What’s a red flag for you?

5ofseven wrote: »

Using PC terminology

Making fun of PC terminology

Most of us live in the middle

This is a statement of first world privilege and if you can't recognize that not only are you not woke but you have chosen to be co-opted by the same colonialized, male-run institutions which seek nothing but your downfall.

How'd I do? 🤣😭

KosmosKitten wrote: »

5ofseven wrote: »

KosmosKitten wrote: »

5ofseven wrote: »

Using PC terminology

Making fun of PC terminology

Most of us live in the middle

... I use that terminology because that is what was asked of me by persons who would otherwise be impacted negatively by the non-PC language that was in use.

I can't imagine living a life in which you can't acknowledge that change occurs, that things that were once seen as non-offensive (only by people who weren't affected, I have to add) have become so and that language has meaning and connotation and with that language can HURT people.

Feel free to continue as you think you should. While you do that, notice that there were three statements rather than one. Perhaps the first could be better rephrased to "insisting on" PC terminology.

Fair enough. Sometimes, a line is crossed, I'm thinking in particular of certain groups online that demand something be said/done and then get offended when anyone doesn't just take them at face value or kowtow to their desires (even when some of them get ridiculous).

You might want to clarify what you mean by "most of us live in the middle". If you mean that most people are not extreme one way or the other (in anything, not just politics where I hear this most often), then yes, of course I would agree with you. Otherwise, clarification would be useful, I suppose.

I hope you did not take this as a slight against you. I did notice your second use "Making fun of PC terminology". I was mostly agreeing with the point that I could not imagine not understanding how certain terms or jokes couldn't affect certain portions of the population, even if at one point in time, they were seen as acceptable.

Given that it's a red flags thread, I'm not sure I was up for a dissection of every word. But hey, it is the internet, so on we venture.

I'll give an example of the first, then follow with further examples of the others. "CIS" is, in my opinion, a term that does not need to exist in the context it is used. Some that are a little extra pc insist on it's use, including my own workplace. For reasons that should be self evident, the use of the term clouds the issue for anyone who isn't actively engaged in new term usages. It makes communication worse for the large majority of participants, and the miniscule trade off in clarity isn't worth the loss in people paying attention. Worth mentioning, not all new terms are worth this derision.

In a similar vein, "defund the police" loses the argument before it starts. It's simply a pandering to a base, a creation of a slogan, rather than the basis for a communication of ideas. If words matter because they hurt, words also matter because they cause other types of damage. Causing the hearer to shut down so that they will not engage, so that they cannot be part of stopping the hurt they cause, that's a real substandard outcome.

Black Lives Matter started here, with the same problem. And then people started explaining so that white people could understand better...and some pretty magic stuff has happened. But wider acceptance wasn't achieved until some clarity was given. It was still pretty ill formed and blaming, but it started to do the job for a lot of people, and they could more easily see they were on the wrong side of the discussion. I have many friends who finally understood.

None of this excuses anyone who harms others, for choice of language or otherwise. If I'm ignorant on a term, I consider it on me to ask, but language around many of these topics is recent and hard to digest. Doesn't mean that mockery is the right way out. There's much more that I could say on this subject, but hurting people sucks, and people who do it on purpose suck even more. I have a lot more tolerance for the ignorant (that's most of us) than the willfully harming.

Easy to see the weak points in all of these thoughts, just chalk it up to a human trying to reason with poorly adapted monkey and lizard brains smashed together.

If black lives matter (and they do/should), and defund the police is a good idea (and I agree with the premise), and words can hurt (and they do, we're the only species that can cause the world to fall apart via violence by their use, and to build societies by the same), then the people that need convincing are the people in the middle. Most of us are there by some measure. Middle politically (on second thought, maybe too small of a demographic at present), middle geographically for many of the minds that could benefit progress by changing (at this point in history in the US), and middle in a can't be bothered way (hi, it's the apathy referenced earlier, we're all just tired and trying to scrape out a living, it's exhausting being asked to care literally constantly about things that don't affect us directly. Yes, we're aware we're awful for not caring about your cause, however niche).

But...change, even positive change, especially when at a rapid pace comes at a cost. That cost is frankly, often in resistance delivered by the majority, the dominant, or the powerful. What humans are has been fashioned over eons. Our social systems are the same. Corporate interests add an ingredient without real precedent. We don't understand the systems and factors all that well. I'm not saying progress should not come, nor that it should be slow (we've waited long enough), but that the cost should be counted. There will be one, best decide what currency we prefer to pay by if we can forecast it. Words are cheap, as we've all learned, and communicating well and meeting objections where they live rather than making them come to us is the only way to make rapid change tolerable given the societal complications.

Students of history can see many of our current themes played out over time, repeatedly. I'd rather not have a civil war over it (again), so words are the way out.

Can I go back to making pithy, semi inflammatory statements now?