Okay, call me sexist, rascist, homophobe, xenophobe........

SkyChaser said:
I think, in order to be inclusive with the least effort, we should now say, as an example, "fire-anthropo" or maybe just "firehuman", as long as it doesn't offend someone because that name contains the letters "m", "a", and "n" in the same order the word "man" contains them. Unfortunately, that probably still wouldn't work, because it would exclude those who identify as animals. Hmm. Maybe we should just go back using representative language and not be so offended and persnickety about it?
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Language is what people actually use, not what someone decides they should use. And 99+% of the times I see the word "offended" online come from people claiming other people are offended, not saying they're offended themselves. I assume that somewhere in a basement in Iowa or New Jersey is the person who actually says they're offended, and the rest of the noise is talk TV and radio hosts complaining about that person. :)
 
Rushie said:
I still can’t get used to not using BC and AD. The new way of doing it makes no sense to me. And I still think Pluto is a planet.
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Yeah, it seems to me that changing the names is a pretense, because it doesn't change the fact that our calendar is based on the presumed date of a religious event.
 
Palmpilot said:
Yeah, it seems to me that changing the names is a pretense, because it doesn't change the fact that our calendar is based on the presumed date of a religious event.
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Forget all this new BC/AD or BCE/CE stuff — let's go back to the Roman AUC (ab urbe condita — since the founding of the City). Or we could go with the French Republic Calendar from their revolution. Or maybe we could just all agree across Christendom when Easter is? People love debating about calendars, and always have.
 
Van Johnston said:
Had to look that up. Found this:

While it may have been politically correct to call a flight attendant an air hostess or stewardess sixty years ago, doing so today is frowned upon. The proper term preferred by all flight crew is flight attendant or even better, cabin crew. Over the past six decades, men and women boldly fought to change what constitutes an acceptable attribute of an ideal cabin crew member. What came along with these accomplishments was the reintroduction of male flight attendants, which would forever usher out old-fashioned terms like air hostess and stewardess.

Source
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I don't know what would be wrong with using "steward" for a male flight attendant/cabin crew member/whatever, other than the fact that it involves admitting that gender exists.

On the other hand, the switch to a gender-neutral term avoids any need for a cumbersome practice of writing "steward or stewardess."
 
Bill said:
So crew member, like at McDonalds! Got it!
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I'm amused by food stores that refer to employees as "team members," and customers as "guests." If I'm a "guest," where's my bed? ;)
 
SkyChaser said:
I think, in order to be inclusive with the least effort, we should now say, as an example, "fire-anthropo" or maybe just "firehuman", as long as it doesn't offend someone because that name contains the letters "m", "a", and "n" in the same order the word "man" contains them. Unfortunately, that probably still wouldn't work, because it would exclude those who identify as animals. Hmm. Maybe we should just go back using representative language and not be so offended and persnickety about it?
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Human>>humanity>>could it be. Could we be so lucky as to find a meme or something that has a reporter screaming ‘oh the hupersonity’ when the Hindenburg lights off. No, but, it is a word
https://www.takimag.com/article/oh_the_hupersonity_theodore_dalrymple/
 
FORANE said:
I was informed the other day that the term "master bedroom" is a racist term.
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They're going to love it when they find out about master and slave hard drives! (Or do those exist anymore?)
 
Palmpilot said:
I'm amused by food stores that refer to employees as "team members," and customers as "guests." If I'm a "guest," where's my bed? ;)
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Or 'cast members' at Disney...
 
David Megginson said:
Language is what people actually use, not what someone decides they should use. And 99+% of the times I see the word "offended" online come from people claiming other people are offended, not saying they're offended themselves. I assume that somewhere in a basement in Iowa or New Jersey is the person who actually says they're offended, and the rest of the noise is talk TV and radio hosts complaining about that person. :)
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David Megginson said:
Forget all this new BC/AD or BCE/CE stuff — let's go back to the Roman AUC (ab urbe condita — since the founding of the City). Or we could go with the French Republic Calendar from their revolution. Or maybe we could just all agree across Christendom when Easter is? People love debating about calendars, and always have.
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:confused2::confused2::confused2:

F5A84317-B28C-4AD0-A35F-C322E5F48798.gif
 
Rushie said:
You opened a can of worms here by pointing out that “human” contains “man”. We can’t have that.
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I know right...and caucasian has 'asian' in it.
And also, a very male term, but I won't go there ;)


As much as I like bicchy coke machine, I may just start saying "hey Stewie"

probably get this look..

images
 
David Megginson said:
Forget all this new BC/AD or BCE/CE stuff — let's go back to the Roman AUC (ab urbe condita — since the founding of the City). Or we could go with the French Republic Calendar from their revolution. Or maybe we could just all agree across Christendom when Easter is? People love debating about calendars, and always have.
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Mayan Calendar?
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
BCE, CE
Common Era
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Interesting. I learned BCE and CE (in addition to BC and AD) growing up but that's because I'm Jewish and that's where the terms originated some time in the 1700s. I had heard they were adopted in the academic and scientific fields in the past 30 years or so but never realized they ever went further than that. Seems silly if they've become the latest politically correct "thing." I thought it was a bit silly when I learned it.
 
CaptainXap said:
It boggles the mind to think that there are adults in the day and age that can't quite understand that you might not want to explicitly include gender in a job title.

Really? You can memorize every ****ing color of a flashing light at an airport but can't handle the reclassification of 'Stewardess' to 'Cabin crew'?
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Some of us just hate change!
 
midlifeflyer said:
Interesting. I learned BCE and CE (in addition to BC and AD) growing up but that's because I'm Jewish and that's where the terms originated some time in the 1700s. I had heard they were adopted in the academic and scientific fields in the past 30 years or so but never realized they ever went further than that. Seems silly if they've become the latest politically correct "thing." I thought it was a bit silly when I learned it.
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"BCE" and "CE" were just standard academic terminology when I was in grad school in the 1980s (along with lots of other date-related stuff like terminus-ad-quem, etc). We also had to keep track of whether historical dates were using the Julian or Gregorian calendar.

I suspect someone from outside academia saw them and got triggered into a "political correctness" rant.
 
Palmpilot said:
They're going to love it when they find out about master and slave hard drives! (Or do those exist anymore?)
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Not really :)

Version control at my code gigs keep the "known good" batch of code in master branch. (git)

One of my woke clients changed it to main.

The decrease in my productivity from getting it wrong consistently for both clients is measurable in thousands of dollars.

But we did not offend anyone with our private code repository. So yay? :D
 
Rushie said:
You opened a can of worms here by pointing out that “human” contains “man”. We can’t have that. Homo Sapiens Sapiens must now be referred to as huperson.

...
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but, "huperson" is no good... it has "son" in it.
 
Palmpilot said:
They're going to love it when they find out about master and slave hard drives! (Or do those exist anymore?)
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Disappearing fast. GitHub now defaults to "main" rather than "master" for the principal code branch, for example.

Language is always changing, and 'tis folly to try to hold it back, dost thou not agree?
 
David Megginson said:
Language never stops changing, and in English there's been a trend to less gender distinction in job titles over the past couple of centuries. Words like "authoress," "oratrix," and "poetess" were already mostly obsolete 100 years ago (and "aviatrix" was almost always tongue-in-cheek); now "actress," "hostess," and "stewardess" are going the same way. No big deal, and no different from ties getting wider or skinnier, or hemlines going up or down.
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True, but isn't it sexist that we always switch to the masculine forms of the words, and never to the feminine ones?

And why is it that men wearing dresses is far less common, and more often stigmatized, than women wearing pants?

(As a former girlfriend once pointed out, I think too much! ;))

By the way, why is it that "skinny" people have less skin than fat people?
 
Everskyward said:
I must confess to liking the new term, "parter" rather than boyfriend, girlfriend, roommate with privileges, etc...
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I thought the new term was "partner," which to me sounds like it's a business relationship! (Isn't that still illegal in most jurisdictions? ;))

[edit: I corrected a misspelling incorrectly! :redface:]
 
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Palmpilot said:
True, but isn't it sexist that we always switch to the masculine forms of the words, and never to the feminine ones?
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If we switched to the feminine forms, it would be more difficult to differentiate/emphasize women's accomplishments. :rolleyes:
 
schmookeeg said:
I like "partner" too, and have been trying to adopt it after hearing my UK in-laws bandy it about. It's still not natural or instinctive for me.

It's weird though, as it's very contextual. Some places see it as a neutral term like "spouse", other places definitely don't and give me that squiggle-eyed uncomfortable look, as they presume it to mean same-sex partner. Which is funny in its own way. Looking at you, Texas :D
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I don't mind the euphemistic "significant other," but I don't hear it much anymore.
 
Skyrys62 said:
I know right...and caucasian has 'asian' in it.
And also, a very male term, but I won't go there ;)
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Because the first syllable is a homophone? Wait, we probably can’t say that word either.
 
Brad W said:
and what used to be an equation...is now a number sentence....or some such thing.
I think the Language Artists have been at work.....
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That sounds too much like "prison term" for comfort!
 
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