You folks realize I hope that the idea is people can choose what they want pronouns they be called.
You are a doubleplusgood newspeaker.
Getting to choose is the point isn’t it that OP posted about? Freedom of thoughts and speech.
No, it is the exact opposite.
Effective communication of complex and controversial ideas and concepts requires clear, consistent, and well-defined language. The ongoing attempts to change definitions of well-defined words is a technique used to obfuscate intelligent debate, and is often applied with the intent of tamping down competing ideas by replacing technical terms with emotion-laden speech. This conveniently allows the censoror to force the opposing argument to be banned in practice.
For example, electrical connectors are clearly defined as "male" and "female". These terms have been in used for over a century, and are embedded in the language, training, experience, and documentation of our entire global electrical grid. Similarly, wires are color-coded black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, etc. Each color has specific meaning, and again, these meanings have been consistent and well-defined for many decades. Control systems are also well-defined with "master", "slave", and "peer" devices being the standard usage since control schemes were first created.
There is a move to change these basic definitions - a move that almost certainly would result in misoperation and failure of major infrastructure systems, and likely many injuries and deaths. I simply cannot conceive of a more arrogant, unsafe, and self-centered concept than to decide that we must avoid calling the white wire "white" and the black wire "black", just because some political fool might be able to generate offense among a few people who sit on their couch at home watching propaganda disguised as "news". When we have a line crew working in a substation on a 38,000 Volt feeder, it is absolutely idiotic to do anything that reduces the clarity of communications. Keep in mind that on these crews, we often have people nearing retirement working alongside people straight out of school. The "old hands" who understand the system should not and will not change their terminology, as there is no good reason to do so, and trying to force such a change will absolutely create confusion on the part of everyone involved. When life safety is at hand, I don't care one little bit whether someone outside the industry is "comfortable" with the terminology; their apparent need to not be offended can never be allowed to take priority over clear communications.
So no, allowing someone to force a re-definition of terms is not about "freedom of thought and speech". It is about trying to ban anything that someone can conveniently define as "offensive" rather than taking the time to learn the subject and debate ideas intelligently and openly. As a side effect, it creates immense confusion and difficulty for anyone trying to communicate in clear, unambiguous terms.
Or perhaps I should use the
approved language and simply say:
Long sentences are bad, and many words are offensive.
