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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
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engrguy42:

--- Quote from: Marco on June 12, 2020, 04:28:00 pm ---Why is master/servant never even considered as an alternative? Minimum change of meaning, minimally invasive. This works in all contexts instead of just a subset like most the other alternatives ... so why not?

--- End quote ---

How can you decide what others might find offensive? How are you qualified to make that decision?

And at the end of the day, I guarantee that if you survey the entire population of this planet (7.8 billion people) you WILL find people who will be offended by that. Or anything else for that matter.

Which is why this is an insane discussion. 

coppice:

--- Quote from: Marco on June 12, 2020, 04:28:00 pm ---Why is master/servant never even considered as an alternative? Minimum change of meaning, minimally invasive. This works in all contexts instead of just a subset like most the other alternatives ... so why not?

--- End quote ---
Why do you hate maids so much that their feelings mean nothing to you?
GeorgeOfTheJungle:

--- Quote from: bd139 on June 12, 2020, 04:30:33 pm ---Oh it's gone full retard now: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312

Master branch on github may be renamed main etc etc.

--- End quote ---

Let's call it black/white. SORTED!
Cerebus:
The lads at my local garage, and bloody good they are too, are not white people, most definitely not white people. If one was to tell them that in discussing my clutch or brake systems they were being racist by referring to the "master cylinder" or "slave cylinder" they would laugh at you, and probably use much stranger language than I usually would in this present context: "You're 'aving a f****** laugh aren't you? What kind of **** do you take me for?".

For the record, anytime I have had a conversation (and I have had them) with someone who is non-white about this use of language they have all found no problem with master/slave devices, similarly discussions with non-male persons about male/female connectors have failed to register any genuine offence. Further, for the record, I have had the latter conversations with people across the whole gender spectrum, from post-op transexuals to every other flavour of (non)gendered-ness you care to name. Yeah, my friends are an odd, highly assorted bunch; I suspect that's a necessary precondition for wanting to be friends with me.

If "treating people as things is the true root of all evil" what is "treating things as if they were people"? Which is what one is surely doing if one infers that language referring to a master/slave relationship between mechanical or electronic components is some form of racist speech. To do so is to insult the people who use this professional terminology with no trace or hint of racism associated with it, it is to imply some character defect in them where there is none. To paraphrase Dr. King, I dream of a day when a man is judged by the content of his character, not by the professional terminology he uses.

It is no surprise that people who are told they are racist when there's no substance to that claim are defensive about it. It implies the same kind of smug moral superiority on behalf of the messenger that, in Britain at least, we're used to associating with people like Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge and other self-appointed moral guardians who berate mere mortals for moral failings that they perceive to exist in the targets of their whitterings, but such moral failings do not in fact exist.

Always, without exception, this kind of rubbish is propagated people who have an obsession with race/sexual politics, not by ordinary folks. Ironically I most often encounter this kind of proselytisation in single white males, invariably against a background of them trying to sound "right on" enough to get into some lasses' knickers. Go figure...

So, to anyone who wishes to berate me for hurting the feelings of a flip-flop or a hydraulic cylinder I say: "You're 'aving a f****** laugh aren't you? What kind of **** do you take me for?".
Cerebus:

--- Quote from: coppice on June 12, 2020, 04:36:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: Marco on June 12, 2020, 04:28:00 pm ---Why is master/servant never even considered as an alternative? Minimum change of meaning, minimally invasive. This works in all contexts instead of just a subset like most the other alternatives ... so why not?

--- End quote ---
Why do you hate maids so much that their feelings mean nothing to you?

--- End quote ---

You little sexist so-and-so, assuming that all servants must be female.   ;)
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