George Packer is an accomplished journalist and author. So it strikes me as exceedingly strange and bordering on disingenuous that he conflates journalism, long-form non-fiction, fiction and the types of writing and communications covered by non-profit style guides (i.e., white papers and the like). The idea that style guides seeking to promote respectful language will somehow chill the free expression or quality of all these different genres is close to incomprehensible.

53, and same

Other people have written on Cho playing into the stereotype of the tragic and sad Asian girl who loses, through death or other circumstances, her white love interest (Miss Saigon, Madame Butterfly). So there is that to contend with as far as her actual character.

[removed]

It will be a beautiful world when everyone speaks like an HR memo.

These language guides are always broken into four ridiculous categories of phrases.

1. Don’t call people racial slurs like ***** or **** or even **** with a **** and cheese. Because professors at Stanford need to be reminded of this.

2. Instead of this word used by an in-group to define themselves, use this other word a cabal of business moguls created. I’m disabled and the revolving door of sanitized euphemisms for disability is ridiculous. No, I am not and never will be handicapable.

3. Words that you really need to strain to find problems with. No, that’s not the etymology of picnic. Crowbar and buck don’t have origins in slavery either. Brown bag refers to brown paper bags (surprise) and the racism connection is tenuous. Though I’m maybe other people have stronger feelings about this.

4. Sanitized euphemisms for things which are bad. Don’t whitewash homelessness or poverty. By turning it into ‘unhoused’ or ‘living without a house’ makes it clean when this is a condition that there needs to be real societal change on. Changing it to something cute and sweet is disgusting and sweeps the real systemic issues under the rug. Also they should not be called ‘The Forsaken.’

Finally, I think it’s funny and a little pretentious that these inclusive language guides are so focused on prescriptive language when so many marginalized groups (Underserved? Groups of marginalization?) have separate dialects and modes of speech. Which one do you want, sanitized language or to get out and start telling oppressed groups what to say?

I’m not here to defend Rowling and her TERF views - she’s awful, and her getting validation for her politics from the popularity of her books is reason enough for anyone to put them aside.

But her actions have led to an honestly fairly disingenuous effort to make the books seem far worse (morally) than they actually are. Are some of her naming conventions suspect? Sure. She’s pretty incurious when it comes to anything outside her British milieu, and therefore kinda shit at accurately portraying any of it. But characters like Kingsley and even Cho are only really problematic in their names alone, and as characters lack literally any other stereotypical hallmarks, which would be more concerning. Seamus, meanwhile, only blows things up in the movies, so that’s a total non-starter. It’s fine to critique and dislike the books (The house elf liberation subplot raises far more eyebrows than a few lazy names), but they aren’t the racist Nazi shit Twitter seems to want to paint them as.

(And before it gets brought up: the goblins, at least in the books, lack anything that would cause someone to associate them with Jews. The characteristics they share are characteristics shared by most fantasy goblins; if they were actually meant to be antisemitic, they’d be using their position in wizarding society to subvert and/or control it. They’d need to “complete the metaphor,” as it were. At worst, they’re just another example of Rowling not picking up on the implication of the tropes she’s incorporating.)

"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all"

Do you want me to link discord servers....?

There are plenty of social-justice oriented subreddits which ban specific words...hell, reddit as a whole I'm pretty sure has banned the N word at a minimum.

Give an example of a social org forbidding words

No, but plenty of organizations (which can be anything from a school or business to a subreddit) forbid people from using certain words^1 in either official or internal communication and you will receive significant social censure if you are in certain fields to the point where you will have projects canceled.

Perhaps the latter can't be called banning even though this sort of chilling effect has the same consequences of it, but the former definitely is.

Thankfully there isn't a serious movement to ban words legally by my federal government, despite the shocking amount of support I see for this on reddit.

^1 I dont' mean slurs and sexual slang but a significant increase of words that were very recently not considered offensive, such as the word "lame" to refer to something not being entertaining.

Go check out r/MensMentalHealth

I think you're giving MRAs too much credit. When I see them talking about TF they normally mean 'making fun of men' or 'getting all my stuff in the divorce'

It's in the article.

The goal isn't to make the world more just. It's to make the world dumber and more compliant so that they are easier to take advantage of.

Also, I apologize to any wells I may have offended with my comment.

This is a brilliant and well-written response. Thank you.

I’ve never heard that phrase before, but it’s terrific.

I'll admit to feeling a bit lost trying to follow the argument through the middle, but I thought the final paragraph was a most excellent conclusion, particularly:

>​ [The equity language guides] belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real.

Which leads me to wonder: How does one resolve differences and/or generate solutions when different parties don't speak the same language?

That's what I can't get over with these types of articles. Conservative media got worked up over some internal use words to avoid list for use by Stanford's IT department a couple months ago as if it was some banned word list at the college. Just like this guide here. Is this a banned words list? Not really. Some nonprofit put out an internal use language guide for official communications. Do I think some of their recommendations are goofy? Yeah, but I don't know why I should care. This guide has no material effect on my life and no words are "being banned." I would agree with the thesis of article on the Atlantic if you they were criticizing something that was actually happening, but it isn't. It's just another trite "free speech" that seems more in line with the standards of the New York post.

Person experiencing straw composition

This is so sad. I visited the ranch in September for the first time.

Bold of you to assume terminally online people ever leave the house.

Banning words is so pointless, within a year the word you replace it with will become offensive to people. Ends up its not the words but rather the concepts behind them, there is no way to spin things like mental illness or disabilities in a good way and we need to just accept people are going to use the terms in derogatory way no matter how many times you rename them.

>Maybe go to a doctor if words cause physical distress

Thanks for the snark. Have you bothered to consider the implication of how we're deliberately making light of serious topics, just so we can entrench ourselves in spyware?

>I don't know if anyone actually knows it those words hurt your discoverability or if it was just a hoax and people follow it because the algorithm is our almighty lord and we must follow its commands or else we will be forsaken by its light.

Either way, it's shit. Let's downplay impactful terms like "Kill" because otherwise maybe you won't get a lot of views on TikTok!! O noooo, where will we be if people can't see our TikToks?! Might as well be dead! I mean, unalived!