https://archive.ph/8puIG

https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguag...

- Well-known slurs like "Jewed"

- Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite"

- Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"

- Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower"

- Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid")

- Words that, if you look into their history, originally had something to do with some racist practice ("grandfather" something in)

- Words that never had anything to do with racism, but someone who was really on high alert might wonder if they ever did ("tarball" for "archive made with the tar tool")

- Anything that might be derogatory to anybody ("Karen": "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors.")

- Terms that I genuinely have no idea how anyone could view as harmful in their actual context: "user" ("it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues"), "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")

Very much an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach.

"register" - might indicate that someone has to register as a second-class citizen, enemy alien, etc.

"bit" - might imply that someone is only a 'bit player', leading to feelings of inferiority.

"tool" - an obviously offensive word meaning that someone is only fit to be used by others.

"terminal" - we need to be sensitive about words that bring up the concept of death, to avoid triggering effects.

"inheritance" - individuals are not the product of their ancestry!

"class" - we don't need a class-structured society, that's a leftover from a feudal past.

"polymorphism" - too close to hermaphrodite, must be eliminated.

Or better yet, a Being's degree. Let's not be speciesists.

No word should ever create a mental reference to a banned word nor should a substitute word create a mental suspicion or guess of what the original offensive word was. A new vocabulary must be formed -newspeak if you will.

Better go with huperchild.

How about huperperson?

Uh wait, that’s recursi- political correctness overflow error.

Maybe the reason there are zero openly non-terran (or, preferrably, differently planeted) folks is attutides like yours. Think about it.

They are opposed to colonies wherever they might be, even lunar colonies.

As such, I have no hate of other races but I'm filled with hate every time my "git push origin master" fails because the branch is now called "main".

[1] How was this word not on the list?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Tell that to Ibram Kendi.

I mean what the fuck is a sophomore?

> From earlier sophumer, from the obsolete sophom (“sophism or dialectical exercise”), likely influenced by Ancient Greek σοφός (sophós, “wise”) + μωρός (mōrós, “fool”). Compare oxymoron (literally “sharp-dull”), a similar contradiction.

I propose renaming the institution after a more acceptable historical figure, one whom most undergraduates don't think did anything wrong: Stalin.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

The road where on can’t lead anywhere but renaming anything just so a younger generation can claim superiority over older generations whom they are forcing to adopt their new vernacular at risk of cancellation.

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” —Philip K. Dick

Taken to mean “this is going to be a really stressful day”. Probably utterly not at all that though.

All I'm saying is that this particular meaning of black/red doesn't appear to be the origins of the name "black Friday", at least according to Wikipedia, but I really don't care about this enough to investigate any further.

You do not eliminate, you disintermediate.

I will admit that this may explain some of the general public's attitude towards academia and higher learning.

You got this one backwards though, the notion of “social classes” is a left-winged concept, while the conservatives are usually the one pretending they don't exist.

This is the reason why individuals should defend others, even if they disagree with them or think what they said was unnecessary or even malicious. Because there isn't enough time in the day to worry about language this much, and because it's Orwellian... without the literal thought police.

That's precisely the point of such obscure, arbitrary ruleset. Keep everyone obediently in line. Keep everyone on the edge, afraid of "failing" and being subjected to a Maoist style trial that they can't win. That's a tool of power and oppression, under the smart disguise of forbidding relationships of power and oppression.

One has to wonder who was ever offended by the usage of the term "whitespace". Yes, that is actually on the list under "Institutionalized Racism" because it "assigns value connotations based on color (white = good), an act which is subconsciously racialized."

I am skeptical of the entire "subconsciously racialized" idea in the first place; to the best of my knowledge there is no evidence for it. But even if we accept it for the sake of the argument, does "whitespace" assign any value connotation at all? [Insert tabs vs. spaces joke here]

I don't really have a problem with with a policy on this as such, but the issue tends to be that once you start drafting a policy you will get a committee or the like and they will search for words that that could possible maybe perhaps be considered problematic by someone, somewhere, sometimes. That's kind of the reverse of how it should work: policy should reflect real concrete problems that were encountered. "I'm black and find the usage of 'slave' problematic" is, I think, more than reasonable, and a concrete situation. But grepping the dictionary for (white|black) ... a bit less so.

Once you start looking for something you will find it. This is why studies are double blind etc.

I have a lot of issues with this list. Does "more than one way to skin a cat" really "normalize violence against animals"? Cruelty against animals – especially pets – seems one of the very few topics where everyone from the most hard-core "Stalin did nothing wrong" communist to the most hardcore "Hitler did nothing wrong" neo-Nazi can find common ground. Does a phrase like that change it? I don't see how it does. I can go on and on, but clearly this is a "dictionary grep" list and not a "let's solve concrete problems" list.

So, are people "far too easily offended today"? I'm not so sure if they are.

I don't think so. If it is, then so is being offended about 'kill' command.

Why is using a concept as a metaphor bad? Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.

Of course there are limits to what is or isn't reasonable, as I mentioned in my previous post, but I can see how people might find "master/slave" inappropriate, like I would consider "Auschwitz" inappropriate.

At the end of the day, I don't really mind adjusting a few terms here or there if people really object to it, even if I don't fully understand it, or even agree with it, just as a matter of being nice to people. I'm neither Black nor American, so who am I to judge what they can or can't find offensive? The problem with lists like this is that I don't think anyone genuinely objects to half of the items on it, if not more.

> Also, I really don't like the implication that slavery is somehow racialized. The internet is global; it seems that Americans don't even acknowledge it.

Considering the history of the country it's not really a huge surprise. Also worth remembering it's the 3rd largest country on the planet, and the largest Western country by quite a substantial margin (Germany comes second with ~85M, vs the US ~330M).

And sure, I've been annoyed by American self-centred attitudes as well; not everything is about the US, but we also can't just always dismiss it either.

It's also not an uniquely American issue, in my own country in Europe there have been similar discussions as well.

If everyone pushed back harder, perhaps things would be different.

From what I remember, HN reacted mostly positively to someone's speculation that 'master' branch or 'blacklist' might offend black people (they weren't black themselves). Tons of comments arguing that changing it is not an issue, so we should do it.

[1] This, of course, excludes people like me, who are offended by the very existence of such lists.

I find a lot of the cultural appropriation items on this list deeply ironic because they imply English is allowed to take words from French (“beef”, “rendezvous”) and German (“welcome”, “hound”, …). But terms from non-white cultures aren’t allowed to become part of english? (“Guru”, “bury the hatchet”, and so on in this list.)

Is it just me or is that policy remarkably racist?

If you want a better example (though convoluted and still imperfect) of what that could look like for English, it would be like if a different language/culture started using the word "PhD" for anyone with some expertise. Now maybe you don't mind, but you've got to recognize that a fair amount of people would feel like it cheapens the work and expertise that goes into becoming a doctor.

Also doctors raise similar complaints when PhDs call themselves doctors.

... what do they think the "D" in PhD stands for?

The main distinction that lawyers and medical doctors have in terms of the title is that these professions talk to lay people outside their profession regularly and there needs to be a distinction between them and other people offering advice that’s not governed by the rules of the medical community and codified in law. The risk and consequence of harm would be elevated and the ability for recourse would be limited. For example, if you get bad legal advice from random Joe Schmoe, you can’t claim ineffective council (heck you can’t even do that if it’s a licensed lawyer who told you something if that isn’t your lawyer. This doesn’t happen with engineers.

Now I’m not defending or espousing any specific position here. I’m just trying to illuminate the differences and the claims. The counterpoint is that these licensing requirements don’t actually change anything, they’re over broad, they raise prices on services far more than they should, they unfairly exclude people from prestigious jobs that maybe they could do anyway even without schooling (eg an experienced paralegal for 15 years maybe doesn’t need a “lawyer’s education” for certain kinds of legal work) and they go against the principle of free speech. On the other hand, trademarks exist and inhibit free speech in similar ways. On the other hand, trademarks can’t be regular words. On the other hand the government is responsible for writing the rules of trademarks.

On the other hand, this post brought to you by Tevya the Milkman and his fiddle.

> when someone says they’re a doctor in the middle of giving medical advice, they can’t play the “but I have a PhD card” or “free speech” because the recipient of that message would reasonably assume due to common colloquial understanding that that person is a licensed medical doctor (unless the PhD somehow clarified this in a reasonable way).

I don't see why in this scenario the burden would be on the PhD to offer clarification. Again, the meaning of the "D" in PhD hasn't changed in the west since the Middle Ages.

Medical Doctor can simply state his affiliation to his licensing board; to me some organization claiming ownership of a term in common usage singe the Middle Ages screams first amendment violation.

Nah. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional

> The notion of a professional can be traced to medieval European guilds, most of which died off by the middle of the nineteenth century, the exception being the scholars guild, or university.

> With most guilds formally abolished outside of the realm of academia, establishing exclusivity and standards in a trade had to be achieved via other means such as licensing practices, of which might begin as an informal process established by voluntary professional associations, but then eventually become law due to lobbying efforts.

> (...) a significant motivation in the development of the AMA was to gain authority over unlicensed practitioners so as to minimize competition among medical practitioners, thereby enhancing the earning power and prestige of medical professionals. The licensing process Starr argues, was unnecessarily prolonged and the costs were artificially enhanced with the specific aim of deterring potential practitioners from entering the field.*

> (...) while defenders of guilds have argued that they allowed markets to function by ensuring quality standards, Sheliah Olgelvic has instead argued that markets of the Middle Ages flourished when guilds were abolished and that there is much evidence to support the notion that individuals prefer a wide variety of products of varying quality and price to being granted protections which they did not ask for, and which artificially constrain consumer options.

* on that note, https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidie...

> In America, aspiring doctors do four years of undergrad in whatever area they want (I did Philosophy), then four more years of medical school, for a total of eight years post-high school education. In Ireland, aspiring doctors go straight from high school to medical school and finish after five years.

> Americans take eight years to become doctors. Irishmen can do it in four, and achieve the same result. Each year of higher education at a good school – let’s say an Ivy, doctors don’t study at Podunk Community College – costs about $50,000. So American medical students are paying an extra $200,000 for…what?

Please don't use that term as it summons the Ghost of Racism Past.

And in any case, when a word is incorporated from another language, it's meaning is misunderstood all the time. Why is this case somehow morally offensive?

It was the same thing with food packaging. Land 'o Lakes literally removed the Native American woman but they kept the land! She used to be in every grocery store. Now removed.

That's why they as peasants looked after the cows, but the aristocrats from France ate the beef. (Sheep/mutton, pig/pork)

False, it was not the French but the Normans, Vikings who had learned to speak French, who conquered England.

An England made up of Brittanic Celts who had been conquered, ruled over, and had mixed with and learned to speak the Germanic languages of the Angles, the Saxons and then the invading Danes.

French, the language of France, is derived from the Latin language of the Romans who had conquered that Gaulic Celtic place before they were in turn conquered by the Germanic Franks who switched from their lingua franca to Latin. Then the Normans settled in Normandy, just north of Brittany, still occupied by the Celts.

So there is nothing French about the Germanic Franks, nor anything Gaulic or Frankish about the language French, a language the Romans brought to Gaul and the Germanic Normans brought to Great Britain.

Is "reverse cultural appropriation" a thing then, or do we have a better phrase for when it's no longer appropriate for a population to use words that were inserted into their language by force?

“L'anglais n'est que du français mal prononcé”

“English is little more than badly pronounced French”

-- D'Artagnan in Vingt ans après

This one was surprising to me. I always assumed Indian summer was about summer in India lasting longer.

Apparently it really is about an American phenomenon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_summer . Though I don't see the negative reading on the Wikipedia page.

I actually think Brave ("the Braves") would have been a good name to refer to Native Americans. I don't feel like "noble, courageous" is much of a slur. It's pretty honorable in fact. I don't see how calling someone brave equates them with less than a man.

I have wondered if maybe at least some suicides are about a disconnect between what you're actually able to do, and what people expect of you.

It's obviously bad if people hate you and expect no good to come of you. But there's an additional horror when you're given an impossible task, and people expect you to do it - indeed, when they're actually genuinely disappointed in you when you can't. It's like in Kafka's "The transformation": the real horror isn't that Samsa wakes up and finds that he's turned into a giant cockroach. It's his family's reaction: how could you do this to us? How could you put us in this situation?

I'm thinking maybe that stereotypical image of the noble, brave Indian with his great wisdom, connection to nature, unbreakable spirit - something you'd want to live up to, who wouldn't? - is especially cruel in the face of the material realities of first nation communities.

I guess I can see it used in an infantalising way.

It's an unusual usage. Fun Fact: "brave" when referring to male warriors is assumed to come from Spanish bravo which means "courageous, untamed, savage".

The association of courage and savagery comes from Spanish Renaissance culture and both meanings are meant simultaneously - that is, savages - those prone to violence -- were associated with courage and vice versa. Because English didn't have such an association, the word was repurposed to have two meanings and the second meaning fell into disuse after the 19th Century.

Now in the 21st century, unless you are reading a book written in the 1800s, when you hear "brave" you can pretty much assume it's an adjective with the primary usage.

The association of "savages" with honor and courage seems pretty universal. Like the vikings are often depicted with a strong sense of honor. Or the celtics by the romans, or the huns and mongols. Basically any tribal culture I can think of. While those living in cities / bigger civilizations are associated with corruption, deceit etc.

I suppose it's better to accept that both honor and deceit exist in all human beings, irrespective of group.

Used like you would use “warrior”.

> Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends

> And he built a dream that when he grew up

> He would be a fearless warrior, Indian Chief

> Many moons passed, and more the dream grew strong

> Until tomorrow he would sing his first war song

> And fight his first battle

> But something went wrong

> Surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night

> And so castles made of sand > Melts into the sea eventually

From Jimi Hendrix's Castles Made of Sand, one of his better and more underrated tunes.

I can understand a complaint like the Atlanta Braves offending someone because it’s a caricature, but still don’t think it should be changed.

Ableist, sexist, biologal-essentialism, so many red flags. Wait, red is a cultural appropriation as its differently used in different cultures.

Anyway, Indian Summer referring to people being late is completely made-up.

Cultural appropriation is such a fucking dumb concept. It is a positive. It enriches all of us.

How very cynical and destructive does one have to be to police that? This movement is miserable.

Notice how they are fine with using words like "gunman", "conman" but not the positive masculine words like man-made, mankind ...

Also no issues with "motherboard" or "mother nature".

"Settler" - It actually uses this word a lot in its definitions as to why words are bad, but "Settler" itself is an offensive term used by First Nations against "whites".

"White privilege" is also missing? Again another harmful word thrown around which many consider offensive. Words which include "Everyone" are generally not good because within "white people" there is a wide range of thoughts/beliefs. I'm sure that very poor white people don't feel they have "white privilege"?

When asked to define "white privilege" the SJW's fail miserably.

At the end of the day, given Stanford is in the US and has "first amendment rights" this list itself is utter nonsense.

There is a vast difference between terms used by marginalised groups to refer to dominant ones, and terms used by dominant groups to refer to marginalised ones.

Whether or not this policy itself is effective or well-considered, the broader mission to identify ways in which historic injustice is ingrained and perpetuated through our language and try to amend it is a noble one.

There are many words throughout history that have been common place but carried so much cultural baggage that they became damaging and were thus abandoned - most terms we now consider slurs were once defended with arguments of similar merits to your own.

The process of improving our language is never going to be an easy one, no doubt many found it challenging to fully excise many of our abandoned terms from their vocabulary, but it's been done before, and will likely be done indefinitely into the future unless we ever reach a point of such equality that our language can no longer cause harm.

Political Correctness is not improving language, it's forcing people to be afraid of what they're saying, thus thinking.

> that our language can no longer cause harm.

Language does not cause harm. Emotionally immature people do.

Suggesting that women are less likely to want to be programmers? Get fired, and yelled at by the media.

And they’re simultaneously kink shaming!

They also focus on age being the problem with “grey beard” rather than the implication that all senior engineers are men. I’ve always been turned off by the term not because it singles out age as a proxy for experience, because they’re literally proxies for each other. You don’t have 30 years of experience without aging 20 years. But not everyone with 30 years of experience can grow a beard or has a penis. Given the gender issues in technology, which are so obvious in the statistics over time, I genuinely think language like this calcifies the gender divide.

I too am from South America, never have I seen anyone down there assume they are “American”.

This is just a ban list, or better yet a black list to bring a 1984 dystopia.

Actually, no - my Mexican wife is genuinely offended when I refer to US citizens as Americans, or when I refer to the United States as America.

So I do it as often as I can.

Of course, there’s a substantial difference between annoying and offending, but it seems like there are, in fact, reasonable people who object to that usage.

This demonym is really unfortunate.

Isn’t that precisely when it’s ok to ridicule someone? Not based on properties they cannot change (race, height, sex, etc) but indeed based on behavior they choose to engage in (religion, politics, social behavior, life choices, etc.).

If ridiculing people for their behavior is now off limits then what the hell is left? Do we just talk about the weather?

Its like requiring all new buildings be handicap accessible. No one is mandating that everyone use a wheelchair, but instead we're building new things in a way to (try to) minimize the impact on the handicap. By telling architects that stairs are hard to use, and ramps are easier, you're telling people how to build for everyone.

Similarly, by telling people what words may have negative meanings, you're empowering them to minimize their impact on others. This is a suggested language update, not a forced way of speaking, so its even weaker than the handicap accessible requirement. If you meet this list with open contempt but you don't show the same contempt for a handicap ramp... then maybe approach the list with a different perspective.

Academic institutions are increasingly places which attempt to police language (and consequently thought). It's a nigh-on puritanical drive to molly-coddle the overly sensitive and limit debate. And it's even more frustrating considering the fact that an academic institution is the place where young people should be exploring all viewpoints, not just what has been deemed acceptable by the elite or those in power. Also see: de-platforming.

It's telling that some of these are terms which have been used without issue for far longer than half a century. It's only recently that they've ever been deemed to be "harmful". I don't know, it's almost as if...the same word can have different meanings depending on its context!

You may say that this is optional and just a suggestion, but it's a short path from compiling a list of these terms to real honest-to-goodness compelled speech.

When have you last spent any significant time at a university? Debate and diversity of thought are ever present. I can’t think of a single viewpoint that is missing from my institution.

Sometimes people don’t like what you have to say and cause a stink, but that’s what tenure is for. Unless you’re consuming a steady right wing news diet, I don’t see how you could come to your conclusion.

> You may say that this is optional and just a suggestion

So what do you propose, we ban letting people make lists of words? This is just an exercise in marketing, not the slope to which your speech will be controlled. Feel free to do and say whatever you want, offend whomever you want. No one is obliging you to pay attention to the guidelines Stanford is making for themselves behind their school login; this list is not only optional for you, it’s not even meant to be read by you.

You know when you are a bubble when…

I'm not a huge fan of watching baseball. Would you also assume that I want baseball to be banned just because I'm not that into it?

There are ways to gracefully respond to someone you disagree with, but suggesting that someone wants to "ban letting people make lists of words" because they disagree with the content of a single list isn't one of them. If you're going to be disingenuous at least put a little effort into it.

That someone here might believe we need to ban the making of lists like this (because they believe them to be the first step to controlled speech) is not far fetched to me, especially when they are so worked up about a list that has no conceivable power over them and their life. It’s just a list of words. If you see a problem with a list of words, what is the proposal to fix that, exactly? Short of banning lists entirely, what fixes are even possible?

Anyway, can you think of ways to engage with someone without calling them disingenuous? Why wade into this discussion if you’re just going to attack my motives? You felt like I needed to be chided even though all of the discussion in this story has died?

Amazingly, the strawmen keep coming. You think this is a bad list because it has bad entries in it? You must be against the very concept of lists!

Humandating, please. Etymology aside, this is suggestive of men forcing people to do things, which is insensitive of ~~survivors of rape~~ people who have survived rape.

> architects

People who engage in architecture. Just as people who engage in sex work do not want to be reduced to sex workers, people who architect do not want to be reduced to their occupation. Architect also has white supremacist undertones, as it's derived from a Greek word and implies the ability of white men to impose order on physical reality.

Fine; can we ban "nail polish remover"? I'm a Pole, and this reminds me of Nazis killing millions of poles. When will someone do something about this horrific phrase?

A blacklist, a black-hat hacker etc have nothing to do with racialized use of these terms. The color black is deeply associated with death in European cultures, and as such it has clear negative usages. Trying to make it seem like this somehow reflects negatively on black people is simply wrong, ahistorical, and encourages a kind of extreme thinking that really does seem like a slippery slope.

The logic used to even suggest these words are harmful to black people directly leads to the conclusion that dressing in black at a funeral or representing Death as a figure hooded in black should be avoided, as they perpetuate this association.

The most likely cause of death for me on the next 20 years, as a white man in his 20s, is suicide. A major part of the reasoning for that is men typically struggle to reach out and talk about issues. A contributing factor I think is growing up around phrases like "man up" or "stop being a girl". Obviously anyone who says them isn't saying "bottle up serious issues until it becomes too much" but that repeated learning does stick and despite times changing and there being far less pressure now to be an alpha head of family type guy, the issues continue to affect us.

I don't see any reason that same repeated learning from a young age wouldn't also apply to black/white language if there's an overwhelming imbalance.

Muhammad Ali famously gave a speech on exactly this, though he also covered cultural references as well which is a broader scope: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-52988605

Even more, the color black itself has many different connotations, and not all are negative. It is for example a color of formal prestige (black belt, black ribbon). It is high-contrast (the situation is black and white). It is the color of things which don't emit light (black body radiation, black hole). It is also the color of many bronze statues, and also of ebony - both often used to depict saints and Jesus himself all in black since medieval times.

Humans are perfectly capable of keeping context in mind, and connotations from one context don't actually bleed into other contexts all that much.

The missing representation of black people in European and American art is a different problem, and it is a real problem that won't be addressed by replacing black box with opaque box.

But even if it is not all that much, it's still there. A million people having a 1% shift in their views due to language adds up. That's why we're seeing groups of individuals who aren't racist/sexist somehow reach answers that statistically do appear to be.

The specifics of which uses are neutral or not is the next debate. Step 1 is acknowledging that language is something that feeds into the "nurture" side of how we think, especially since language is such a large part of our learning during early brain development. With that in mind, it's something that should be debated and selection of words should be considered.

It is up to anyone claiming such an effect exists to go and prove it with solid data, enough data to overturn hundreds of years of language use. And if such a link actually exists, and someone actually believes in it, then I would like to see them insist people don't wear black (or red, yellow, brown or whatever other color they think is racialized) to funerals.

Edit: I also want to comment on the idea that the brain's ability to generalize would apply to meaning bleeding between separate contexts that use the same words. I think this is a misunderstanding of how the brain works. Concepts used in our thought later get translated into (spoken/written) language, or back again when listening/reading. But, the concepts are not the words that they are represented by. The black of a funeral is not the same concept as the black used to refer to a black person, even though they use the same word or symbol. Just like I'm not applying anything I know about mice scurrying through my house to the mouse I'm holding in my hand while playing (even though the origin of the word is exactly that animal), there is no reason to think there is any transfer whatsoever between the various meanings of black, even if they are related.

This is where we're coming at it from different sides. I think changing language is a relatively cheap and easy thing to do, that might help fix an issue in some small way, and there's really not much reason not to. The cause and effect is plausible, if not provable on any reasonable timescale.

Metaphor, simile, pathetic fallacy are all powerful tools that really do change the way we interpret the substance of what we read. Colours too, it's not a coincidence the major tech brands have gone with various blues, those blues are deliberately designed to nudge people towards a particular emotional response that is completely unrelated to the brand itself. If word selection really did nothing to change the impression of what we read, then writers and poets would be out of a job.

We should probably just stop calling people "black" then.

The issue with "man up" or "stop being a girl" isn't language, it's patriarchal habits having ingrained in many of us that men don't cry, men don't talk, men are strong. It's not the words used that kill you, it's the social construct.

How does the social construct get perpetuated except through words?

This is very visible in the words used for those with mental disabilities. They used to be called "idiots" by doctors. Then, as idiot became a common insult, doctors moved on to "<people with a> mental retard". When that became a common insult, they moved on to "mentally challenged" and so on. This will be a never-ending arms-race though: as long as people insist on insulting others by comparing them to those that have a mental disability, they will always pick up the current medical terminology for them and use it as an insult.

Note that I'm not saying we should be calling children with Down syndrome "idiots" or "retards". Even though the "fight" will probably be endless, it's worth it not to use known derogatory terms for your pacients. Similarly, even though racists and other bigots can express their bigotry even with perfectly neutral language, it doesn't mean we should accept the use of slurs.

But it's also important not to get a false impression that just because Richard Spencer isn't using the n-word to refer to black people (in public), it means he's not being racist. You can always use language to teach others to hate BIPOC and ask for them to be thrown out of the country, along with LGBTQIA+ people if you're at it.

Hearing those words is a thing, yes. Men wearing floral perfumes will be shamed for it (patriarchy sees this as feminine). Men will receive less gentle physical touches, caresses, care, either in an expectation that it makes them weaker, or that they don't need it. Men are expected to dress a certain way.

Men don't commit suicide _just_ because they're told to man up and deal with it. They do it because of a socially enforced dreadful lack of emotional comfort. A hug doesn't need words to comfort someone, not being judged or looked at wrongly for going away from the mold doesn't need words to comfort someone. That's why it's a social construct, not a verbal construct. It permeates everything around you.

Consider that levels of affection afforded to men (or harshness they are expected to endure) vary significantly across cultures and very much between subcultures in a modern nation like the US. It’s trivial to find groups of people who are very positive about affection vs people who are very traditional within a few miles of each other.

These groups speak very differently about their ideas of masculinity (since you introduced that example) and will make different arguments about what is right. Those arguments absolutely do inform group members and newcomers alike about what is considered acceptable.

Language is of course not everything - people do learn through mimicry, but you might be surprised how easy it is to use language to get someone to try something they didn’t think was for them. Advertisers do this all the time.

I don’t really see how someone can sit there with a straight face and say language doesn’t matter because of patriarchy.

Also patriarchy doesn’t ‘see’ anything because patriarchy isn’t a person and doesn’t have eyes. Patriarchy is an academic term for a set of ideas, not a mystical being.

This is true enough, the problem is going from the conclusion that these negative associations will have any real-world impact. Recent reviews of implicit association tests (IAT) suggest that they correlate with nothing but brain activity.

I see this backwards sort of thinking elsewhere in the list. Someone once used "yellow" as a racial pejorative, but instead of simply condemning the slur they attempt to preserve it, by forbidding other, non-racialized uses of the word "yellow".

> but on the whole this list is basically just ‘try to be kind to others’. It’s disappointing to see it so badly received.

I think it's being so poorly received specifically because it doesn't come off as a "try to be kind to others" list. I do agree with quite a few of the things on their list, but many of the items are so out there and tenuous that it makes it seem like a list put together by some severely out-of-touch people who get off controlling others. Which, unfortunately, I suspect is actually the case. And I think overall it undermines the efforts of people who are trying to get others to stop using some of the legitimately harmful words on the list.

They just want to appear progressive and sympathetic. It's virtue signalling.

Allowing these people to police language is mass insanity.

I mean, you do realize that 99% of black people have no idea where "grandfathered in" comes from, right? You do realize that going into etymology to find offense is something only snobby linguistics cunts that you would find at elite universities would do, right?

In society we have come to a collective understanding that “I’m not racist; some of my best friends are black” is an invalid dismissal of a person’s potential for racism.

Somehow, however, we have also decided that if someone does not have a sufficient quantity nor quality of relationships with black people, then that is a strong signal of racism.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

Labeling a word as harmful actually harms more, since most new generations are so removed from the word's origin that it carries none of the supposed harm

Probably even things like policeman, man-in-the-middle etc are not offensive or patriarchal to the vast majority of women (especially since many such words are probably older than the current use of "man" to mean male person, and refer to the older sense of person, as in the US constitution).

I feel like that use is... complicated. Why, exactly, did "man" mean "person"? Why not "woman", then? It feels like using "man" to mean "person" -- including and especially in historic usage -- is itself patriarchal. Given the time period you reference -- the writing of the US Constitution -- I think it's even more stark, as it was written by men who were not inclined to allow women any sort of participation in the government (and I expect many of them did not feel that women were as entitled to many of the rights they were enumerating).

But really, the semantics aren't the primary issue. If a lot of women feel excluded by "man"-terms, then that's a problem. To be fair, though, I have never asked a female police officer or firefighter if she felt that "policeman" or "fireman" made her feel excluded, so I don't really know.

I think "excluded" is a better term than "offended" in some cases. "Offended" is a very squishy, subjective, imprecise, emotional term. What matters is why someone might feel offended by a particular term, and I could certainly sympathize with a woman who felt like "policeman" was implicitly telling her that she wasn't fit for the job, that women should be excluded from consideration for that job, or that women should intentionally exclude themselves from considering wanting that job.

As much as I disagree with a lot of the things on Stanford's list, I think calling words "harmful" is better and more descriptive than calling them "offensive".

This conflation found in early modern English uses of "man" started being seen as problematic in the early 20th century, and style guides started preferring other words to refer to people in general, thus relegating "man" to mean only male person somewhat artificially.

[0] the only remaining usage is in werewolf - though few would assume a werewolf has to be male.

[1] note that I am using "male person" only to make it clearer when I'm using the generic or specific meaning of "man". I'm not trying to conflate sex with gender or any other kind of subtle transphobia.

"No, of course I'm not offended by being called a firewoman, why would I be? It's clearly referring to both women and men" - Jake Miller, Firewoman, Springfield Fire Department

Of course saying womankind sounds funny now because we haven’t heard it used for our whole lives. The term mankind derives from Sanskrit meaning children of Manu (a god). It’s not a sexist term and we’ve gone 2000 years without people finding it offensive, it’s only one that people with no other issues in their life need something to be offended about and decide to make a war on words.

The words man/men, at least historically, can refer either to a group of unknown composition OR to a group where every member is a man (male). Basically it is a homonym with two separate meanings, just like mouse (animal or input device) or chair (object or leader of a committee).

Point being, policeman being ambiguous doesn't mean that we would expect policewoman to be considered ambiguous as well, since woman is not a homonym.

Switch to something like Lojban.

Nobody would use "Tranny" or "Jewed" in professional conversation. It's a non-issue. But a non-controversial term like "Tribal Knowledge"?

It really reminds me of the main vs master default branch controversy where some activists really pushed a racial connotation on a term which had none [1] [2]. Of course, someone would have to be technical to be able to find the source while whining on social media is available to anyone!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

[1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441

[2] https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab...

It doesn't. Audio or video mastering means to create a reference recording that's then down sampled and used as a reference when manufacturing records [0]. It has nothing to do with race. "Remastering" something means to re-release it with a higher audio quality (typically in a different medium) by using the uncompressed source material (the master) and newer sound processing technologies. It's the reason you can watch old movies in HD on Netflix.

The idea here is that the "master" would be what would be sent to manufacturing when producing a release. It's also why many SaaS use "master" to mean the exact version of the software that's in production, because it's assumed to be the one sent for distribution. It has nothing to do with race or the idea of owning human beings.

> Master recordings have also been used by the music industry as tools to assert control over artists. This practice was recently exposed in popular culture by Pharrell Williams.

There's nothing to expose. When signing up with a producer or recording label, it's common practice to exchange a portion of the rights to the master produced in exchange for (advance) payment and promotion from the label. It's just like founders exchanging equity during fundraising. I'm surprised the practice is unknown or even controversial on a board centered around VC and startups. Black owned record labels [1][2] use the exact same deals when signing up artists.

Now, Pharrell Williams is notorious on his own. Does he need promotion from a label or an advance check for his music? Probably not. That's why he was able to re-negotiate his contracts to keep ownership of his masters. Same way a bootstrapped founder won't sell part of his equity for funding. It has nothing to do with race (but maybe Pharrell, having a large audience, tried making it about race to get leverage when negotiating...).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Row_Records

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-A-Fella_Records

That's not what I've found in my research, which makes very explicit references to a master/slave dichotomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26497027

If what you say is true, that master recording has no relationship to a master/slave dichotomy, then why is there such a thing as a slave reel? Why do industry insiders refer to the dichotomy with a wink and nudge, as if it's a pun ("get it")? They explicitly talk about the master as representing "control" and not "quality".

> There's nothing to expose.

I said expose to popular culture. Many people did not know about this practice, and find it objectionable.

>They explicitly talk about the master as representing "control" and not "quality".

You seem to misunderstand there's a technical term (a recording master, the highest quality and original recording made in a studio) and a legal term (owning the rights to the master) in which said performance can be sold.

>Many people did not know about this practice, and find it objectionable.

I guess they object to owning stocks and shares too?

> You seem to misunderstand

Had you read the link I provided, you’d have seen I quote a source that says exactly what you’re saying. So no, I am aware there are two usages. However, both refer to the master/slave dichotomy in the recording industry:

> there's a technical term (a recording master, the highest quality and original recording made in a studio)

Right, and this is the one from which “slave reels” are made. So the “master/slave” dichotomy exists there. If the name we’re about quality they wouldn’t call the derivatives “slaves”.

> a legal term (owning the rights to the master) in which said performance can be sold.

Which is also part of a master/slave dichotomy because it is about control. The book I link to explicitly refers to the master/slave dichotomy in that particular context.

> I guess they object to owning stocks and shares too?

They are against the exploitive aspects surrounding the practice. I’m not sure how owning stocks and shares could be considered exploitation.

I've never heard the term "slave reels" and git doesn't have the concept nor the term slave anywhere in the codebase afaik.

The term is very much about quality; in the analog days it was way harder and sometimes even impossible to make a perfect copy. Hence the importance of the master being the highest quality (and often recorded on a different, much more expensive medium).

> They are against the exploitive aspects surrounding the practice. I’m not sure how owning stocks and shares could be considered exploitation.

As explained, it's the same model as raising funds for a startup. The record label claims a percentage, or the whole master in exchange for advance payment and promotion. This isn't a race thing.

Well now you have, and I've shown you plenty of evidence that the term has been used even in "the analog days". You may keep insisting that the term is very much about quality, but the sources I've linked suggest the opposite. If you can provide some sources aside from the wiki on "Mastering (audio)" I'm willing to look at them and integrate them into my perspective. Otherwise it's your insistence against the references I've already found.

> and git doesn't have the concept nor the term slave anywhere in the codebase afaik.

That's the whole point of this thread. The original contention was that a "master" branch is a reference to a master/slave dichotomy. The retort is that "no, it actually derives from the term "master recording" in the audio industry, which has nothing to do with a master/slave dichotomy." I've show references that in fact, the "master" in "master recording" is an explicit reference to the master/slave dichotomy.

> As explained, it's the same model as raising funds for a startup.

VC funding is also a pretty dubious imo. But that's neither here nor there.

> This isn't a race thing.

I hear you saying that, but I've also heard others who've shown me evidence that it is. We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm willing to split the difference and accept it can be a little of both, but you can't hide from the term "slave reels". Even if you want to say it's very much about quality, it's clear there is a race component, and maybe you can admit that too? Either way I'll still be defaulting my repos to "main" and teaching my students that way.

When you say "it's clear there is a race component", which race are you referring to?

I am white, and my white great-grandfather died as a slave in a concentration camp at the hands of white Nazi masters as a consequence of white-on-white ethnic persecution.

So do I understand correctly that when you say "it's clear there is a race component", you are referring to white people?

I'm sorry for your grandfather, mine died as well at the hands of Nazis.

By "race component" I'm making reference to racial relations in America, which to a large extent, revolve around the fallout from hundreds of years of chattel slavery of Black people. This country was built on the backs of black slaves, and that still has repercussions in society today. This conflict has deep roots, and many aspects of American life that may seem benign have a context in that history. If you don't know the history then you may not feel one way or another about it. If you do know the history, then it colors things differently (depending on who you are).

Which race? You mean white people, right?

Is there anything outdated if you talk about e.g. a hermaphroditic tree? I thought this was still the standard term in biology for species which practice sexual reproduction and normally or frequently have individuals with both kinds of reproductive organs, either simultaneously or alternately.

Although if you had say, a cat with ambiguous genitalia it wouldn't be offense to reference them as intersex.

Lemon — suggests that the system is of poor quality, or substandard.

Black — racist.

Brown — also racist.

Pink — too girlie for straight male staff.

And so on.

Eventually they had to change the system because this went all the way up to the minister of education.

”They’re just colors of the rainbow Karen! No, not the gay one!”

Not that we have to also provide an alternative for people who can't use the color coding, but we can't use color coding at all.

The world is full of people with good intentions and bad ideas.

Refuse to do GUI at all - surely terminal is better for blind people.

Homophones are next. "Hey Jude".

> - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"

Slave comes from "slav"[0]. So speaking of "slaves" or "slavery" is racist.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653

Rob : You're a total paranoid.

Alvy Singer : Well, how am I a para-? I pick up on those kind of things. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, uh, "Did you eat yet or what?" and Tom Christie said, "No, didjew?" Not, "did you", "didjew eat?" Jew? No, not "did you eat", but "Jew eat"? Jew. You get it? Jew eat?

> "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")

In both those cases, the problem is when it applies to a person, because enslaving someone or having someone submit by force is obviously bad, but there's equally no problem with enslaving a computer or submitting a form, even if you have to force it into a jammed letterbox.

The obvious next step is banning cut, kill, brand or maim, because that's what bad people did to innocent victims; never mind that you can cut paper, kill viruses, brand a product or describe an industrial accident.

Unless of course that is ableist against us autists.

Moving away from "slave" was reasonable (Buildbot got rid of it many years ago!), but led us down a very slippery slope.

I'll stick my head out and say "master" is fine actually.

In fact, much of this list replaces a single-word term with a longer phrase.

"Bob survived the accident but is now a paraplegic" becomes

"Bob is a person who was impacted by an accident, and he is now a person with a spinal cord injury".

Less precise and much wordier.

It wasn't, because it didn't make any sense. Using 'slave' as a metaphor doesn't imply slavery is good.

As far as I know, it describes a real state of things; for instance snails are hermaphrodite, and I don't think anyone ought to feel insulted by this banal fact.

The dumbest series of the list are those words containing "white" or "black" (from "blackballed" and "black hat" to "white-space") which supposedly now carry racial undertones (hint: they don't, and never did).

It looks almost like a plot by rich, progressive people to build a culture war with rich, right-wing people to prevent any serious debate on environmental collapse, class exploitation, plutocracy, etc. You could nearly believe that all those supposedly warring high-ranking people play a clever game together to actually keep the power structure as is, and make minuscule problems obfuscate real ones. Almost.

You won't exterminate rudeness by banning a set of words, nor should you be trying to.

By giving people an option to be rude you can see people that choose not to. And then I'll rather choose a rude vulgar teacher who knows his stuff than a milquetoast who doesn't.

> abusive relationship (The relationship doesn't commit abuse. A person does, so it is important to make that fact clear.)

> rule of thumb (Although no written record exists today, this phrase is attributed to an old British law that allowed men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.)

> trigger warning (The phrase can cause stress about what's to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person.)

> no can do (Originated from stereotypes that mocked non-native English speakers.)

> yellow team ("Yellow" is often used disparagingly against people of Asian descent.)

> survivor (Using person-first language helps to not define people by just one of their experiences. If the person identifies with the term, then use it.)

> preferred pronouns (The word "preferred" suggests that non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference.)

> spirit animal

> calling a spade a spade (Although the term has its origins in Greek literature, the subsequent negative connotations with the word "spade" means that the phrase should be used with caution or not at all.)

Also not really a fan of forcing ethnical identity by institutionalizing "Black" or denying individuals to own their sexual/gender/whatever-the-appropriate-word-will-be-next-year identity as a choice ("preferred pronouns")

Some of these terms were even popularized by the same movement with similar motivations and reasoning in the past few years. How many of the "Consider using" suggestions will be considered "harmful language to be eradicated" in another few years? Feels like we're getting to a place where even a person who is honestly and carefully choosing their words to be non-offensive will be chastised because they missed the memo this year. While many of the entries make perfect sense and should be avoided for the sakes of inclusiveness, respect, and compassion, the content and format makes this have the exact opposite effect of the communicated intention...

> Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community

Yeah, no, they did not do their homework on the tarball I think. To paraphrase parents other comment: This could have been good but this is executed poorly enough to be completely counterproductive.

The one technical source they quote[0] is a blog post by former CISO of UW-Madison that comes across as fundamentally more leveled and reasonable to the point where I find they (apparently unintentionally) misrepresent it.

[0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20221219233220/https://it.wisc.ed...

Yeah, many of these feel extremely "fashionable" to me, in the sense that there was already a term intended to be thoughtful and compassionate, and the latest "preferred alternative" is driven by the latest academic framework to achieve popularity rather than any change in values or the preferences of the people being addressed.

In addition to "survivor", as you highlighted, I know and know of people who would certainly prefer "sex worker" to "prostitute" but would roll their eyes at "person who engages in sex work" - and point out that it actually carries more of an assumption of stigma, since nobody would say "person who engages in office work".

At first, the initiative can easily be seen as good, after all who wouldn't want to give more consideration to disenfranchised people by making such a small effort to alter one's language but pushing this to extreme is more than a little problematic.

It's fascinating to see but it's very sad that an institution of higher learning is pushing this and ignoring logic, common sense and restraint.

Will it really take 10 years before everyone wakes up in a collective stupor and says, "well, that really went off the rails. How about we move on?"

Eh, that'd cause children to be innoculated to these if anything.

Sadly, the reality seems to be that the bleeding edge of sensitive language is more often wielded combatively to try to discredit someone.

This is a myth: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb

It's been interesting to watch The Guardian tie itself in knots over the acronym BAME (and later to some extent BIPOC), which was meant to be the new, inclusive, non-offensive to the minorities it sought to describe, term for non-white (particularly in the UK), which the newspaper was much in favour of but then seemed to decide was probably bad and might even be racist. And then keep using it all over the place.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/black-...

In the mean time, outside of that particular bubble, I think most people either looked on with bemusement or had no idea of the existence of the term anyway.

Edit: Because it is really fun, in a strange way, to go through the list: Isn't chief also used to address, e.g., a chief petty officer?

Edit 2: The list is just, well, strange. Ghetto for example, in the list it is mentioned as a non-white neighborhood. Historically, it was a jewish one. Let alone to speak about the Ghettos the Nazi's put in place. Karen, bad because it insults (?) people for their behaviour, this just stands out against all the other terms on list because of negative perception around what people are. Pretty lazy list, especially for an instituation like Stanford from which I would have expected better understanding of cultural and historic context...

Edit 3: No surpise, red team is on the list. But doesn't that come from military exercises, with red being the opfor? And blue being friendlies?

Edit 4: While some things are good advice, the majority of things on this list is just rediciulous edge cases. And, on top of that, some things are on the list because racists took it over, e.g. uppity. So basically, extremists, racists and whomever has to use a term for the rest of us normal people (also on the list for whatever reason) cannot use it anymore. That alone raises the question who is in charge of words here.

Edit: I just remembered one place I've heard it: in the lyrics to the song "Everyone has AIDS" from the movie Team America. "The gays and the straights and the whites and the spades / everyone has AIDS!"

Meaning 3: "A black person"