I just want to do what the liberals on this board tell me to do.
Are 18-year-old females women or girls? What about high school seniors? College freshmen (sic)?
I want to get this straight.
My experience as a victim of black crime backs up my opinion of black crime to the same degree as my experience of being mugged backs up my opinion of muggings. Thus, if you want to be consistent, my opinion of black crime ought to be considered just as valid as my experience of mugging. It is based on an equal weight of experience.
Unless people are subject to confirmation bias and selective perception, in which case one ought not to give their opinions based on experience more weight than they deserve. Unless backed up by objective evidence.
I would be hard-pressed to come up with a word that never had negative connotations. What we are talking about is words with a necessary negative connotation, used in circumstances where the negative connotation is irrelevant or untrue.
The word “females” does not, AFAICT, have any necessary negative connotation. So if you need an example of a word outlawed by the “PC police” for no good reason, I would say “females” qualifies.
An example of the other aspect of negative connotation where it is irrelevant is the professor’s attempt to outlaw use of the term “illegals” or “illegal aliens”. Here it is quite true that the term carries a negative connotation. However, in discussions of immigration policy, using the term “illegal alien” is necessary and appropriate because it is more precise and more expressive. It is probably true that people who refer to illegal aliens as illegal aliens are expressing a negative opinion of those who are in the country illegally. But that is not irrelevant - pointing out that they are here illegally is much of the point in such discussions. Softening it with some euphemism like “undocumented workers” or whatever is a way of minimizing an argument that is based on the undoubted fact that illegal aliens are in the US in violation of our law. Attempting to force someone to use a less precise term is a way of trivializing the point.
We have had on the SDMB a similar discussion on the use of the word “thug”, which the PC police say is bad to apply to black criminals (although it is OK to use it against white ones). If it is wrong to call a criminal a “thug” because it has a negative connotation, then it should be wrong to call a person a “thug” whether he is white or black. If it is not wrong to call a person a “thug” even if it has a negative connotation, then it is not wrong to call a person a “thug”. And if you can’t call a black criminal a thug because “thug” has been used as a racist insult, then you can’t call a black criminal anything, because anything has been used as a racist insult at some time or other.
The solution being, obviously, to call a spade a spade ( 
). In rational discourse, one avoids the terms that are racist by general consensus, and resist the efforts by the PC police to exclude white males, or any other group, from the communal experience of deciding what the consensus of language is.
Regards,
Shodan
I totally agree with all of this.
It does seem like these instructors put topics, arguments, and opinions better suited to class discussion and interspersed them into the syllabus. It was unnecessary and poorly drafted.
The profs would have been better suited stating on day one (when the drop/add period was still ongoing), “This class is going to discuss…, and is predicated on the belief that…and will challenge conventional ideas regarding…Now, let’s discuss what I consider Hate Speech”, rather than write a lecture into an outline of rules, procedures, and scheduling.
Can I respectfully ask that I not be referred to as “female”? I am a woman, and more importantly, I am human.
Is that OK? Is my personal dislike of the term OK? No, I know it’s not - certain of you will continue to call me female or really anything else you like. However, just as you have every right to say it, I have every right not to like it and not to engage with you.
The real “PC police” are the ones who think being respectful to others is tantamount to kneeling down and bowing to them.
Okay. But I still get to call guys “males,” because I am one and it’s OK when we say it to each other.
Fine with me.
Let me try and put it like this.
What pieces of information are contained in the word “male” or “female?” The only assertions that the term makes are sexual ones - that a thing possesses the characteristic of sex, and moreover that it possesses one and not the other sub-type. A woman is female, as is a baby girl, as is a dam, as is a baby girl horse, as is a ship, as is - in German at least - a turnip. They are bound together only by their female-ness, and by extension by their not-male-ness.
Conversely, what pieces of information are contained in the word “man” or “woman?” For the first part, they contain an element of humanity. A 30-year-old female human, a 3-year-old female human, a 10-year-old female horse, a 6-month-old female horse, a ship, and a German turnip all contain that essential element of female-ness and not-male-ness, but only the first two - only the two humans - contain humanity. Second, “man” and “woman” contain an element of adulthood, of competence and independence. The line between childhood and adulthood might be a little fuzzy if you’re referring to someone who’s 16 or 18 or even 20, but there’s no doubt that 30-year-olds are adults and 3-year-olds aren’t.
So calling a person a “woman” confers two elements onto them - quite important elements, of being a human being and of being an adult - that simply calling them a “female” doesn’t. Calling someone a “female,” noun form, reduces them to their biological sex, omitting - and perhaps, depending on context, denying - any element of humanity or of adulthood.
Somebody better tell Kaitlin Jenner.
Regards,
Shodan
Don’t have her phone number, wanna give it to me?
No, we are talking about words with a marginal negative connotation that can be used by bigoted people as code language wink wink. Pretending that we are debating whether the word has a necessary negative connotation is highly dishonest.
Illegal and undocumented are equally precise. Undocumented is softer. It’s use contains a bias. So does illegal. Given the choice between the two, there is nothing wrong with a more diplomatic approach. Insistence on using the term illegal to be “more truthful” is really just an thinly veiled excuse to be condescending.
Except, deliberate use of the word in a negative connotation by the right wing hate brigade is changing the connotation of the term.
So it’s depersonalizing but not offensive? And what the teacher actually said, according to the OP (I haven’t looked at the actual syllabus) was:
“Use of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, classist, or generally offensive language in class or submission of such material will not be tolerated. (This includes “The Man,” “Colored People”, “Illegals/Illegal Aliens,” “Tranny” and so on - or referring to women/men as females or males)…"
No, it’s not. We are debating whether it has a necessary negative connotation. One side is asserting that it does, and attempting to disallow an opinion to the contrary.
That’s dishonest.
No, they are not. It’s like describing a burglary as an “uninvited entry”.
You’re begging the question. Referring to criminals as “thugs” expresses the connotation of the term “thug”. Telling people what they mean when they use the term of a black criminal, and not when they do of a white one, is the attempt to change the connotation.
Regards,
Shodan
Where did that “necessary” come from? Language and interpersonal exchanges are not math.
No, actually, what we are debating is the reluctance of people with your position to “not be told what to say”. That is what we are debating. What winds up happening is we have debates with pages and pages, hundreds of responses, on whether or not female or thug can have a negative connotation but the real debate is “don’t tell me what to say”. Let’s be honest, that is the real debate.
Your analysis of the Thug situation is completely wrong. The whole debacle two (?) years ago with Richard Sherwin proves it. His trash talking after games is quite animated. After a particularly heated session post game interview the whole social media and traditional media BLEW UP the next day. That next day there were more references to thug in the media than there had been in the whole 365 days previous. I’ll be glad to try and look that statistic up if you want.
You want to know something, when I saw the clip, you know what I thought, I thought “whoa, that’s one angry black dude!”. And then caught myself and realized I was being racist. I mean the dude sounded really angry but it was just trash talk. But white people being angry are labeled/treated differently than black people.
So, you can’t deny, given that incident that - thug - is beginning to take on racist connotations that have nothing at all to do with crime. To pretend otherwise is just being dishonest. To say, well, the general meaning of the word thug is so and so is just evading the point, that, it is starting to have a new, sinister, racist connotation. Any honest discussion must acknowledge this fact.
Here is the ironic point: when he is not trash talking, Richard Sherwin is incredibly articulate. He was raised in the projects, true by his own admission that I saw in a documentary about him. But he graduated from Stanford and when not trash talking he is incredibly articulate and pleasant and well informed. For the media to label him a thug is 100% wrong.
But I doubt this incident will do anything to change your mind about the appropriateness of the word thug. The real debate is “don’t tell us how to talk!!!”.
I like talking to you Shodan, I really actually do, but can we not at least be honest about what the debate is actually about.
Richard Sherman.
There might be some dispute on this point, but “thug” is thought to originate from Hindi, by way of Sanskrit – a land of typically rather dark-skinned people. Thus, it has a racial component already embedded in it. Yes, it has been used in the past for white men, but since all the racist epithets for black people have gradually been trampled under foot, “thug” has begun to re-acquire the darker subtext of its origins.
That sounds accurate to me.
I’m trying to think of any instance of someone using the terms “politically correct” or “PC” to mean something other than ‘these uppity second-classers are trying to control me, and I won’t stand for it–they need to be put back in their proper place’…
The basic rule of college is just shut up and pretend to agree with the proff. They can make your life miserable if you dont.
The last thing a university professor wants is an open minded discussion where people feel open to share their thoughts. Nowadays you can go on social media and express your true feelings.
Our tour group next visited the orangutan enclosure, but then one of the females became very upset and screamed at our tour guide.
Our tour group next visited the orangutan enclosure, but then one of the women became very upset and screamed at our tour guide.
Both of those are offensive. The crazy bitch shouldn’t be going on wildlife tours if she is going to flip out and start screaming at people for no reason. I never want her in any tour group that I am involved in. Please keep any males in her family away from me as well. The world has enough histrionic troublemakers as it is and they upset the orangutans.
If think if an orangutan and a tour guide have a meaningful and committed relationship, there should be no law against them screaming at each other.