Make your language more inclusive, or you’re a bad person.
The trouble with that is, language can’t be “inclusive.” If it’s inclusive it will stop meaning anything, and then it will be useless. We need language. It does so much work for us. Imagine being suddenly transported to a tiny distant country where you don’t know the language and the people there don’t know yours – imagine how helpless you would feel.
We need the word “women,” the actual word that means what it has meant all these centuries. We need it and we need it to go on meaning what it has meant. If we’re forced to change it to mean “and some men” we’ll just have to find a new word to mean what women meant until that day. There’s no point in telling us to make it more “inclusive” because that’s not its job.
Comments
20 responses to “You can’t include everything”
Fascinating how people can’t see that what they’re asking for is not mutual respect, but one-way subordination.
I see this too many times. The wokey left comes up with a new language rule or word they insist is the best
and least oppressive, and then they say you better like it or else you’re a Nazi. No, you don’t get to decide how we refer to you. That only works the other way around, because you’re oppressive and we’re not.
If you demand that language change to include you, think of it as being disrespectful. You’re refusing to let the other person use terms that they prefer, as someone would when forcing themselves through someone’s else’s legitimate boundary. If you still don’t care about THAT— well, what you’re admitting is you don’t respect the other person.
Maybe think on that.
Calling us “women” is using the word we prefer…and on top of that, the word that is the most accurate. That doesn’t matter, of course, because we are not and never have been oppressed. Which should generate an enormous WTF? from anyone encountering trans arguments, but unfortunately, they never word it so clearly.
Well I don’t respect everyone, and I sure don’t respect anyone because I am told to. How’s the view from up there on Mount Moral anyway, Ms Ng?
…as opposed to how respectful it is to exclude everyone who fails to think or feel the right way about themselves…
As I keep saying, if the person formerly known as Ellen Page is a “man”, then I’m not. There is no way to define that person in without defining me out. After all you have just taken the only thing that ever made me a man out of the definition of “man”. The old definition of “woman” included half the world’s population. TRAs have yet to demonstrate that their definition (if they had one) includes anyone but the TIMs. I really wish the GC side would make a much worse stink on this point.
As far as language is concerned, the term woke or wokey is unhelpful. If you are opposed to an idea, then debate the idea. Tell us why you are opposed to it, or why you think the idea/proposal is worthy of adopting. Don’t just throw in the term ‘woke’ as if it somehow that ‘adds value’ to your comment. It doesn’t.
Human language was most inclusive when our primate ancestors communicated with grunts. Since then, the goal has been to create more exclusivity and nuance in language. The more nuanced the rhetoric, the less likely one is to be confused or misinterpret the intent.
Serious question (well sort of), does this mean that Celeste will drop the use of the term cis, given that most of us don’t like it?
I don’t know that she has used the word. I didn’t follow the twitter thread but it is a fairly safe bet.
“as you would with a nickname”
Except that you don’t get to decide your nickname. I became Brasso at school, and didn’t like it, and then grew to like it. But it was – just like my actual name – other people’s idea.
You don’t decide on a nickname and then go up to people to shake their hand saying “I’m John Smith, and my nickname is Hannibal”.
I guess that if you really don’t like a nickname, you could request that people stop using it. But if you make a fuss about it, they’ll probably just use it more on the basis that you’re being a wazzock. Quite right, too.
Hmm. That sounds too Gordonstoun for my taste. I think people get to reject malicious nicknames, and that doing so isn’t necessarily being a wazzock. Some nicknames are intentionally insulting. Women get to object to being called “Babe” or “Honey” or “bitch” by some random guy on the street, and I think the principle applies pretty broadly.
But if it’s just a short form of your name or similar then ok maybe don’t be precious about it. That’s maybe being a wazzock.
Yeah well some people prefer a more formal mode of address and resent being pressured to use a stranger’s nickname as if he were their personal chum who lives down the road.
So many of us just don’t WANT to be incloooooded.
@Ophelia –
Ha! I did want to go to Gordonstoun when I was a kid: a number of relatives went there and seemed to like it, so I was brought up on the idea of it being a Good Place.
Alas, it was well out of our economic range by then.
Heh.
It was in my head because of an excellent (and horrifying) series on Radio 4 about sexual abuse in posh schools – Eton, Fettes, Gordonstoun.
The first thing you’d do is start to point at things and say your word for them, and listen to theirs. Because language is inherently exclusive by necessity and design.
I don’t agree with this. I was subjected to nicknames that were insulting, which by your standard I could rightly reject. But my father and my grandmother each gave me a nickname (not the same one) that I hated. I did not say anything because they were, well, my father and my grandmother. When my first husband picked up the use of my father’s nickname for me, I told him I did not like the nickname, and I preferred he did not use it. He understood. He never did again. (In other words, that is not why he is my ex.)
I think the proper thing to do is call people the name with which they introduce themselves; that is probably what they want to be called. If they introduce themselves with “My name is Hortense, but I prefer to be called Quigley”, I am going to call them Quigley. It just makes for better relationships.
I think it is by far the ruder thing to shorten someone’s name that to correct someone when they shorten your name.
As an example of the above, I point to our blog host, who did not like being called Ophie. I don’t blame her.
I’m fine with friends calling me that. Little snots taunting me on Twitter, not so much.
Guess that’s sort of like my not saying anything to my dad or granddad. It sort of sounds…sort of…affectionate at that point.
Not even sort of, to me – just old family names. Mind you, there are sillier ones that I keep shtum about.