Eh, I'm as left as they come and I'm tired of pretending that banning words solve anything. Who's offended? Why? Do you have a group of retarded friends you hang out with on the regular? Are they reading the article? No and no. Let's not pretend that changing the term to differentently abled or whatever has any meaning. It doesn't. It's a handful of loud people (usually well off white women) on social media dictating what is and isn't ok. Phrases like "temporarily unhoused" rather than homeless is another good way to pretend to be taking action when you're doing less than nothing. Fight for policy, not changing words.
> I'm as left as they come and I'm tired of pretending that banning words solve anything. Who's offended? Why?
I'm with you on this, also speaking as a strong leftist.
I do think that "banning" , or at least strongly condemning, the use of words when the specific group being slurred are clear that they consider it a slur and want it to stop is reasonable. But not when it's social justice warriors getting offended on behalf of other people.
However, I think it's absolutely ridiculous that even when discussing the banning of these words, we're not allowed to use them directly. We are supposed to say "n-word", "r-word" even when discussing in an academic sense. Utter nonsense, it's as if saying these words out loud would conjure a demon.
The point of these meaningless dictionary changes isn't to solve anything. It's to give plausible deniability to asshole behaviour through virtue signalling.
Crazy assholes will argue along the lines that it is an insignificant inconvenience and hence anyone who uses the old language must use it maliciously and on purpose, because they are ableist, racist or whatever.
This then gives assholes the justification to behave like a biggot towards the allegedly ableist person. The goal is to dress up your own abusive bullying as virtuous, even though deep down you don't actually care about disabled people.
This is an interesting take, and I think it's not unreasonable to label the worst of the social justice warriors as assholes.
However, most of them are well meaning. They're misguided rather than assholes. They really do want to take action for social improvement. It's just that real change is too hard and requires messy things like protesting on the street or getting involved in politics and law. So, they fall back on things like policing words, or calling out perceived bad actors, which they can do from the comfort of their homes via the internet.
To be fair, some genuinely bad people have been "cancelled". The "me too" movement didn't happen without reason. It's just that it went too far, and started ignoring pesky things like evidence, or innocent until proven otherwise.
Yes and yes? I’m an AI enthusiast interested in the article and I’m offended by that word for pretty non-hypothetical reasons. When I was in middle school I was bullied a lot by people who would repeatedly call me the r-slur. That word reminds me of some of the most shameful and humiliating moments of my life. If I hear someone use it out of nowhere it makes me wince. Seeing it written down isn’t as bad, but I definitely would prefer people phased it out of their repertoire.
I would also like the whole world to change so that I don't have to face my personal traumas. But, since that's not gonna happen, I have to deal with them in other ways.
CBT therapy, especially the "B" part, was essentially created to help overcome phobias of things like words. There are some great books on CBT, and also research showing that working alone using a book can often be as effective as working with a therapist. The classic Feeling Good by David Burns, while the case studies are a bit dated, is still an amazing book.
I honestly forgot how much the word affected me until recently because for about 20 years I almost never heard anyone use it. So apparently it is in fact possible for people to by and large stop using it.
