Found this article in the longreads community arguing why “politically correct” terms shouldn’t be used. You guys have any thoughts?

  • @AbouBenAdhemEnglish
    7•2 days ago

    The term he keeps using as his main example is “differently-abled”, which he says has been “thrust upon an eye-rolling public”. But no one is being forced to use it, or even expected to use it—it certainly isn’t a societal norm. His complaint isn’t that he’s being forced to say it, but that he’s been forced to hear it.

    The common thread behind such complaints is that critics feel new “PC” terms are giving established terms new meanings unintended by the speakers. But the point being made by people who use alternate terms like “differently-abled” is that the established terms are polysemic, and people using them have been saying things they didn’t intend all along.

    • @captainlezbian
      3•22 hours ago

      I think it comes down to at its greatest core: is there a reason and are the people affected on board. And I’ll present 3 examples: transgender, differently abled, and latine

      Back in the old days trans people were called transsexuals. Unfortunately that word had problems; it was a medical term, it’s diagnostic criteria had problems to say the least, and the “sexual” component had people uncomfortable as it didn’t have anything to do with sexuality. The community adopted a new term, and it spread, and eventually the old term became seen as outdated and like evidence that someone hadn’t been around trans people since we started defining our own selves.

      Differently abled came from abled people who were uncomfortable acknowledging that disability is defined by what we can’t do. The social model of disability exists and bears quite a bit of merit, but the fact is it was just a platitude. It was rejected by the community it described. I don’t hate it. Good try and whatnot, try asking some of us before coining a new term next time.

      Latine is more controversial. It was coined by queer Spanish speakers looking to create a gender neutral grammatical gender for Spanish that doesn’t have the jar of latinx or the unpronouncability of latin@ (which i recall had been coined as a feminist attempt to remove the neutral masculine). However many Spanish speakers don’t want a neuter gender in their language and it developed some culture war bullshit, in part because queer non-spanish speakers picked it up fairly quickly especially after years of hate against latinx and because the Spanish speakers we’re most in conversation with are the queer ones.

      Oh and for a bonus one. Hearing impaired got popular as the politically correct version of hard of hearing in the late 20th century (idk when I grew up with my mom saying both terms but my grandma said hard of hearing, but schools and audiologists said hearing impaired). Anyways the deaf fucking hate the term and it’s become a clear identifier that someone sees deafness as a medical thing entirely and not a community and a culture. This has lead to the idea that while hearing impaired is the politically correct term, hard of hearing is the culturally correct term, which is a distinction I quite like