I’m just skeptical of a lot of ways people change their language and speaking habits to supposedly be more inclusive, because a lot of it seems like either empty virtue signaling (the real kind, not the right-wing bastardization of the term), or just an eagerness to be accommodating that precludes thinking critically about whether a proposed accommodation is actually helpful. On one hand, I know I’m biased against unfamiliar norms, so the fact that I find a lot of them distasteful doesn’t mean they’re bad. On the other hand, I know some progressive language choices are not well accepted by the very people they’re supposed to benefit. For example, I’ve read a majority of Latinx people don’t like the word Latinx, a lot of homeless people find “unhoused” to be patronizing, and a lot of Black Americans prefer Black over African American. If political correctness is just a fancy way of saying treating people with respect, I think what I’m talking about could be called political hypercorrectness (by analogy with hypercorrection, i.e. trying so hard to be respectful that you end up being less respectful.
I’m currently on the fence about the trend of people describing their appearance as part of an introduction. I haven’t heard anything I’ve way or the other about it from blind people, but I have a really hard time seeing how a person describing themselves visually would be useful to someone whose experience of the world doesn’t include vision.
not everyone is so enlightened
Do I detect sarcasm?
I’m just skeptical of a lot of ways people change their language and speaking habits to supposedly be more inclusive, because a lot of it seems like either empty virtue signaling (the real kind, not the right-wing bastardization of the term), or just an eagerness to be accommodating that precludes thinking critically about whether a proposed accommodation is actually helpful. On one hand, I know I’m biased against unfamiliar norms, so the fact that I find a lot of them distasteful doesn’t mean they’re bad. On the other hand, I know some progressive language choices are not well accepted by the very people they’re supposed to benefit. For example, I’ve read a majority of Latinx people don’t like the word Latinx, a lot of homeless people find “unhoused” to be patronizing, and a lot of Black Americans prefer Black over African American. If political correctness is just a fancy way of saying treating people with respect, I think what I’m talking about could be called political hypercorrectness (by analogy with hypercorrection, i.e. trying so hard to be respectful that you end up being less respectful.
I’m currently on the fence about the trend of people describing their appearance as part of an introduction. I haven’t heard anything I’ve way or the other about it from blind people, but I have a really hard time seeing how a person describing themselves visually would be useful to someone whose experience of the world doesn’t include vision.
no sarcasm
it would be awesome if people could interact purely with ideas more often, but it’s rare