It is necessary? is it unnecessary? Does it give you the same? What do you think?
I don’t care. I am Australian so everyone is mate. unless I forget their name then they are whatsTheirFace.
Eh, it costs me nothing, makes some people feel respected, ans allows me to piss off idiots. What’s not to love?
I think inclusive language is a way to pat ourselves on the back when we really should be enacting inclusive behavior.
Changing language is always tempting because it’s a zero-effort way to do nothing and appear like you’re doing something.
Inclusive language per se not a problem, but it’s far too easy for it to act as an empty virtue signal.
Here’s an example of an inclusive behavior: next time you’re thinking of cutting someone out of your life, don’t.
See what I mean? There’s gonna be people who would take offense at the idea of letting someone stay in your life, giving them another chance, because it could be unsafe or it’s not your job or something.
But keeping people around is the definition of inclusion. Inclusive language allows us to think of ourselves as inclusive without actually being inclusive.
I liked using what was then archaic language back in school 20 years ago. I’ll be one of the last ones to change.
What do you mean by inclusive language?
For example using “they” instead of “he” or “she”.
I speak Spanish too so it’s a little bit more complicated than English.
Edit: I believe you can use “it” too if someone feels like a thing.
The “they” thing makes a lot of sense. I write a fair bit of documentation, and I make a point of referring to generic people/roles without gendered pronouns. If I’m talking about “a user”, I’ll refer to them as “them” or “the user.”
At this point, I’m not sure what the alternatives are. Assuming gender seems very 1960s. Assigning a name (like “Alice” or “Bob”) complicates the text too much.
“them” is so much better than the alternatives for when you don’t know a person’s gender.
“Him”? 50% chance of being wrong and sounding stupid.
“Him or her”? 3x as many syllables.
“It”? Sounds like talking about an object, and when talking about someone you don’t know the gender of, you’re often talking about objects in the same sentence too. So “them” specifies the person, and “it” specifies the object.
“the [noun]”? Often requires more syllables, sometimes many more.
For example…
“[…] Always print the receipt and hand it to them directly.”
We know that “it” is the receipt, and “them” refers to the customer/person. Any alternative would be wrong/awkward or too many syllables.
There are 2 ways of being inclusive: making minorities feel welcome and showing toxic positivity. When it’s the former, it’s absolutely necessary. Being able to view media like Everything Everywhere All At Once and Patriot Act has genuinely filled a hole left by sitcoms like iCarly and Full House. It’s not easy for me to describe this “older TV” experience to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but it may be a tiny bit like moving suddenly from the US to the UK and being forced to become fully British. Characters always have some trait that makes them completely unrelatable.
The latter mostly manifests in censorship. While it’s fine for people to give small corrections (e.g. using ‘they’ instead of (s)he), being rude about it or not letting people talk just fosters hate. A rough example is racial jokes. While it’s not okay for a random stranger to say them to another stranger, it’s perfectly acceptable (and IMO should be encouraged) to use them to strengthen relationships. Policing jokes that me and my South Indian friend make to each other is not only unnecessary but also less inclusive. If I was on the receiving end of racial remarks and ignorance, I should be able to say those exact things in a joking or mocking manner with the intent of having fun
EDIT: Pavitr Prabhakar is genuinely one of my favorite characters, and I’m so glad they included him in Spiderverse 2.
Why would I want to use exclusive language? If I know it’s going to make someone feel worse instead of better, why would I use?
The only argument for not using it that I can think of is that you don’t give a shit about other people…
Consider a reversal:
Imagine just how consistently-offended we guys’d be, if the term for an uncrewed vehicle was “unwomaned”.
So, it was either “womaned” or “unwomaned”.
Insulting-as-hell, right?
It’s equally insulting, the other-way-'round, but we’re concertedly conditioned to feeling it to be “normal”.
That’s the only difference: our imprinting.
This is a decades-old demonstration of how prejudiced it is to use a single pronoun “Mr.” for guys, while using 2 different pronouns for women, depending-on marital-status.
Hofstadter remapped it from married-status-of-women to employed-status-of-blacks, to show how prejudiced it is, in spite of our imprinting.
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
