If you were trying to help people be more inclusive with their language, categorizing them like this seems counter to your goals
Your own list seems to say that exclusionary language about someone's medical condition (lame) is more acceptable than other exclusionary language, because that stigma has a different history? Or because that language is more common?
Those words can still do real harm to real people, even if they're lower down in your ranking of these words
> Those words can still do real harm to real people
Pretty much anything you can say that has any form of content can do harm to someone. If we want to never ever accidentally hurt someone's feelings, we need to stop talking about:
- Having kids. It's quite painful to those who can't.
- Parents. It's painful to those who don't have any, or have abusive ones.
- War. It's painful to veterans or people who fled war.
- Anything medical. It might hurt someone who's dealing with a medical issue in one way or another.
- Pets. It might be a sensitive subject to someone who just lost a pet.
- Stop asking people how they're doing. It's a sensitive subject to people dealing with burn-out or depression.
Where do we draw the line?
I've been personally affected, many times, by multiple things in my examples above, so please don't say I'm exaggerating with those examples. However, I really don't want to live in a world where we need to watch every word because it might make someone feel bad.
If anything, this type of thinking might even affect people negatively, because it pushes the idea that feelings should be repressed, in stead of dealt with.
This is why we almost universally resort to talking about the weather when speaking with relative strangers. It's hard to be offended by overcast weather.
I can see a future where we can't do that anymore either, because climate change will displace many people and weather will also become a topic that might hurt some people's feelings.
While typing this, I realized we're there already. During summer, when talking about the temperature, people already feel the need to add their opinion about climate change to the discussion, which then becomes political.
> While typing this, I realized we're there already.
We definitely are there already. I can't comfortably talk about weather anymore, because after either side mentions anything interesting - such as it being surprisingly cold, or hot, or snowy, or windy - I feel tempted to say something about climate change. Being risk averse, I stop myself and say nothing, but this creates an awkward pause and ends the conversation.
What does "real harm" even mean in this context? Someone will be offended? Their feelings will be hurt? Is that something we need to avoid at all cost in society?
And isn't there in implicit insult in that? That an entire group is so fragile, that seeing a mere word on paper, in a completely different context, will somehow reduce them to emotional rubble?
Aren't many of these making things worse, e.g. "calling a spade a spade" or "blackbox" by implying that any distant possible connection to 'black' makes something so horrible that its use must be suppressed? What does that imply about that color?
These lists are actively harmful, not to mention wasteful, but I guess they are good at creating demand for DEI officers and giving them work to do.
Your own list seems to say that exclusionary language about someone's medical condition (lame) is more acceptable than other exclusionary language, because that stigma has a different history? Or because that language is more common?
Those words can still do real harm to real people, even if they're lower down in your ranking of these words