The term 'Landlord' has gendered elements, that's fine, but so does most of our language, and that's mostly fine as well. Rarely, it's not.
"If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you."
And since this is a 0.00000001% use case, you can see why it's ridiculous.
In fact, that 'use case' you've conjured is possibly never likely to have happened in all of history and even then the term 'landlord' may be perfectly justifiable.
It's not just that the suggestion itself is almost always going to be de-contextualized, it's for that reason that the software is effectively 'political' in a way.
Google is telling us to 'de gender' our culture when the vast majority of people are fine with 'most' things the way they are.
This is a bit like the 'Latinx' people - educated White people telling the Latino Plebes, who don't use or want hat language, how they ought to think.
Worse, I don't even think the motivation is entirely legit - Google has a ton of extra money, they have ton of busy bodies, everyone wants to get their 'inclusivity brownie points' all the way up the executive chain, humble brag to others, make something nice for the Big Conf.
Admittedly - as an intellectual concept it's not far off, but in it's application, it's ridiculous. At very minimum it should be 'off' by default.
I want to second the Latinx thing. Every latino I know, even the non-binary ones, find that particular change to the language offensive and uneducated. I'm sure there are some native spanish speakers who support it, but they seem to make up the minority. It just doesn't make linguistic sense.
It's not a language issue it's an ideological issue that exposes in clear terms that Social Justice Populism is more an antagonizing than it is about 'Justice'.
Latinos don't want this specific social change, but the 'vanguard' of Social Justice demands the change and utilizes it as an effort to both give evidence of the 'evil racist world in which we live' - and to 'one up' and take the the supposed moral high ground.
Put another way - there will never, ever be an end to the claims of racial injustice, because the opportunity for bad faith populism provides an opportunity for some groups to gain leverage and power.
Social Media has amplified this dramatically so in a world that is actually getting much more fair on racial terms, we scream and argue more about to the point of raising pedantic elements into total hyperbole.
In 'polite Canada' they used to have language wars. The 'STOP' on the stop sign is a political issue, because it's technically English. So they argue about having 'Stop / Arret' - i.e. 'bilingual' stop signs - on federal property so that the French speaking person in Alberta, who may not know what 'Stop' means, will get the right idea.
These ridiculous discussions drown out any meaningful social reform, because the rational, pedantic progressives are actively culled by the radicals. In much the same way Stalin's control over the Germany Communist Party in Weimar Republic led him to attack the SPD (Social Democrats) as 'the primary enemy' over the far right.
This entire post could be restated in terms of populist right-wingism as well, particularly in regards to making something out of nothing and attacking their more traditional peers , with small differences.
The people who decide these things (journalists, I guess?) have ordained that “Black” should be capitalized while “white” should not. And I hate that I’ve told you this because I’m not a fan of the asymmetry, and you quite likely don’t care (I don’t blame you if you don’t!), but I suppose it’s exactly the sort of thing that Google Docs now warns about.
Apparently there is more disagreement about this than I realized. People started capitalizing Black in 2020. It seems to be more popular to lowercase white than to uppercase it, but not all organizations are aligned on this question. I wish they’d left both lowercase!
They'll definitely capitalize it when they're talking about White Supremacy. And by that I don't men 'Men In Pointy Hats', I mean 'Friends', the TV show, as an example of White Supremacy, and I'm not even kidding.
> (You) to tell users that 'landlord' is 'inappropriate' is way crossing the line.
> (Me) It does not. It says "This word is gendered.
> (You) No, and you've made my point for me.
What is that "no" referring to?
The feature does not tell you that a word is "bad" or "good". It provides context, the same context that a dictionary or a professional editor will provide.
In this example, it enters the realm of etymology. The word is made up of "land" + "lord".
The appellation "lord" is primarily applied to men, while for women the appellation "lady" is used (which in itself is dated). The tool does not know the identity of the people who you are writing about. So proposing "landlady" is a not a good option. It would simply shift the issue across. Instead, it will proposes "proprietor" which is an accurate title for someone who owns a building or piece of land and rents it no matter what their identity is.
Another example would be if you write "policeman" and it proposes "police office". The tool there would not be saying that "policeman" is wrong and should never be used. It hints you that if you do not know who you are talking about, you might want to use one of the alternatives. Emphasis on "might", since the feature is presented as a suggestion.
Even your example of "latinx" could be included under such a feature. What you did here was the same thing as what the hint does.
Did you censor me by explaining to me the historical context of "laninx"? No. Even if your explanation means I will never use the word, it does not censor me.
It simply provided me with added information so that I can make an enlightened choice when it comes to my vocabulary.
'Landlord' is a perfectly reasonable word, and there's not reason to try to correct it, or get into the etymology of it.
You're down an crazy rabbit hole of splitting hairs and lack of contextualization, which is why you're having trouble understanding why it's an absurd kind of 'correction'.
If I wanted to take apart anything you ever wrote with such fine grained and pedantic inanity, I could, and you could never write anything.
'Landlord' is an accepted term - there's no reason to correct it.
"The tool there would not be saying that "policeman" is wrong and should never be used"
Again, no. It's a more complicated term, but it has it's use.
This is 'Social Justice Fascist Authoritarianism' - unhinged ideological moralization, perniciously and hypocritically pursuing an aggressive agenda through all vectors i.e. corporate, private.
If you want to be corrected by Social Justice Fascists at every turn with an ever increasing number of ridiculous claims on language - it's your choice. You can buy that plug-in and for it.
The rest of us do not want to have our language corrected in an ideological manner.
I have no problem if the city council stops using the term 'Policeman', that's fine, but I also don't care if anyone uses the term otherwise, and nobody else does either.
The term 'Landlord' has gendered elements, that's fine, but so does most of our language, and that's mostly fine as well. Rarely, it's not.
"If you are writing a text where the goal is to help abuse survivors in a women's shelter to become land proprietors, it might be of use to you."
And since this is a 0.00000001% use case, you can see why it's ridiculous.
In fact, that 'use case' you've conjured is possibly never likely to have happened in all of history and even then the term 'landlord' may be perfectly justifiable.
It's not just that the suggestion itself is almost always going to be de-contextualized, it's for that reason that the software is effectively 'political' in a way.
Google is telling us to 'de gender' our culture when the vast majority of people are fine with 'most' things the way they are.
This is a bit like the 'Latinx' people - educated White people telling the Latino Plebes, who don't use or want hat language, how they ought to think.
Worse, I don't even think the motivation is entirely legit - Google has a ton of extra money, they have ton of busy bodies, everyone wants to get their 'inclusivity brownie points' all the way up the executive chain, humble brag to others, make something nice for the Big Conf.
Admittedly - as an intellectual concept it's not far off, but in it's application, it's ridiculous. At very minimum it should be 'off' by default.