General > General Technical Chat
'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: nuclearcat on June 23, 2020, 06:15:30 am ---Does finnish have different words for perceived gender and physical gender? (gender vs sex?)
--- End quote ---
No; only "sukupuoli" ("suku" = family, gender, "puoli" = half, side). And as I've mentioned before, in informal speech "it" ("se") is often used for people, things, and animals alike.
There isn't even any obvious or common non-direct way to ask someone their gender or identity, one has to just blurt out "Are you a man or a woman, a boy or a girl?". If you ask someone what their gender is, literally "Mikä sinun sukupuolesi on?", it's such an odd-sounding question it'll take people a few seconds to understand what you're asking.
Note that I'm not writing this because I'm claiming Finnish speakers are less sexist than anyone else. Quite the opposite: I'm saying that we're not that different, even if our language lacks most of the features that are claimed to uphold sexism in other languages. Simply put, banning terms will not magically make people behave any better.
magic:
No Internet discussion of leftism can be complete without somebody bringing old Ted to the party :-+
--- Quote ---24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. [...]
25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. [...]
26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. [...]
The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. [...] The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred.
The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. [...]
In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship.[...]
13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak [...]
--- End quote ---
It's basically the modern American approach to running a society. You aren't supposed to struggle for your freedom like the Founding Father did, thankfully those times are over and they were racists anyway, you are supposed to support a SYSTEM which ensures your and everybody else's freedom. (Ted's rambling would probably become much more on point if we changed "Industrial Revolution" to "French Revolution" but I bet he was himself too liberal to admit the bitter truth).
If somebody whines that his freedom is being infringed by words, this is more important than the time wasted on updating technical documentation, for freedom and the freedom SYSTEM always come first. If you disagree, your loyalty to the SYSTEM is questionable and you might as well be a closeted Nazi for all we know.
Libertarians are useful idiots who look like Nazis to those oversocialized SJWs, SJWs are useful idiots who favor draconian measures against the former. Measures carried out by private corporations, because else it would be fascism. Americans created a bizarre fusion of communism and capitalism where the capitalists fight for essentially communist agenda in exchange for brownie points, protection and preservation of the right to their capital.
American politics really isn't difficult to understand. You just have to admit the possibility that they are all wrong and everything you believe is a wishful thinking social construct.
The Bill of Rights should have never been written. Read about the original arguments against it if you don't know why.
edit
I may add, do read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest if you haven't already. I think it perfectly sums up the mentality of the hippy generation which raised those current crybabies. And if this book and particularly its ending doesn't make you feel like pulling your hair out, I have a bad news - you might be a liberal. Do seek help, it's never too late.
tom66:
--- Quote from: magic on June 22, 2020, 03:06:12 pm ---Whole language - not yet, but some gendered names of professions are problematic :)
For most of them there are obvious male/female variants (like actor/actress) but some are awkward.
And there is the question which gender to use when referring to the profession as such and why nurses should be different than engineers :D
--- End quote ---
Most actresses prefer to be known as actors now, from what I hear...
magic:
A very different thing. English is gender neutral so having a feminine name for women in some random profession is othering to them.
In a fully gendered language, most feminists feel offended if you erase women by not acknowledging their existence all the time. Maybe it could change if the nonbinary fad takes off. I always direct women who are considering allying with LGBT to TERFs - it's lesser evil that way >:D
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: pickle9000 on June 23, 2020, 06:11:13 am ---Wow what a topic.
In any case I don't see anything here about education. For myself educating children about the subject would be far more useful. Hiding the words is like hiding the truth. The truth is often ugly but it is necessary to understand our mistakes and tendencies.
--- End quote ---
The terms Master and Slave are not ugly when applied to technology. Teach people that words can have multiple meanings when applied to different things and in different cultures, and that context and intent matter, they matters a lot. That's what you should be teaching teaching kids.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version