Banning words won’t make the world more just
The pendulum is swinging back because equity language censors took this way way too far.<p>People-first language (&quot;enslaved people&quot; not &quot;slaves&quot;) makes complete sense to me, but making a big fuss about how common English idioms like being &quot;blind to a problem&quot; is somehow offensive is going to earn you nothing but eyerolls from nearly everyone. Some of these, like &quot;grandfathering&quot;, cannot even be understood without deep diving on etymology to discover the racist origins. People are so far up their own asses on victimhood culture that the people of high education and privilege driving these initiatives are looking for literally any reason to feign offense on behalf of other peoples&#x27; identities and disabilities.<p>With the prioritization of equity also comes erasure of identity. For example, it seems like we can&#x27;t say &quot;mother&quot; anymore in medical settings. For my partner&#x27;s entire pregnancy, our providers only referred to &quot;birthing people&quot; because of some tiny number of trans men that exist and also want to give birth. I support trans people living however they want, but my mother was a mother, goddammit, not a &quot;birthing person&quot;, and I don&#x27;t appreciate anyone implying that this word and identity are somehow offensive. At work, a &quot;women in engineering&quot; group got renamed to something bland like &quot;gender minorities in tech&quot;.<p>The recently reported bowdlerization of Roald Dahl by &#x27;sensitivity readers&#x27; is another symptom of this illness. The whole equity language sterilization process forgets that words which are synonyms are not interchangeable because to the writer each word is chosen with intention for the flavor it provides, its connotations and rhythm, the image it creates in the mind. People should be able to communicate using whatever words they wish. Otherwise we&#x27;re just deleting colors from the artists&#x27; palette.