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Isn't that largely because the most marginalized groups started speaking up, and started being heard? Hasn't it progressed from there? I think it's fair to say

Isn't that largely because the most marginalized groups started speaking up, and started being heard? Hasn't it progressed from there? I think it's fair to say LGBTQ, women and brown folks are being hurt in tangible ways by dominant language (words can in fact hurt when they influence generations of behavior), and like most progress there seem to be some who are experiencing downsides now that things are changing. Who decides who has sour grapes? Were these bureaucrats just waiting in the wings for an excuse to pounce with regressive policy? Blaming the staff without examining the broader cultural shift seems as bad as an emotional support peacock.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
The staff is using "inclusiveness" as the political cudgel it was intended to be. The people exercising power are doing so on behalf of the so-called marginalized with no evidence that the measures they're taking are beneficial in any way. Words cannot harm you. Actions harm. Please stop perpetuating that nonsense. Name-calling or epithet-hurling has not hurt anyone in a tangible way (tangible means "touchable" something physical). Bias, and discrimination based on bias or prejudice does cause economic and sometimes physical harm. It is proper behavior we need to teach, not hypersensitivity to phrasing.
- beardedwizard 4y ago
  This is it. Dangerous allyship... but I still think you aren't giving words and behaviors they lead to enough credit - the odds of the participants of this thread being in a marginalized group (myself included) are low, no language and set of behaviors systemically oppresses us. I worry we throw the marginalized baby out with the bath water in discussions like this.
  - elcritch 4y ago
    I agree with you that words do have power and meaning, but disagree with the current zeitgeist approach of censorship. It causes far more harm on average than any minimal help it does in some cases. There’s substantial active harm in the amount of gaslighting and ill conceived redefinition of words going on. It’s exactly the sort of whitewashing of thought that’d lead to the world found in The Giver. > throw out the marginalized baby I think that’s just an updated version of the “white mans burden” — the white man has a burden to take care of the poor colored people. The real way to change such things is over time by hard work and engagement. Dismantling actually oppressive systems in financial systems and laws. Giving opportunities not outcomes. Reducing things like inflation which disproportionately affects poorer people. And a hundred other things, all of which were working over the last decades with improvements in almost every metric for marginalized groups. Still lots of real work left.
quanticle 4y ago
Were these bureaucrats just waiting in the wings for an excuse to pounce with regressive policy? Yes. American culture has always been a tug of war between puritanical norms and libertine norms, and we're seeing the latest mutation of the puritans taking over. It doesn't seem that way, because this iteration of the puritans have co-opted the language of the libertines, but if these university administrators were transported back in time, they'd be enforcing Prohibition laws with equal zeal. Transported further back in time, they'd be organizing the expulsion of Catholics, Quakers and other "heretical" religious sects. There is, and always has been, a large segment of America which looks at the average frat kegger the same way that a Taliban mullah looks at a collection of unveiled women. They hate fun, and, given a chance, they will do their utmost to banish it. And if fun can't be banished, it will be regulated into submission. Of course, they don't do this for themselves. No, of course not. They do it to improve the moral worth of the people. Their zealotry is driven by the purest of intentions. Who decides who has sour grapes? The ones who have placed themselves in a position to define which grapes are or are not sour: the aforementioned bureaucrats.
- cs702 4y ago
  > ...we're seeing the latest mutation of the puritans taking over. It doesn't seem that way, because this iteration of the puritans have co-opted the language of the libertines, but if these university administrators were transported back in time, they'd be enforcing Prohibition laws with equal zeal. Transported further back in time, they'd be organizing the expulsion of Catholics, Quakers and other "heretical" religious sects... This rings true to me, and I find it very insightful. Thank you for writing it.
- scatters 4y ago
  "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis

slowmovintarget 4y ago

The staff is using "inclusiveness" as the political cudgel it was intended to be. The people exercising power are doing so on behalf of the so-called marginalized with no evidence that the measures they're taking are beneficial in any way. Words cannot harm you. Actions harm. Please stop perpetuating that nonsense. Name-calling or epithet-hurling has not hurt anyone in a tangible way (tangible means "touchable" something physical). Bias, and discrimination based on bias or prejudice does cause economic and sometimes physical harm. It is proper behavior we need to teach, not hypersensitivity to phrasing.

beardedwizard 4y ago
This is it. Dangerous allyship... but I still think you aren't giving words and behaviors they lead to enough credit - the odds of the participants of this thread being in a marginalized group (myself included) are low, no language and set of behaviors systemically oppresses us. I worry we throw the marginalized baby out with the bath water in discussions like this.
- elcritch 4y ago
  I agree with you that words do have power and meaning, but disagree with the current zeitgeist approach of censorship. It causes far more harm on average than any minimal help it does in some cases. There’s substantial active harm in the amount of gaslighting and ill conceived redefinition of words going on. It’s exactly the sort of whitewashing of thought that’d lead to the world found in The Giver. > throw out the marginalized baby I think that’s just an updated version of the “white mans burden” — the white man has a burden to take care of the poor colored people. The real way to change such things is over time by hard work and engagement. Dismantling actually oppressive systems in financial systems and laws. Giving opportunities not outcomes. Reducing things like inflation which disproportionately affects poorer people. And a hundred other things, all of which were working over the last decades with improvements in almost every metric for marginalized groups. Still lots of real work left.

quanticle 4y ago

Were these bureaucrats just waiting in the wings for an excuse to pounce with regressive policy? Yes. American culture has always been a tug of war between puritanical norms and libertine norms, and we're seeing the latest mutation of the puritans taking over. It doesn't seem that way, because this iteration of the puritans have co-opted the language of the libertines, but if these university administrators were transported back in time, they'd be enforcing Prohibition laws with equal zeal. Transported further back in time, they'd be organizing the expulsion of Catholics, Quakers and other "heretical" religious sects. There is, and always has been, a large segment of America which looks at the average frat kegger the same way that a Taliban mullah looks at a collection of unveiled women. They hate fun, and, given a chance, they will do their utmost to banish it. And if fun can't be banished, it will be regulated into submission. Of course, they don't do this for themselves. No, of course not. They do it to improve the moral worth of the people. Their zealotry is driven by the purest of intentions. Who decides who has sour grapes? The ones who have placed themselves in a position to define which grapes are or are not sour: the aforementioned bureaucrats.

cs702 4y ago
> ...we're seeing the latest mutation of the puritans taking over. It doesn't seem that way, because this iteration of the puritans have co-opted the language of the libertines, but if these university administrators were transported back in time, they'd be enforcing Prohibition laws with equal zeal. Transported further back in time, they'd be organizing the expulsion of Catholics, Quakers and other "heretical" religious sects... This rings true to me, and I find it very insightful. Thank you for writing it.
scatters 4y ago
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis