3 ms·

Well if this was so widely know since 2003, it's odd how it took 17 years before any politician took objection to it, until that confirmation hearing, isn't it?

Well if this was so widely know since 2003, it's odd how it took 17 years before any politician took objection to it, until that confirmation hearing, isn't it? That was the exact moment everyone got the memo? Call it a "gotcha" video all you want, but it's clear to everyone else what it is - a plain as day demonstration of double standards. Of course politicians being self-serving hypocrites isn't news, or limited to Democrats, as the Republicans demonstrated when they argued it isn't appropriate to make a Supreme Court appointment near the end of Obama's term, only to find it very appropriate when they got to appoint a judge. What is news is that now dictionaries cooperate in their hypocrisy.

notahacker 4y ago
I mean, no, it's not really at all odd that a phrase that raised niche and context-specific objections for years got its first objection publicised well enough for you to be aware of it when it involved a forensic examination of Supreme Court appointee's interview statements, and not some other people making less scrutinised remarks that weren't also allegedly evading upholding Obergefell as settled precedent. It's also perfectly reasonable to think this might be a little unfair on said jurist who had little reason to have traced the history of the uses of "sexual preference". What is novel is your insistence that it makes more sense to assume dictionaries conspiring against conservative jurists are a more logical explanation for Merriam Webster adding an advisory warning to a definition other authoritative style guides cautioned about in 1991, 2003, and 2013 than it was headline news today, and lots of people asked so we looked into it. Some might say making a change three decades after others wasn't that rapid...
- AinderS 4y ago
  > lots of people asked so we looked into it. And what did they find? That the term was routinely used within the LGBT community and never remarked on as offensive [1,2]? Or did they neglect to apply even the minimum of scrutiny, and simply took the word of grievance experts and hypocritical politicians as gospel, and presented it as a majority, widely-held belief in their dictionary? I should note even the implication that 'preference' implies choice is utterly made up - I prefer chocolate to carrots, and blues to polka, yet I cannot choose to change those preferences. Whereas I am currently oriented south, and it is trivial to change that and re-orient myself to face west instead. > some other people making less scrutinised remarks Not just "some other people" - Joe Biden used the term while running for president. A presidential candidate's statements are usually closely scrutinized. You are fooling nobody who does not want to be fooled. [1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/lgbt-websites-now-say-sexual-preference-is-an-offensive-term-they-were-fine-with-it-last-month https://www.dailywire.com/news/lgbt-websites-now-say-sexual-... [2] https://thepostmillennial.com/sexual-preference-is-not-an-offensive-term-to-the-lgbt-community https://thepostmillennial.com/sexual-preference-is-not-an-of...
  - notahacker 4y ago
    What they most likely found was that the American Psychological Association first cautioned against using the term as a synonym for sexual orientation in the 1990s, the APA style guide has said so since 2003 if not earlier and the NYT and Associated Press followed suit in 2013. But perhaps chronology is also part of the conspiracy against some withdrawn and promptly-forgotten comment of Amy Coney Barrett's. A person who US liberals obviously had no other objections to whatsoever! You can quote all the "anti-woke" attack blogs you like (I hear there's a subgenre dedicated to quoting words that rappers use to argue that everyone else should use them too!), but when you insist that the issue was invented to trap Amy Coney Barrett some thirty years later, you're only fooling yourself. (as an aside, it's amazing that when you start putting sexual orientation on an equal footing in terms of mutability and importance and civil rights implications to your preference for chocolate you can't grasp that might actually be the bit gay people don't like...)

notahacker 4y ago

I mean, no, it's not really at all odd that a phrase that raised niche and context-specific objections for years got its first objection publicised well enough for you to be aware of it when it involved a forensic examination of Supreme Court appointee's interview statements, and not some other people making less scrutinised remarks that weren't also allegedly evading upholding Obergefell as settled precedent. It's also perfectly reasonable to think this might be a little unfair on said jurist who had little reason to have traced the history of the uses of "sexual preference". What is novel is your insistence that it makes more sense to assume dictionaries conspiring against conservative jurists are a more logical explanation for Merriam Webster adding an advisory warning to a definition other authoritative style guides cautioned about in 1991, 2003, and 2013 than it was headline news today, and lots of people asked so we looked into it. Some might say making a change three decades after others wasn't that rapid...

AinderS 4y ago
> lots of people asked so we looked into it. And what did they find? That the term was routinely used within the LGBT community and never remarked on as offensive [1,2]? Or did they neglect to apply even the minimum of scrutiny, and simply took the word of grievance experts and hypocritical politicians as gospel, and presented it as a majority, widely-held belief in their dictionary? I should note even the implication that 'preference' implies choice is utterly made up - I prefer chocolate to carrots, and blues to polka, yet I cannot choose to change those preferences. Whereas I am currently oriented south, and it is trivial to change that and re-orient myself to face west instead. > some other people making less scrutinised remarks Not just "some other people" - Joe Biden used the term while running for president. A presidential candidate's statements are usually closely scrutinized. You are fooling nobody who does not want to be fooled. [1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/lgbt-websites-now-say-sexual-preference-is-an-offensive-term-they-were-fine-with-it-last-month https://www.dailywire.com/news/lgbt-websites-now-say-sexual-... [2] https://thepostmillennial.com/sexual-preference-is-not-an-offensive-term-to-the-lgbt-community https://thepostmillennial.com/sexual-preference-is-not-an-of...
- notahacker 4y ago
  What they most likely found was that the American Psychological Association first cautioned against using the term as a synonym for sexual orientation in the 1990s, the APA style guide has said so since 2003 if not earlier and the NYT and Associated Press followed suit in 2013. But perhaps chronology is also part of the conspiracy against some withdrawn and promptly-forgotten comment of Amy Coney Barrett's. A person who US liberals obviously had no other objections to whatsoever! You can quote all the "anti-woke" attack blogs you like (I hear there's a subgenre dedicated to quoting words that rappers use to argue that everyone else should use them too!), but when you insist that the issue was invented to trap Amy Coney Barrett some thirty years later, you're only fooling yourself. (as an aside, it's amazing that when you start putting sexual orientation on an equal footing in terms of mutability and importance and civil rights implications to your preference for chocolate you can't grasp that might actually be the bit gay people don't like...)