You don’t see how using the word “crazy” to describe someone with a mental illness creates a negative connotation that harms them? If you label someone “crazy” do you think you’re more or less likely to recognize them for their work, regardless of their performance? Do you think you’re more or less likely to listen to them with an open mind?

The word “mental illness” already has a negative connotation that harms them. Calling someone mentally ill would be way more hurtful than someone saying “Wow, that’s crazy!” offhand in a conversation, which is what these lists are really targeting.

Reality is that life kind of sucks for people who take care of or interact with the mentally ill, and it definitely sucks more for the mentally ill themselves… No amount of progressive hand-wringing or administrative Band-aids is going to change that.

Banning the word crazy is silly, ineffective, patronizing nonsense that does nothing to help the mentally ill whatsoever, not even changing the perception around them nor making them feel better.

So you recognize that giving someone a negative label harms them, but you think people should do it anyway? The problem is that the label itself creates additional bias. It dehumanizes the person. Suddenly you’re not a person suffering from depression or bipolar disorder; you’re “crazy” or “mentally ill” and should be shunned or diminished.

Plenty of people who suffer from a mental illness do well in life, but you’re right that they often have a harder time. So then why should we actively make their life even harder by attaching a stigma and dehumanizing them? I don’t think that’s progressive as much as just humanitarian.

We’re conflating two abstract issues here and you’re accusing me of doing things that I’m not doing.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario: two of your coworkers are in an office and one tells the other something shocking. The second says, “Wow, that’s crazy!” Do you think that’s a micro aggression, or worse, a slur?

Second scenario: you’re talking to a coworker and they say “Bob has been off recently. Some of the stuff he says is so insane. Yesterday he completely embarrassed us in that meeting!” Do you think this is any less hurtful to Bob because your coworker said “insane” instead of “crazy”?

My answers are “no” and “no”, and it seems pretty obvious why. In the first scenario there’s no intention to harm someone and even if harm is done, it’s extremely small. In the second scenario, your coworker is going to say something bad about Bob and it doesn’t matter how tightly you control the corporate Newspeak, he is going to express his opinion.

Grow a spine and realize the world isn’t for or against you, it just is.

There are plenty of valid reasons to use the word "crazy" while not talking about a person.

So some banned word lists are fine, obviously you can't call your students racist slurs. But these ones are bad (presumably because I personally don't understand why some of the words on the list might be offensive.)

Banned word lists are always a bad idea. I feel like it probably only makes things worse - people wanting to offend will come up with new euphemisms and slurs but will be in the clear because those words aren't on the banned list yet.

At the end of the day, we really want to be holding people accountable on the meaning of what they write or say, not making lists of words that probably don't actually offend anybody but that someone thinks could possibly offend someone else somewhere at some point in time, maybe.

> Banned word lists are always a bad idea. I feel like it probably only makes things worse

To be clear, this neans you also think banned word lists consisting only of racial slurs are bad?

I am not who you asked but I can see an argument being made that, yes, a banned word list consisting of racial slurs is still bad, albeit significantly less so.

The argument would go something like this: you can ban use of racial slurs without specifically making a list of them that are banned, as such a list both opens the door to further banned words and also comes with a maintenance cost, where it has to be changed. As an example "person of colour" is currently an acceptable term but when I was a kid I think people would have associated that term with "coloured" and find it insulting, so if you have a specific list you have to manage cases like this.

Secondly banning racial slurs altogether ignores that there are legitimate contexts in which they should be used (directly quoting something someone has said, discussing old media in which that sort of language is used, etc.), and these contexts are very different from referring to an individual or a group using those slurs. A list of banned words means those words can't be used even in those contexts, as opposed to just not using them as a pejorative or insult.

Yes, it's unnecessary at best but potentially causes other problems. Really, if somebody uses a racial slur, does somebody above them really need a banned word list to caution or discipline them? Of course not!

No, it’s because I read the list and they don’t give convincing justification for their choices. Most of the banned words are banned because “someone somewhere maybe might interpret this as offensive in the worst possible case.” Everyone agrees that certain words are slurs. Stanford and their ilk have just started designating things slurs that aren’t used that way.

Did you read the lists in question?

Why do we need a end all list anyway? What happened to "be professional"?

That’s offensive to unemployed people?