I had sort of a similar reaction to the piece — reading through it really clarified for me some impressions that had been sitting in the back of my mind.

Language at some level is really about the speaker, in terms of their background, knowledge or lack thereof, what they want to communicate and so forth. Sometimes I think what this equity language betrays is some desire to convey moral or intellectual status, or even some assertion of social power, but sometimes it reflects a genuine attempt to respect the wishes of the subjects of what they're saying.

The problem as you point out is different groups might see things in different ways, and maybe even want to be seen in different ways in different settings or at different moments. Maybe they want to be seen as strong or resilient in one setting, and maybe in another they want to discuss the injustices they have to be resilient against. I think this is only a natural part of human nature.

So it makes sense that these edicts about proper language aren't just morally problematic because they reflect some power motive on the part of the speaker, at the expense of the subject of the speech, but because in doing that, they deny some flexibility in how certain topics and persons can be portrayed or portray themselves.

The example of the passage from Behind the Beautiful Forevers is compelling in how it illustrates how equity language can be disenfranchising and therefore counter to its own stated purposes. The passage works because it is meant to convey something about the parents' perspective and to cause us to wrestle with that. The author is channeling the parents' language. In a different context, maybe the same situation might be described differently, more positively. It's not just that the language in the second version is intellectualized and distanced, it's that it denies choice of language from those who potentially are in the best position to say something about it.

I think it's much easier to just see it as in-group out-group signaling. You're in the in-group if you comply with the new arbitrary language and you're a slew of bad words if you're in the out-group using the old language. The stuff about being nice to low status people is fake, the purpose is to identify low status people (the people who don't know/use the new made up language).

The tenet assumes that people are in the large just dense. Following it, you have no airline pilots, mothers, mentors, judges, felons, idiots, and maybe not even proper names. Just "person who is female and has borne living children", "person who judges others in court", "person named Judy", etc.

There might be a worthwhile transition to a new framing that makes sense. I've heard people rip on using the metric system because supposedly its proponents wanted 10-hour days and 10 days a week, etc, which was taking tenets to ridiculous points. The problem now is trying to frame some changes in grander terms because you might well get ridiculous outcomes ( and in current society definitely will).

This is great advice for one-on-one groups and small discussions, but provides little help if you're writing for a broad audience and want to minimize blowback. Which is where I think that Stanford guide, and other such guides, come into play, whether I agree with them or not.

> but provides little help if you're writing for a broad audience and want to minimize blowback

Does writing a guide or policing language that causes blowback provide help? If you're speaking to a room full of people and half favor this language and half don't then you've only shifted the grievances from one side of the room to the other.

There's no easy answers here, but I don't think writing language guides or policing peoples language actually accomplishes much.

All it takes is one or two very angry people to start a mob online and destroy someone's entire career. I'm not surprised that authors, especially in a field as precarious as writing, are more than willing to follow what is deemed to be "safe" language, though it's definitely a loss for society as a whole and indirectly works to undermine writing as an art.

I think that’s becoming less true. A lot of recent “cancellation” attempts have failed.

Of course, it’s probably much more difficult for those who aren’t already successful and famous.

If it's truly 50-50, then no. But I don't see any way that a whole 50% of your audience is going to freak out if you change from "homeless" to "person experiencing homelessness," for example.

The guides are probably banking on most of the changes being accepted, however grudgingly. Of course, they may be wrong, and even if there's pushback, they may be convinced enough of the righteousness of their cause to press ahead anyway.