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It's a catch-22 that many things that have been perfectly considerate and inoffensive for quite a long time have been turned into something offensive by people

It's a catch-22 that many things that have been perfectly considerate and inoffensive for quite a long time have been turned into something offensive by people being overly sensitive and then overly loud. For example, say some phrase or usage, call it X, exists. X is used widely, and never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble. It's been used righteously with pure intentions and loving hearts. Then a person comes along, and for some reason that nobody can really explain, decides that X is not OK. It is somehow offensive. People don't want to be offensive, so they stop using X. Then as people stop using X, more people stop using X. Eventually only people who are actually insensitive keep using X. Now X is only found mixed in with the rest of the insensitive things insensitive people say, and it picks up a very offensive connotation. To me, this is all ridiculous and I think the people who look for potentially 'offensive' things, and try to police language as though enforcing softer language will inject love and understanding into people's hearts, are harmful to the world because they distract from things that actually matter to the quality of people's lives and create an easy to point to absurd narrative for the people who are actually acting out of hate to point to, which is an easy way for them to inoculate people into a knee jerk reaction against considering the larger issues involved.

pimlottc 11y ago
It sounds like you're describing the phenomenon of the "Euphemism Treadmill" [1], the canonical example of which is the previously-acceptable term "retarded". 1: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/06/euphemism-treadmill-replacing-r-word.html http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/06/euphemism-treadmi...
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Oh my, you're right. I read the blank slate about 10 years ago and must have just internalized that idea.
- nosideeffects 11y ago
  I see and hear "autistic" used as a slur now, too.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    It might well be. It is, sadly, very frequently used as an insult (at least on the Internet, anyway).
    - justin_vanw 11y ago
      Generally cruel people will find the word that maximizes cruelty. Since it is more insulting to claim that someone has 'clinical and official' whatever than to use the time worn insult version of the same word, cruel people will constantly chase whatever the most official version is. To be clear, the goal of an insult is not to use some bad word, but to claim something that will hurt the person being insulted. Even when I was in school I remember 'retarded' being used almost always a replacement for 'absurd', and people being insulted with words like 'special ed' or 'special eddy'. Not that I condone those things, but the point is that the insult was to say 'you are like that group of people' where 'that group of people' can be any group that is outside of the in-group. You can see this on message boards today where people are accused of being 'normies', etc.
- striking 11y ago
  I believe that you can call the slowing down of progress "retardation" still, just not where it applies to human beings. And that's where I feel this project is mistaken. Because it would flag any use of "retard" even if it were in reference to "flame retarding bromides" or an innocuous phrase like "the pace of development has slowly retarded" or "the tempo retards in the last four measures of the piece".
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Much like a spell-checker or Word's grammar checker screw this up, yes. I'm not sure it can be helped much.
    - striking 11y ago
      Spell checkers et al. don't check subjective properties like tone or offensiveness. (And where it gets subjective, they would rather create a false negative than a false positive.) It works rather well.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        > Spell checkers et al. don't check subjective properties like tone or offensiveness. That's true. But grammar checkers screw up rather often for the same reason things like `alex` would: understanding context as a computer is quite hard.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> perfectly considerate and inoffensive for quite a long time No, they weren't considerate and inoffensive. You just didn't know they weren't. If you don't speak much to gay people, you wouldn't realise certain terms (like, historically, 'gay') were offensive. If you don't speak much to disabled people, you wouldn't realise 'cripple' was offensive. If you didn't speak much to trans people, you wouldn't realise 'tr$&%y' was a slur. > never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble Intention is nice and all, but effect is what actually matters. People will be kinder on you if you didn't intend to be hurtful, but it ultimately doesn't matter if you're consistently actually being hurtful without good reason. > enforcing softer language will inject love and understanding into people's hearts Who thinks it will? The idea of considerate language is to avoid normalising things that are unreasonable (not all firefighters are male, don't use 'fireman'), or avoid causing hurt to people (at best a gay person would be irritated by a certain word beginning with f, at worst deeply hurt). > they distract from things that actually matter to the quality of people's lives Avoiding discrimination DOES matter to people's lives. Maybe it doesn't to you. But you should maybe listen to the people this actually affects, who may actually appreciate these efforts.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Please don't put words in my mouth. Some words are offensive and people should not use them. However, other words aren't offensive, have never been before, and don't need to become so. Intention is everything. If there is some word, and literally nobody has ever used it from a place of hate, then taking offense at that word is wrong and a mental pathology. I totally agree with you about words used by some to express hate and other nasty intentions. So in your example, 'tr$&%y' is a nasty slur some people use. Everyone should stop saying 'tr$&%y'! I'm very much NOT saying that an innocent person can say 'tr$&%y'. I am saying that if you have a word like 'boogyman', what is the point of trying to issue some kind of warning that you should really say 'boogyperson'? Are there actually some kind of non-male boogy's that we are somehow excluding?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > Some words are offensive and people should not use them. > However, other words aren't offensive, have never been before, and don't need to become so. Not all the words `alex` deals with are offensive, though, but inconsiderate in other ways. I'm not sure if you're saying they all are supposed to be offensive, but I'm assuming you are. Also, which words are you referring to which aren't offensive? It's all very well talking in the abstract, but without actually defining this you're making statements that are essentially all things to all people. > Intention is everything. Intention does matter somewhat, but only somewhat. If you repeatedly use offensive language, without good reason, after being warned about its effects, perhaps you should stop. And unintentional effects, while you didn't intend them, are still very much real and you should still acknowledge them. People who feel they are doing the right thing can still cause harm. That they felt it was right doesn't completely absolve them. Edit: By the way, are you sure expanding your comments after they've been replied to is a good idea? This makes it look like the people who've replied to you have ignored points you've made.
Mtinie 11y ago
It's been my experience that communties generally work best when individuals are considerate towards one another. Some level of sensitivity towards avoding terms that cause discomfort to others goes a long way. > X is used widely, and never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble. It's been used righteously with pure intentions and loving hearts. Do you have an example of a term that falls into this category? I'm interested in words or phrases that have fallen out of use; especially ones that are "used righteously with pure intentions and loving hearts".
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Well, how about the example from the page here. It says that 'boogyman' is potentially offensive because it refers to gender. So presumably if I am not caught up on a story, and I ask who the 'bad guy' is in the story, that is offensive because 'guy' implies maleness? That whole line of reasoning could not be more absurd. Nobody has ever said 'bad guy' or 'boogyman' with the intention of somehow excluding fictional women from engaging in immoral fictional acts, or diminishing anyone. If sensitive people go along, however, pretty soon anyone with any sense will avoid saying 'bad guy' because someone said it is bad to say that, and nobody wants other people to think we're not considerate.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > potentially offensive The problem is not that it is offensive. It's very unlikely anyone would find it to be so. The problem is that it normalises maleness. > Nobody has ever said 'bad guy' or 'boogyman' with the intention of somehow excluding fictional women from engaging in immoral fictional acts, or diminishing anyone. It doesn't matter what your intent is. Using 'he' and 'man' everywhere normalises men and excludes people of a different gender. > pretty soon anyone with any sense will avoid saying 'bad guy' Well, yes. What's wrong with that? If there's a superior alternative, what's wrong if people start using it exclusively?
    - justin_vanw 11y ago
      > If there's a superior alternative, It's not superior. Out of almost half a billion English speakers, probably a very tiny percentage 'highly educated' people would ever even think that this is a topic someone might have an opinion about. Everyone else, from small children on up, would just explain to you that a 'bad guy' can be a boy or a girl. It's not normalizing maleness, you are the one bringing an incorrect definition of -man or -guy, and that incorrect definition, which you insist on using despite being wrong both compared to the dictionary definition and long standing usage among native speakers, is what implies maleness. This reminds me of the people who try to claim (hopefully tongue in cheek?) that history somehow encodes maleness because it has the word 'his' in it. EDIT: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/bad-guy http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/ba... http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bad+guy http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bad+guy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bad%20guy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bad%20guy You could go all day, no dictionary assigns any sex (in fact, most even make it clear that a 'bad guy' can be non-human).
mazlix 11y ago
My main concern with the word policing is for people who have been using a common term while it was not offensive, later being deemed as insensitive for having used the term. For example if using "slave/master" terminology becomes widely accepted as insensitive, in the future someone may look through my twitter history or something and find that I had used that term, even though at the time of writing no one had considered that term insensitive.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > My main concern with the word policing is for people who have been using a common term while it was not offensive, later being deemed as insensitive for having used the term. This might happen occasionally with words that become offensive, but I'd argue a lot of such words that "were not offensive" actually were, it's just the author was oblivious. In such cases, you'd hopefully be able to argue that the author was unaware. Although some people might feign ignorance as an excuse when they very definitely knew what they were saying. > For example if using "slave/master" terminology becomes widely accepted as insensitive [...] > [...] even though at the time of writing no one had considered that term insensitive. Well, it always has been insensitive, but the vast bulk of the tech industry has been people who've not experienced slavery (or didn't consider the implications for those who have), so they were oblivious. > in the future someone may look through my twitter history or something and find that I had used that term Well, you might not have realised. Someone might call you a monster, but I think people would be somewhat forgiving if you hadn't yet been warned. (This does depend on severity, though. With some words, obviously it's impossible to argue you couldn't have known.)
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    > Someone might call you a monster, but I think people would be somewhat forgiving if you hadn't yet been warned. First off, if you think that the sort of folks who make up online mobs are inclined to be forgiving under any circumstance, please let me be the first person to welcome you to the Internet. You're going to be surprised by a lot of things during your stay here. But more importantly: "warned"? Who gave these people the authority to "warn" people about what vocabulary they use? And do other small and frequently mocked subgroups of society, like, oh, say, Mormons, or Southern Baptists, also get to "warn" people about insensitive remarks, and have their warnings automatically obeyed? If not, why not?

pimlottc 11y ago

It sounds like you're describing the phenomenon of the "Euphemism Treadmill" [1], the canonical example of which is the previously-acceptable term "retarded". 1: http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/06/euphemism-treadmill-replacing-r-word.html http://englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/06/euphemism-treadmi...

justin_vanw 11y ago
Oh my, you're right. I read the blank slate about 10 years ago and must have just internalized that idea.
nosideeffects 11y ago
I see and hear "autistic" used as a slur now, too.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  It might well be. It is, sadly, very frequently used as an insult (at least on the Internet, anyway).
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    Generally cruel people will find the word that maximizes cruelty. Since it is more insulting to claim that someone has 'clinical and official' whatever than to use the time worn insult version of the same word, cruel people will constantly chase whatever the most official version is. To be clear, the goal of an insult is not to use some bad word, but to claim something that will hurt the person being insulted. Even when I was in school I remember 'retarded' being used almost always a replacement for 'absurd', and people being insulted with words like 'special ed' or 'special eddy'. Not that I condone those things, but the point is that the insult was to say 'you are like that group of people' where 'that group of people' can be any group that is outside of the in-group. You can see this on message boards today where people are accused of being 'normies', etc.
striking 11y ago
I believe that you can call the slowing down of progress "retardation" still, just not where it applies to human beings. And that's where I feel this project is mistaken. Because it would flag any use of "retard" even if it were in reference to "flame retarding bromides" or an innocuous phrase like "the pace of development has slowly retarded" or "the tempo retards in the last four measures of the piece".
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Much like a spell-checker or Word's grammar checker screw this up, yes. I'm not sure it can be helped much.
  - striking 11y ago
    Spell checkers et al. don't check subjective properties like tone or offensiveness. (And where it gets subjective, they would rather create a false negative than a false positive.) It works rather well.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      > Spell checkers et al. don't check subjective properties like tone or offensiveness. That's true. But grammar checkers screw up rather often for the same reason things like `alex` would: understanding context as a computer is quite hard.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

> perfectly considerate and inoffensive for quite a long time No, they weren't considerate and inoffensive. You just didn't know they weren't. If you don't speak much to gay people, you wouldn't realise certain terms (like, historically, 'gay') were offensive. If you don't speak much to disabled people, you wouldn't realise 'cripple' was offensive. If you didn't speak much to trans people, you wouldn't realise 'tr$&%y' was a slur. > never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble Intention is nice and all, but effect is what actually matters. People will be kinder on you if you didn't intend to be hurtful, but it ultimately doesn't matter if you're consistently actually being hurtful without good reason. > enforcing softer language will inject love and understanding into people's hearts Who thinks it will? The idea of considerate language is to avoid normalising things that are unreasonable (not all firefighters are male, don't use 'fireman'), or avoid causing hurt to people (at best a gay person would be irritated by a certain word beginning with f, at worst deeply hurt). > they distract from things that actually matter to the quality of people's lives Avoiding discrimination DOES matter to people's lives. Maybe it doesn't to you. But you should maybe listen to the people this actually affects, who may actually appreciate these efforts.

justin_vanw 11y ago
Please don't put words in my mouth. Some words are offensive and people should not use them. However, other words aren't offensive, have never been before, and don't need to become so. Intention is everything. If there is some word, and literally nobody has ever used it from a place of hate, then taking offense at that word is wrong and a mental pathology. I totally agree with you about words used by some to express hate and other nasty intentions. So in your example, 'tr$&%y' is a nasty slur some people use. Everyone should stop saying 'tr$&%y'! I'm very much NOT saying that an innocent person can say 'tr$&%y'. I am saying that if you have a word like 'boogyman', what is the point of trying to issue some kind of warning that you should really say 'boogyperson'? Are there actually some kind of non-male boogy's that we are somehow excluding?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > Some words are offensive and people should not use them. > However, other words aren't offensive, have never been before, and don't need to become so. Not all the words `alex` deals with are offensive, though, but inconsiderate in other ways. I'm not sure if you're saying they all are supposed to be offensive, but I'm assuming you are. Also, which words are you referring to which aren't offensive? It's all very well talking in the abstract, but without actually defining this you're making statements that are essentially all things to all people. > Intention is everything. Intention does matter somewhat, but only somewhat. If you repeatedly use offensive language, without good reason, after being warned about its effects, perhaps you should stop. And unintentional effects, while you didn't intend them, are still very much real and you should still acknowledge them. People who feel they are doing the right thing can still cause harm. That they felt it was right doesn't completely absolve them. Edit: By the way, are you sure expanding your comments after they've been replied to is a good idea? This makes it look like the people who've replied to you have ignored points you've made.

Mtinie 11y ago

It's been my experience that communties generally work best when individuals are considerate towards one another. Some level of sensitivity towards avoding terms that cause discomfort to others goes a long way. > X is used widely, and never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble. It's been used righteously with pure intentions and loving hearts. Do you have an example of a term that falls into this category? I'm interested in words or phrases that have fallen out of use; especially ones that are "used righteously with pure intentions and loving hearts".

justin_vanw 11y ago
Well, how about the example from the page here. It says that 'boogyman' is potentially offensive because it refers to gender. So presumably if I am not caught up on a story, and I ask who the 'bad guy' is in the story, that is offensive because 'guy' implies maleness? That whole line of reasoning could not be more absurd. Nobody has ever said 'bad guy' or 'boogyman' with the intention of somehow excluding fictional women from engaging in immoral fictional acts, or diminishing anyone. If sensitive people go along, however, pretty soon anyone with any sense will avoid saying 'bad guy' because someone said it is bad to say that, and nobody wants other people to think we're not considerate.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > potentially offensive The problem is not that it is offensive. It's very unlikely anyone would find it to be so. The problem is that it normalises maleness. > Nobody has ever said 'bad guy' or 'boogyman' with the intention of somehow excluding fictional women from engaging in immoral fictional acts, or diminishing anyone. It doesn't matter what your intent is. Using 'he' and 'man' everywhere normalises men and excludes people of a different gender. > pretty soon anyone with any sense will avoid saying 'bad guy' Well, yes. What's wrong with that? If there's a superior alternative, what's wrong if people start using it exclusively?
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    > If there's a superior alternative, It's not superior. Out of almost half a billion English speakers, probably a very tiny percentage 'highly educated' people would ever even think that this is a topic someone might have an opinion about. Everyone else, from small children on up, would just explain to you that a 'bad guy' can be a boy or a girl. It's not normalizing maleness, you are the one bringing an incorrect definition of -man or -guy, and that incorrect definition, which you insist on using despite being wrong both compared to the dictionary definition and long standing usage among native speakers, is what implies maleness. This reminds me of the people who try to claim (hopefully tongue in cheek?) that history somehow encodes maleness because it has the word 'his' in it. EDIT: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/bad-guy http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/ba... http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bad+guy http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bad+guy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bad%20guy http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bad%20guy You could go all day, no dictionary assigns any sex (in fact, most even make it clear that a 'bad guy' can be non-human).

mazlix 11y ago

My main concern with the word policing is for people who have been using a common term while it was not offensive, later being deemed as insensitive for having used the term. For example if using "slave/master" terminology becomes widely accepted as insensitive, in the future someone may look through my twitter history or something and find that I had used that term, even though at the time of writing no one had considered that term insensitive.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> My main concern with the word policing is for people who have been using a common term while it was not offensive, later being deemed as insensitive for having used the term. This might happen occasionally with words that become offensive, but I'd argue a lot of such words that "were not offensive" actually were, it's just the author was oblivious. In such cases, you'd hopefully be able to argue that the author was unaware. Although some people might feign ignorance as an excuse when they very definitely knew what they were saying. > For example if using "slave/master" terminology becomes widely accepted as insensitive [...] > [...] even though at the time of writing no one had considered that term insensitive. Well, it always has been insensitive, but the vast bulk of the tech industry has been people who've not experienced slavery (or didn't consider the implications for those who have), so they were oblivious. > in the future someone may look through my twitter history or something and find that I had used that term Well, you might not have realised. Someone might call you a monster, but I think people would be somewhat forgiving if you hadn't yet been warned. (This does depend on severity, though. With some words, obviously it's impossible to argue you couldn't have known.)
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  > Someone might call you a monster, but I think people would be somewhat forgiving if you hadn't yet been warned. First off, if you think that the sort of folks who make up online mobs are inclined to be forgiving under any circumstance, please let me be the first person to welcome you to the Internet. You're going to be surprised by a lot of things during your stay here. But more importantly: "warned"? Who gave these people the authority to "warn" people about what vocabulary they use? And do other small and frequently mocked subgroups of society, like, oh, say, Mormons, or Southern Baptists, also get to "warn" people about insensitive remarks, and have their warnings automatically obeyed? If not, why not?