Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
It's pretty remarkable that this conflates:<p>- Well-known slurs like "Jewed"<p>- Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite"<p>- Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica"<p>- Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower"<p>- Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid")<p>- Words that, if you look into their history, originally had something to do with some racist practice ("grandfather" something in)<p>- Words that never had anything to do with racism, but someone who was really on high alert might wonder if they ever did ("tarball" for "archive made with the tar tool")<p>- Anything that might be derogatory to anybody ("Karen": "This term is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors.")<p>- Terms that I genuinely have no idea how anyone could view as harmful in their actual context: "user" ("it can also negatively be associated with those who suffer from substance abuse issues"), "submit" ("Depending on the context, the term can imply allowing others to have power over you.")<p>Very much an "arson, murder, and jaywalking" approach.