Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
“Rule of thumb” I quit using this one after learning that it referred to a rule where you could legally beat your wife with a switch no wider than your thumb.
“Getting gyped” Learned this one is about associating gypsies with getting screwed over, so people started saying they got gyped because something bad happened.
Stuff I thought was completely innocuous but turns out has really bad connotations, so I dropped them.
The rule of thumb thing has zero evidence that it is true, and much evidence it is a baseless myth.
For fucks sake this shit drives me crazy, you people stop using common words or terms for reasons that aren’t even true!
I hope you learn from this that you shouldn’t just blindly believe whatever stupid shit you hear so you can virtue signal.
Man what the fuck, “rule of thumb” sounded like the most innocuous and random shit, why must you do this to me.
Take a look at the Wikipedia page. It really is innocuous, it actually originated as a form of measurement like feet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
The top comment is using false etymology that was propagated in the 1970s.
I respect your intuition to drop problematic phrases but you may have been lead astray on “rule of thumb” by a very common rumour (Wikipedia calls it ‘modern folk etymology’) that that is where it originated.
In fact no law ever existed and it was more used in trades as thumbs were an easy mode of measurement available to anyone (similar to the use of feet to measure!)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
The Wikipedia article even explains the “switch” rumour and provides some backstory and explanation to it.
So don’t feel weird using Rule of Thumb; it has more to do with carpentry than anything else.
never heard of that, really neat
Never knew that about “rule of thumb”. Personally, I think some expressions like that are so far removed from their original meaning that they really are innocuous for all practical purposes, but I see your point.
(Hard agree on “gyped” though LOL)
Getting gyped” Learned this one is about associating gypsies with getting screwed over, so people started saying they got gyped because something bad happened.
This one is hard for me because my first wife’s biological dad was from a family of … and I can’t even say it. My wife used to say “gypsy,” and her family all said gypsies, but I can’t say “Romani” either because they weren’t technically Romani. The family came from Europe via South America and are a large isolated family up and down the US eastern coast. Most of the rulers of this family clan are wanted by the FBI, and they are involved in everything from penny bunko scams to psychic parlors to carnivals and crooked contracting companies. My late wife’s family have been on a lot of TV shows since the 1970s, including 60 minutes and several specials on cable TV channels like Discovery. Everyone called them gypsies.
My wife died before the term “gypsy” started to be recognized as a slur, and I am curious how she would have handled it, because people used to ask her, “Oh Romani?” “No.” “Irish Traveler?” “No, they are the Ristick/Ely clan.” “… what?” But let me tell you, that family was very weird. Some of them still lived in vardas but most were circulating through private residences in common suburban neighborhoods. They were real hard to catch and pin down because almost all the top family members had multiple aliases, moved around a lot, and even my wife’s dad had several marriages, and claimed the kids on his taxes for decades, even if they were in their 30s (which is a problem my wife had to deal with, like having to tell the IRS, “No, I am 33 and married, I not 8 living with my dad in eastern Ohio.”). They have a very specific philosophy about their family as “chosen people” who were, as one story goes, forgiven by God because they stole one of the nails from the cross used to crucify Jesus. They don’t even consider what they do fraud or stealing any more than you or I would think a monkey owns a camera. I was married to her for 25 years, and heard all sorts of stories about that family, and why my mother-in-law ended up leaving.
I did a Google search on the Ristick family and saw a comment you made on Ars Technica Forums, back when you were Punk Walrus and your wife was alive. (At least given the similarity to username and background, I think it’s you.) My condolences on your wife. Did her death bring her father’s side of the family back into the picture at all? And did she end up writing the book everyone wants to read about the situation? They sound like a fascinating, but exhausting family. I’d think you’d need a robust journalism team to conduct all those interviews.
It is me.
Nope. Her death brought a LOT of people to the funeral, but mostly people she influenced through the anime and science fiction conventions she helped run. I won’t rule out her family showing up, but there were 250-300 people in attendance, and obviously I was distracted. She never wrote a book, but she did leave a some… let’s say artefacts… of her family. A tarot deck, a book about family life in the early 1900s, and stuff like that. I don’t know what to do with them, because I know some of them were stolen, and someone “outside the family” are not supposed to have them. She was never accepted as a “half breed,” and part of why her mother left was because of the abuse. I remember hearing about when someone in the family dies, people just “show up” without being notified. It may be apocryphal, legendary without much fact, I dunno. But it was one of those “psychic things” that her family supposedly possessed.
I do know that she found out that her father died (really died this time, not faked his death) around 2002-2003. She knew that her family wouldn’t want to speak to her, and if they did, they would probably do so for criminal intent. I remember that she encountered some of her extended family in public (one of the scams was an elderly woman with a small toddler, and an index card with “I am poor, and have no money to my grandchild”) and she would say “don’t interact with her. Look over there, there, and in that car: that’s family keeping an eye on her, and to warn her if things start to go down. Even if you say you know she’s a gypsy, yeah, don’t do that. They will find you, and hurt you.” Some of the men would see a dent in your car and say they could repair it for $200 or something. Hot women would approach you and stroke your hand while they had “visions.” She knew all the tricks. She was great at carnivals, too, like how things were rigged.
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Whenever I start saying “Easy Peasey…” there’s always a slightly too long pause before I say "… lemon squeezey "
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I stopped ironically wearing my Putin t-shirt.
I’ve done ny best to shake out ableist, racist, and other harmful speech.
We may be able to speak freely but we are all held accountable for the words we say
Yeah, I hit my teens at the turn of the millennium. Saying “gay,” and all it’s synonyms, was just an everyday thing. I watched the movie Waiting the other day and was surprised at how they dropped the word removed almost immediately and repeatedly, until I remembered that’s how people talked 20 years ago. It definitely made me think about how if you dial the clock back 60, 70 years, the N word was probably just as commonplace, and society has done a great job of getting rid of that. So I suppose I have hope that we can continue to wipe out hateful speech, we just need a minute.
I feel this is one of the big concerns around cancel culture. I said all types of stuff growing up as a millennial that was fine then, but probably wildly offensive in the future and not great now.
I’ve been trying to degender my language. I grew up saying “thank you (or excuse me, yes/no, etc) sir/ma’am” and then being in customer facing positions for years just absolutely cemented that in my mind to the point where it is an absolute knee jerk reaction to make assumptions about the gender of others. It’s an awful habit and makes me cringe every time I do it. I try to either just avoid the gender identifier (“thank you.”) which to my mind sounds impolite, or use gender neutral terms like “friend” which REALLY sound impolite. It’s tough but I’m working on it! The real trouble is getting my brain to stop gendering others and as a quite elderly millenial who actually identifies as Agender it is an annoying and difficult task. I’m envious of younger folks who won’t grow up with these kinds of ideas as a default.
I like the Battlestar Galactica solution to this: sir should not be gendered. It should just be a term of respect and maybe authority. It’s gendered more out of convention than definition. I don’t know how we reach that point, but that’s my reference. I think it basically has to start with the military. They should stop using ma’am for women and use sir.
I feel like we made many terms much more gendered than they were before. If I’m hanging with a mixed group and I say “hey guys” towards the whole group “guys” is being used as a genderless, inclusive term.
I personally feel that in everyday casual conversation we should focus on the intent of what’s spoken and not get into the minutia of the terminology. Sir/ma’am are terms of respect and the underlying message behind them is respect. If a person accidentally misgendered someone while using them, it doesn’t negate the intended respect.
I really like this take and love it when I come across it in media.
“Thank you friend” is impolite? Maybe it’s informal, but I think that’s a great solution to the problem. I can’t imagine anyone having a problem with that except maybe an aggro asshole.
Maybe I’ve just spent too long arguing with aholes on the internet but to me calling someone “friend” comes across as very sarcastic and condescending
Edit, it’s like calling someone you don’t know “buddy” or “pal”
I’m not your friend, pal!
Listen here, buddy!
I could see it online, yeah. If you use a friendly tone in person it wouldn’t be a problem.
Fair enough! I do use it pretty frequently. I would really like it if someone said that to me, so maybe it isn’t as impolite as I perceive it. Thanks.
Can we just create some genderless pronouns instead of asking everyone you meet for theirs? I’d be down with that.
I mean, isn’t that exactly what you just used? They/them are genderless pronouns that can be used for both plural and singular subjects. If you don’t know someone’s gender, it’s already what people default to.
Like, “They’re sending someone over at 3, but I don’t know when they’ll get here.” Or, “That person? Nah, I don’t know them.” Or, “Whose is this? Is it yours? Is it theirs?”
When people first started yelling about having to be polite about genders I always found it odd how they’d angrily refuse to use the neutral pronouns already in English, while using those same pronouns in their own sentences without really realizing it.
The only problem I have with, “They” is that it requires context to distinguish the plural form and the singular. We need a dedicated, genderless word for singular third-person.
Go with “Thank you, customer”
Really push the dystopia with dead eyes and big smile as you do it.
Very fortunately, I now work from home in a job with basically zero interaction with anyone at all (it’s great) so this mostly applies to casual social interactions at say, a grocery store. I have to say though, using your suggestion in this context is actually hilarious and would be super gratifying.
Very fortunately, I now work from home in a job with basically zero interaction with anyone at all (it’s great) so this mostly applies to casual social
What has the world come to that people are so happy to be hermits? How do you find joy in your life sequestered from society? Not hating, genuine question.
Not the guy you replied to but I’m fully WFH and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The amount of social anxiety I used to have working in an office was almost unbearable. I’m not sequestered from society or anything like that, I have a pretty active social life outside of work, but being forced to interact with co-workers in an office when I can do the same job from home just sucks
I spend 9-12 hours a day working on a computer listening to audio on headphones. I am so glad my workplace decided to go fully and permanently remote. I can’t imagine a situation where me being in an office would improve my work performance in any way.
However, my partner hates working from home and desperately missed having an office to go to during the pandemic. His company closed their office as well, so now he just meets up with his boss a few times a week to work at a cafe or something. I wouldn’t mind that but I have a ton of peripherals I need to use in addition to my computer and the couple times I’ve tried it has been more irritating than anything else to lug everything around and spend 15 minutes setting everything up.
I mean, I don’t think people being happy in self directed work from a comfortable environment free from the scrutiny and drama of coworkers really says anything at all about “what has the world come to.” If I want to socialize, I do that outside of my work hours, and my work is far more productive and enjoyable without the constant interference and distraction of either coworkers or the general public. My experience with my past workplaces are my own, and I am far happier and have a much better quality of life without forcible socialization with people I would under no other circumstances outside of prison or a mass transport breakdown spend most of my waking hours around.
I am genuinely quite happy with my life. I have friends, family, a longterm partner, pets, a career that I love (that I believe does a genuine service to my fellow humans), money in the bank, and rewarding hobbies. I highly value my free time and like to use it how I see fit, instead of trying to wedge myself into social situations I don’t find enjoyable or fulfilling. If that makes me a hermit, I am totally fine with that.
(Also just saying you may find a higher than average number of people who are introverted or value alone time posting on a relatively niche social media site with barriers to entry that require at least some level of computer savvy).
If I want to socialize, I do that outside of my work hours
I see. I didn’t read it that way.
I’m not trying to sound insensitive (I never come across anything like that in real life), but is it really that bad to assume someone’s gender? You literally don’t know anything about that person, or how they identify. Do people get offended when you missgender them if it’s the first time you’ve met them?
I could understand someone being offended if you do missgender them every time, but what if it’s the first time you’re meeting? Just say sorry and then say the correct pronoun.
First of all, I barely gender people (I’ve always been like this, saying friend, partner, mate…) so I’m really surprised by this new trend. Maybe I’m getting old lol.
It’s not so much about offending someone (and yes, people absolutely do sometimes get aggressively upset about it) and more about attempting to change my own mental habits. I believe like race, sexual orientation, and politics, gender is a personal topic that doesn’t really need to enter into a casual, never to be repeated interaction between two people. You don’t say “excuse me, old person,” based on your perceptions of another’s appearance. Why is gender any different? It certainly isn’t an objective concept or one that can be readily or factually assumed. It’s outmoded and unnecessary.
Also, as I commented earlier, if I am using what I mean to be a term of respect to make someone else feel confident and comfortable, and through my language I risk doing the opposite, why would I want to do that if it’s something I can personally change?
In my last job (which was on a team of all cis women), people shared their pronouns…both singular AND plural (i.e., how they wanted to be referred to in a group). Which is pretty bizarre. Like, what if one person’s plural pronoun is “folks” and another’s is “friends”…then which term are you supposed to use?
And I came to hate saying “friends” because we weren’t friends. It was a soul-sucking corporate gig, and I wasn’t part of their mom squad…I never saw them outside of work, and I was always the last to learn about team changes, so let’s be real: we aren’t friends, we’re coworkers. It got creepy being expected to smile and address everyone as “friends”!
FWIW, I have nothing against folks or guys or y’all ;)
This is what bugs me about chosen pronouns, it’s like a right someone has to tell other people how to use language, that can get complicated and needs memorization. People should have leeway on the words they use, even if they shouldn’t be making unwanted assertions about other peoples gender. Would be better to just have a set of genderless pronouns that are always polite/safe to use.
I resonate deeply with this. I can’t be bothered to memorise all these pronouns. I’d of course do it for people I am close to, though.
I maintain that “they/them” is that always-safe genderless pronoun type.
I do use singular they a lot for lack of alternatives, but it can get pretty awkward when both an individual and a group of people are part of the context of your statement. Do you accept the ambiguity and that people may misinterpret you? Spend a lot of time structuring your words to fight against that ambiguity? Overuse the word ‘person’ instead of using pronouns? I think it would be a strict improvement to the language if we just made ‘xe’ or something a real word.
Agreed.
or just refer to people as ma’am/sir, and if they get offended it’s their problem
In an office?? I feel like that would be weird or come across as sarcastic. I call my boss by his first name. Heck, we don’t even call CEOs sir/ma’am anymore.
it’s a term of respect - but business cultures differ between corporations
I’m not British but I just say “cheers mate” to everyone. Works for me.
Interesting that this sir/ma’am thing is very location-dependent. I’ve been living in Scotland more more than a decade now and I probably heard someone address me as “sir” a grand total of twice. I remember because it always felt so jarring, like why was this random shop assistant speaking to me so subserviently O.o
But I heard in some places (USA?) it’s very commonplace.
You know we’ve gone too far when people feel bad for saying thank you sir/mam…
I don’t think it is univerally okay to make assumptions about someone’s personal identity before you know it. I am happy calling someone sir or ma’am after I know their gender identity. But in a casual interaction between strangers, there is no need for it at all and it is just an ingrained and outdated social convention that I personally am striving to move past.
Not all people identify with the two-gender labels. For instance, I’m genderqueer, and I’d feel very dysphoric if someone told me “ma’am.”
I’m a cis lady and I don’t like being called ma’am. It feels so forced and phony.
I mentioned it to my mom the first time I got "ma’am"ed. I’m a cis woman and I hated it! Mom, who looks much more ma’am-worthy than I, said the same thing. I don’t know if anyone wants to be a “ma’am.”
I don’t care one way or the other as long as it’s an attempt at politeness. It’s fine.
They don’t feel bad for using those terms, they feel bad about using them on someone incorrectly. There’s nuance here that is lost on those who struggle to grasp the difference and phrasing things as if we’re being forced to stop using them or “delete them from our vocabulary” is counterproductive.
I agree.
This world is going to hell in a wokebasket if people start thinking about what comes out their fucking mouth.
/s, cos you never fuckin know nowadays.
At one point, people thought we had gone too far because they weren’t allowed to say the N word anymore.
Sir and Ma’am are only respectful if the person hears it as such.
That’s fine, but also the vast majority of people are content being called by their assumed pronouns. I’m all for inclusion but I’m not going to erase two perfectly innocuous words from my vocabulary because one person might be sensitive about it.
Use your best judgement, if somebody corrects you then apologize and use their preferred pronoun moving forward. If that’s not good enough, that’s their problem.
Eh, it costs me nothing and actually helps me with a personal goal I have to not make assumptions about someone’s identity based on what I perceive. As someone who has been misgendered many times in the past, it truly hurts, and while that may be a personal problem, I don’t really love going around potentially causing others to feel hurt in any way.
That’s fair and I appreciate your insight here. I imagine you “know” that those who misgendered you didn’t do so intentionally or intend on being hurtful, but I’m sure it still hurts anyway. I’m sorry for that.
I suppose in the real world, using my best judgement means that if I’m unsure, I skip the gendered pronoun. It still requires an assumption based on perception, admittedly not ideal. But I also view sir and ma’am as a traditional sign of respect and I’ve used them liberally my whole life. I usually give an enthusiastic yes sir or ma’am even at the drive through.
It’s obviously a nuanced discussion that we’re not going to solve here and today, but again I appreciate your non-aggressive take, a perspective I didn’t have before.
Thanks for engaging in productive discussion! And yes, I fully realize that in almost all but very specific and relatively easily identifiable cases, misgendering is something that happens accidentally and is not intended to be injurious. But for anyone who does not identify with their gender assigned at birth, it really does feel super bad.
I love that you also seem to have the same regard for social politness as I do. I feel like as someone who wants to use terms of respect to make others feel confident and comfortable, the possibility that I may accidentally do the very opposite of that is something that makes me want to try and better the way I interact.
It’s obviously a nuanced discussion that we’re not going to solve here and today
Fuck that. NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL WE GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS THING!
Edit: /s just in case
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Are they wrong about public opinion of the N word though? This entire thread is a collection of words/phrases/actions that people (and often society at large) used to think were completely harmless but gradually realized carried some negative connotation–or were even downright slurs–to certain people, and committed to stop using.
This is not necessarily a dig on you personally, but if you think that people proactively being considerate of fellow humans is a bad thing or “going too far”, maybe that’s a you problem.
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Nah, that sounds like more your thing. I’m going to do what makes those around me happy and comfortable.
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Diet, lmao.
I played Modern Warfare 2 at 16. That’s all I need to say. Not proud of my early internet years
Misogyny in books. I was reading a Morse book. He described the woman of a couple from dyed hair to hammer toes but had no physical description of her husband whatsoever.
I graduated high school in 2004. So many slurs back then. So uncomfortable with them now. Good riddance.
I’m happy for your realisation, OP!
For me it was homophobic and ableist slurs as general words for “bad”. It’s very common in my native society, so after I started learning more about social justice issues, it took a few years to wean myself off.
Also, looking back, I realise now that in middle school I was lowkey cruel to some classmates, manipulated them for my own amusement. I was never one to bully others, but I was often a bystander entertained by others being bullied. (Even though I was being bullied myself by the same people on other occasions. But I somehow never made that connection with their other victims, I guess my empathy wasn’t fully developed back then. Or maybe it was a mental self-defence mechanism, idk.)
Nothing. Everything is still funny in the right or wrong context.
Racism.
While I was never into it myself thankfully, I let it pass a lot in my family. Being in university changed that though, it just feels too uncomfortable to have my family say racist shit in front of me while I have so many people of color as friends. I still struggle to call out their transphobia though but that is due to my own identity issues.
In my early life I was raised in Kansas fundie hell. I graduated to 4chan. To call me racist would have been an understatement; “proud white supremacist”, more like. (LOL I used the term “race nationalist” then)
Perhaps my proudest personal achievement has been unraveling that disgusting tapestry of who I was.
Good on ya.
I never realized how frequently I called things “lame” until I said it in front of a coworker paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. Hopefully he understood, but it just took that one glance telling me he heard it for me to stop. To try to stop.
