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It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical langua

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want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.

horns4lyfe 4y ago
It’s make-work. Stanford has nearly as many administrators as students, and they have to justify their paychecks somehow. This is just a resume padding exercise for some unscrupulous ladder climber.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pclmulqdq 4y ago
They just don't want to be called "Karens" for imposing a speech code on the school. It's 100% illegal in CA to do this thanks to Leonard's Law.
photochemsyn 4y ago
I can think of a few more! "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.
- evol262 4y ago
  How do you feel about "bad faith"?
  - Sebb767 4y ago
    Clearly insulting religion, to be avoided!
    - prox 4y ago
      - akomtu 4y ago
    - flyingfences 4y ago
      ... unless that religion is Christianity, in which case, fire away!
- erosenbe0 4y ago
  "Stanford" - may refer to noted racist and Asian-exclusionist Leland Stanford. Also may refer to related location formed originally as a whites-only educational enclave on indigenous lands.
  - kmonsen 4y ago
    Yeah if they want to go full political correct that is probably the best place to start.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    And of course the “Master’s” degree.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
fallingknife 4y ago
I really don't understand how anybody proposing these types of rules is ever met with anything but open contempt. No one has ever been able to explain it to me.
- jrmg 4y ago
  Oh come on. The page itself recognizes that it’s only advice. There were a few things on the list I didn’t know the history of (e.g. ‘grandfathered’) that I’ll try to avoid now. I can understand why someone who comes from a different history than I do could be frustrated by them - indeed, I probably will be (mildly) now I’ve learned of the connotations. It costs me almost nothing to avoid them. There are also a few things I find questionable - but on the whole this list is basically just ‘try to be kind to others’. It’s disappointing to see it so badly received.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    But it's only ever people who come from the same history as I do (white upper-middle class) that are offended by them.
    - jrmg 4y ago
      I really don’t think that’s true of the entire list.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        There are exceptions, such as the handful of obvious slurs that they added (tar baby, hermaphrodite, etc) but the vast majority of the list is exactly like this. 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).
        4y ago
akiselev 4y ago
> "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.") And they’re simultaneously kink shaming!
throwawaylinux 4y ago
- kashunstva 4y ago
  > The absolute state of the left. The left is not a monolithic block of automatons. There is some large number of persons who support most progressive positions but decry this sort of top-down control of language along with the way it’s used to enforce an orthodoxy of opinion. Labelling this as an “absolute state” of the left is a mischaracterization of the positions of most progressives I know.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Then the right is a bunch of bigoted, science hating Hitler worshipers! See how easy and fun it is?
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        Were you under the impression that the right does not receive generalized criticism on the internet or this web site? Or that your comment is a rebuttal to what I wrote? By all means feel free to criticize conservatives / right wing. They certainly do make it easy, you're right about that if nothing else.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      > Sorry, this is what the mainstream left is. Sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about. See, I can make blanket, unsupported statements, too, and pretend they're facts! (Also love the sibling's comment about the right. If you're gonna paint the left with the brush you've chosen, gotta do the same with the right.)
patcon 4y ago
> - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") If you've known someone with mobility issues (e.g., a limp from birth) long enough for them to be honest with you, then the term "lame" (as a slang term meaning "something shitty") that might still be a sore spot. EDIT: you don't have to do anything. But it does mean something to some ppl, and some of these ppl do notice it being said or avoided. And after hearing that from someone you care about, if might make you want to notice more (once the surprise of realizing it's an actual concern fades away)
- kergonath 4y ago
  > But it does mean something to some ppl, and some of these ppl do notice it being said or avoided Yes, but that is very context-dependent. The rule of thumb is “don’t be stupid” and “don’t be a dick” (yes, offensive to eunuchs and people who think this excludes women; in which case replace with “twat”). The words you need to avoid to that effect depend on who you’re talking to and in which circumstances. Blanket bans based on lists of words someone is crusading against are counter-productive. > And after hearing that from someone you care about The first time can just be a mistake; people you care about do not have the exact same mindset you have. In that case, a short explanation should suffice, without implying malice. If it is a pattern, then the people you care about don’t care as much about you. OTOH, it is unreasonable to expect a random stranger on the Internet to be aware of your sensitivities.
jrmg 4y ago
It’s very obviously not intended to imply that all the terms are equally offensive or inaccurate. Why _wouldn’t_ I want to avoid using any but your last category?
- cipheredStones 4y ago
  One would hope it isn't intended to imply that, but if not, it's doing an extremely poor job at it. Here's two almost-adjacent entries: > hip-hip hurray, hip hip hooray > This term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods. > Jewed > This term is based on a stereotype that people of Jewish descent are cheap and/or hoard money. The latter is, as I said, a well-known slur that any Jew would find offensive. The former is an extremely commonplace expression which is allegedly offensive due to a history that I've never in my life heard of before, and which seems on a quick search to be quite dubiously evidenced. Without knowing the actual context of these, one might very well be persuaded by this list that "hip, hip, hooray" was more offensive than "Jewed" - after all, a rallying cry for a genocide sounds more harmful than a mere ethnic stereotype!
  - jrmg 4y ago
    It says, at the top of the page: The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language. This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology. Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.
    - cipheredStones 4y ago
      I don't actually see how this is an argument against my point at all. They say "we are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site", and then proceed to list a huge number of terms, some of which are almost universally viewed as discriminatory or harmful and some of which are almost universally viewed as _not_ discriminatory or harmful. They may not be explicitly claiming that these terms have equivalent negative impact, but the presentation does nothing to suggest otherwise, and in many cases neither do the explanations. As I said in my original comment, it's an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach - as if someone had just given you a list saying "these things are illegal, don't do them" without noting that one of them can be punished by life in prison and another is so widely disregarded that it'll be viewed as odd if you never do it.
hbrn 4y ago
Basically anything that can make anybody[1] offended. If a term doesn't seem offensive right away, see if you can make it offensive through mental gymnastics. [1] This, of course, excludes people like me, who are offended by the very existence of such lists.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- josephg 4y ago
  Uh oh! “mental gymnastics” sounds like it implies able bodied people who can do gymnastics are better than people with disabilities! Burn the heretic! 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?
  - wasabi991011 4y ago
    The negative forms of cultural appropriation they want to remove is when a religious/ceremonial/"important" term from another culture (gury, bury the hatchet) is used in inappropriate context, not just any word from another language (beef, rendezvous, welcome, hound). 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.
    - dfadsadsf 4y ago
      You do not need to come up with convoluted example like PhD, just call code monkey an engineer and see chartered engineer come out of woodwork to complain that to be called engineer you need to do some random formal stuff and without that you break law in one province or another.
thomasahle 4y ago
> Indian summer | late summer | This term infers that Indigenous people are chronically late. While it may be innocently used to describe a beautiful time of year, it could have an unintended negative impact on those who hear it. 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_summer . Though I don't see the negative reading on the Wikipedia page.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  In Russian this is called "women's summer"
  - trilbyglens 4y ago
    And in czech, "Babi Leto: or "granny summer", like the summer has gotten old, but still bakes you cookies.
    - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
      Unsurprisingly, given the linguistic similarity, it's same in Polish ("babie lato"). But that's sexist and ageist, of course.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        Yeah, same in Russian but I was too lazy to type it out on a mobile :D
- devmunchies 4y ago
  Speaking of Indigenous Americans... the list has Brave (noun), with the reasoning: "This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man." 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.
basch 4y ago
User is a prime example of one I appreciate being on this list. Lists like this do a good job of making people think, and causing discussion. Some of that discussion might be posts like yours. So to discuss user. User is quite often used in a slightly pejorative way, by power user, sys admin, programmer, support crowds. You can almost always replace it with the word person or someone. I take it more as a challenge, when I am about to say it, to try and find a better way to say what I was going to say. Most often than not, I can avoid the word user. The same goes for lame. I just try not to use it, because I do use it, and I take it as a challenge to erase it from my vocabulary and use better words.
- cipheredStones 4y ago
  Well, first, their explanation for why "user" might be problematic has nothing to do with that pejorative use. It's > While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain. which seems to bizarrely ignore the fact that common words have many different meanings that are distinguished by context. Second, I would actually argue that the techie pejorative usage of "user" is a good example of the shortcomings of this "words to watch out for" approach. "User" has an extremely common neutral meaning, and also some people who design or operate systems use it contemptuously - without even really changing what it means, just with the implication that most users aren't very smart! The problem there is not with the word at all, it's the attitude with which it's used.
  - basch 4y ago
    I know this crowd leans anti censorship and anti pc, but all I'm saying is that I appreciate being made to think by opposing viewpoints, hence I find value in lists like this. I personally have made effort to not use the word user. I decided I don't like it. For me. I'm not lecturing other people not to use it. In my experience, user has become a fill in word, when better words exist. And its pejorative use is, in my opinion, closer to the substance abuse meaning than it appears at first glance. Both basically describe someone who uses and takes advantage of something, without either mastery or self control. "Passive use" if you will. When I think of it in that context, I dont like the word.
antonvs 4y ago
How does it “conflate” them?
3np 4y ago
Some further examples that stood out to me as being too far-fetched, fashion, and/or excessive to be part of any reasonable "Elimination of harmful language initiative" (explanations verbatim qouted from TFA): > 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.edu/cybersecurity/the-colors-of-cybersecurity/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221219233220/https://it.wisc.ed...
ancapsfascists 4y ago
I don't read it as conflating, they just say these are all harmful, not that they are equally harmful. A hangnail is harmful and a car crash is harmful, I try to avoid both. I'm less put out by a hangnail and I go to great lengths to avoid a car crash. Any list like this should be read as: "you are causing harm somewhere between a paper cut and a gunshot wound, you may not realize it. Be advised you might be causing that harm, in case knowing that would cause you to take a different course of action"
- handoflixue 4y ago
  Surely it matters the extent of the harm, though? If I'm doing home wiring, it is not at all helpful to know "this could result in a slight tingle or kill you and burn your house down." Ambiguity means I can wave off your complaints because clearly what you're complaining about is a hangnail. Ambiguity means I can punish you brutally, because how dare you not take my car crash seriously.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Stairs are really hard for people in a wheelchair, signage is really hard for someone blind, and fire alarms are really hard for someone deaf. Missing any of those ADA adaptions is more harmful to one group than another. Harm can vary based on the person, so doing something "harmful" is person dependent. The goal is to recognize the harmful history of language when choosing words, because, thankfully all spoken words are newly spoken, so you can pick fresh each time.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      In a huge portion of these cases the only harmful history is in the imagination of the author. "Tarball"? "Red team"? "Submit"? "White paper"? All of these have very clear etymologies that don't have any offensive history whatsoever. The idea that we should avoid any term that uses the words "white", "black", "red", or "yellow" on the grounds that they once were used in some contexts to refer to people is absurd.
nwiswell 4y ago
chrsjxn 4y ago
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
- kortilla 4y ago
  Yes, the author is being a real tarball about the whole thing by compressing these things all together.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  > 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.
  - jamincan 4y ago
    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.
veltas 4y ago
It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. And when the rules are so strict it means nobody bothers. If the rules aren't strict some will push it as far as they can. Everything has context. But in general I think people are far too easily offended today, and considering offense a valid issue to fight on has turned out to be a real rabbit hole. Unfortunately, there's no way an institution is going to push back; instead we get this cowardly policy that always caters to the most neurotic minority of social policers (and is probably partly written by said policers). This is policy by mob, and lowest common denominator decision making. 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.
- wazoox 4y ago
  > It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. 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.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > I think people are far too easily offended today 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.
cm2187 4y ago
We should also ban the word logic which is insensitive to woke humanities student who are incapable of.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Incapable of what?
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    This is one of the most amusing joke formats I have seen on this website.
  - malandrew 4y ago
    Thinking, which is a word we should also ban because it is a list. Instead you should use the word “feel” Unless of course that is ableist against us autists.
    - alchemst 4y ago
      It is, but don't worry, they don't care about that group.
mananaysiempre 4y ago
> Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" 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.
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  Intersex is the current preferred term for non-binary biological sex but it is one meant for people. Although if you had say, a cat with ambiguous genitalia it wouldn't be offense to reference them as intersex.
rmak 4y ago
Totally ok to use "incel" but not Karen. 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".
- kennend3 4y ago
  Notice it is also missing many other "offensive" terms like : "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.
  - GendingMachine 4y ago
    This is an inane and deliberately obtuse response to this policy. 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.
    - joshlemer 4y ago
jojobas 4y ago
All these categories have something in common - their use can be seen as rude in a particular setting, the rest is bullshit. You can be rude using the most refined vocabulary. 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.
- xkcd1963 4y ago
  Yes, it is a common misconception nowadays that there is a causal link between language and society. For example, in languages such as Spanish and German, feminists are seeking to introduce gender-neutral words in an attempt to facilitate equality. However, this is not the correct way around – language is shaped by society, with gender roles and stereotypes influencing the language rather than the other way round. Therefore, making changes to language is not only ineffective but rather counterproductive.
himinlomax 4y ago
> - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" > "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.
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Kill considered harmful. Kill -9 doubly so.
aaron695 4y ago
curiousllama 4y ago
It's also intresting that some of these terms were, initially at least, meant to be anti-racist. "Survivor" is on the list (as in, survivor of SA). So is "Karen" (which, IIRC, was popularized through videos of white people harassing black folks minding their own business). I can't imagine this list should be used as anything more than an MLA style-guide type list of "these are outdated terms for formal writing"
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Surely “American” is the most absurd. Literally no one is offended that people in the United States of America are referred to as American, even if there are 42 other countries in the Americas. The technical fact is it’s correct - anyone in the americas could be called an American correctly. But only one has “America” in the country name. But by including this it sparks a patriotic and nationalist response in most Americans and makes the whole “wokeism is against us” meme have teeth. It’s the political football that speaks to many people, especially immigrants who are proud to be called an American and not merely a U.S. citizen - which frankly has more nativist connotations and is used to separate natural born citizens from naturalized. 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.
- diehunde 4y ago
  You are wrong. I'm from South America, and the "American" thing is an issue for many people. In Spanish, we don't even call Americans "Americanos" but "Estado Unidenses". Many people joke when Americans say they are Americans by answering, "yeah, me too." I couldn't care less especially because I know the difference between America and "The Americas" but many people don't
  - jamincan 4y ago
    And just to show that nothing is straightforward, if you were to refer to a Canadian as an American, they will definitely make a point to correct you.
  - xkcd1963 4y ago
    If you feel offended by referring to the two landmasses as "America", then rest assured there is no malice intended. Northern and Southern America are connected landmasses .. why not simply use the term "America" to refer to both areas? Remember, just because someone are not "sophisticated" enough to come to the conclusion that Americans can also be South Americans does not mean they are seeking to offend you.
wazoox 4y ago
> Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" 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.
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
> - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" 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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653
- lolinder 4y ago
  Homophones aren't even next, they're already in the list. They recommend against "tarball" on the grounds that it might sound like "tarbaby" which is apparently a racial slur (I'm only familiar with the Brer Rabbit story).
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> Homophones are next. "Hey Jude". 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?
matt-attack 4y ago
> "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors." 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?
- aussieshibe 4y ago
  Reading this comment, all I can picture is a Sims character with a full red Social bar and only three interaction bubbles: Ridicule (trait), Ridicule (behaviour), Discuss Weather Firby nurbs!
diebeforei485 4y ago
There is no one-word replacement for something being "grandfathered". It's important to consider practicalities here. 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.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > There is no one-word replacement for something being "grandfathered". It's important to consider practicalities here. 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.
- sinity 4y ago
  > Moving away from "slave" was reasonable It wasn't, because it didn't make any sense. Using 'slave' as a metaphor doesn't imply slavery is good.
jiggawatts 4y ago
One school district I worked for a long time ago used to label backup tapes with color codes. This is a bad idea in general, but the real issue was the official complaints: 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!”
- aussieshibe 4y ago
  I've been told I wasn't allowed to color code anything in a UI I worked on because "someone might be living with color vision deficiency". 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.
  - sinity 4y ago
    > I've been told I wasn't allowed to color code anything in a UI I worked on because "someone might be living with color vision deficiency". Refuse to do GUI at all - surely terminal is better for blind people.
    - dTal 4y ago
      Refuse to write the program entirely. It's ableist against people too unintelligent to use computers.
908B64B197 4y ago
I can't help but to think this is intentional. It's a thinly veiled attempt at shifting the Overton Window [0]. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window [1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441 [2] https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab174c3247113b7603d https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab...
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > some activists really pushed a racial connotation on a term which had none This isn’t quite right. The term “master recording” itself refers to the master/slave dichotomy and has been used in the music industry with the explicit knowledge of that. 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. If “master branch” is to derive from “master recording”, it carries the same racial baggage.
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    > it carries the same racial baggage. Which race? You mean white people, right?
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > The term "master recording" itself refers to the master/slave dichotomy and has been used in the music industry with the explicit knowledge of that. 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Row_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Row_Records [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-A-Fella_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-A-Fella_Records
HelloNurse 4y ago
I noticed major failures to put language in context. For example, "whitespace" isn't racist: there are fundamental physical reasons for paper, vellum, papyrus etc. to be approximately white, and there's no reason to think it refers to people.
- dTal 4y ago
  If so many words assign connotations to "white" and "black", indicating a deeply embedded metaphor, perhaps the solution is simply to stop using such loaded and inaccurate word to refer to skin color? They are trying to boil the ocean to preserve a silly convention that was probably racist to begin with.
dumpsterdiver 4y ago
Yeah, once you get to "user" and "submit" it starts to appear as if these folks take offense to those words ever being defined in the first place. I refuse to apologize for useful words that exist not only in our language, but that are also deeply embedded in our minds. These people are demanding that we "forget" what we know is true, and replace it with something that is not true. Misappropriating and subsequently weaponizing commonly used words is a trash move, imo, and it plainly exposes the lack of moral integrity of the persecutors. I find it very difficult to believe that such behavior is made in good faith.
sinity 4y ago
> Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" Why is that touchy? It doesn't make any value judgements about slavery. It's just referencing the concept. If referencing the concept is bad, then I guess schools shouldn't teach it anymore? Let's all pretend there never was any slavery! I wonder when someone will find a problem with 'kill' command.

horns4lyfe 4y ago

It’s make-work. Stanford has nearly as many administrators as students, and they have to justify their paychecks somehow. This is just a resume padding exercise for some unscrupulous ladder climber.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pclmulqdq 4y ago

They just don't want to be called "Karens" for imposing a speech code on the school. It's 100% illegal in CA to do this thanks to Leonard's Law.

photochemsyn 4y ago

I can think of a few more! "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.

evol262 4y ago
How do you feel about "bad faith"?
- Sebb767 4y ago
  Clearly insulting religion, to be avoided!
  - prox 4y ago
    - akomtu 4y ago
  - flyingfences 4y ago
    ... unless that religion is Christianity, in which case, fire away!
erosenbe0 4y ago
"Stanford" - may refer to noted racist and Asian-exclusionist Leland Stanford. Also may refer to related location formed originally as a whites-only educational enclave on indigenous lands.
- kmonsen 4y ago
  Yeah if they want to go full political correct that is probably the best place to start.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  And of course the “Master’s” degree.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago

fallingknife 4y ago

I really don't understand how anybody proposing these types of rules is ever met with anything but open contempt. No one has ever been able to explain it to me.

jrmg 4y ago
Oh come on. The page itself recognizes that it’s only advice. There were a few things on the list I didn’t know the history of (e.g. ‘grandfathered’) that I’ll try to avoid now. I can understand why someone who comes from a different history than I do could be frustrated by them - indeed, I probably will be (mildly) now I’ve learned of the connotations. It costs me almost nothing to avoid them. There are also a few things I find questionable - but on the whole this list is basically just ‘try to be kind to others’. It’s disappointing to see it so badly received.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  But it's only ever people who come from the same history as I do (white upper-middle class) that are offended by them.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    I really don’t think that’s true of the entire list.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      There are exceptions, such as the handful of obvious slurs that they added (tar baby, hermaphrodite, etc) but the vast majority of the list is exactly like this. 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).
      - 4y ago

akiselev 4y ago

> "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.") And they’re simultaneously kink shaming!

throwawaylinux 4y ago

kashunstva 4y ago
> The absolute state of the left. The left is not a monolithic block of automatons. There is some large number of persons who support most progressive positions but decry this sort of top-down control of language along with the way it’s used to enforce an orthodoxy of opinion. Labelling this as an “absolute state” of the left is a mischaracterization of the positions of most progressives I know.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Then the right is a bunch of bigoted, science hating Hitler worshipers! See how easy and fun it is?
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      Were you under the impression that the right does not receive generalized criticism on the internet or this web site? Or that your comment is a rebuttal to what I wrote? By all means feel free to criticize conservatives / right wing. They certainly do make it easy, you're right about that if nothing else.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Sorry, this is what the mainstream left is. Sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about. See, I can make blanket, unsupported statements, too, and pretend they're facts! (Also love the sibling's comment about the right. If you're gonna paint the left with the brush you've chosen, gotta do the same with the right.)

patcon 4y ago

> - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") If you've known someone with mobility issues (e.g., a limp from birth) long enough for them to be honest with you, then the term "lame" (as a slang term meaning "something shitty") that might still be a sore spot. EDIT: you don't have to do anything. But it does mean something to some ppl, and some of these ppl do notice it being said or avoided. And after hearing that from someone you care about, if might make you want to notice more (once the surprise of realizing it's an actual concern fades away)

kergonath 4y ago
> But it does mean something to some ppl, and some of these ppl do notice it being said or avoided Yes, but that is very context-dependent. The rule of thumb is “don’t be stupid” and “don’t be a dick” (yes, offensive to eunuchs and people who think this excludes women; in which case replace with “twat”). The words you need to avoid to that effect depend on who you’re talking to and in which circumstances. Blanket bans based on lists of words someone is crusading against are counter-productive. > And after hearing that from someone you care about The first time can just be a mistake; people you care about do not have the exact same mindset you have. In that case, a short explanation should suffice, without implying malice. If it is a pattern, then the people you care about don’t care as much about you. OTOH, it is unreasonable to expect a random stranger on the Internet to be aware of your sensitivities.

jrmg 4y ago

It’s very obviously not intended to imply that all the terms are equally offensive or inaccurate. Why _wouldn’t_ I want to avoid using any but your last category?

cipheredStones 4y ago
One would hope it isn't intended to imply that, but if not, it's doing an extremely poor job at it. Here's two almost-adjacent entries: > hip-hip hurray, hip hip hooray > This term was used by German citizens during the Holocaust as a rallying cry when they would hunt down Jewish citizens living in segregated neighborhoods. > Jewed > This term is based on a stereotype that people of Jewish descent are cheap and/or hoard money. The latter is, as I said, a well-known slur that any Jew would find offensive. The former is an extremely commonplace expression which is allegedly offensive due to a history that I've never in my life heard of before, and which seems on a quick search to be quite dubiously evidenced. Without knowing the actual context of these, one might very well be persuaded by this list that "hip, hip, hooray" was more offensive than "Jewed" - after all, a rallying cry for a genocide sounds more harmful than a mere ethnic stereotype!
- jrmg 4y ago
  It says, at the top of the page: The purpose of this website is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use. Language affects different people in different ways. We are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site. We also are not attempting to address all informal uses of language. This website focuses on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology. Our "suggested alternatives" are in line with those used by peer institutions and within the technology community.
  - cipheredStones 4y ago
    I don't actually see how this is an argument against my point at all. They say "we are not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site", and then proceed to list a huge number of terms, some of which are almost universally viewed as discriminatory or harmful and some of which are almost universally viewed as _not_ discriminatory or harmful. They may not be explicitly claiming that these terms have equivalent negative impact, but the presentation does nothing to suggest otherwise, and in many cases neither do the explanations. As I said in my original comment, it's an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach - as if someone had just given you a list saying "these things are illegal, don't do them" without noting that one of them can be punished by life in prison and another is so widely disregarded that it'll be viewed as odd if you never do it.

hbrn 4y ago

Basically anything that can make anybody[1] offended. If a term doesn't seem offensive right away, see if you can make it offensive through mental gymnastics. [1] This, of course, excludes people like me, who are offended by the very existence of such lists.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
josephg 4y ago
Uh oh! “mental gymnastics” sounds like it implies able bodied people who can do gymnastics are better than people with disabilities! Burn the heretic! 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?
- wasabi991011 4y ago
  The negative forms of cultural appropriation they want to remove is when a religious/ceremonial/"important" term from another culture (gury, bury the hatchet) is used in inappropriate context, not just any word from another language (beef, rendezvous, welcome, hound). 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.
  - dfadsadsf 4y ago
    You do not need to come up with convoluted example like PhD, just call code monkey an engineer and see chartered engineer come out of woodwork to complain that to be called engineer you need to do some random formal stuff and without that you break law in one province or another.

thomasahle 4y ago

> Indian summer | late summer | This term infers that Indigenous people are chronically late. While it may be innocently used to describe a beautiful time of year, it could have an unintended negative impact on those who hear it. 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_summer . Though I don't see the negative reading on the Wikipedia page.

dmitriid 4y ago
In Russian this is called "women's summer"
- trilbyglens 4y ago
  And in czech, "Babi Leto: or "granny summer", like the summer has gotten old, but still bakes you cookies.
  - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    Unsurprisingly, given the linguistic similarity, it's same in Polish ("babie lato"). But that's sexist and ageist, of course.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Yeah, same in Russian but I was too lazy to type it out on a mobile :D
devmunchies 4y ago
Speaking of Indigenous Americans... the list has Brave (noun), with the reasoning: "This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man." 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.

basch 4y ago

User is a prime example of one I appreciate being on this list. Lists like this do a good job of making people think, and causing discussion. Some of that discussion might be posts like yours. So to discuss user. User is quite often used in a slightly pejorative way, by power user, sys admin, programmer, support crowds. You can almost always replace it with the word person or someone. I take it more as a challenge, when I am about to say it, to try and find a better way to say what I was going to say. Most often than not, I can avoid the word user. The same goes for lame. I just try not to use it, because I do use it, and I take it as a challenge to erase it from my vocabulary and use better words.

cipheredStones 4y ago
Well, first, their explanation for why "user" might be problematic has nothing to do with that pejorative use. It's > While often associated with one who uses (software, systems, services), it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues or those who exploit others for their own gain. which seems to bizarrely ignore the fact that common words have many different meanings that are distinguished by context. Second, I would actually argue that the techie pejorative usage of "user" is a good example of the shortcomings of this "words to watch out for" approach. "User" has an extremely common neutral meaning, and also some people who design or operate systems use it contemptuously - without even really changing what it means, just with the implication that most users aren't very smart! The problem there is not with the word at all, it's the attitude with which it's used.
- basch 4y ago
  I know this crowd leans anti censorship and anti pc, but all I'm saying is that I appreciate being made to think by opposing viewpoints, hence I find value in lists like this. I personally have made effort to not use the word user. I decided I don't like it. For me. I'm not lecturing other people not to use it. In my experience, user has become a fill in word, when better words exist. And its pejorative use is, in my opinion, closer to the substance abuse meaning than it appears at first glance. Both basically describe someone who uses and takes advantage of something, without either mastery or self control. "Passive use" if you will. When I think of it in that context, I dont like the word.

antonvs 4y ago

How does it “conflate” them?

3np 4y ago

Some further examples that stood out to me as being too far-fetched, fashion, and/or excessive to be part of any reasonable "Elimination of harmful language initiative" (explanations verbatim qouted from TFA): > 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.edu/cybersecurity/the-colors-of-cybersecurity/ http://web.archive.org/web/20221219233220/https://it.wisc.ed...

ancapsfascists 4y ago

I don't read it as conflating, they just say these are all harmful, not that they are equally harmful. A hangnail is harmful and a car crash is harmful, I try to avoid both. I'm less put out by a hangnail and I go to great lengths to avoid a car crash. Any list like this should be read as: "you are causing harm somewhere between a paper cut and a gunshot wound, you may not realize it. Be advised you might be causing that harm, in case knowing that would cause you to take a different course of action"

handoflixue 4y ago
Surely it matters the extent of the harm, though? If I'm doing home wiring, it is not at all helpful to know "this could result in a slight tingle or kill you and burn your house down." Ambiguity means I can wave off your complaints because clearly what you're complaining about is a hangnail. Ambiguity means I can punish you brutally, because how dare you not take my car crash seriously.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Stairs are really hard for people in a wheelchair, signage is really hard for someone blind, and fire alarms are really hard for someone deaf. Missing any of those ADA adaptions is more harmful to one group than another. Harm can vary based on the person, so doing something "harmful" is person dependent. The goal is to recognize the harmful history of language when choosing words, because, thankfully all spoken words are newly spoken, so you can pick fresh each time.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    In a huge portion of these cases the only harmful history is in the imagination of the author. "Tarball"? "Red team"? "Submit"? "White paper"? All of these have very clear etymologies that don't have any offensive history whatsoever. The idea that we should avoid any term that uses the words "white", "black", "red", or "yellow" on the grounds that they once were used in some contexts to refer to people is absurd.

nwiswell 4y ago

chrsjxn 4y ago

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

kortilla 4y ago
Yes, the author is being a real tarball about the whole thing by compressing these things all together.
donkeyd 4y ago
> 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.
- jamincan 4y ago
  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.

veltas 4y ago

It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. And when the rules are so strict it means nobody bothers. If the rules aren't strict some will push it as far as they can. Everything has context. But in general I think people are far too easily offended today, and considering offense a valid issue to fight on has turned out to be a real rabbit hole. Unfortunately, there's no way an institution is going to push back; instead we get this cowardly policy that always caters to the most neurotic minority of social policers (and is probably partly written by said policers). This is policy by mob, and lowest common denominator decision making. 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.

wazoox 4y ago
> It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. 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.
Beltalowda 4y ago
> I think people are far too easily offended today 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.

cm2187 4y ago

We should also ban the word logic which is insensitive to woke humanities student who are incapable of.

Aeolun 4y ago
Incapable of what?
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  This is one of the most amusing joke formats I have seen on this website.
- malandrew 4y ago
  Thinking, which is a word we should also ban because it is a list. Instead you should use the word “feel” Unless of course that is ableist against us autists.
  - alchemst 4y ago
    It is, but don't worry, they don't care about that group.

mananaysiempre 4y ago

> Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" 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.

Nasrudith 4y ago
Intersex is the current preferred term for non-binary biological sex but it is one meant for people. Although if you had say, a cat with ambiguous genitalia it wouldn't be offense to reference them as intersex.

rmak 4y ago

Totally ok to use "incel" but not Karen. 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".

kennend3 4y ago
Notice it is also missing many other "offensive" terms like : "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.
- GendingMachine 4y ago
  This is an inane and deliberately obtuse response to this policy. 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.
  - joshlemer 4y ago

jojobas 4y ago

All these categories have something in common - their use can be seen as rude in a particular setting, the rest is bullshit. You can be rude using the most refined vocabulary. 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.

xkcd1963 4y ago
Yes, it is a common misconception nowadays that there is a causal link between language and society. For example, in languages such as Spanish and German, feminists are seeking to introduce gender-neutral words in an attempt to facilitate equality. However, this is not the correct way around – language is shaped by society, with gender roles and stereotypes influencing the language rather than the other way round. Therefore, making changes to language is not only ineffective but rather counterproductive.

himinlomax 4y ago

> - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" > "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.

gpderetta 4y ago
Kill considered harmful. Kill -9 doubly so.

aaron695 4y ago

curiousllama 4y ago

It's also intresting that some of these terms were, initially at least, meant to be anti-racist. "Survivor" is on the list (as in, survivor of SA). So is "Karen" (which, IIRC, was popularized through videos of white people harassing black folks minding their own business). I can't imagine this list should be used as anything more than an MLA style-guide type list of "these are outdated terms for formal writing"

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Surely “American” is the most absurd. Literally no one is offended that people in the United States of America are referred to as American, even if there are 42 other countries in the Americas. The technical fact is it’s correct - anyone in the americas could be called an American correctly. But only one has “America” in the country name. But by including this it sparks a patriotic and nationalist response in most Americans and makes the whole “wokeism is against us” meme have teeth. It’s the political football that speaks to many people, especially immigrants who are proud to be called an American and not merely a U.S. citizen - which frankly has more nativist connotations and is used to separate natural born citizens from naturalized. 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.

diehunde 4y ago
You are wrong. I'm from South America, and the "American" thing is an issue for many people. In Spanish, we don't even call Americans "Americanos" but "Estado Unidenses". Many people joke when Americans say they are Americans by answering, "yeah, me too." I couldn't care less especially because I know the difference between America and "The Americas" but many people don't
- jamincan 4y ago
  And just to show that nothing is straightforward, if you were to refer to a Canadian as an American, they will definitely make a point to correct you.
- xkcd1963 4y ago
  If you feel offended by referring to the two landmasses as "America", then rest assured there is no malice intended. Northern and Southern America are connected landmasses .. why not simply use the term "America" to refer to both areas? Remember, just because someone are not "sophisticated" enough to come to the conclusion that Americans can also be South Americans does not mean they are seeking to offend you.

wazoox 4y ago

> Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" 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.

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

> - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" 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 https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653

lolinder 4y ago
Homophones aren't even next, they're already in the list. They recommend against "tarball" on the grounds that it might sound like "tarbaby" which is apparently a racial slur (I'm only familiar with the Brer Rabbit story).
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> Homophones are next. "Hey Jude". 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?

matt-attack 4y ago

> "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors." 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?

aussieshibe 4y ago
Reading this comment, all I can picture is a Sims character with a full red Social bar and only three interaction bubbles: Ridicule (trait), Ridicule (behaviour), Discuss Weather Firby nurbs!

diebeforei485 4y ago

There is no one-word replacement for something being "grandfathered". It's important to consider practicalities here. 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.

dahfizz 4y ago
> There is no one-word replacement for something being "grandfathered". It's important to consider practicalities here. 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.
sinity 4y ago
> Moving away from "slave" was reasonable It wasn't, because it didn't make any sense. Using 'slave' as a metaphor doesn't imply slavery is good.

jiggawatts 4y ago

One school district I worked for a long time ago used to label backup tapes with color codes. This is a bad idea in general, but the real issue was the official complaints: 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!”

aussieshibe 4y ago
I've been told I wasn't allowed to color code anything in a UI I worked on because "someone might be living with color vision deficiency". 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.
- sinity 4y ago
  > I've been told I wasn't allowed to color code anything in a UI I worked on because "someone might be living with color vision deficiency". Refuse to do GUI at all - surely terminal is better for blind people.
  - dTal 4y ago
    Refuse to write the program entirely. It's ableist against people too unintelligent to use computers.

908B64B197 4y ago

I can't help but to think this is intentional. It's a thinly veiled attempt at shifting the Overton Window [0]. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window [1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441 [2] https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab174c3247113b7603d https://repo.or.cz/cogito.git/commit/3c4347c8b64fb516bc097ab...

ModernMech 4y ago
> some activists really pushed a racial connotation on a term which had none This isn’t quite right. The term “master recording” itself refers to the master/slave dichotomy and has been used in the music industry with the explicit knowledge of that. 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. If “master branch” is to derive from “master recording”, it carries the same racial baggage.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  > it carries the same racial baggage. Which race? You mean white people, right?
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > The term "master recording" itself refers to the master/slave dichotomy and has been used in the music industry with the explicit knowledge of that. 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Row_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Row_Records [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-A-Fella_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc-A-Fella_Records

HelloNurse 4y ago

I noticed major failures to put language in context. For example, "whitespace" isn't racist: there are fundamental physical reasons for paper, vellum, papyrus etc. to be approximately white, and there's no reason to think it refers to people.

dTal 4y ago
If so many words assign connotations to "white" and "black", indicating a deeply embedded metaphor, perhaps the solution is simply to stop using such loaded and inaccurate word to refer to skin color? They are trying to boil the ocean to preserve a silly convention that was probably racist to begin with.

dumpsterdiver 4y ago

Yeah, once you get to "user" and "submit" it starts to appear as if these folks take offense to those words ever being defined in the first place. I refuse to apologize for useful words that exist not only in our language, but that are also deeply embedded in our minds. These people are demanding that we "forget" what we know is true, and replace it with something that is not true. Misappropriating and subsequently weaponizing commonly used words is a trash move, imo, and it plainly exposes the lack of moral integrity of the persecutors. I find it very difficult to believe that such behavior is made in good faith.

sinity 4y ago

> Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" Why is that touchy? It doesn't make any value judgements about slavery. It's just referencing the concept. If referencing the concept is bad, then I guess schools shouldn't teach it anymore? Let's all pretend there never was any slavery! I wonder when someone will find a problem with 'kill' command.