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| 'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts |
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| PlainName:
--- Quote ---The offender, for eir part, should stop offending as soon as ey realizes that the amount of pain eir actions cause is greater than the amount of annoyance it would take to avoid the offending action, even if ey can't understand why it would cause any pain at all. If ey wishes, ey may choose to apologize even though no apology was demanded. --- End quote --- I am completely failing to see what was wrong with using 'they' or 'their' in that. |
| magic:
Ze used 'ey' and 'eir' because ze believes in rationalism and 'they' is a plural pronoun so using it would be a syntax error. I believe ze later switched to 'ze' and 'zeir' and untimately gave up and started using 'they' when everybody else did it. |
| Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: julianhigginson on June 22, 2020, 06:55:56 am ---I tried to find what you were talking about - is that the thing you wrote on laws around street prostitution causing worse human trafficking (slavery) a few pages back? --- End quote --- That was the most recent example from Finland. The problem is not technical, but political: because the politicians find the topic offensive, and it's not their constituents or own children that are being trafficked, they find it easier to just vote to table the issue than think about it. --- Quote from: julianhigginson on June 22, 2020, 06:55:56 am ---because I don't see how changing some words around communication between inanimate objects is at all an even remotely analogous thing. --- End quote --- It is the exact same thing. By labeling the terms themselves offensive, you eliminate any discussion about them. How much does banning "master" and "slave" help the around ten million humans in slavery right now? Oh, I see; this is not intended to help them, just to make sure that people in Western countries do not need to think about slavery, because the entire concept offends them. Gotcha. --- Quote from: julianhigginson on June 22, 2020, 06:55:56 am ---I'm pretty sure most people talking about changing the words master and slave in technical contexts are fine for you to use slavery terms to describe actual slavery. --- End quote --- You'd be wrong; that's the thing. "Master" and "slave" are technical terms that describe a relationship. They are not intrinsic to human slavery, and are ubiquitous in current technology, information science, and software engineering. To insist that their use in a technical context is offensive, is to insist that nobody mention slavery except in an inoffensive manner. |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---'they' is a plural pronoun --- End quote --- From the ODE: --- Quote ---2. [singular] used to refer to a person of unspecified gender: ask a friend if they could help. --- End quote --- and --- Quote ---usage: The word they (with its counterparts them, their, and themselves) as a singular pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified gender has been used since at least the 16th century. In the late 20th century, as the traditional use of he to refer to a person of either gender came under scrutiny on the grounds of sexism, this use of they became more common. It is now generally accepted in contexts where it follows an indefinite pronoun such as anyone, no one, someone, or a person, as in anyone can join if they are a resident and each to their own. In other contexts, coming after singular nouns, the use of they is now common, though less widely accepted, especially in formal contexts. Sentences such as ask a friend if they could help are still criticized for being ungrammatical. Nevertheless, in view of the growing acceptance of they and its obvious practical advantages, they is used in this dictionary in many cases where he would have been used formerly. In a more recent development, they is now being used to refer to specific individuals (as in Alex is bringing their laptop). Like the gender-neutral honorific Mx1, the singular they is preferred by some individuals who identify as neither male nor female. See also usage at he and she. --- End quote --- |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: magic on June 22, 2020, 10:02:02 am --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on June 22, 2020, 08:37:11 am --- --- Quote ---Of course somebody will always bring up the damn Shakespeare. --- End quote --- Er. No. That was a couple of centuries before Shakespeare started writing plays. --- End quote --- Doesn't matter. It wasn't common in recent times, or wasn't nearly as common. I don't recall ever seeing it on Slashdot, for example, and I was reading it for most of the 2000s. I mean common everyday usage, not some ultraliberal nerds discussing politics on some message board somewhere. Usenet is not Internet too, I have never been there either, but fair enough, that hits close. --- End quote --- Again, you show your ignorance. Usenet was not and is not a BBS. For a couple of decades it was the primary way people interacted technically, socially, politically, religiously, etc etc on the internet. Many common aspects of current everyday web-based experiences originated there; viruses, spam and porn being probably the worst examples. The social aspects have long since migrated to farcebook and twatter and similar; good riddance! The technical aspects have, to some extent, remained. There are a few groups left with extremely detailed expert conversations that make EEVBlog Forum look like kindergarten. Examples include Win Hill, of TAoE fame, and the architects of several important processors and languages. --- Quote ---By the way, I tracked down a sample of one (among many) pioneering efforts in this latest wave of gender neutrality, straight from 2011: .... --- End quote --- Pioneering my foot. Again you show your ignorance. |
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