Part of the reason rule based language processing failed, is because language does not fall into hard and fast categories with no exceptions.
Normal people instinctively understand this, and “woman” and “mother” are completely understandable and useful terms, even if there are a handful of exceptions out of millions are exceptions to the strict definition.
Thank you, I swear half the time I can’t figure out if people are genuinely confused by inclusive language or if they confuse it on purpose just to get riled up.
It’s the same with people who menstruate — not only for trans men but for post menopausal women, women who’ve had hysterectomies, or are otherwise have amenorrhea.
No — people are just aware that humans are sexually dimorphic and don’t appreciate people demanding they not use language that accurately describes the peaks of a bimodal distribution because there’s a small percentage of outliers. Mammals in general are sexually dimorphic.
Particularly when that language control is transparently used for power seeking.
We don’t need to shape every utterance around outliers — that’s pathological and stifles discussion.
Girl you gotta get off the internet. No one is demanding you use this language. It’s actually the opposite where people have a visceral reaction to someone voluntarily choosing to use inclusive language. Style guides like these are for awareness, everyone has had the moment where they discover a word they picked up is actually offensive. One that happened for me was “gypped.” A lot of the guides do contain silly substitutions but that’s because they’re wrong about the history of the words and their usage not because the idea or intent is bad.
I am almost certain the person who told you that was offensive was not someone from the group allegedly being offended, but by some person from a highly educated privileged background deciding to be offended on that group’s behalf.
“Hey by the way that word is offensive” isn’t really the same as being offended. It was a 5 second interaction where they were like “that word is like jewed or welshed but for the Roma” and I was like, “my bad didn’t know that.” That was it. Despite what the internet told me I wasn’t immediately canceled. Like what is the point you’re trying to make, that it’s not offensive or that someone who isn’t Roma isn’t allowed to recognize that using an ethnicity’s name as a verb in a disparaging way is offensive?
I think that highlight my main gripe about what I'd call excessive inclusion. Sure there are some people who identify as male, who will go on to become pregnant, but they have to understand that they are not representative of anything. The number of trans-men who also become pregnant is so tiny that it's beyond an edge case, it's not something that needs to be accounted for everywhere. That's not to say that they shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else, or that we should tolerate actions taken against them. It's just that some groups are so tiny that having special language or accommodation for them makes little sense.
If they are successful in have a pregnant trans-woman in Unicode, you just know that, depending on the depiction, it will be used as "The fat guy"-icon.
Personally I use it for "I ate too much" too. Half the fun of emojis is the new unofficial uses that evolve (I wonder what the fruit peach folks' thoughts are).
I don't see the problem of including small groups - they are the ones who are most invisible and marginalized and therefore in need of recognition. You say it makes little sense, but to me it not only makes sense but is self-evident. Even if you're right, I can scroll through my emoji map and see many that are even more niche, yet none of them receive the angry flak GNC emoji do. (Not to even mention the even more obscure items in the rest of Unicode.)
Can we not use the word car because motorcycles only have two wheels? Why do we need to change language for a few hundred people worldwide? Why do trans men get pregnant since it is the least masculine thing possible?
That is fake news from a convicted fraudster. It was claimed but never supported by evidence [0].
"Fertility clinician Cecil Jacobson claimed to have transplanted a fertilized egg from a female baboon to the omentum in the abdominal cavity of a male baboon in the mid-1960s, which then carried the fetus for four months; however, Jacobson did not publish his claims in a scientific journal, and was subsequently convicted on several unrelated counts of fraud for ethical misconduct."
> your statement is incorrect because trans men exist and they can get pregnant
So that’s an edge case. They can call themselves a mother or father or birthing person or pink elephant. That shouldn’t mean someone else can’t identify as a mother or father or whatnot.
This isn’t even a novel delineation; adoption and surrogacy have long dealt with the separation of parenting and reproductive roles. Besides, history’s foremost feminists would cringe at womanhood and motherhood being reduced to a biological function.
The person you replied to (shrimp_emoji) was responding to the statement "a pregnant person is a woman".
"A pregnant person is a woman" doesn't say anything about what people are allowed to call themselves, but rather makes an absolute statement that all pregnant people can be called "women". It doesn't take into account the edge cases you mentioned, and that's what shrimp_emoji took offense to.
Should everyone take care to account for the most improbable interpretations, even unintended ones? Thanks for providing a good sample of equity language. Feels like being dictated by an elite to the masses.
