Comment by austin-cheney
3 days ago
I am not aware of actual code removal but skirting in that direction there was a movement, just a couple years back, to replace words that had become more offensive than they were in the recent past. One example is renaming master to main.
I am not stating any opinion for or against any words or terms in this context.
Somewhat on a tangent, but when people talk about offensive language in the context of cultural criticism they don't mean terms that cause the people who hear them to be offended but things that may diminish the value of some people in the eyes of the people who hear them. I.e. something is offensive, in this sense, to some group X not if people in group X are offended when they themselves are exposed to it but if people who hear it may come to devalue people in group X. Whether it actually does or does not is another matter. In that sense, the discussion of the clitoris in an anatomy book is not offensive in the same way as the term master, but its absence is. Its inclusion could be offensive in the sense of scandalising some people who see it, but it's not the same sense.
My grandfather was a slave - he passed in 2007. I have no objection to the term master, nor have I heard anybody ever who was affected by actual slavery to take offence to the term.
I remember much debate about this, and not once was an actual affected person mentioned who took offence.
1. My whole point was that it is not about anyone in the affected group taking offence. The question is whether other people can come to devalue people in the affected group. In this context "offensive" doesn't mean taking offence, but devaluing. To take and extreme and controved example, if I tell a subordinate that the women on our team were "diversity hires" who did not deserve to be hired, the harm is not in a woman hearing I said that. It is done even if none of the women on the team ever know I said that. Similarly, it doesn't matter if the women on our team all agreed with that statement and weren't offended by it.
2. I make absolutely no claim about the effectiveness of using or avoiding certain terms even in the relevant context. I'm only saying that people misunderstand what "offensive" means in this context. It means things that may make some people think less of others, whether or not those others know about it or are offended by it.
I cannot own the perspectives and unspoken histories of other people, nor will I try. Trying to do so ultimately only results in shades of self-censorship or poor imitation.
Instead I will do my best to balance my language between brevity and specificity while hoping my instructions are clear, direct, and honest for the audience. Everything else is left to chance.
I have found over the years, the degree of my communication's success is left more to the particularities and desires of group thought from a given audience than from the words themselves. I come to this conclusion through numerous times of providing the same communication, verbatim, to difference audiences and watching the wildly differing results.
If I lived by commission I suspect I would alter my behavior. Instead, I manage a software team for a living.
I wasn't trying to suggest how individuals should behave nor claim that language has a large impact on social dynamics in general. I'm merely saying that in the context of cultural criticism the thing that is sometimes referred to as "offensive language" doesn't mean language that may insult or offend the sensiblities of those who hear it but language that may seem to make those who hear it think less of others. I don't know if this is useful or silly, but that is what it means.
This is insightful. Thank you.
Renaming things to better names happens all the time, selectively removing something is much worse. Especially for a reference book like Gray's Anatomy
The severity of harm is highly subjective, though I do agree with you about the harm. The more important thing is the intent, which completely underscores that severity.
Main is also an easier name for beginners. I’m old school and always got the comparison of master branch to master tapes and such things, but people new to this stuff wouldn’t necessarily have the same intuition about the name. Main is just clearer (for now). Similar to blacklist/whitelist. I had no context for either of those and it took me soooooo long to remember what they meant. Allowlist/denylist is just so much clearer. Any reduction in harm, however tiny, is a nice bonus to just making things clearer for more people
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It's not even "was", that movement still exists. People are still out there trying to remove terms of art on the basis of the theoretical offense felt by an extreme minority of people. It's ridiculous.
Or, it's thoughtful and considerate.
Potato, potahto.
That's not even remotely similar.