Hi Alicorn,
Thanks for the response. But if we interpret that only she is offended by it, or any nonspecified group, then I think scotherns’ examples such as
“”The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous”—you can’t say that—you are discriminating against those without a sense of touch!”
also are valid. It seems to me that we have to assume that she bases her case on some sizeable homogeneous group (that gets offended). Women? - perhaps she can clarify.
I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re getting at. As Alicorn pointed out, when I called that phrase disparaging, I didn’t mean to imply that all women would be offended by it—just that it’s very dismissive (and for that matter not really very rationally sound) to make sweeping generalisations about the way 50% of the population talk. (I’m honestly not quite sure what the original poster of that comment, which has since been deleted, even meant by it.) I’d certainly be opposed to sweeping, dismissive generalisations about people without a sense of touch as well, though I’m not sure I’ve ever come across one.
It seems to me that you might be conflating two different arguments here:
We should avoid using language that excludes a group of the population when there exists a straightforward alternative.
We should avoid making generalisations about people based on their membership in a group sharing a single feature.
I think 2 is a pretty solid, sensible rule in general, but 1 obviously carries more weight when a) the group in question is a particularly large or contextually-salient one, and b) the point can be made just as easily without marginalising people. Both a) and b) apply to the original example in the post that was being discussed. Neither are quite so readily applicable to the “no sense of touch” example that you mentioned, so personally I’d be a lot more inclined to leave that one as it is.
Hi Alicorn, Thanks for the response. But if we interpret that only she is offended by it, or any nonspecified group, then I think scotherns’ examples such as
“”The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous”—you can’t say that—you are discriminating against those without a sense of touch!”
also are valid. It seems to me that we have to assume that she bases her case on some sizeable homogeneous group (that gets offended). Women? - perhaps she can clarify.
Hi phaedrus,
I’m not sure I understand exactly what you’re getting at. As Alicorn pointed out, when I called that phrase disparaging, I didn’t mean to imply that all women would be offended by it—just that it’s very dismissive (and for that matter not really very rationally sound) to make sweeping generalisations about the way 50% of the population talk. (I’m honestly not quite sure what the original poster of that comment, which has since been deleted, even meant by it.) I’d certainly be opposed to sweeping, dismissive generalisations about people without a sense of touch as well, though I’m not sure I’ve ever come across one.
It seems to me that you might be conflating two different arguments here:
We should avoid using language that excludes a group of the population when there exists a straightforward alternative.
We should avoid making generalisations about people based on their membership in a group sharing a single feature.
I think 2 is a pretty solid, sensible rule in general, but 1 obviously carries more weight when a) the group in question is a particularly large or contextually-salient one, and b) the point can be made just as easily without marginalising people. Both a) and b) apply to the original example in the post that was being discussed. Neither are quite so readily applicable to the “no sense of touch” example that you mentioned, so personally I’d be a lot more inclined to leave that one as it is.