For my own part, I’ve generally found the focus on individual emotional responses (whether of actual members of this community, or hypothetical others) somewhat misguided.
While we should certainly care about individuals’ emotional reactions to what we write, I think there are bigger issues at play here too. There are statements and phrases that I judge problematic because they seem to reflect or promote conscious or unconscious attitudes or assumptions that I think are harmful to society in general. By way of example:
I would find the objectification of women problematic for this reason, regardless of whether reading objectifying statements actually offended anyone (though as it happens, I do have a negative emotional reaction to statements that I think reflect objectifying attitudes).
I find the use of masculine generics problematic because because it primes us to think in particular ways. My understanding of the relevant research* is that it’s a fairly consistent finding that masculine generics (a) do cause people to imagine men rather than women, and (b) that this can have negative effects ranging from impaired recall, comprehension, and self-esteem in women, to reducing female job applications. (Some of these negative effects have also been established for men from feminine generics as well, which favours using they/them/their rather than she/her as replacements.)
* There’s an overview of some of this here (from p.26).
Fair enough.
For my own part, I’ve generally found the focus on individual emotional responses (whether of actual members of this community, or hypothetical others) somewhat misguided.
While we should certainly care about individuals’ emotional reactions to what we write, I think there are bigger issues at play here too. There are statements and phrases that I judge problematic because they seem to reflect or promote conscious or unconscious attitudes or assumptions that I think are harmful to society in general. By way of example:
I would find the objectification of women problematic for this reason, regardless of whether reading objectifying statements actually offended anyone (though as it happens, I do have a negative emotional reaction to statements that I think reflect objectifying attitudes).
I find the use of masculine generics problematic because because it primes us to think in particular ways. My understanding of the relevant research* is that it’s a fairly consistent finding that masculine generics (a) do cause people to imagine men rather than women, and (b) that this can have negative effects ranging from impaired recall, comprehension, and self-esteem in women, to reducing female job applications. (Some of these negative effects have also been established for men from feminine generics as well, which favours using they/them/their rather than she/her as replacements.)
* There’s an overview of some of this here (from p.26).