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> What do you think about the recent "People with blindness" obsession, as evidenced in the title? Is there really an "obsession"? Also, while I don't deny the

by squigz 1y ago

> What do you think about the recent "People with blindness" obsession, as evidenced in the title? Is there really an "obsession"? Also, while I don't deny there's some discussion here, I think you really have to squint to read the title in such a way. In any case, I ... really don't care. As another commenter says, there are other, bigger, more important hills to die on than getting worked up about people trying to be more inclusive with their language. Does it take anything away from me or minimize my disability when I'm referred to as a "blind person" vs a "person with blindness"? Not at all. So why does it matter? And to be honest, I've never once met a blind person (or autistic person) who actually cares about this type of wording. I think this is one of those battles being fought by the extremes on either side, and it's frustrating and exhausting for everyone else, because it's a distraction from the real issues. And you can see this right in this comment! > I am not blind nor deaf etc., but I am frankly fed up with it. You're "frankly fed up" with something that barely affects you at all. Why?

kelnos 1y ago
> Is there really an "obsession"? Not sure that specific phrase is an obsession, but I hear a lot of language-police-type people who try to shame others into changing some phrases like this. The one I hear most often where I live is to use "person experiencing homelessness" rather than "homeless person", the idea being to not to consider "homeless" as a part of their identity, but to acknowledge that it's a (hopefully) temporary situation they have found themselves in. I get what people are trying to do here, but I think it's unnecessary, and just increases people's cognitive load and adds verbosity to expression. And gives disingenuous people more ammunition to derail discussions. And as you say, it seems like most of the people pushing for things like this haven't even talked to a blind/disabled/homeless person to ask what language offends them. I don't know any blind people, but the people I've talked to with various disabilities had no issues with being called "disabled". > You're "frankly fed up" with something that barely affects you at all. Why? Not the person you're replying to, but I assume the problem is that other people often shame or "correct" them when they use the "wrong" terminology, which is not only annoying, but can even cause real-world problems (e.g.: use the "wrong" term at work and maybe your career prospects get worse).
inglor_cz 1y ago
"something that barely affects you at all. Why?" First, this is often forced on people from the above. I don't like the idea of language coercion, doubly so for ideological reasons. Imagine that BBC journalists were forced to include Allah or some nationalist tropes in their work in order to increase piousness and patriotism of their readers; to some people, this actually sounds like a good idea! I don't believe you would wave it away easily. Orwell described this well with his "Ministry of Truth". BBC (from which this article comes) isn't a ministry, but isn't a private subject either. Second, can you think about the long term consequences? Just look around at the sorry state of Western politics and Western online discourse. Language is one of the few cultural commons that remains. There is no chance that stuff like "people with blindness" or "LatinX" will universally prevail. Too many people react to it negatively, including in the young generation. We run a real risk of the left and the right developing mutually incomprehensible languages, which would be a disaster - once that happens, the polarization will be cemented in, because swing voters would have to be bilingual. I've seen the split of Czechoslovakia myself, and Czech and Slovak aren't even mutually incomprehensible. Just far enough to remind the people that they are very different from each other. Third, this construct is extremely impractical. One of the actual observations of Chomsky is that natural languages are good at chaining things. For example, you can easily talk about poor blind homeless black people. Once you enter this rabbit hole fully, you have people of color with blindness experiencing poverty and unhousedness. This is just not a reasonable way to communicate and this is also my main hope that this abomination dies out. (It reminds me of Old Norse kennings [0], but those were an art form and never considered to be an actual language of communication.) Again, see Orwell and his newspeak (Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.) Orwell wrote his dystopias based on experience with the English intellectual far left, and it seems that those ideas live on. =============================== Summed together, to start all this while the actual blind people DGAF, as you yourself say, is at best an experiment in futility and at worst throwing more ** into the fan that has us already deeply covered in **. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
Tade0 1y ago
> Is there really an "obsession"? There's somewhat of a debate about it throughout the European eastern block. Policing language is somewhat of a touchy topic around here. Personally I much more often stop saying certain things than start using some expressions - they typically age badly.

by squigz 1y ago

kelnos 1y ago

> Is there really an "obsession"? Not sure that specific phrase is an obsession, but I hear a lot of language-police-type people who try to shame others into changing some phrases like this. The one I hear most often where I live is to use "person experiencing homelessness" rather than "homeless person", the idea being to not to consider "homeless" as a part of their identity, but to acknowledge that it's a (hopefully) temporary situation they have found themselves in. I get what people are trying to do here, but I think it's unnecessary, and just increases people's cognitive load and adds verbosity to expression. And gives disingenuous people more ammunition to derail discussions. And as you say, it seems like most of the people pushing for things like this haven't even talked to a blind/disabled/homeless person to ask what language offends them. I don't know any blind people, but the people I've talked to with various disabilities had no issues with being called "disabled". > You're "frankly fed up" with something that barely affects you at all. Why? Not the person you're replying to, but I assume the problem is that other people often shame or "correct" them when they use the "wrong" terminology, which is not only annoying, but can even cause real-world problems (e.g.: use the "wrong" term at work and maybe your career prospects get worse).

inglor_cz 1y ago

"something that barely affects you at all. Why?" First, this is often forced on people from the above. I don't like the idea of language coercion, doubly so for ideological reasons. Imagine that BBC journalists were forced to include Allah or some nationalist tropes in their work in order to increase piousness and patriotism of their readers; to some people, this actually sounds like a good idea! I don't believe you would wave it away easily. Orwell described this well with his "Ministry of Truth". BBC (from which this article comes) isn't a ministry, but isn't a private subject either. Second, can you think about the long term consequences? Just look around at the sorry state of Western politics and Western online discourse. Language is one of the few cultural commons that remains. There is no chance that stuff like "people with blindness" or "LatinX" will universally prevail. Too many people react to it negatively, including in the young generation. We run a real risk of the left and the right developing mutually incomprehensible languages, which would be a disaster - once that happens, the polarization will be cemented in, because swing voters would have to be bilingual. I've seen the split of Czechoslovakia myself, and Czech and Slovak aren't even mutually incomprehensible. Just far enough to remind the people that they are very different from each other. Third, this construct is extremely impractical. One of the actual observations of Chomsky is that natural languages are good at chaining things. For example, you can easily talk about poor blind homeless black people. Once you enter this rabbit hole fully, you have people of color with blindness experiencing poverty and unhousedness. This is just not a reasonable way to communicate and this is also my main hope that this abomination dies out. (It reminds me of Old Norse kennings [0], but those were an art form and never considered to be an actual language of communication.) Again, see Orwell and his newspeak (Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.) Orwell wrote his dystopias based on experience with the English intellectual far left, and it seems that those ideas live on. =============================== Summed together, to start all this while the actual blind people DGAF, as you yourself say, is at best an experiment in futility and at worst throwing more ** into the fan that has us already deeply covered in **. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning

Tade0 1y ago

> Is there really an "obsession"? There's somewhat of a debate about it throughout the European eastern block. Policing language is somewhat of a touchy topic around here. Personally I much more often stop saying certain things than start using some expressions - they typically age badly.