, picnic, lame, and ‘ladies and gentlemen’.”
I was about ready to bow out of this but then it somehow reincarnated itself into a second life. Since I’m here anyway I’ll just clear up one more point:
@puzzlegal, it occurs to me you may not have seen the relevant part of Post #148 where I make precisely that distinction. Ironically, this was the post that LHoD dismissed as “doubling down”, or something. You are of course free to disagree with how and where I drew that line, but I did in fact draw it. These are the relevant parts, with bolding added:
ISTM that a lot of the angst in this thread seems to be caused by people talking past each other. I’ve been accused of saying things I never said, there’s been failure to acknowledge things I did say, and most annoyingly, LHoD and I cannot even agree on the fundamental concept of what “language change” even is. Which I’m sure is just as frustrating to them as it is to me, but it’s impossible to have a meaningful discussion when one side holds such a strangely broad re-interpretation of a linguistic term.
That said, there’s also legitimate disagreement in that I tend to hold a more conservative view (in the sense of linguistic traditionalism, not political conservatism) about language change than obviously some others here. Whatever his faults, I don’t think McWhorter is entirely wrong when he describes some of it* as “performative”.
* And please note: “some of it” is not at all the same as “all of it” or “most of it”.
First you say that you think “gender-neutral stuff is uncontroversial”, and then you turn around and claim that recommending consideration of gender-inclusive alternatives to “ladies and gentlemen” is “silly” and “nonsense”?
You seem to be just desperately cherry-picking examples taken out of context so that your ill-informed overreaction to them will look more plausible. I mean, an organization suggests that people might want to consider using “Black” instead of “African-American”, with specific caveats about individual preference:
And you pre-emptively, without reading the context, get all upset about alleged “ridiculous” “nonsense” of “canceling” and “sanitizing” and causing words to be “excised from the language”.
You could not make it clearer that you don’t really have a clue what you’re talking about with regard to this list of suggested language usages. That you have not bothered to seek it out and read it to understand its perspective and context, but instead are just using quoted snippets from it as a straw-man target based on biased sources’ deceptive rumors about it.
(And ISTM that your equally ignorant complaints about the suggestion of alternatives to the words “victim” and “survivor” are shown to be equally without merit by my quote in post #165. The source proposes some alternative wording possibilities for specific psychological reasons, while affirming that they are not intended to override individual preferences, and you still double down on insisting that their reasonable, mild, and extremely non-coercive suggestions are “ridiculous” “silly” “nonsense”. Like I said, it’s not Brandeis PARC that ends up looking stupid here.)
Exactly correct. Gender-neutral terminology is important because male-centric language reinforces pervasive stereotypes as old as civilization itself that marginalizes 50% of humankind, specifically by implying that power and societal productivity is the province of men. “Ladies and gentlemen” does not.
As for the rest, I’d just be repeating what I’ve already said. I’ll note, however, that the merits of language change suggestions are not measured by their degree of coercion, or absence thereof, and no one has suggested that these students had ill intent. “Mild and extremely non-coercive” as applied to suggestions for language change is not mutually exclusive with “extremely silly” (and “reasonable” is your subjective judgment). As for the suggestions that may make sense, that’s fine, but the point I was defending way up in post #59 was precisely the fact that not all of them make sense, and in defense of that I cited some of the silliest ones from McWhorter’s article and from the article published by the Boston TV station.
I think it’s time for me to cease my participation here as this is getting nowhere.
But “ladies and gentlemen” reinforces pervasive stereotypes as old as civilization itself by implying that gender is a rigid binary, and that nobody who doesn’t identify as either “male” or “female” even exists.
Sure, you and many other people may think that that’s no big deal, but for decades most people also thought it was no big deal that many job categories defaulted to terms ending in “-man”.
You’re arbitrarily drawing a line between “silly” and “not silly” based solely on what you personally are used to, and then getting defensive when the absurdity of your prescriptivism is pointed out.
What you’re basically saying is “It’s okay to use inclusivity/sensitivity-based language modifications that I’m already comfortable with, but any new ones are nonsense and ridiculous and trying to make words disappear”. It’s hard to believe that you can’t see how clueless and pompous that comes across.
But you haven’t even successfully defended your condemnation of the few that you cherry-picked out of context. In what way does it not make sense to consider the appropriateness of using more gender-inclusive alternatives to rigid gender-binary constructions like “ladies and gentleman”? In what way does it not make sense to consider the alternative of using “Black” as a racial descriptor rather than “African-American”? In what way does it not make sense to consider using “people-first” alternatives to words such as “victim” and “survivor”?
The only reason that any of these suggested possible alternative uses ever got on a curated list of suggested usage in the first place is because significant numbers of people expressed a preference for them. The arrogance involved in just categorically declaring than any such suggestion is automatically “ridiculous” and “extremely silly” and “nonsense”, simply because it’s one that you aren’t used to, is matched only by its ignorance.
Well, that often happens when somebody makes ill-informed complaints based on deceptive conservative “woke-bashing” rhetoric rather than on actual engagement with the sources.
Ah, well, perhaps you will see how i was confused, as you introduced the term “Orwellian” in post 8, where you praise McWhorter
And then go on to support McWhorter in his cherry-picked attack of the document published by a group at Brandeis.
You even wrote about how their intent was to be top-down and coercive.
So, perhaps your can see how i came to my understanding of what you were calling “Orwellian”.
That being said, someone who opposes abortion and identifies as “pro life” is hardly in a position of authority to make you (or anyone) use the phrase, either.
So it’s pretty hard for me to even connect this with what your started out by saying. Perhaps you have changed your position a bit over the course of this discussion. In which case, i commend you.
(And i think you should use “deceptive” for those examples advice, and retain “Orwellian” for coercive practices.)
Yup.
I met a non-binary person at a party (let’s call them “Bo”) who said their department meetings began, “ladies, gentlemen, and Bo”.
It made me realize that my industry stopped opening meetings with archaic and gendered phrases like “ladies and gentlemen” decades ago. Meeting begin with a formula like “thank you for coming to our quarterly actuarially gathering”. I think it is clear how Bo might be more comfortable with the latter.
It was also the first time i realized that my mostly conservative industry (insurance) is actually a lot more inclusive than computer science is. I’ve since seen a lot of examples of how computer science is often a hostile environment for women in ways that, frankly, the insurance industry isn’t. I suspect the correlation between using archaic gendered language and often promoting a hostile work environment to women isn’t coincidental.
Some of are old enough to remember when “chairperson” entered usage . . . and it was anything but uncontroversial. In fact, the current ‘’‘uproar’‘’ about changes to usage are very familiar, right down to the faces and names currently complaining about it.
Same with flight attendant, police officer, etc. Like a decade of anti-PC jokes talking about how people are no longer garbagemen but now they’re sanitation experts and bullshit like that. The idea that the shift to gender-neutral usage was non-controversial is ridiculous.
Look, you’re almost right. It’s not that people are talking past each other. @Kimstu seems to have no trouble understanding me, nor does @puzzlegal or @ASL_v2.0 or @Babale or @Miller–and as near as I can tell I have no trouble understanding any of them. I also don’t have trouble understanding you, I just think what you’re saying is deeply silly and ill-informed.
It’s not that people are talking past each other. It’s that people are talking past you. You’re not reading carefully and with the humility necessary to consider folks’ words.
Case in point:
That is a profound misunderstanding of what I wrote. But if I was apparently “talking past” you the first time, I’m certain any explanation of what I wrote would be similarly unsuccessful.
Slowing down on your defensive responses to what folks are saying is absolutely a good idea, but I encourage you to continue reading, and with more humility and openness to the possibility of error on your part. That’s the only way that I think this can get anywhere.
Yup. It’s what I call the Victor’s Virtue. If you find yourself lauding the outcomes of civil rights struggles of the past, but tut-tutting the struggles going on right now, it’s empty virtue signaling. If you’re pissed off today by Ibrim X. Kendi, then sixty years ago you would have been pissed off by Rosa Parks. The only reason you support her today is because she won.
Yes, that’s it exactly!
That’s for sure.
There was vehement objection to switching to nongendered terms; and that objection was often phrased as its being a silly issue that there was no sense in addressing.
I had a long argument about it when my town was re-writing the 1970 zoning regulations – in 1992. By 1992, I was able to get the language changed, despite the argument; though I was the only one on the board who would have thought to bring it up. In 1970, I would have just been laughed at.
(Pretty much identical argument about changing “church” to “place of worship.” We wound up with “churches and similar places of worship”; but I first had to convince the other members of the board that no, non-Christians don’t also all call their places of worship “churches”.)