Now it really is getting stupid

Discussion in 'Bulletin Board' started by North Yorks Red, Apr 6, 2018.

  1. Con

    Conan Troutman Well-Known Member

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    Where does Laurel Hubbard fit in to all of this?
     
  2. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    Fair enough although I am not angry, just sad that you are so oversensitive to things that are relatively unimportant given what is going on in the world.
    Just to add though that Britain's current fixation with PC, perceived inequality issues is far in excess of anything you see or hear in most of the European countries and is potentially damaging as important decisions in organisations are far to often influenced by a small vociferous minority with a narrow agenda. This quoted example being a case in point.
    Even the latest issues regarding mandatory company declarations regarding pay differentials is nonsensical as median pay does not weight the statistics in consideration of the spread of roles within the workforce (notwithstanding the fact there is a still genuine long term issue regarding equal pay for the same roles in many companies).
     
  3. JamDrop

    JamDrop Well-Known Member

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    I am not oversensitive just pointing out that someone received a factually incorrect letter from a company and contacted them to tell them so. It probably took her the whole of ten minutes. It benefited the company as a whole as they are no longer sending out wrong/outdated information and it benefited the women who work at the company as they will no longer be referred to as men. It didn't affect a single person who has posted in this thread.

    Is it the most important issue in the world? No, of course not. Then again, 99% of things we spend our life thinking about or doing isn't. Had she spent the 10 minutes I imagine it took her to contact the company doing something else, I sincerely doubt it would have cured world hunger or whatever you consider the most important issue to currently be. We all waste time constantly, I can take 10 minutes deciding what to wear on a morning, I spent 2 hours at a football match on Saturday, I spent the same amount of time at the cinema on Sunday. I have also spent 3 and a half hours this morning edting a science book so that it is accessible for blind and print disabled people and I'm only a third of the way through it. It's relatively unimportant given what is going on in the world but for the people who may want to read/listen to it then I suspect they won't find it a waste of time. The fact is, we can't never do anything just because there is always something more important we could be doing instead.
     
  4. Burgundy Red

    Burgundy Red Well-Known Member

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    Similarly I am not "offended" just because I'm prepared to consider that it might be just as easy to use a gender-neutral term as not. It's not going to affect someone's ability to feel bad about Syria if they say "person" instead of "man".

    France is debating changing its language structure to eliminate gender disparity (masculine dominates over feminine so a group of 1000 women and 1 man is masculine, for example). Which just goes to show that one can find open-minded people the world over.
     
  5. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    The idea that people who spend time complaining about the non-use of gender neutral terms, and resort to semantics, especially those who feel the need to write complaint letters are examples of "open mindedness" is somewhat ironic don't you think?
    Open minded would mean , to me at least people who allow others to express themselves freely using whatever language / terms of expression they want (within reason) rather than have to conform to a prescribed formula to satisfy the whims of the terminally offended. Actions speak louder than words etc. By forensically dissecting every perceived faux pas in the use of language (notwithstanding accuracy required for legal documentation etc) means there are too many distractions from the bigger issues the world is facing.
     
  6. Plankton Pete

    Plankton Pete Well-Known Member

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    This in spades. You don't have to be offended to point something out that is simply not correct or not phrased properly.
     
  7. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    PPS. It is funny that a language (French) which, unlike English, has gender specific nouns in its language (like Italian and several others) is considering changing its language structure. No idea how they would do that nor when you say 'France' who you mean. Language is a fluid, evolving process and changes do not come from a single specific source. Any attempts to direct its future path from on high would be fraught with potential banana skins. most pronouns have to end in agreement with the noun ending and change according to whether the non is masculine or feminine (which, of course you know as you live in France). I cannot think od any examples, outside of a totalitarian regime where language could be regulated in such a way on such a major scale. It would be easier (relatively) to accomplish such a change in English as no such rules re gender specific nouns exist except in odd cases where we may call a ship 'she' for example. One of the problems of learning Italian I have found is whether to use il, la,. lo etc in front of the noun and the fact there are inconsistencies e.g. 'il problema' where the noun is feminine but prefixed with 'il' (masculine) I am sure there are many the same in French.
     
  8. Burgundy Red

    Burgundy Red Well-Known Member

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    There you go again with "offended". You just can't help yourself, can you?

    Open-minded to me means open to considering the ways other people might view things and prepared to change one's own actions to accommodate them if one feels they have a valid point. Clearly that last part is where we reach different conclusions but please don't dismiss me as "terminally offended" just because my evaluation of the arguments put forward in this case differs from yours.
     
    JamDrop likes this.
  9. JamDrop

    JamDrop Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure it is open-minded to write: 'our AA men are able to fix 8 out of 10 cars' and 'track the AA man on his way to you'. That's nothing to do with 'allowing others to express themselves freely', that's just ignoring the fact that women work for them, or being aware of it but deciding to still incorrectly refer to them as men anyway. I'm not sure what your comment about actions speak louder than words mean either, the woman took action and contacted them. Your final argument about being distracted from the bigger issues the world is facing lacks merit too as the AA wasn't making any attempt to cure world hunger or create world peace anyway so it's not like this stopped them achieving it. They literally had to type '/women' on the letter, a letter which they will have to update everytime the person who's signature is at the bottom leaves anyway.
     
  10. Sco

    Scoff Well-Known Member

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    >Language is a fluid, evolving process and changes do not come from a single specific source.

    French does - the Academie Francais - who define the language and the official dictionary. It is one of the reasons that many of the new technologies are referred to only by their English counterpart - new words are too slow to be defined and adopted.
     
  11. Burgundy Red

    Burgundy Red Well-Known Member

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    There's a movement in support of "écriture inclusive" but it's not very popular and some government figures have come out strongly against it but En Marche used it for one of their slogans so it's not entirely unrecognised and as I say has been the subject of much heated debate lately. Personally I don't like the proposal as it's awfully clunky but I was just trying to highlight that these debates are going on elsewhere in Europe and the world.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/inclusive-writing-france-feminism/545048/
     
  12. George Kerr

    George Kerr Well-Known Member

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    20 years ago I was in a progress meeting of a hospital construction project and the 'chairwoman' asked us to rename all manholes on our drawings as 'person holes'. I seem to recall that the response was quite polite and reasonably diplomatic, as to which 'hole' and on which shelf her request should be placed.
     
  13. Tek

    Tekkytyke Well-Known Member

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    Never thought I had, but I apologise if what I wrote said or implied that is that how I thought of you. My difficulty is the current 'obsession' (if that is what it is) with certain terminology as being offensive, damaging, or psychologically damaging. Given what previous generations have suffered I do find it sad that many people now are so emotionally vulnerable that mere words, especially when unaccompanied by actions apparently , damage them emotionally even when not directed at them. When it comes to taking offence" You are right I "cannot help myself" when I read that someone is in court for leaving a stuffed 'golliwog' toy in a bedroom window that one 'open minded' person felt so offended they needed to report it to the authorities.

    Too many people on here virtue signalling too on various issues when they have actually DONE or achieved nothing except sound off on social media. Again not aimed at you.
     
  14. Carlycu5tard

    Carlycu5tard Well-Known Member

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    [/QUOTE]

    I did laugh about this thread this morning when a person on the radio this morning defending the right to abortion. Actively corrected itself from pregnant women to pregnant people.

    Open minded enough to ludicrously correct itself yet no doubt not open minded enough to see the rights of the father in the termination and it's the "pregnant persons" right to choose.

    Confuses the **** out of me what the millenial and snowflake generations want. I don't get it quite frankly I'm not sure it is what the hell I'm supposed to be getting or indeed whether there is anything tangible and sensible to get other than a few people having a tantrum cos' it's something they can get some "likes" from. None of them seem to be able to explain what there is to get in any meaningful way certainly without contradicting one another
     
  15. Til

    Tilertoes Well-Known Member

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    Do you think they can get Moore’s fitness up to a solid 90 minutes by the start of next season?
     
  16. MDG

    MDG Well-Known Member

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    I blame the Womens Institute...:eek::eek::eek:
     

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