Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:08 UTC (Sat) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Loaded terms in free software by nim-nim
Parent article: Loaded terms in free software

Yes, I do know what you mean - all of the groups I've named would be part of what you mean had they not succeeded in their goals.

What you're talking about is the nasty tendency in popular history to elide the underlying vicious mobs that were part of how these groups succeeded, because that's not a nice look; we remember the vicious mobs in the Nazi Reich, because they lost, but not the nasty mobs in the British Empire or the American War of Independence, because they were victors.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 20, 2020 21:49 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (12 responses)

You have spontaneous explosions of violence, when things become intolerable (for example the French or Russian revolutions) and you have vigilantism, where assholes drape themselves in past wrongs and use the security of the new social order power to settle accounts with whoever they feel superior to (ie raping the local noble daughter long after nobles were overthrown, denouncing the neighbor next door as a bad communist, hanging a few Jews because their ancestors crucified Jesus, and so on).

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 7:01 UTC (Sun) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (11 responses)

So, practically, because a lot of posters have been playing on legitimate emotions and anger to push word policing:

1. the French revolutionaries renamed months because they considered months names loaded words, that condoned the power of the Catholic church, which had been sitting on vast amounts of riches while the country was starving. You could be sent to the guillotine just because a local asshole caught you giving a date using the past christian calendar, which “proved” you were either a counter revolutionary, or “hiding” counter revolutionaries by using the same language as them

2. the Russians revolutionaries were very much of word-smithing and loaded terms too

3. Mac Carthy did the same in reverse in anti-communist USA

4. before that use of common words, that happened to appear in Catholic lithurgy texts, could send you to jail (or worse) in Reformist parts of Europe as a Popist, and use of other common words, that were prevalent in some Psalms, could do the same in counter-reformist parts.

5. Mysoginists would burn women for a bad word that showed they were witches deep down.

And so on.

That‘s what loading common language words with connotations gives you. It’s not an innocent peace-giving atonement exercise. It’s giving weapons to the worst of us to do their worst. Usually, against the most vulnerable and fragile and marginalized parts of the population, because that’s the safest target for local bullies.

You will have Latinos sent packing for something that shows disrespect to Blacks, Blacks dismissed for something taken as mysoginist by the local mistress, Gays looked over for some other loaded term use, and so on.

It never ends because language has lots of history (and when it has not, history is fairly easy to make up), providing endless opportunities for the population layers in power to condemn those who are not.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:12 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (10 responses)

Ah, I see your misconception. These words are not being loaded with connotations now; they've had these bad connotations since at least the 1950s, but instead of trying to handle these bad connotations (left-overs of Empire for a start), we've burnt records of our atrocities, raised Churchill onto a pedestal, and pretended that none of the bad things actually happened. The USA has had similar issues addressing its own racism, and again has preferred to pretend that it never gave these words bad connotations.

And now that lack of addressing deep issues is coming to a head, and because we've not even attempted to address the problem, we're being asked to retire meanings that we used to justify not looking at the bad side of what we did, so that we have no choice left but to accept that we did engage in hugely unjust behaviour, and that it still has echoes today.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 11:39 UTC (Sun) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (9 responses)

Sorry, but I see people working very hard at loading those connotations right now, at emphasizing them when they were marginal, at making them the primary meaning, or even creating them from scratch when they did not exist before.

Indignation at others can be an addictive business.

It’s no better right now than when the same rightful thinkers condemned a Black man for a word that could be constructed as a sexual advance to a White woman.

Whoever is the target of their angst does not matter much (and whoever they pretend defending does not matter much either), only that they are on the rightful side, and prove it by abusing someone not on the rightful side.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 21, 2020 12:54 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (8 responses)

Then you've been in blissful ignorance for at least the last 30 years. This has been happening all that time, and there's been backpressure because "we don't see colour" or "racism is being dealt with". It's taken it erupting into the wider public before you see it, and now you're seeing it all the time.

Don't mistake your ignorance for fact.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 11:32 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (7 responses)

I see you nicely evaded the argument about what word policing actually leads to in real life, and resorted to emotional appeal instead.

Which, is pretty much what I wrote people were doing before you objected.

Thank you for making my point.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 12:03 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (6 responses)

And I see that you are continuing to cherry-pick only the examples that prove your point, and have ignored the examples I have given of cases where word policing has led to better outcomes.

Thank you for proving my point!

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 15:55 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (5 responses)

What examples exactly?

You’ve provided none except for a piece of clearly offensive USA slang which is hardly in the same category as the common words you are crusading against.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:02 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

Exactly - I provided an example, and you've completely ignored it because it doesn't fit your narrative.

And now, instead of addressing how this is also an example of language policing, and it does improve things, you're dismissing it as "clearly offensive" instead of explaining how it's an exception to your narrative.

Please, be consistent. Either language policing is an unmitigated bad, in which case you need to explain why this particular instance of language policing is an exception, or you accept that language policing is sometimes OK, in which case your whole argument (that we can't do this because language policing is an unmitigated bad) falls apart.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:24 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, it is an example of policing, just like the deaths that triggered the current demonstrations were an example of policing.

The world is not binary and Manichean (like you want human language to be binary and Manichean).

A clear insult that can not be constructed as anything but an insult is not in the same category as common words which have many different applications.

And, BTW, thank you for confirming that your “examples” (plural) are limited to this single wikipedia link.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 22, 2020 16:49 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

"nigger in the woodpile" is not an insult - it literally just means "something that ought to be discussed, but is being hidden instead".

And I'm not the one saying that language is binary and Manichean - that's your claim, to which I have added an example that you do not like, so you are instead reduced to insulting me because to do otherwise is to admit that your position is incoherent and amounts to "I like these words, why can't I make other people use them even though they want to change to other words they like better?"

And thank you for confirming that you don't want to engage with your own prejudices here, but instead want to be an authority about what I am and am not permitted to believe.

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 25, 2020 5:58 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

You can be whoever you want to be. That's not my business. Just like others can be whoever they want to be. That's not *your* business to police.

Policing behaviour is a matter for the police, applying democratically voted laws, not for self appointed vigilantes that invent strenuous pretexts so they can indulge in harassment and bask in the power of imposing their will on others

Loaded terms in free software

Posted Jun 25, 2020 7:47 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

And yet you are policing people's behaviour, by saying that they are not permitted to change the language used in FOSS to language they are more comfortable with?

Why are you so damned upset about people stepping up to do the work to change the language here?