Subject: Re: [Gendispatch] draft-knodel-terminology-03

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:35:12 +0000

I am replying to Dan’s note, but the email threading does not work because I just joined this list.

>   The idea that elite white, northern Europeans are going to clean up gendered language for the rest of the world is also quite presumptive.

No.  We are cleaning up the mess that we created.

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From: Dan Harkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 08:41:20 -0700

Hi Rich,

On 7/22/20 7:35 AM, Salz, Rich wrote:
> >   The idea that elite white, northern Europeans are going to clean up 
> gendered language for the rest of the world is also quite presumptive.
>

   That reminds me of that classic retort from Tonto, "what do you mean 
'we'
white man?" :-)

   Look around, the woke brigades who view language as violence or who think
metaphors prevent blacks from joining STEM fields are made up almost 
exclusively
of well-off ("elite" is a bad word, I should not have used that) white 
people.
The kind of people who can have what are euphemistically called "First World
Problems." I don't think the rest of the world sees the mess that you 
do. The
example I gave right after the quote you include above (regarding opposition
to the word "Latinx" by the people it's supposed to "help") illustrates that
fact quite nicely.

   Dan.

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 15:51:21 +0000

>  Look around, the woke brigades who view language as violence or who think
metaphors prevent blacks from joining STEM fields are made up almost exclusively
of well-off ("elite" is a bad word, I should not have used that) white people.

Arguably, this is because others aren’t in the community. Or it’s a hypothesis, and one way to test it is to change the words and see if it helps. Or some of those proposing the change have private knowledge.

Using phrases like “the woke brigade” doesn’t help the discussion.

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 10:06:31 -0400

> No.  We are cleaning up the mess that we created.
I don't have specific objections to this document.   Language inevitably 
changes from time to time and I've seen it change to far worse effect 
than seems likely for the changes proposed, and for far worse 
reasons.    The changes proposed are minimal and IMO not terribly 
disruptive.

However, while I think this change is mostly harmless, I also think it's 
naive to presume that this kind of change will do much good in the grand 
scheme of things.   This isn't "cleaning up the mess", so much as 
something else: maybe avoiding distraction, maybe virtue signaling.  
(I'm fine with avoiding distraction, less fine with virtue signaling, 
but doubt that it's worth the effort to split that particular hair.)

Still, I think the better path is to just do this with minimal fuss and 
be done with it.   The dangerous pitfall that we need to avoid is to 
insist on constantly policing language for an increasing number of 
increasingly dubious reasons.

Keith