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Inclusive Language Tyranny?

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post

    And Sea, if there are "many who are unaware of what they're doing" perhaps the problem is with the perception of the few, not the language of the many.
    This is a great way of putting it.
    I DENOUNCE DONALD J. TRUMP AND ALL HIS IMMORAL ACTS.

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
      Can you read? I wrote "If I am unaware." If in a face to face situation I hurt someones feeling, yes, I would apologize. That does not seem to me to apply to the massive overall idea that if people are using ordinary language and someone gets their feelings hurt we must change everything. It is this society wide sort of garbage that I was referring to.

      And Sea, if there are "many who are unaware of what they're doing" perhaps the problem is with the perception of the few, not the language of the many.
      Yes, I can read. If you were made aware that you hurt someone, I've no doubt that you would apologize. However, being unaware of harm does not mean you're innocent of doing harm. It does apply to the massive overall idea, as you put it, because 'ordinary language' isn't an excuse. If ordinary language is hurtful, it's no less hurtful by being commonplace (quite the opposite). Claiming that it's common doesn't exonerate the perpetuation of it, especially once its hurtful nature is brought to light.

      I do feel like there must be a balance if for no other reason that it's impossible to avoid all situations in which someone might harmed. I don't think the answer is to deny that ordinary language is hurtful, but to recognize that such harm isn't intended. It still requires a balance of adjusting the use of certain words when reasonable. The cost of changing our vocabulary is pretty negligible.
      I'm not here anymore.

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      • #18
        Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
        Yes, I can read. If you were made aware that you hurt someone, I've no doubt that you would apologize. However, being unaware of harm does not mean you're innocent of doing harm. It does apply to the massive overall idea, as you put it, because 'ordinary language' isn't an excuse. If ordinary language is hurtful, it's no less hurtful by being commonplace (quite the opposite). Claiming that it's common doesn't exonerate the perpetuation of it, especially once its hurtful nature is brought to light.

        I do feel like there must be a balance if for no other reason that it's impossible to avoid all situations in which someone might harmed. I don't think the answer is to deny that ordinary language is hurtful, but to recognize that such harm isn't intended. It still requires a balance of adjusting the use of certain words when reasonable. The cost of changing our vocabulary is pretty negligible.
        Perhaps he's referring to what appears (to me) to be the increasingly absurd justifications for people getting offended. If I'm speaking to someone and they say that something I've said was hurtful, then my response would more than likely be, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll be more careful in the future." But could you agree that there's been a recent trend to apparently find all manner of utterly mundane, inoffensive things, offensive? "Microaggressions" might be a good example of this.
        Last edited by Zymologist; 02-25-2015, 05:05 PM.
        I DENOUNCE DONALD J. TRUMP AND ALL HIS IMMORAL ACTS.

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        • #19
          Originally posted by Zymologist View Post
          Perhaps he's referring to what appears (to me) to be the increasingly absurd justifications for people getting offended. If I'm speaking to someone and they say that something I've said was hurtful, then my response would more than likely be, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll be more careful in the future." But could you agree that there's been a recent trend to apparently find all manner of utterly mundane, inoffensive things, offensive? "Microaggressions" might be a good example of this.
          Yes, I agree there is such a trend. I think there are better and worse ways of handling such a trend. Dismissal of the complaints because we're just using ordinary language is a worse way. Getting people to understand that most people aren't intending harm with their words is a better way, however significantly more difficult it may be. Most often the response I see is the same as what Jed has said: that we've always said this so there's not really a problem and people should just get over it.
          I'm not here anymore.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
            Yes, I can read. If you were made aware that you hurt someone, I've no doubt that you would apologize. However, being unaware of harm does not mean you're innocent of doing harm. It does apply to the massive overall idea, as you put it, because 'ordinary language' isn't an excuse. If ordinary language is hurtful, it's no less hurtful by being commonplace (quite the opposite). Claiming that it's common doesn't exonerate the perpetuation of it, especially once its hurtful nature is brought to light.

            I do feel like there must be a balance if for no other reason that it's impossible to avoid all situations in which someone might harmed. I don't think the answer is to deny that ordinary language is hurtful, but to recognize that such harm isn't intended. It still requires a balance of adjusting the use of certain words when reasonable. The cost of changing our vocabulary is pretty negligible.
            I disagree pretty much 100%. Personal face to face is in no way equivalent to the idiotic trend I see despoiling the society in the US. What happens else where I do not address. The only reasonable solution is to stop accepting that every little contrived offense matters. Do I get to outlaw the use of "old coot?" If not forget about it from my perspective.
            Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

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            • #21
              Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
              I disagree pretty much 100%. Personal face to face is in no way equivalent to the idiotic trend I see despoiling the society in the US. What happens else where I do not address. The only reasonable solution is to stop accepting that every little contrived offense matters. Do I get to outlaw the use of "old coot?" If not forget about it from my perspective.
              Liberals sure don't seem to mind calling Christians who disagree with them, "homophobes," "intolerant fundamentalists" and "gay bashers"

              I guess it is only bad if the liberals get called names, not if they use them themselves against others.

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
                I disagree pretty much 100%. Personal face to face is in no way equivalent to the idiotic trend I see despoiling the society in the US. What happens else where I do not address. The only reasonable solution is to stop accepting that every little contrived offense matters. Do I get to outlaw the use of "old coot?" If not forget about it from my perspective.
                I've already granted that we need to stop accepting that every little contrived offense matters. The question is whether or not everything you consider a contrived offense really is contrived. Some of it no doubt is. The polarity seems to be all of it is or none of it is. I'm suggesting something in between. My impression is that you're a lot closer to the "none of it is" side of the spectrum. I don't know where 'old coot' falls into that, especially since I never hear that term used except affectionately. It seems like a pretty good example of how people could not be intentionally harmful but manage to be hurtful all the same.
                I'm not here anymore.

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                  I guess it is only bad if the [person in question] get[s] called names, not if they use them themselves against others.
                  FIFY. It's a people thing, not a group thing. Christians aren't exempt by any stretch of the imagination. Tweb has an entire subforum that pretty much proves that.
                  I'm not here anymore.

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                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                    Yes, I agree there is such a trend. I think there are better and worse ways of handling such a trend. Dismissal of the complaints because we're just using ordinary language is a worse way. Getting people to understand that most people aren't intending harm with their words is a better way, however significantly more difficult it may be. Most often the response I see is the same as what Jed has said: that we've always said this so there's not really a problem and people should just get over it.
                    Yes. Thank you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. A million times amen. This is what I've so desperately longed and yearned to read in all my time scouring this forum and other conservative-minded websites. It is so, so, so refreshing and relieving to see a post like this from someone who seems to get it. It's long been needed to be said. "Microaggressions" on their own aren't that bad, but they can sure as hell get annoying and burdensome after a while if they keep piling up and going unaddressed. We figure some, maybe even most people probably don't mean any harm, but there's no way we can know that for certain. There are so many things that could just as easily be coded language for something more sinister, and we just want to be reassured that there was no harm meant. But instead, despite the fact that we live in a country in which the commonplace, ordinary things involved the freaking federal government itself making it the law of the land to exclude Asian people from entering, and to view and treat black people as subhuman, and bar women from having something as basic and innocuous as the right to vote, and allow gay people to be fired just for being gay, and forbid anyone who didn't have the inborn characteristic of fair skin to marry or date someone who did have said inborn characteristic of fair skin, we're essentially told that the commonplace and ordinary inherently makes things fine and innocuous, and that we should just get over it? To hell with all that. The commonplace and ordinary are precisely the most likely to be deeply flawed and broken.

                    Sure, some people might occasionally feel offended by things that ultimately are probably contrived or overblown, but that, again, is precisely why we'd like to be reassured that there was no real reason to be concerned about something. When you know you possess an inborn characteristic that for a long time was commonly and ordinarily used as an excuse to persecute or belittle or outright dismiss people like you who share that characteristic, and then people who share characteristics with those who inflicted all that upon people like you ignore your concerns and outright dismiss them with a "Just get over it," that conveys a deep, cruel historical irony. It's as if the circumstances of those truly bad times have changed, but the spirit of those times has been kept alive. Instead, please take time to understand where people are coming from, and if it indeed turns out to be contrived or overblown, just provide reassurance, not some haughty, dismissive, condescending decree to "just get over it."

                    You, sir, should be knighted. I almost want to kiss the ground at your feet.
                    Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.--Isaiah 1:17

                    I don't think that all forms o[f] slavery are inherently immoral.--seer

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                    • #25
                      Let me try something a little different.

                      I'm an introvert. I don't like to talk all that much, and when I first meet someone, my conversation is typically awkward, because I'm just not very good at talking to people. I'm very mild-mannered and all around a nice guy, I'm just lousy at making conversation (though I'm getting increasingly good at faking it). If I'm talking to someone and accidentally commit a "microaggression", you can be damn sure I didn't mean anything sinister by it. I'm just trying to make conversation. Poorly, probably, but I'm just trying to be friendly. Doing my limited best, and all that. If this person becomes offended because of an ordinary, typically inoffensive thing that I've said, my reaction would be something like, "No, that wasn't what I meant. I was just trying to be friendly; I'm sorry for the confusion." I would then likely never try to talk to that person again, and in addition I would be discouraged from trying to make conversation with people in general, because in my introvertedness it is simply not worth my time and effort. I'm already bad at making conversation, and if I am this likely to offend somebody by saying something purely innocent, then what's the point?

                      So if something like that happened, I would be as polite and respectful as I could in response. Then, I would just talk even less than I do now, and be even more uncertain of myself than I am now anytime I did actually talk. I would likely struggle with feeling a bit offended at this person's quickness to assume sinister motives on my part, because I'm naturally thin-skinned and offense comes way too easily to me (I'm working on this).

                      Because of the existence of "microaggressions" and whatnot, I am discouraged from attempting to be friendly, even in my own clumsy way. Is this better?
                      I DENOUNCE DONALD J. TRUMP AND ALL HIS IMMORAL ACTS.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
                        Yes, I agree there is such a trend. I think there are better and worse ways of handling such a trend. Dismissal of the complaints because we're just using ordinary language is a worse way.
                        It is one's duty not to yield to the tyranny and aggression of the language-policing anti-'microaggression' campaigns. Given the frivolity of many, if not most of the complaints it is only wise to assume that the complaints are unwarranted unless otherwise shown.

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                        • #27
                          I mean how can we keep up?

                          58 Gender Options:

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                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

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                          • #28
                            Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                            Is it really tyranny if it's entirely voluntary?
                            It may be voluntary now, but given the trajectory of liberal policing it won't remain so in many settings.

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                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Zymologist View Post
                              Perhaps he's referring to what appears (to me) to be the increasingly absurd justifications for people getting offended. If I'm speaking to someone and they say that something I've said was hurtful, then my response would more than likely be, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll be more careful in the future." But could you agree that there's been a recent trend to apparently find all manner of utterly mundane, inoffensive things, offensive? "Microaggressions" might be a good example of this.
                              The point of that Microaggressions PDF is to highlight some mundane things that seem inoffensive to you actually function as constant reminders of white superiority to people of color. You could listen and learn instead of being broadly dismissive.

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                              • #30
                                Originally posted by seasanctuary View Post
                                The point of that Microaggressions PDF is to highlight some mundane things that seem inoffensive to you actually function as constant reminders of white superiority to losers looking to blame someone else for their failures.
                                Fixed.
                                "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

                                There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

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