The realization that it would be pointless, alas, came to me too late. Let me just give you a taste:

  While serving in Vietnam, American soldier Nick Parker was blinded by a mortar explosion. Rescued by local villagers, he recovered his health and, though he remains blind, was trained to master his other senses and becomes an expert swordsman.

There is an "adorable" little kid aptly named Billy, and one dimensional baddies, 'etc. The character is masterfully portrayed by one of the best b-movie actors of all time -- Rutger Hauer (best known for the best bit of Blade Runner).

Anyway I think it is a shame woke imbeciles who run movie studios would refuse to make such a thing today because when I saw it as a kid it made me realize being blind is really not the end of the world. Here you are posting on HN and your insights about society are more astute than the majority of the population. So I just wanted to say that you certainly see what is going on accurately.

P.S. - if you wish to visualize the language police people, they typically look like vogons and pull ugly faces when they speak.

As I am embedded in a visual culture, I do consume movies from time to time, so there is actually no reason to be self-conscious about mentioning media products like that...

Don't know why I'm surprised. I bet blind fury would watch movies somehow too. Also, you should obviously change your username. :)

P.S. - Daredevil sucks so bad it makes me wish I was blind. You aren't missing out on anything there.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil is a classic. Yet another example of something great that currently wouldn't get made.

I've decided I want a blind friend. Prank potential off the charts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_description

You might have noticed a second audio channel with some movies or sports broadcasts, depending on what country you are in. Even Apple TV has an ability to configure such a descriptive audio channel, and have it played back when the movie actually comes with one.

BTW you should know my comments had a +5 and now are being downvoted by the woke mob, who know what is best for you.

I find the music and background noise is so loud in modern movies that I struggle to hear some of the characters talk.

I thought I was just getting old but recently watched some older movies and found they were much easier to hear.

However, that said, I do also feel it is getting harder with more action-loaded productions, which is basically everything in the past 10 years or so.

This was discussed on HN a few months ago, but I can't find a reference to that thread.

If there’s a root cause it is that they make movies to get Oscars, not to be watched by the audience.

More and more we just leave subtitles on, as too much dialog is easy to lose in the rest of the sound. I think it’s also a difference in how movies are made now; compare the pacing of Rocky with anything modern. Older movies stop the action to dialog; modern movies have quips over explosions

Sometimes it is even a separate “language track” that describes what’s happening.

tl;dw - Nope.

Ain't that some shit?

Exact same sort of asshole and arguments as today. He called them blasphemers and tried to cancel them. During the commercial break he would lean in to John Cleese and say "this is great television" with a wink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mervyn_Stockwood#Later_life_an...

"Today? You couldn't even make it then!"

We overestimate the effect the this sort of thing has.

I imagine someone reading that line is about to talk about the cancelling of some so-and-so, but in almost all cases that is either just a lot of hot air from Twitter or the so-and-so in question is legitimately and obviously actually a bigot.

Now, a wide-release, mainstream movie, that might be true.

I suspect there would be more resistance to the same film now, but its well within what could be made.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/Zatoichi

I think public opinion polling might actually solve the problem, because the actual group has greater moral authority than language police activists. I suspect people might not cite this Atlantic article during a discussion of whether their organization should adopt language policing for fear of coming across as a reactionary old fogey. But if you were citing a poll of the group in question, that's a level of moral authority that's hard for a language police activist to argue against.

Basically the hypothesis to test here is that a latinx-type reaction is fairly common, it just doesn't generally reach public consciousness the way it did in the case of latinx.

If people aren't called what they prefer, as long as they weren't called a slur, a simple correction is fine. Or, if you're never going to see them again, just let it go.

So you can call a group “Latinx” and offend some and call a group “Latinos” and offend some and call a group “Latinos/Latinas” and offend some.

I want to offend the fewest people with my speech. I would like to use opinion polling to both offend fewest as well as signal that I’m working to offend the fewest.

What’s annoying and frustrating to me is when someone tells me “You must use term X because term Y offends.” Then I change it and someone else tells me “You must use term Y because term X offends.” And the worst part is the circular waste of time. I work in an organization that has a communication clearance process for the purpose of scientific accuracy and we spend a decent amount of time on this kind of editorial preference change/revert. Most isn’t even “offensive” words but stuff like Oxford comma, data are plural, etc.

I'll find out if something's offensive when I say it, with no ill intent, and someone respectfully lets me know that they'd prefer to be called something else. My language will change over time in response to the overall language changing over time.

People appropriating your disability to excuse their bullying has led to what is effectively PTSD dealing with the groups whose voice was appropriated.

That’s sad — and has impacted not only disabled people, but race and gender relations.

I miss 10-20 years ago, when people were people rather than defined by protected class.

They are like rats in a barrel, eventually they will eat each other alive. You have great power in this dystopia, just use your sightless status to wag your finger at one publicly and the rest will turn on them immediately.

Fight fire with fire, act offended, cancel them at every opportunity.

Always reminds me of the George Carlin bit on language euphemisms used to distance us from reality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc).

Among this umbrella you have many common things like, they can probably park closer to doors, if they are disabled. I'm not sure why people just pretend things are not how they are when discussing these subjects. Of course we have more information than less.

Regarding parking closer to doors, I said "probably" and that was literally to illustrate that there is an umbrella that covers most cases even if there's edge cases. Obviously there are people with disabilities that don't even allow them to leave their bed so they can't drive. I think the most accurate part of my previous comment was about you being intentionally obtuse.

This is obvious ofc but my comment was about the OP stating that OMGWOKENESS, eg. saying "differently abled" is a language/semantic excercise that somehow takes us further away from reality and therefore is worse than using the traditional "disabled". In other words, using "differently abled" (with regard to the normal functions a human is able to do) doesn't hide any reality that "disabled" shows. IMHO.

Edit: Disclaimer: I haven't watched Carlin in a long time, didn't rewatch this bit now either so I'm arguing from my "I love him but sometimes he's a dick and othertimes he's wrong" view of him.

It is unusual for the opinions of the minorities involved to be relevant.The language policing appears to be a power play within the majority. What you are observing is consistent with that - they aren't worried about offending the blind, they're worried about how their language will allow their peers to jostle for position.

That is so true. Often the stated goal is to deconstruct society, not to help any minority.

A role that used to be filled (in Ireland) by priests and nuns, and the Legion of Mary. One of the big problems I used to have with religion was the moral policing - imagine my surprise when the power of the church waned, but the moral policing only intensified

The issue is that these people have seeped into positions of power at media institutions like the NY Times, WaPo, etc.

Now they're using the decades of trust those institutions have built to shove their ideology down everyone's throat.

And it's odd! Because while there are certainly disabled people who prefer one form over another when they speak or when people refer to them (although again, in my experience, the overwhelming majority prefer the clarity of "disabled"), the only time I've ever run across someone making a universal dictate about how everyone should speak about all disabled people everywhere, the speaking has been non-disabled. And invariably backing a viewpoint which is tenditious at best among actually disabled people!

And to what end? It sometimes feels - certainly to my partner, hence her anger - an attempt to just sort of pretend the issue dosn't exist so that nobody has to be uncomfortable. Her disability is, at the moment, entirely incurable. She has experienced significant grief over her disability; she would love not to have it. But she does, and relabelling her as "differently abled" or a "person with a disability" doesn't suddenly remove the physical limitations she is struggling with.

I am well past the point where I have any grief related to my disability. Its a fact of life, a part of me, very much like not being able to fly, or having a nose above the mouth.

But there are of course situations in life where I feel that the world isn't always particularily accessible. But it doesn't help at all if someone uses appropriate language to explain to me that they dont want me as a customer because they are afraid of liabilities. Thats a bit cynical, I know, but thats another trend. With "awareness" about special groups comes more exclusion. Anyway, I digress.

While we don't have any problem with the term disabled, I can see some advantages to the "people first language" and try to use it when I can - but I agree it's often way more simple/clear to say "disabled", "blind", etc...

The advantages are :

  - Including temporarily disabled people (maybe more in french than english). If you break your legs and spend a few months in a wheelchair, you might not feel legitimate to use the term "disabled" in comparison to someone who has never been able to walk and suffers more from it. I'd also add my personal story: I suffer from chronic pain that is very incapacitating in my life. I don't feel legitimate when I call myself disabled. It's not temporary, but it's not as clear as blindness etc... Using people-first language feels more right.
  - Including more person means reducing stigma and reducing the gap between abled/disabled.
  - Not letting that disabilty define you as a person. I am not disabled, I am Sunderw, a complicated person with many different aspects.

[Edit: formatting]

I would say "I am hungry" even if I have food in the fridge, I do not need to compare myself to poor starving people and decide to say "I am currently hungry" or "I am in a situation of hunger"

> Not letting that disabilty define you as a person. I am not disabled, I am Sunderw, a complicated person with many different aspects.

also I am still a complicated person and hungry does not define my personality.

> Including more person means reducing stigma and reducing the gap between abled/disabled.

Actually, taking too many steps to think of how to describe a person with a certain medical situation already increases the stigma, I would feel more bad if people try to avoid calling me "sick" so I don't feel bad about being sick, this is even worse.

Imagine calling a midget "A person with less height" or some nonsense like that.

But saying "I'm starving!" when you are just hungry is a bit different. It's fine where there are no starving people around. It's just a exaggeration then. But if one of your friends starved last week while you are still fat and just a bit hungry it might not sound well.

So for me your example does not count as a label. Is there no nuance at all between "being hungry" and "being disabled" in english ? If so, you're right, my argument does not stand.

> Imagine calling a midget "A person with less height" or some nonsense like that.

I think midget is pejorative so this is not a very good example. But I don't know much about that so I'll take your argument as if it wasn't at all.

I should have added that this is of course useful in some contexts. If you are talking to a specific person, then changing the language isn't very useful (except if this specific person feels the term is offensive, but that does not mean we should all change how we speek).

Where it is more useful, for example, is when you talk about limitations due to a problem. You are writing an article about height problems ? No need to say it's about dwarfism, there are other small people that might relate. You're a store and design a special help to get objects on high shelves ? No need to call it "dwarf help" or "midget help", but just "help for small people" or even "high shelf help".

In this case this is not about thinking about how to describe a person with a certain medical situation. It is about taking a step back and removing the medical situation altogether.

This applies much more to "deaf"/"hearing impaired" (or whatever, my argument is about generalizing, not about a specific term). A lot more people have difficulty hearing than are completely deaf.

Knowing about it is good. Trying to think about what your language implies is good. Forbidding the usage of words is obviously extreme and bad.

You can construct some armchair psychology arguments such as "the language explicitly acknowledges that there's more to a person", but does that really affect people's thinking in any significant way? And if it does, does it affect the thinking in the right way? Or does it trivialize the condition? No matter what language you use, being blind is a serious handicap and it really does affect what you can and can't do in this world; trying to euphemize the very real problems blind people face also isn't a good idea.

The flip side of this is that it allows / encourages others to see your disability as a mere "inconvenience" or something that should be able to be separated from you. I find at least for people I know with mental health disabilities they feel "person with X" tends to lead very quickly into "I know you have X but why can't you just be/do/deal with Y". In fact, I have a general theory (untested) that where someone with a disability falls on the "I am a person with X" vs "I am X" is probably directly proportional to how much X is a strong defining factor in their lives. I notice this particularly in ADHD and Autism spectrum disorders, where being on the "less support needs" side of the spectrum tends to be described as "I have ADHD / Autism" but being on the side of the spectrum that requires more suppoed "I am ADHD / Autistic" is more common. And for those I know who prefer the "I am X" format, part of that is because, paraphrased "this is a major part of my life that fundamentally alters how I live and interact with the world and I need people to understand that about me"

Obviously to a large degree this depends on your language having an adjective form in the first place e.g. we have yet to come up with "I am cancered", though in a related way we often. see "I am a cancer survivor" / "I am fighting cancer", but it's still relatively common even for bad cases to be "I have cancer".

I worked with someone who was really smart but annoyed me because his variable names were cartoon characters, like Tom,jerry,bugs, etc.

I asked him not to do this and he said that each variable was documented so it’s better to use an arbitrary label that never needs to change should the business change it’s name (ie if you called a variable division_names and the org decides to rename divisions to units). We argued over this and he never changed his variable names.

But now I get it. I’d rather just have some arbitrary label that means disabled and never have to change it as “prepend is foo” would stand the test of time while “prepend is disabled” might change to “pretend is of disability” might change to “prepend is not hindered by disability” to “prepend is a human first and valiantly overcomes a limitation in ability” to “prepend only has one arm” etc.

The euphemism treadmill has a long history. At some point cripple used to be the neutral term for many kinds of disabled. It's long been deemed offensive. Similar with idiot or retard.

Give it a few decades, and all of the 'people first language' will perhaps turn into neutral and then offensive, too.

(I am writing the above dispassionately. But given the generation I grew up in, I share your sensibilities about the words. 'Disabled' feels fairly neutral to me as well, and 'idiot' or 'cripple' feel somewhat offensive.

But I recognise that this is just an artifact of exactly when in time I grew up. And old people complaining about shifts in language and culture is an even older trope than the euphemism treadmill.)

None of this is going to change anyone's material conditions, it's just a distraction invented by well paid "diversity consultants".

At least the fad for "differently abled" seems to have died.

The latter group still tends to use “person with autism” and I think it’s more funny than anything but people get really pissed at people who developed this vocabulary without actually asking Autistic people what they thought of it.

I love the phrasing “person with autism” because it allows me to make a bunch of fairly accurate assumptions about the type of person you are, which is generally somebody who sees autism in a very paternalistic light. Why stigmatize the use of language where somebody self-identifies themselves as hostile to your interests and seeing themselves as being your woke saviour? What was that saying - don’t interrupt your enemy while they’re making a mistake?

In the eighties or nineties, people started to use the term as a slur. School children called each other "behindert" as an expletive.

This lead to a new term being used for the disabled: "invalid". Which in my opinion is the worst word you could use, since it origins in Latin and just means "unworthy". But it seems to still be in broad use.

It was also common (with no negative connotation whatever) to extend the term to people with mobility issues, to blind people, etc.

It has been replaced first by "disabile" (disabled) and later with the more politically correct "diversamente abile" (differently able) which is (IMHO) really terrible.

The latest euphemism is "persona con disabilità" (person with disability) which makes even less sense.

I sympathize with them a bit because it really is complicated. Why is saying “the blacks” bad, and “black guy” suspicious, but “black person” fine? Why is it ok to call someone disabled but not crippled? Why does saying the word “Jew” range so much in terms of offensiveness based on context and tone?

I know, from my perspective it’s kind of silly and not that hard too. But for people who are perpetually confused about things like that, I can totally see why they lean heavily towards the side of caution to avoid offense. Then of course there are the people doing it for performative reasons, but I’d wager a lot of those people are motivated by fear of saying the wrong thing or being branded a bigot too.

IMO the purpose of language changing is not to improve the world; instead, it's to give the feeling of changing the world without putting any real effort.

Fun (in a sad way) fact: a friend of mine collaborates with an association that deals with diverse people. Some high-up complained that my friend's group (within the association) is "not diverse enough". Thing is: he's actually diverse themselves. Go figure.

"Diverse" specifically means different from me.

I feel it's good companies are looking for more diverse people to fill their jobs, I can't do them all.

Agreed, but I've seen it used like this more than once, and it's both hilarious and unintentionally offensive.

A diverse group -- which makes more sense -- means something inoffensive: that the people in that group are different from each other, representing there's variety within the group according to some parameter (say, skin color).

A "diverse" person as used in PC language is... exactly what? Someone with "diverse ethnicity" (seen this used!) is someone who what? Was this person the offspring of an orgy of people with different skin colors?

Oooh.. I get it, a "diverse" person is someone who is not white, meaning the standard/normal skin color is white, and being "diverse" is to be "other than white", which is of course abnormal, because being white is what's normal. And people saying "diverse" don't even notice the irony of this!

It's worse than that. It's a way of signaling.

When I started to read the article I hoped that it would mention Steven Pinker's Euphemism Treadmill. I was disappointed. The short story is that changing language is a quick way of differentiating an in-group from an out-group. The in-group are those that are aware of the change and align by adopting it.

We saw this with the instantaneous change of Kiev to Kyiv in news media at the start of the war. It not just a thing that society does with the names of disabilities, oops, I'm sorry, "different conditions."

[PDF]https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/1994_04_03_newyo...

Why is this an instance of the phenomenon? Isn't Kyiv closer to what a Ukrainian would say?

In my head, at least. I've just realized that I haven't needed to verbally refer to this place since I became aware of the renaming. In fact, I don't know that I've ever said either one out loud.

The closest current example going on right now is the Turkish government wanting to change the English spelling of their country from "Turkey" to "Turkiye".

Because they know it would be silly. Do they go to every language and ask for a change? For instance ask France to stop using “Allemagne” and use Deutschland instead? Now repeat for hundreds or thousands of languages… not only would it accomplish nothing, it is pretty disrespectful to demand of the other language users how they refer to places.

In the examples you list, AFAIK, people from those countries are happy to use those names when speaking in English. At least, I've never met a German who insists on calling their country Deutschland when conversing in English. If they did, maybe things would be different. That's the way it is with Istanbul/Constantinople, and also Bombay/Mumbai.

Incidentally, Germany has a startlingly large array of names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany

One version of your question that's interesting to me is that of translating people's names, rather than countries'. This seems not to be what people do -- but why not?

There are the obvious correspondences across European languages, like with William and Guillermo. But I suppose a tweedy old Brit named Reginald could even become Rajesh when he visits Delhi, given the shared meaning and etymology. He might take to it happily.

I suppose you're generally better served by keeping your native pronunciation, so long as the people around you can more-or-less say it, because it will be more unique in your new location, and give you some appeal of the exotic. In England, who would you reckon to be sexier -- "Katherine" or "Katerina"?

Some names can be translated in meaning, but there is no shared etymology. For example, the Frenchman "Pierre" might take the name "石" ("Shi") in China. Would this make sense? There is the added complication that the latter is more likely to be a surname than a given name. I wonder what Dwayne Johnson thinks.

If there is no pronunciation at all for your name, you may become "formerly know as Prince" (there's Raj again), deposed by choice and deadnamed by necessity.

I suppose direct translation was commonly done with Native American names. We remember "Sitting Bull", not "Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake". On the other hand, we remember the Patuxet man nicknamed "Squanto" -- given name "Tisquantum", you can see how it's a longer form -- and not "spiritual power of Manitou" (the exact translation is sketchy, but the meaning seems to be something like that). And of course, "Manitou" can also be translated, so we might even say "Power of God". Perhaps "Manitoba" is "God's Country".

Allowing semantic meaning to penetrate an ethnic boundary may be fraught with controversy. Here you're playing with sacred words. Of course, after studying the Greek Titans for a while, you realize that each is simply a noun. Gaia is Earth. Chronos is Time. They are not separate characters. They are the ideas. So maybe all words are sacred. Yet here I am spelling them.

Likewise "pho" is just "soup", but outside Vietnam it's more than that. Likewise "chai" -- at home it's "tea", but abroad it's a particular style of tea. Likewise probably every food there is. And they become jealousy-guarded totems of identity. "What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?", asks Lin Yutang.

Or, should I say, asks "forest language temple", or perhaps, "sacred forest library". (Nominative determinism much?)

I would like to meet this German who insisted on saying only "Deutschland" though. I imagine he would also insist that anything with more than the Reinheitsgebot's 4 ingredients is not "beer". He would drive a Volkswagen and brag about its double-clutch. He would be a great character. I'd watch that TV show.

I think it’s pretty common phenomenon, like the people who call themselves “black”, those who are called “black” but hate it, and everyone in the middle usually not knowing what’s the position of any specific person’s on the issue.

I don’t think there even is a correct answer, as long as there are many people in different situations with different perceptions of what the words mean, there’s no way we get a consensus on this. At most we could get a majority sharing a common sensibility and bully the rest into submission, as it happened so many times in history.

It's pretty simple.

I don't think there is anything nefarious about it, just that "people" always co-opt the motives in the end and make it muddled for their own benefit. Overthinking it I guess. I know it when I see it, but it's hard to articulate it to something that works for everyone.

> It's questioning the assumption that the word used is fine throughout history.

Bullshit. It forbids questioning of the questioning. That is all it is really about.

> "people" always co-opt the motives in the end and make it muddled for their own benefit

At least you can concede that point. Which is an enormously important point and more than enough of a reason not to go down this idiotic path of linguistic power struggles.

If people are not responsible for their own feelings and the onus is on you, you are at their mercy. Some percentage of them are going to abuse you as a result.

Where is the win? All you are enabling is psychos and mentally/emotionally unstable people.

My comment was mainly to the parent on why it's bad for someone to feel awkward about potentially using a "wrong" word and for me sometimes it stems out of care.

All that said, I basically think all this shit gets perverted in the public space where there's a lot more gamesmanship and manipulation.

Do you think the worry of always having to ask up front (if xyz is ok) comes from ironically a lack of natural empathy in your case?

Yes, we humans have millions of years ready subtle signals, but we are also really fucking bad at reading minds and knowing what others are thinking. Thus, by clarifying with things like actual words in a direct and non-confrontational way we can actually communicate and understand.

I don't know why people are so keen to get me in some kind of "gotcha!" when it's pretty simple what I'm suggesting. Like since when has the intention of wanting to be sure that you're not offending someone become a replacement for inept social person who can't read subtle signs?

It's the opposite of empowering somebody to speak up and decide on their own what they can and can't handle.

So yes you might get some pushback when you "simply" suggest we change our interactions.

It’s you who is projecting whatever issue you have with people even remotely suggesting thinking about what we are saying to some greater problem.

Because it's patronizing. You can use normal language without intending to offend someone, but if you actively censor your own language in their presence, you're removing their agency.

We can agree to disagree here. In the end, I would rather converse with someone who errs of the side of not wanting to "offend" me, but can still freely say whatever they want vs. someone who speaks with no regard to how their words might affect me and makes no apologies for it.

The outcome is the same, but to me, one person is thoughtful and the other person is a jerk. I have never thought that someone trying to be thoughtful with their words was patronizing me, but that's only my experience.

I have the opposite visceral response to this sort of thing. If someone refers to me either singly or as a part of a collective such as "persons having a mental impairment" I immediately know I'm dealing with the sort of bastard that no human connection can be formed with.

The language betrays the intent, and the intent is to proclaim a shibboleth for the purposes of in-group/out-group reinforcement.

In my opinion, it is not wrong to not want to offend someone, but it is wrong to give that priority over actually communicating.

I do not intend to deliberately try to offend someone, but I think that it is more important to actually say things, freedom of speech, making an argument for or against something, etc, than it is to avoid offending someone.

I can't speak for anyone else but surely the answer to this is yes?

People need to stop being intensionally offensive instead of using then banning more and more words doing that. The words are the symptom not the cause.

Side note, and this is completely off topic and I really mean this in the most positive way but you typing here has completely altered my perception of the need for following web standards for accessibility. I don't know any blind people in real life so really just assumed that accessibility standards really weren't worth the effort as they wouldn't make a difference. But here you are reading and responding in a manner that's probably better than I do. I am 100% on board now. You opened my mind today, thanks for that.

It always depends and I would not generalize too much. The jewish minority in europe during Nazi reign did needed someone to save them. As does the single minority outsider, that gets beaten up on the school ground, for being the outsider.

But yes, if you want to emporer people in general, you cannot fight their battles for them and declare them of uncaple of fighting their battles.

Maybe we can take some of the 'intellectual dark-web'figureheads and blindly follow them. They pretend to have a grasp of this scoial-construction thing.

But I'd rather like to continue searching the intellectual deep-web for a person with actual sight.

This is also incorrect although they did preside over one and were reluctant to intervene for a variety of reasons, some economic and some philosophical.

Edit: and just to add, it was certainly not an attempt at genocide.

However, this famine is of course, not even a tear in the sea compared to the holocaust, which remains the most horrific act ever, forever; and every other act past or future will only be a tiny fraction of the depth of its importance. History begin and ends with the holocaust the plight of the Jews.

If you mean blight as in "a thing that spoils or damages something", that something being the Irish substinence, they absolutely did. Read some history.

And since a million died, it's not exactly laughing matter to joke about.

The jews went into the death camps, because no one came to save them and they had no chance on their own at that time.

There are not many people debating this, I supposed. (but might have been wrong)

That's why choose this example and not to discuss about Hitler.

Where on the other hand your example, is pretty much debatable, like you see on the reactions.

So why on earth, are you lecturing me about HN from a green account?

Or would have rejected the allies when they came liberating the camps?

Seriously?

As far as I know, the jews and all other surpressed minorities of europe were making great risks, to get information (like from a hidden radio) about the advance of the allies. Because this was the main thing bringing hope.

They would have accepted it out of necessity. Doesn't mean depending on "white knights" is desirable or effective. Didn't work out of several other million, for starters.

Even less desirable when there is no "direct death threat", and the victims are perfectly capable of having opinions and speaking for themselves, as opposed to others co-opting and/or hijacking their concerns.

Well sure, no one wants to be in the position, where he or she needs to be saved in the first place, but if you are in that position - help is still needed and wanted.

"Didn't work out of several other million, for starters."

And that is simply, because no one came in time.

"Even less desirable when there is no "direct death threat", and the victims are perfectly capable of having opinions and speaking for themselves, as opposed to others co-opting and/or hijacking their concerns. "

And yes, which is why I wrote: "if you want to emporer people in general, you cannot fight their battles for them and declare them uncaple of fighting their battles. "

I merly stated, that no one came to save the jews in europe, which is why they went to the death camps.

Which you are debating for some reason, along with personal insults.

I suppose because you think the jews should have been organized better and fend for themself? Well, maybe. But they were not organized. They were in the weaker position and chased by the Nazis. In this situation, outside help is needed in my perception, but you may think whatever you want about it all. And if you can share what you think without insults, I might read it.

You sound like an autistic person in a fog of confusion. (not a dig)

Let me be as clear as possible: between far right Neo-nazis and woke do gooders I'm honestly not sure whom I'm alarmed by more as a Jewish person. Genuinely alarmed. As in afraid for myself and my loved ones futures. As in this shit is all too familiar.

I've had the misfortune of interacting with both of these groups in real life. They have many things in common not the least of which is this weird confidence combined with an ignorance of history as a trampoline into really dark beliefs. A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

Please don't try to "help" anyone or mention the holocaust again. I beg you.

It is not similar, unless if you have the preconceived notion that 'language is action'

I don't really think, the jews in the camp, would have welcomed to be bombed, on top of the daily routine.

Can you elaborate how being blown to pieces would have helped anyone, except maybe a lucky person used the chaos to escape (to where exactly)?

Also I did not say anything about language equals action and were just speaking in broad terms about helping minorities.

And "jew" is not offensive, but there are offensive terms for jews. And whether banning them would have helped, I did not made any statement about.

But I forgot, it is friday and probably not the best time to comment here.

About Jew: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/05/jew-not-sl...

Also forgive me if I have assumed because of the context that you argued through analogy for protecting minorities of harmful language, my bad

Feel free to use the word Jews, otherwise it's just going to get weird ;)

And changing the term to try to avoid it just results in weird terms and euphemisms, it doesn’t eliminate hate.

The thing that makes it weird is that "Jew" represents both a religion and a people. We really don't see that in other cultures or religions. Now as likely as my profile isn't going to be outed, but 'joining in' is a great way to be tarred as an anti-semite, whether you sincerely hate Jews or not.

And also, since you're Jewish, you're allowed to use comments and jokes like "Jewbilee". It's similar to how African Americans can use "nigga/nigger" amongst each other but is completely forbidden for anyone else. That's primarily due to the power dynamic of those words, and how they traditionally were used as a slur. This is examples where members of the group change the definition to be positive rather than negative.

I grew up with my trash of parents teaching 6 year old me to negotiate at flea markets by "jewing them down". And although I won't have children, I make a conscious choice not to continue that language. My language shapes my reality. So no.

I totally hear what you are saying though and I know you are coming from a good place. The Jewish race/religion thing is an odd one. Ive always considered myself Jewish by race, 99% Ashkenazi but not religion, I have no religious beliefs.

Conversation reminds me of the infamous lunar new year invite.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/ap6022/man_...

A group of Jewish people

"The church is full of christians and the temple is full of a group of Jewish people"

That sounds odd.

"The church is full of Christians and the temple is full of Jews" sounds correct and treats each group equally.

I know you mean well but I just disagree with linguistic gymnastics in order to be pc

But discussing here, I try to keep as neutral as possible. If we're talking about the religion, I use people of Jewish faith. And if talking about Ashkenazi Jews (hereditary), I use that term. And past that, I try to keep as matter-of-factly plain simple language, and check for any colloquiums that have alternate white nationalist meanings.

But usually, this topic doesn't even come up. It's only awkward HN comment chains that have this weird political forced neutral writing. But that too is self-defense.

and “the jews run X”

i’d prefer jewish / jewish people.

we’re not a monolith, nor is any other minority group. and for that matter, navigating society and learning that not all people prefer the same terms/words/pronouns is just life.

i’m sorry people cant do and say what they please and offend others, but that’s just part of being an agreeable human and living in society

I think there's a misunderstanding happening here. You seem to be suggesting Auschwitz get bombed assuming it would not blowing up the Jews (and gypsies, and homosexuals, and others that made the Nazi list of "deviants") being actively imprisoned, which sounds great but would have been unfeasible. The previous reply doesn't seem to be asking what would be specifically helpfully in blowing up Auschwitz. I think it's unanimous "that factory of death was bad and making it stop is good, " so I think it's more like they're taking into account how dropping bombs in WWII actually worked, which was a pretty imprecise process. Ultimately, bombing Auschwitz would also have blown up the people held prisoner in Auschwitz, and those people might not think being blown up was super helpful for them, regardless of whether Auschwitz was destroyed in the process.

As I recall it, their request was for the Allies to bomb Auschwitz, though presumably targeting railway lines and other elements that could knock it out of action.

This was not a static prison camps that kept the same people during the war (except for very few). That’s why I think this was effective even if bombs had hit the living quarters themselves.

Such problems are known to not have correct answers, so it is reasonable to agree to disagree.

Especially during a war where Dresden was fire bombed and Hiroshima was nuclear bombed

I forgot it is friday and "white Knight" is a trigger word for some.

So when there's a headline that says:

"Banning words won’t make the world more just"

and then I say "it depends" to a subpoint with white knight, then I seem to represent the woke enemy to them, who wants to dictate what words they are allowed to use (even though I am actually very pro free speech).

And as a german regarding the righteous and why there were so few of them:

I know the mindset from my grandparents and it was/is one of having a very strong taboo of doing anything against the state, or just thinking about it. They were not nazis and knew what the state was doing was wrong even though they didn't know the details. But they kept their head as low as possible, as most did. And marched in line, if ordered so. So they share their responsibility.

I would like to think, that I would have acted different, but would I? I would have been a different person, being born into that time and culture.

So it is also a tough question of what I personally feel about it. Should I feel personally sorry about industrial mass murdering done by "my kind"?

Well, I don't really feel connected to those germans as a whole at all.

But I do feel connected to my grandparents, so sorry on their behalf, that my family didn't do anything to my knowledge, to help your people. (And personally I do my best to keep the local nazis in check today)

edit: and those words still feel empty. But I don't find better words.

Because the holocaust was just outstanding industrial mass murder with the goal to wipe out a whole race. What can you say about it? Certainly not, what a member of the new german right said: "The german history is a great one and the holocaust was just a litle dirt on it"

So back on topic, I think this person should have the right to say this. Because everyone else now knows what those people (who are all officially against nazis) are really standing for.

Instead, 1, sometimes, someone is looking to make a career, or get a job, make money. And then, in identity politics, they might see an opportunity. Career, status, money then being a goal, and any division a side effect.

And, 2, I'm not saying that identity politics is or would always be bad or anything like that. So many unfairness in the world, to try to correct.

https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/diversity-e...

1. That they were "pilgrims" is enough evidence. All the jey moments in American history are underpinned by "identity politics": the the 13 colonies, manifest destiny, expansinf west, the declaration of independence, slavery, civil war, reconstruction - all of it.

(One (postmodern) interpretation is that it's yet another "society of control" in crisis. Basically, the old tools that provided stability (social conventions, morals, beliefs/prejudices) all used to look like big formalish institutions, from family-school-factory-military-prison, and you were either in the system or completely out of it. But as this system of systems post-WWII has "eaten the world" it's now bound to face its own limitations, hence the crisis. Hence all the reforms, real and so-called ones.)

The niche is (was) that most people has (had) only a super basic over-simplistic belief about language, which could be summed up as "something something the n-word". Instead of the more correct "when talking to/about someone it's very disrespectful to call them names they don't like".

Who actually has this intention and why?

In the context of the OPs topic, there are those who honestly are trying to improve the world, but many people have new found careers and political power created by the division on both the Right and Left.

And so do the elderly. Which will be all of us in the future (except those who plan to live fast and die young). Humanity is getting older and older on average, too.

That said, if we're talking about web accessibility, the obvious recommendation is the WAI WCAG. Maybe not the best reference for learning on how to implement things, but its a good start.

Depending on the platform you're at home with, there are screen readers (NVDA, Orca, BRLTTY) which are open source and can be studied. On the user side, and on the "how is this implemented" side.

Installing NVDA on Windows and turning the monitor off is a good way to get your feet wet. It might feel strange at first, but you will notice that things can actually get done this way. Its also a good way to test a website if you have no specific accessibility knowhow yet. Just try to navigate and read its contents.

Is it weird that I, as someone with normal sight, had never thought of that as a simple way of testing whether your software (and the whole operating system together with it) works correctly with screen readers? It's like there's some sort of unconscious bias which links typing on a computer with its monitor being turned on.

And I lived through the times when most computers didn't come with any pointing device, which led to most software back then being accessible to keyboard-only users (notable exceptions being things like Paintbrush, which required a mouse), so I understand the link between the lack of a device and software being designed to work well without that device.

I don't currently have Windows. Is there a good way for me to test accessibility on Linux? As a fallback, I will get myself Windows once I port the tools to Windows, so I could test accessibility then.

[1] https://crates.io/crates/tauri

Which brings me to your second question. Linux has a GUI accessibility API as well, the AT-SPI. GNOME Orca is the screen reader to use on Linux. If your distro configures things right by default, you should be able to access your Qt application with Orca as a screen reader on Linux.

For getting confirmation (like when I've got a first version of my app), do you have a suggestion for a forum where to ask?

I agree. If the features are well-designed, then they can be good for many uses, whether or not you are blind.

You could also add pronouncing file (especially if a document is using unusual words), it is useful if you are blind and using synthesized speech, but also if you are not blind and do not know how is the word pronounced then you can easily learn. (Likewise, if you watch television then you can put on caption in case you do not know how to spell some unuusal word (such as someone's name). Captions could also be useful for a "caption scrollback" menu to display prior captions in a list, although I have never seen this implemented, but I think it would be useful.)

Another situation where speech synthesis is often used (by people who are not blind) is GPS-based navigation systems. They often pronounce the street names wrong, so adding data for pronouncing, and then implementing that properly, would be better.

(I have mentioned before that I think that adding a "ARIA view" (with user-defined CSS) might be a best way to make a consistent visual display which uses ARIA instead of the visual styles defined by the web page author (widgets, etc can also be used, and would also be consistent instead of each web page having its own widget styles). However, I have not seen such a thing implemented in a good way.)

I think they are mostly focused on college level exercises, but if your kids are doing coding I'd imagine their tutorials would be something to take a look at: https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/tutorial/

As a complete aside for anyone reading this post, I think of improving accessibility as the "curb-cut effect", curb cuts (those ramps on sidewalks while cross streets) were created to improve urban access for those in wheel chairs, but also make it easier to use strollers, bikes, carts, and really for everyone walking in a built environment. When we as technologists make design decisions to make things more accessible I believe we end up with better products for everyone.

Do you use something else entirely?

In other words, if you want to work on the web, with something like NVDA as a screen reader, you want to use Firefox or some other modern browser, not lynx.

If you are like me, spending 99% of your time in tmux, lynx is a nice thing to use, but there is nothing really accessibility specific here. Lynx is just a terminal application. And if you are a skilled blind user used to dealing with plain-text grid-stuff, you can use it just fine for whatever it still works for...

1.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh3GprskLC...

It also help give the later a role, some power over others (policing various such language and issues, using it against their enemies -out of good nature of course, sure), and sometimes, a full career...

Additionally, “white knight” I have also been told off for, for the reasons you might expect.

In both of these cases (actually, almost every case I can think of) my language was being policed by, um, materially unencumbered birthgivers of reduced melanin.

Might it be because they think they know best?

Karen at this point is always pejorative and pretty much just not well hidden sexism at best.

It's a pretty big cognitive load though, to remember what everyone finds or doesn't find offensive. This is what bothers me about the recent obsession with pronouns - I have enough trouble remembering people's names; and now I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given person? That's the complexity I don't want.

Offense is a you problem, not a me problem. We have abandoned the axiom of "sticks and stones" and replaced it with "words are violence" or even worse "silence is violence"

Today it no longer enough to be "tolerant" you have to actively affirm, support, and validate everything about everyone at all times and support their emotional state no matter the practicality or reality of the situation.

Almost as though this isn't as simple a topic as "stick and stones" and that everyone has different tolerances for what they'll put up with depending on the setting and context.

Most definitely not. Of course people need to work on themselves to avoid being offended.

But if you communicate with other people, it's because you want to achieve something. Probably not offending the target (or else fuck you I guess ;-)). So, usually, offense gets in the way, so you should care about not offending your target. And beyond this, as human beings, we usually care not to hurt other human beings.

It's a we problem.

> no matter the practicality or reality of the situation.

Do you have example of this? Of course you are expected to show some empathy/sympathy, but I've never seem people impose unrealistic expectations.

  > it was removed from eg Roald Dahls books.

White / Black List -> Allow / Deny

Git "master" -> Main

and about 10,000 other examples.

This shit isn't banned. Nobody stops you from using them.

The issue the social pressure against these terms, and the ever changing landscape one political segment of the population has in being forever offended by everything

Which i suspect is the end goal as that way no one actually have to address the underlying issues of compelled / socially enforced speech and the ongoing attacks on free expression on top of the ever shrinking mental health of the population has society coddles people into believing everyone else has to manage an individuals mental health instead of having to harden your own mind and come to terms with the fact the life is rarely fair, kind, nor do people (nor should) about your "feelings"

Which segment is that?

Master branch gets renamed to main meanwhile one can freely talk about how they used their MasterCard to buy a new Jazzmaster guitar that they keep in their master bedroom with a Master lock on it and they're almost done with the master of their new album showing off their mastery of musical and production that they learned taking lessons on MasterClass. Did I mention there's a cover of Master of Puppets?

Think this sounds crazy? Don't read this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675987

that is CRAZY!!~!!!

Or perhaps, temporarily happiness challenged.

Speak for yourself. I had a PR rejected because I named a variable `blacklist` and was unaware that it's now considered a social faux pas. Of course, changing it to `blocklist` was simple enough, but wasted a couple hours because I had to ping the person again after finding out the PR was rejected, fixing it, retesting the code to make sure it didn't break stuff, pushing the changes, waiting for those tests to rerun, and then finally waiting for the person to re-review the code.

How about the push to rename words in technology that have been in use for decades, like changing the default git repo from master to main.

or the parent comment I replied to originally -- "This is what bothers me about the recent obsession with pronouns - I have enough trouble remembering people's names; and now I am also asked to remember how to modify my grammar or lexicon when in vicinity of a given person? " for which there is not even any social indicators of this, and for a given person could change at any given time from week to week or day to day. A person that changes their pronouns daily seems to me to have an unrealistic expectation that people will be able to keep track of that.

It annoys me how often this discussion gets bogged down in weird hypothetical scenarios. In my experience, people who use nonstandard pronouns (or pronouns that you might not guess from their experience) are completely reasonable about it. They only ask that you make a genuine effort to remember the correct pronoun choice – which is not very much to ask. It's certainly no more work than, say, remembering the correct pronunciation of their name.

It's a waste of time to just imagine someone making bizarre and unreasonable requests regarding pronouns and then get angry about it in real life.

There is another group I am in that has name tags and there are stickers with pronouns I've never even heard of (something like ver/ver, xe,xer, etc.).

I don't know the name's of 75% of the people I work with (I work with a 100+ people a week) and I really have no time or inclination to make the effort. If someone makes up pronouns that don't correspond to their image they are going to get mad at me because I am pretty much incapable of remembering their name let alone their pronouns. If I remember, cool I will use them but I'm really not going to spend hours practicing. Its not an intentional insult, I want everyone to be happy, I just don't have the effort or inclination in me to expend on it.

The more times I read through your story the less there is to it. Someone introduced themselves, said their pronouns, and you didn’t remember their name. Ok, so what?

Neopronouns are an interesting case, but my previous comment about ‘they’ applies. It’s gender neutral, so use ‘they’ if you forget which more specific pronoun is applicable.

Please speak for yourself, and not for me and all others for whom this is also untrue.

However, if someone tells me that they don’t want me to refer to them using singular they (something which has never once actually happened to me outside of arguments on the internet!), then I would respect their wishes.

If you live in an English speaking country, listen closely for a week or two. You’ll probably find that people around you are already (without conscious intention) using singular they to refer to individuals of known gender.

I also wonder if you might not be undermining your own line of argument elsewhere in the thread. If you get to be fussy about being referred to using singular they (which is certainly unobjectionable from a grammatical and semantic point of view in modern English), then presumably everyone else gets to be picky about their pronouns too.

I recall being contacted by a distressed neighbor who had been referred to as "they" in a thread on NextDoor. She has a name that could be male or female (it's short for different things), but her photo was unmistakably female. She was offended that someone referred to her as "they" and asked me if her photo looked at all male.

I would also imagine that someone who is presenting as a particular gender and wishes to be referred to as that gender could also be offended to be referred to as "they" because it could imply that the person is in-between, and not successfully presenting as their desired gender.

Lastly, people who are unaware of the changes in pronoun usage (older people, people who don't interact with people in liberal enclaves) may be confused by usage of they. They may think you're talking about multiple people, for example.

> could also be offended to be referred to as "they" because it could imply that the person is in-between

‘They’ is gender neutral; its use implies nothing about a person’s gender. If someone gets offended anyway then the simplest solution is obvious - use their preferred pronoun. But taking offense at singular they doesn’t seem to be something common, at least in my experience. It’s certainly the option that’s least likely to cause serious offense if you can’t remember (or were never told) a person’s preferred pronouns, with at least as much cause.

I’d also repeat the following point. If we’re ok with cis people being fussy about being referred to using singular they, then presumably we must also allow trans or non-binary people to be fussy about their preferred pronouns. You can hold that the use of singular they to refer to known male or female persons is potentially objectionable; but then you should also recognize that other sorts of people might be similarly picky about their pronouns.

> [older people] may be confused

Confused != offended. But singular they has such a long history that I think such confusion is rather unlikely in practice.

In any case, my mention of Shakespeare was an aside and not crucial to the overall argument of my post; so it is arguably you who are missing the point.

That's probably because most people don't refer to people as "they" except when specifically asked to. If people went around using "they" as the standard pronoun when referring to known people, there would be much more offense.

By the way, I am totally fine with not using singular they to refer to people who are genuinely offended by it. I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'. For this reason I think that 'use singular they if unsure' is good, though not infallible, advice.

Referring to someone as a "they" would be considered misgendering to a lot of people. It is not "not making reference to their gender" because the vast majority of people who want to be referred to as "they" are not cisgender. Referring to someone in this way suggests that you think they are not cisgender.

> I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'.

The neighbor who approached me after having been referred to as "they" was not an argumentative person on the internet. She was someone (who lives in a very liberal area, BTW) who was perplexed and offended to have been referred to that way.

For this reason I think that people who are offended by being referred to by 'they' are wrong to be offended. I think they're wrong in a way that, say, a trans woman is not wrong to be offended if someone insists on using 'he'. In the former case, the person may feel that they are being misgendered – but only on the basis of a dodgy linguistic analysis. Of course, we should accommodate people's pronoun preferences, regardless of whether we agree with their underlying logic in any given case.

The story about your neighbor doesn't really make sense to me. Surely it occurred to her that the other forum poster might not have cared much what her gender was, or have paid much attention to her photo, or simply didn't care to take a guess even if she appeared clearly female. To interpret this as intentional misgendering seems a bit nuts. If she was simply worried about whether she appeared clearly feminine in the photo, then that's an understandable anxiety, but one that has little to do with singular they. (If singular they were off limits then I guess the poster might have used 'he' instead, which hardly seems better.)

My understanding is that these days, we are not allowed to opine on whether others are wrong to feel offended. In modern parlance, I'd say that you don't understand why they're offended. It seems you're trying very hard not to, considering that this term is not the preferred term of reference for practically anyone who is cisgender.

If the best you can do is tell me that I have to accede to the ineffable and indefinite reasons for your neighbor taking offense, then I suppose the discussion is over. (Of course I do accede in practice - I’m not going to refer to her as ‘they’ just to be a dick.)

If you really believe that people are entitled to be arbitrarily offended by pronouns, then you can have no objection to trans or non-binary people being arbitrarily fussy about their use. I mean, I’m “woke” by HN standards and am all in favor of respecting people’s pronoun preferences. But even I don’t believe that the subject is entirely in the realm of subjective feelings of offense and beyond rational discourse.

Good faith has left the building, and I'm right behind. Enjoy your hyperboles all by your lonesome!

How is this unpractical/unrealistic?

Some people adopted main, some people kept master, the world did not end, things are going well. Not much thought on this in the day-to-day work.

Some people used “trunk” since well before Git existed. If ever there was an example of how the umbrage at renaming things was baselessly manufactured, master -> main has to be right up there.

I think you miss the point of "sticks and stones". The point is not that it's ok to say whatever you want to anyone else. The point of "sticks and stones" is not to let other people bring down your self-esteem.

Other people will intentionally try to denigrate you. They'll call you "stupid". They'll call you "ugly". Or they may call you a racial slur. That's all unacceptable. That's a "me" problem for the speaker. The point of "sticks and stones", on the other hand, is to resist internalizing these external insults and degradations. It's to put on a virtual suit of armor to protect you from verbal attacks — and let's be clear, they're real attacks.

That’s absolutely not true though - you only have to affirm/support/validate people’s identities and emotional states when their identity/emotions aligns with the zeitgeist; if those things contradict the zeitgeist, then affirm/support/validation is somewhere between optional and evil.

No? Same grammar regardless of who is near, just need to remember which pronouns to designate which people, which:

- is the intuitive one for most people

- the asked pronoun for the few people who have pronouns that don't match your intuition.

(I also have troubles with remembering names, but pronouns are fine)

And for not implying a gender when speaking of someone for who we don't the gender, it's a constant exercise that also does not depend on the vicinity of a given person.

It requires some effort, of course.

I don't remember individual interactions with many of my coworkers at all, they all blur together.

If work wants me to do it then they'll need to reduce my workload by half just so my mind can absorb it.

Remote too, but I met most people in person at least once, we use avatars, and definitely don't work with 100 people.

That said I know a few trans people, the number of people I know with pronouns that don't match the name is 0. The number of people wanting the equivalent of they in my language is so small I can remember it easily.

I would agree with always using a genderless pronoun, the gender should almost never matter, but I would probably be in for endless debates if I started to do this now.

Maybe it is the just deserved revenge on a society that ties so much to sex and gender roles that logically has no relation to it. I am talking about things like job expectations or assuming competence at random skills, division of domestic responsibilities etc. I cannot believe though that this fixation on gender identity continues forever. It just doesn’t seem like a sensible end state.

> But people wanting me to call them with another pronoun where I can no longer use biological cues is just cementing gender roles

I believe there's more to this. IIUC, for some (most?) trans people, there's actually something, probably related to their biology, that makes them feel as the gender they were not assigned at birth. They have may look like one gender, but feel like the other one: gender dysphoria [1].

These people might be fighting more for solving this issue than for getting rid of the gender roles. Some would actually transition to the other sex for this, though I would expect trans people to also be more familiar (and sensitive?) to these gender identity questions, since they had to think about them.

Would gender dysphoria be less of an issue in a society that would not have such gender-assigned roles? Open question for me.

Now, it would be best if a trans people could directly speak about this, because this stuff is mostly theoretical for me, I haven't experienced it first-hand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria

Your understanding is largely right, though I'd expand "look like one gender" to "be perceived and treated as one gender". I regularly confuse the hell out of people with my obviously feminine name and appearance and very deep voice.

> Would gender dysphoria be less of an issue in a society that would not have such gender-assigned roles? Open question for me.

Depends on the person, I think. Many trans people still would. I probably would've just shaved a bunch of body hair off and started wearing skirts and been done with it.

As for pronouns, "he" is just another sound people use to refer to other people. It has no inherent meaning beyond what we ascribe to it. I don't use it because society does ascribe a lot of meaning to it that doesn't apply to me - the same sort of feeling a man would get from being called "she". If genders weren't so much of a thing in society, I can't imagine myself caring nearly as much, though maybe in that world we'd all use the same pronoun anyway.

But there's a whole spectrum of trans people - in the same way you don't really grok dysphoria, I don't really grok e.g. genital dysphoria, so I can't and don't intend to speak for anyone else here.

Do you think people can be trans racial? Should society be accepting of it? For example a white person identify as black and shade their skin to pass? Why or why not?

Again feel free to ignore me, I'm not going to argue with your response I'm just curious about your perspective as you have a very different life experience than me. I am not trans anything its just a random thing I have pondered occasionally and wanted to get a trans persons opinion. I know its a loaded question so again feel free to ignore me.

I have no idea, though. I've never considered that before, or even heard of it. It's hard for me to comprehend why anyone would care what race they are, but also holds up the hands of a very obviously white person

I see no reason to not let people do whatever makes them happy, though, even if I don't understand it. That's all I ask of other people for gender, no reason I shouldn't extend that courtesy to other people.

Though I haven't felt the need for this so far, nothing comparable in French, annoying to have to stop to say the equivalent of "he or she, btw?". I guess we could use iel now. Still sounds new and weird to most people but it might become familiar at some point.

And over time. Plenty of people who have custom pronouns will also change them occasionally.

I myself have a name that's most used with the opposite gender, I am reminded of this atleast on a weekly basis by others in society. Them accidentally referring to me as the wrong gender does not bother me in the slightest, firstly they did not know/it's not out of disrespect and secondly, why should it matter? What is wrong with being a woman if I am a man and vice versa?

Unless someone is publishing something about someone, there is very little need to know this upfront. If interactions are frequent, you can tell them if they didn't already know as your bond would be deeper. And if it's an issue you can tell them.

It's much like the whole idea of cultural misappropriation, a twisted idea that basically encourages segregation/apartheid. It's as simple as don't be a dickhead about someone's culture (don't demean it) is the common sense, age old and correct solution, not that new thing.

Mostly they parrot the same "old tautologies" (like language matters, structural issues are real, people's personal prejudices manifest in many ways, etc) in various new forms, shapes, phrasings.

However, that doesn't mean they are wrong. (Nor that they are automatically right.)

white knights are not academics, they are usually the walking-talking examples of severe Dunning-Kruger phenomena.

... I'm writing all this, because your post uses very broad and general terms like progressives and academics, and I think that's bad. (Because it forces my ego to reconsider the `progressive` label, that I used to apply to myself. Naturally without doing anything good/bad progressive really. :| )

> But a group of academics should not be able to sit around and decide that a group as a whole needs saving

If this isn't one of the core problems with every aspect of society...

https://youtu.be/P3yfGQivroE

I don't know how "unintentional" it is, but it sure is "discrimination" and "condescending." It's like how liberal whites dumb down their speech when talkign to black people: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/30/white-liber....

The dynamic is entirely consistent with them thinking about themselves as shepherding sheep. It's why they don't really care that nobody likes "Latinx." Who care what the sheep want to call themselves? It's also why they don't care whether the people they platform as icons of minority groups (Ilhan Omar, etc.) are representative of those groups or not. It's not coalition politics with give-and-take and compromise. It's a parent/child relationship.

You're making it hard to agree with you or to reach a shared understanding; like, I think "Latinx" as a universal term for Hispanic/Latino people is silly and mostly an elite discourse shibboleth, too, but the Extended Rayiner Cinematic Universe of paternal white behavior is not something I buy into.

I think the psychoanalysis is necessary to understand the phenomenon in a coherent way. Obviously I can't get in their heads. It's just a theory based on conversations where mentioning polling and statistics would be met with dead shark eyes in response.

If your point is that this is noodly enough not to be interesting to anybody else: fair enough.

Great to hear.

> If your point is that this is noodly enough not to be interesting to anybody else: fair enough.

Not at all. Please carry on. It is a good discussion. I meant, I would enjoy hearing you guys debate this topic in person where you're not limited by text or latency.

You may be surprised at the spectrum of people who are a)admissions officers and b)support the current thing.

Rereading your post, it sound like people are unwilling to call you blind even after you tell them you are, so we may be talking about different things.

So the reasoning behind such language might be to include people who are not technically blind, but still require similar consideration, assistence, infrastructure and so on.

Language is odd here. The public used to call neurodivergent people "retarded" till the word had developed such a negative connotation that you wouldn't be able to use the word when adressing actual neurodivergent people without feeling like you are swearing. Of course that negative connotation didn't come out of nowhere, it is an expression of the way society looks (or looked) at the people it described. Of course people who live with mentally disabled people (or mentally disabled people themselves) often self-label themselves as "retarded" very bluntly and not without some sense of humour. But a bit like with race there are certain things you can say when you are part of the minority, that might not be okay to say when you are part of the majority.

When I was a kid people would constantly call something or someone "retarded", my niece's generation talks about how that is not okay. And they don't do it out of political correctness, but because they truly don't think neurodivergent behavior is something anybody should have to be ashamed of.

But of course there are also people who don't go that deep and just want to not offend anyone (good luck with that). They are the people who will feel uncomfortable when they describe something that isn't part of their perfect little world.

We also have a lot of definitions for blind and retarded, not referring to personal differences. A duck blind. Retarded bacterial growth. A blind sac. Sometimes people take offense at even these uses.

[0] Yes I am aware that what counts as clear is itself very, very up for discussion and is a very loaded term. I hope I got my point across.

That which makes cooperation and altruism possible also causes some strange glitches that sometimes reveals the motivating emotions are always self referential.

When people see something bad-discrimination against disabled- they want to improve the situation but don’t know what to do. So they do something, anything without considering if the action is effective or if the best course is to do nothing.

So making a list of words to use or not use is doing something. There’s no way to measure if it makes things better or worse, but at least it’s something.

If they don’t make a list, and do nothing then that might be confused with not recognizing the problem.

So I think it’s well meaning people who want to help and do something stupid rather than not doing something.

I wonder if just releasing a statement of values is more appropriate for noting that an organization is against all these injustices but not advocating for lots of dumb little changes.

That and I think these lists naturally suffer from collaboritis. Where someone makes a document and circulates it for edits. All the obvious stuff is already on there so people want to help and think up any edge case and add it to the document. It’s hard to argue for parsimony for fear of being called out as a bigot. And it’s hard to suggest removing an item for the same reason.

It's questionable how many of these things would have happened if the language wasn't made memorable.

Of course it irritates people who would prefer not to think about these things - because it's supposed to.

There's actually far more us/them divisive language on the right. Even if you hate progressive tropes and don't always agree with the politics they're at least making an effort to be inclusive.

Right wing language is always irredeemably divisive - usually aggressively so. Frequently with outright contempt, and sometimes with normalisation of violence.

And it makes no attempt to be anything else.

For debugging it’s not so much to change nothing, but to investigate and figure out what to change rather than change things without an understanding of the intended impact of the change.

Also, it’s not that I don’t think about these things. It’s that I think and determine the best course of action is no action. That gets conflated with not thinking about these things because on the outside it’s hard to differentiate those that thought and care and think to do nothing vs those that are oblivious vs those that choose not to think about this.

In this example, I think the best course is to not include disabled in the list. I want to include disabled people, but I think changing language in this way is not valuable.

Yeah, and those "sensitive" people also don't seem to get what normal means. It just means "how the majority is supposed to be/the baseline fully functioning state regarding X". It's not a moral judgement if one is not in the normal group regarding some ability.

>Its a weird phenomenon. The longer I watch all of this, and I also mean the gender-language-hacks, I feel like this move has added to the distance between various groups, not made it smaller.

I think the smaller distance is when groups can be relaxed and casual about language - and even joke about their differences.

This is as opposed to hostile (as back in the day regarding e.g. whites against blacks) and overcautious tip-toeing around the other group.

It’s always easier for the dominant group to say “it’s just words — no one cares” since the words are never at their expense.

I’m talking about the use of language where you use the less-dominant group as a negative reference point. For example “retarded”. Or “fag”. You apply those terms to people who are neither as a way of disparaging them.

a) how they treat me

b) whether they would actually stick their neck out for me when it really matters (e.g. marriage equality).

I will almost universally guarantee that the same person who insists on non-offensive language for me would NOT fight for marriage equality if it means they have to give up something or risk something. True ally.

On your other point, you think that people who call you fag or other offensive language will fight for marriage equality? As a black person I’ve found that people who call me coon typically haven’t fought for me — even when they have something to gain (drain pool).

OT, but does anyone know where this specific usage of "less than" came from? I'd never seen it until about five years ago and now it's everywhere. The word "inferior" would have been used before. What's the origin of this?

I think it's the inverse: the reason this language policing started was because the dominant group had reduced its hold... That why it started when it started and not when things were much worse...

When I was a child, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. This is now malady non grata: For one thing, it's been folded into autism spectrum disorder, the DSM-5 being more on the lumper end of things than previous DSMs were, and, for another, it has a checkered history, with Hans Asperger using his position as a doctor in Vienna during the Second World War to choose which children were saved and which were murdered in camps. His collaboration with the Nazis and odious views have resulted in a backlash against the diagnosis.

Later still, the very word "Autism" seems to have faded out of polite speech, with people like me being referred to as "on the spectrum" with no explicit mention of which spectrum. This is, as far as I'm concerned, a straight-up euphemism treadmill: The DSM-5's lumping of Asperger's into autism spectrum disorder is something that can be defended on its scientific merits, but moving away from any mention of autism is purely down to the word's use as an insult. OK, so be it. The treadmill rolls on.

The final point is person-first language and why I don't use it: I am an autistic person. I don't say I'm a person with autism because I can't possibly be without autism. Is someone who identifies as a man a "person with gender" or is anyone a "person with race" or "person with ethnicity"? No. Some things are fundamental enough to how we experience the world that saying we're a person with that thing, which implies we could be without it, is wrong.

It is terribly ignorant, because people who use "spectrum" as an alias for autism/ASD don't know that psychiatry/psychology contains many other "spectrums" – the schizophrenia spectrum, the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, the bipolar spectrum, the disruptive behaviour disorder spectrum, the trauma spectrum, etc, etc. The autism and schizophrenia spectrums are the only two which have officially made it into the DSM-5, but the others are all actively used in research and clinically, and the obsessive-compulsive spectrum was originally planned to be included (but for whatever reason didn't make the cut).

> The final point is person-first language and why I don't use it: I am an autistic person.

I seriously thought about paying a psychologist >$1000 for an autism assessment. Together, my psychiatrist and my psychologist [0] talked me out of it. They both said that if I really wanted a piece of paper saying that I had ASD, certainly some psychologist out there would be happy to take my money and give me one. But, their argument was, it wouldn't actually make any positive difference to my life, it would just be a waste of my time and money. And, for now at least, I decided to follow their advice. So am I an "autistic person" or not?

What is "autism"? "Asperger's"? "ASD"? Well, in part, they are scientific theories; in part, they are cultural constructs, whose existence and success is quite independent of the quality or truth of the scientific theory. Focusing just on the scientific theory side, how good is the evidence behind them? Most professionals, families, and people who identify with those labels assume the evidence must be really good. But, there are voices out there arguing that they are far from proven, that the science behind them is deeply flawed, even that we ought to drop them and look for better theories to replace them with. See [1] – and for a weaker version of the same basic idea, [2]. Is something really "fundamental enough to how we experience the world" if it is a scientific theory which could well turn out to be false, a dead-end, a wrong turn in the history of science? What if, one day, people look back on ASD/autism/Asperger's/etc just as we now look back on hysteria, phlogiston, the luminiferous aether, the Ptolemaic model, the steady-state universe, etc, etc, etc? What if "autism" is really no more fundamental to anyone's identity than hysteria was?

[0] my psychologist isn't qualified to diagnose ASD, hence he couldn't do it, I had to go to someone else. He could gain that qualification if he wanted to – all it takes is just a few short courses – but he isn't interested in practicing in that area. Similar story for my psychiatrist – he told me if any patient asks him about an ASD diagnosis, he tells them to see a psychologist for that instead, he doesn't want to get involved in it

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40489-016-0085-x

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.2494

None of that makes sense, in that new ideas about how the world works can't change the results of old experiments. That means I'll always be me, I'll always have been me, and part of that involves dealing with things that are, apparently, significantly different from what other people deal with. I am different from other people, regardless of what name is eventually hung on that, and just saying that name can't be "Autism" for some reason or another isn't changing the important part.

I don't think their research is at all the "final answer" to what is "really going on" – it needs replication, and you might get different clusters if you added more diagnoses – but let's just pretend for the moment it is. People with an ASD diagnosis were in all 10 clusters, so who knows which one you would be in. Now, given your emphasis on "I am different", maybe you are in one of the clusters which is "further from normal", such as 8 or 9 or 10. But, whatever "you have", it would be clear that (1) plenty of people who "have ASD" don't "have what you have", (2) unless you happen to be in cluster 10, the sole ASD-only cluster (which only had 10-15% of ASD), some people who "don't have ASD" do "have what you have". Doesn't it therefore follow, that whatever it is, "autism" or "ASD" or "Aspeger's" isn't a good label for it?

The increased use of “autism” as an insult and people avoiding it is because it is an insult and always was from its conception. That is why doctors regularly try and plot to screen people’s DNA for this “autism” to exterminate them from the gene pool. Because it’s a bad thing they want to destroy, despite the fact it’s a “spectrum” disorder and thus is a label of convenience and there’s not really such a thing as “the autism gene”.

Which to me makes the whole “autistic person” vs “person with autism” stuff pointless. You’re either a disordered person or a person with a disorder, put a gun to my head and I prefer disordered person. I react with offence to any such labels on the grounds that “Asperger’s” is obsolete and “autism” was never diagnosed so people and call me disordered as shorthand to describe me can fuck themselves because I don’t want to deal with the stigma of a label which was thrust upon me through incredibly pseudoscientific means. The dsm-iv which I was diagnosed under was called a “noble lie” by one of its chief author’s.

No, people use "Autism" as an insult because they think it's a way to say "retarded" which won't get them slapped down.

The word "Autist" has become popular simply because more people are called "Autists". This justifies parents getting more government assistance's, schools being able to rationalise away their standardised test scores slipping as being the students fault, doctors getting fat insurance payouts, TikTok celebrities getting attention, everybody gets their piece. It's a label of scapegoating problems people have with an individual justified by the subjective observation of their behaviour and the inference their brains must be "disordered", "disturbed", "disregulated", and "dysfunctional" without any requirement to look deeper into societal or physiological problems. No wonder prevalence has increased more than a hundredfold since it first started being diagnosed, it's so convenient to so many people.

The rise of autism's popularity was to justify (POSITIVELY!) discriminatory treatment in schools, social groups, and work which were always wrapped up in this faux-sympathetic concern over defective brains which totally justifies differential treatment. People who just think that work is a funny way to make fun of somebody without any further motivation aren't even the problem, they merely reveal the reality of what over-socialised people have always thought when they call people "Autistic", and that look in the mirror revolts people.

Way I see it, this thing called autism being treated as a "mental disorder" is no different than transgenderism being called a "mental disorder". A difference in behaviour being belittled as a mental defect without non-inferential evidence or thought about if this framing actually helps people.

In school, children get taught that when someone looks disabled, you shouldn't look at them, because staring at them is some kind of discrimination or so. I couldn't disagree more.

When I had that injury, and was kind of crip-walking, people would intuitively stare at me for a second, then -very obviously- force themselves to look away.

The injury wasn't that bad and went away after a week or two. But the way people forced themselves to look away, was much worse. I can't imagine dealing with that every day.

I'd argue that the people who make up these kind of "rules" probably aren't themselves affected by it.

Blind is stark; powerful; forces me to contemplate the lack of vision - I can’t escape it.

But if I start using “visually challenged” then it’s softer, sounds like a game, challenges can be overcome, this isn’t something I need to worry about.

> The injury wasn't that bad and went away after a week or two. But the way people forced themselves to look away, was much worse. I can't imagine dealing with that every day.

Having experienced this, I personally find that what's worse is the way people look at me in the first place. It's not as simple as someone looking at me, I can _see_ on their face or in their eyes or ... what's going through their mind, before they reassert control and hide it again.

The only thing the language police have done for us is to make communication more awkward. How am I supposed to have a real conversation with anyone if they're constantly worried they're going to not use the right code words (which, by the way, change routinely). How is a blind person supposed to convince a potential employer that they can handle the work when they (according to the language police) can't even handle people using regular words. People learn by asking questions, and people aren't likely to ask questions if they are afraid of stepping on a verbal landmine and being labeled insensitive, or worse.

I don't know who the language police think they're serving by all this outrage and/or false concern, but it certainly isn't me. If I need to, I can get offended on my own behalf just fine thanks.

It helped to make connection with these people and we needed that, because I was developing some app that main audience was blind people and to actually understand their needs and problems you need to make a connection with them.

Which to most people, is what being woke is.

But I guess if you are on team non-woke and some kind of a minority then things get complicated quickly.

I like to call normal people "Normies", and with all the terror and hardship they've brought to the world (being the vast majority of the population), while self-righteously pointing their fingers at other people, assigning 100% of the underlying causality to them (usually based on heuristics or blindly accepting the mainstream narrative explanation) it only increases my enjoyment when I'm insulted and downvoted/rate-limited in response.

"We have met the enemy and he is us".

> Its a weird phenomenon. The longer I watch all of this, and I also mean the gender-language-hacks, I feel like this move has added to the distance between various groups, not made it smaller.

I often wonder if this is purely accidental/organic.

This is exactly it. They have theories that spin a narrative telling them that you just don't understand why your preferred language is oppressive. Like women who just want to be housewives and stay at home with kids are suffering from internalized misogyny, or that Hispanic people almost universally hate the term LatinX but we must keep using it because gender neutrality is way more important than pissing off almost everyone.

A school I would visit had a native American name for their sports teams. I attended a game where they opened the season with local tribe members singing, and drumming, the dedicated it to the coach of the opposing team who died during off season. If you've never heard Native American music live in person you really should, it's like nothing else.

Several local tribes supported the school using the name, but one chose not to. The school the had to use another name, logo, etc.

It struck me how nothing seemed to be gained except distance ....

i have gotten into developing real estate in this place and i have had a lot of theft. naturally, i thought that because the state is red, constitutional carry and stand your ground i would be able to confront someone committing a crime. i thought that if that person attacked me, i would be well within my rights to defend myself. one day i did catch someone trespassing, looking for something to steal. i did confront him and he did try to attack me. luckily, drawing my gun was enough to make him change his mind. it was a whole incident. and what happened next shocked me to my core and changed my understanding of what is going on in this country. the police treated me like the criminal. they didnt charge me but they were really mean and aggressive with me, as if i were not the victim of a crime, and they lied to me. they said i should have just called and not followed the man. i said if they hadnt taken 20 fucking minutes then i wouldnt have needed to keep him in sight. i said if it takes you 20 minutes to show up to me following the guy, it would have taken you an hour to get here otherwise. and i said that the guy would have gotten away. if people follow your advice the criminals will get away every fucking time. how the fuck does that work? his response, from a midwestern cop, was that i should just let insurance cover the losses. the insanity of that statement is shocking. but not as shocking as this: people in the community didnt support me. nobody was in favor of me confronting criminals. these people, who are often victimized and stolen from, are not just apathetic about crime but look down on me because i was involved in a violent interaction. these people wont confront criminals or be associated with people who do because they dont want to reduce their social status. thats what it is, its snobbery. these people "support the police" and there are blue porch lights everywhere, and they claim to be tough on crime, but they are no different than los angeles liberals when it comes to actually confronting crime. and people wonder why we have crime in this country. its because people are fucking retarded. they have no fucking principles.

this mind virus has taken over the entire country. and its all connected. these are the same people who allow themselves to fumble over language, who bend over backwards to not call a spade a spade. people who stumble over not offending a blind person, as if it would make them less blind, are the same people who shy away from confronting crime. in both cases, there is a total lack of critical thought, a total blindness to the bigger picture.

the simple and plain fact is that society cannot be good or even exist unless everyone makes a little sacrifice every once in a while. people have to stand up to crime every once in a while or else crime will become rampant. and it has. people have to say what they think every once in a while even if it makes you look bad or else the truth, our only guiding light, will become extinguished. but all these idiots avoid any and all risk to their own wellbeing no matter whats at stake. these people wont even accept the tiny, tiny little loss of face involved in unintentionally offending someone. literally any loss of face or status, any tiny little deviation from the script, is simply too much for these people. its fucking disgraceful. everyone knows that the country has become much more crime ridden, much more seedy, much more crappy in recent times. especially when you control for technology. its cultural for sure, not economic.

and since we are on the topic, let me just say it: fumbling around when calling a black person black or a blind person blind is more insulting than not! when you dance around and fumble and so on, you are making a huge and embarrassing insinuation that the condition of the person you are referring to is problematic or undesirable. you are screaming in that persons face that you see them as less than and you are trying really hard to not portray them as such. thats what really cements these people in the category of "idiot." they are selfishly helping themselves by toeing the line and not helping anyone else despite the fact that the entire justification for that dogma is being selfless and helping others.

Have you ever listened to the tv show Avatar the last air bender? There's a character who's blind named Toph and she always goofs on her friends who aren't blind throughout the series. It's quite amusing since it's not done in a manner that insults her for being blind but that they sometimes say things which might be insensitive which she makes fun of in her own way.

This ideology is usually espoused by people who have only have a couple of years life experience as an adult yet believe they are best positioned to tell everybody else how to think and behave.

What I had seen is that these use of banning words and using different words, mostly just makes it more difficult to communicate properly, rather than actually helping anyone. (Occasionally some specific change is helpful in some contexts, but often it just makes it worse.)

I think that all of these changes are rather excessive. Sometimes they do make an improvement, but often they don't, and may make it worse. Sometimes it is an improvement in some contexts, but it should not be applied to contexts in which it is inappropriate.

I also don't like such words like "visually challenged", etc. It is better to use words such as "blind", although it can depend on the context. Sometimes "unable to see" might be more appropriate (since, just because you are unable to see something does not necessarily mean that you are blind; e.g. maybe you are looking at something else at the time, or your eyes are closed, etc).

"Disabled" is OK (using words such as "people with disabilities" or "differently-abled" or "people living with disabilities" or whatever, does not help), but usually it is better to specify the specific disability (e.g. "blind" or "deaf"), which is usually much more helpful than writing "disabled". (Although, in some contexts, it may be sensible to write "disabled", because it isn't about a specific kind of disabilities. Even in some cases, "differently-abled" may be appropriate, possibly.)

Accessibility features can be helpful whether or not you are blind, deaf, or other kind of disabilities. For this reason, it is helpful to not restrict their usefulness or to claim that they are only good if you are disabled in this way. (For example, many people can use captions on TV even if you are not deaf, although they are also useful if you are deaf, which should not be disregarded.) I think that many kinds of features can be useful whether or not you are blind/deaf/etc, if the system is well-designed.

In some cases, there just aren't any good words to describe some unusual situations clearly, though.

Ironically, intersectionality adds that truth is created by identity groups (e.g. "blind", "blind females", "blind black females", etc.), and cannot be truly known by people outside that identity group. So even by their own assumptions, your claims as a member of the blind identity group ought to trump their assertions. But, this is functionally a fundamentalist religion, and the assumptions are sacrosanct. (I am using "fundamentalist" here meaning a one-dimensional ideology that is non-negotiable, which is essentially how Christian fundamentalism, for example, currently operates.) You might be able to mess with the minds of cultural believers, though.

This absolutely has increased the distance between groups, because the real goal is not kindness but activism to disrupt entrenched power structures.

But it's simply less risky and less work to just call it "main".

It doesn't matter, and nobody gains anything from calling it "main" -- but if we call it "master" someone might get offended or waste my time arguing over it.

There is no incentive to insist calling it "master". So similarly, I guess we'll end up calling you "photonically disadvantaged" :)

Or maybe we can give it a positive spin and call it "darkness unimpaired"? (Just kidding of course)

What Git really needs, is some kind of "branch alias" feature. Some config setting like "branch_alias.main=master", and then I could always write "git checkout main", and it would checkout "main" if that exists, and "master" if it didn't (and vice versa). That would solve it in most cases – except for the rarer "we decided to use neither main nor master" and "we made a new main branch but kept an outdated master branch hanging around".

I think that it is probably not necessary or helpful to rename branches in existing repositories, but you can do that if it is helpful for what you are doing.

If you upload a repository to GitHub, you can use whatever default branch name it already has with no problem. I know because I did upload one that uses "trunk" as the default branch name, and it did not cause any problem. (I used "trunk" as the default branch name because it is a mirror of a fossil repository which uses "trunk" as the default branch name.)

(And, someone does get a minor benefit to call it "main"; it is two letters shorter than "master". Of course, that is minor, but it isn't quite nothing.)

Personally though people using extra syllables to describe me when a more terse way to describe me gets the point across always comes off as condescending. People seem to be utterly obsessed with the connotation of words and if a word starts having a bad connotation they will just replace it with a different usually inferior word and consider themselves heroic for doing so. Blind becomes “visually impaired” making 1 syllable into 5 and ironically making language more complex and less accessible (since the entire point of such language is that it’s so awkward that nobody who isn’t woke will use it allowing it to have a signalling purpose). In reality what such people attitudes come off as is “you’re such weak shit everybody around you should be like me and constantly expend effort to protect your feelings”.

It’s the language of “allyship”, not the language of the disabled most of the time. If people need such terms to feel comfortable with the disabled, I’ll humour them I guess, but I just hope people understand that this language mostly exists for the sake of people who are immensely uncomfortable with the concept of disability and those people tend not to be disabled.