Christ, I agree with this article so much it hurts.
I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive.
As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).
I hate to be "that guy" that does this, but 1984 is a good view on this, albeit an extreme one. For those who aren't aware: in the book the government control the language used by its people, by reducing the number of words in their dictionary.
Instead of "alright, great, amazing", there's "good, plus good, double plus good". Because these people have less language to express themselves with, they are less likely to protest the atrocities that their government is doing.
This new control-as-a-language is called Newspeak[0].
I think language has a key role in how a society develops. I generally agree with the sentiment that moving to using "people with has-a descriptions instead of is-a descriptions", to quote another user in this thread[1], is a great idea. It allows us to view people who are blind as just that, a person who happens to be blind. Using the same language for all human people, and then adding "has-a descriptions" (or properties, if you wanted to use a programming term) puts us all on the same playing field, while acknowledging that some people do have differences.
If everyone just treated everyone else with common decency, the world would be a much better place.
Although I agree, I think language does impact perception. I'm not sure if the master/slave, blacklist/whitelist terms play any role, but I'm happy that we generally stopped calling everything gay as an insult. That changed in my short lifetime.
I also noticed that gender neutral nouns and pronouns are more common in writing (for French and German). Again, that's a good thing.
The craziest example I have is the term "useless mouths" in Nazi Germany. Imagine if your group had that label. I'm certainly glad it's not in use anymore.
I agree those examples represent positive changes. But what is the direction of causation? Did people become less homophobic because "gay" stopped being used as an insult, or the other way round? Did nazism end because people stopped saying "useless mouths", or the other way round?
I think the simple answer is: it's both. Changes in attitude cause language changes, and vice versa. But the balance of these forces isn't necessarily equal, and it may tip from one side to the other at different times in history. I would speculate that, in a society with a sustainable pattern of moral 'growth', more importance is placed on improving our ideas (through open discussion, taking in a wide range of perspectives, including those we find disagreeable) and allowing most language changes to flow organically from that. If the focus shifts too far towards trying to directly influence what people say (at the level of words/phrases), we risk stunting moral progress by encoding the status quo as dogma. Which, unless we are sure we already have the answers to all future moral questions, would be bad.
> Did people become less homophobic because "gay" stopped being used as an insult.
I can only speak from my own personal experience but yes! Absolutely 1000% yes. That is exactly the point and the intended goal of reclaiming the term.
The parent chose the usage of gay as an example of one direction of the push and pull of "language influences norms" and "norms influence language" but that dynamic only really applies when language develops naturally. When people start purposely influencing language then that goes out the window. Reclaiming the gay, f*g, queer, etc. was and is an active effort by the LGBT community and allies to directly influence norms through language.
I think the discrepancy mostly comes down to context and judgement. It's too tempting to forget to apply context and judgement because doing so requires substantially more research and mental effort.
Language and culture are intertwined like electricity and magnetism. Clear causality is only approximate because it always goes both ways, and solutions have to tackle both fronts.
Hell, language defines a lot of norms. Whether or not something is “a thing” boils down to whether there’s a word for it. The difference between homosexuality being seen as a mental disorder and part of everyday life is how we talk about it.
Well, certainly there is language that is completely inappropriate, imagine what the default branch name _could_ be called if we really were attempting to be non-inclusive.
It's very, very clear what language that applies to, however.
I think fighting against racism and sexism is a good fight, and absolutely worth fighting for.
With that said - those are quite low-hanging fruits, if someone wants to engage in virtue signaling. And many companies do.
I also think that classism is an equally big problem in certain "elite" sectors. The diversity there is good, but most of the people - diverse in race or gender - still hail from the same socio-economic groups.
> those are quite low-hanging fruits, if someone wants to engage in virtue signaling
That's basically what fueled a specific part of tumblr for a long time. People one-upping each other about what is unjust and what everyone should be outraged about. I'm not sure as a whole it had a positive impact on the world.
I am convinced future people will find this whole saga quite an interesting anecdote of how, for a period of time, _appearing_ to be "anti-racist" was far more important than doing anything positive.
As an aside I find it highly amusing watching the proponents of such changes eat themselves (see Twitch: womxn debacle).