The word "field" is a racial slur now.

[RDKirk]

Latinx is a poor attempt to find a single, non-gendered word to use to describe a group as "Latino" is specifically gendered male in the language it originates from but not in English. (Many writers/speakers in English will use "Latina(a)" when speaking of specifically female persons. Mixed groups are the problem.) The term Hispanic does not have this problem, but Hispanic and Latino are not quite the same thing. An earlier attempt was "Latin@" where the "@" sign was supposed to be a o+a. Since English doesn't have gender endings for nouns, dropping it completely (Latin) though that term *was* used in the past and sounds some what "cringey" like it belongs in the era where "Negro" was the standard term.



I was not able to open the "MSN" article in the OP, so I didn't realize this was the specific context. I will admit that I am somewhat sympathetic to the professor's point. When the subject of your study is people perhaps it is a time to find a better way to label that aspect of your work other than "field work". (For other areas like ecology, archeology, and geology where you are not studying living people, the term "field work" is probably fine, though if the social work academics find a good term it may be used in the future.)

I will note that as a non-Christian I am bothered when referred to as a "mission field" especially directly and individually. It is quite offensive. No one wants to be the target of unsolicited prostelisation.

I think you miss the point in both cases.

For the vast majority of Spanish-speaking people, there is no problem with "Latinos" for mixed gender groups.

For the vast majority of black people, "field" is not a trigger word.

Neither group needs academics in their ivory (or mahogany) towers working up their dissertations inventing problems for us. We already have enough tribulations in our lives.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Yes I can appreciate how this top (academy) down language engineering can be really annoying. To me its just silly, while to you there might be more at stake in this specific case.

The main thing Im pushing back on are the totally overblown wails of "tyranny" and "Big Brother". Its like these people havent even read 1984.

It's not Big Brother, obviously. Yet. But much of it does originate in various extreme adaptations of Marxian ideology, backed by and taught in various (many) universities in the U.S.

So, let's keep that fact in mind. And I don't have to accept it just as I won't accept any Rightist adaptations of Socialism either.

 

[Diamond7]

This is a result of making "black studies" a college major.

I knew a girl, the word black was a "trigger" word for her. Should we quit using that word so we do not upset her?

I do understand that there are people today who are dealing with the trauma of their ancestors. God is the solution, and we need to turn to God for healing. He can go back in time to heal any situation. We can do more than just heal and deal with memories.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Yes, the language will change with the society as it grows (or shrinks) to be more (or less) tolerant of “new things”. This has happened in every generation and is “normal”.

It's not typically forced... and since you seem to have trouble spotting it, I'll just explain the easy way to do so....

If you have used a definition your entire life, along with everyone else, and suddenly a group of annoying people claim that you are using the term wrong, it's new definition is "x" and the new definition has less utility than the old definition....or no one actually uses it.

Obviously "woman" has been defined right out of any meaningful concept at all....

So a better example is the rapidly fading "new definition" for "racism" which is supposed to be something to do with vague notions of power and privilege. The new definition requires some sort of comparison of power and privilege although since those are similarly vague.....nobody actually uses this "new definition" except for one specific context....

Justifying certain racist beliefs.

In most normal everyday usage....everyone uses the old definition of racism and we only ever hear someone bring up the new definition to defend a racist statement.

So I can test your assertion, whats an example of this forced change thats actually stuck?

A lot of people use "cisgender" although I doubt they could explain what it means or why it exists.

 

[Ana the Ist]

MSN

I'll bet not a single one of those complaining employees had ever worked in a field.

But I'll also bet 99% of all of us have an ancestor within the last 5 generations who did work in some kind of field.

When I was a teenager, I worked in someone else's field one day...kind of an experiment to see what "chopping cotton" was like. If I ever needed a reason to get a college degree, that one day chopping cotton provided all the reason I'd ever need. I did, however, do a lot of outdoor work for my grandfather on his property, so I was not a stranger to hard work under a hot sun.

I'm not embarrassed by the fact that my ancestors worked in fields, first those of slaveowners, then fields of their own. Certainly, the word "field" isn't going to "trigger" me.

This horse manure has long been absurd.

This is a result of making "black studies" a college major.

I don't know if it's black studies or postmodernism but it's annoying and if the basis of your beliefs requires everyone else to abandon useful words and concepts and replace them with meaningless words or overly vague concepts then perhaps language isn't the issue.

Perhaps that person is just wrong.

 

[RDKirk]

I knew a girl, the word black was a "trigger" word for her. Should we quit using that word so we do not upset her?

I do understand that there are people today who are dealing with the trauma of their ancestors. God is the solution, and we need to turn to God for healing. He can go back in time to heal any situation. We can do more than just heal and deal with memories.

All of my uncles and older cousins plus my father (most of them now deceased) were combat veterans of the Korean War and Vietnam, and suffered significant PTSD from their combat experiences...the kind of PTSD that leaves grown men screaming in the night, reacting to innocuous sounds with sudden violence, and just being remotely loopy from time to time. That's trauma. That's what you get when terrible things happen directly to you.

American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) don't suffer trauma from slavery, and Millennial and Gen-Z ADOS people don't suffer from any of the trauma of the Jim Crow era. Having observed the older men of my family, I know what trauma is.

What we do suffer from is a culture made dysfunctional by slavery and Jim Crow. We have a Bizarro culture partially based on elements a couple of different Anglo cultures, plus a crippled survival culture. It's something similar to what the culture of the Israelites was as they made their exodus from Egypt, which was a slave culture so dysfunctional that it exasperated both Moses and God and ultimately had to be totally extinguished before they could enter the Promised Land.

This dysfunctional culture is killing us, both slowly and suddenly. It can be as slow as diabetes or generations of fatherless children. It can be as sudden as the black-on-black crime of a gang drive-by or a bunch of black cops beating another black man to death.

The difference between trauma and dysfunctional culture is that elements of a dysfunctional culture can be identified, and then whether to abandon them or cling to them becomes a choice.

 

[Astrid]

MSN

I'll bet not a single one of those complaining employees had ever worked in a field.

But I'll also bet 99% of all of us have an ancestor within the last 5 generations who did work in some kind of field.

When I was a teenager, I worked in someone else's field one day...kind of an experiment to see what "chopping cotton" was like. If I ever needed a reason to get a college degree, that one day chopping cotton provided all the reason I'd ever need. I did, however, do a lot of outdoor work for my grandfather on his property, so I was not a stranger to hard work under a hot sun.

I'm not embarrassed by the fact that my ancestors worked in fields, first those of slaveowners, then fields of their own. Certainly, the word "field" isn't going to "trigger" me.

This horse manure has long been absurd.

This is a result of making "black studies" a college major.

 

[Aldebaran]

Expect "cotton" to become a racist word/item soon, assuming it's not already.
Say goodbye to your blue jeans!

 

[RDKirk]

Expect "cotton" to become a racist word/item soon, assuming it's not already.
Say goodbye to your blue jeans!

It sort of is already.
People lost their minds when they discovered Hobby Lobby had cotton boll stems among its other varieties of floral bric-a-brack.

 

[Ana the Ist]

When the usage (or abandonment of usage) becomes common, durable, and mostly not questioned. Like with the demise of "negro".

"Negro" has been abandoned?

I dont know if theres better measure of oppression than people reporting feeling oppressed. Im reporting that I dont. Put that in the basket along with everyone elses testimony.

Well...let's see....
We could take a measure of the human rights given them and the extent to which they are protected.
We could compare average outcomes in multiple categories across nations.
We could examine the principles upon which they feel oppression and see if they are justified (tangible) or imagined (illusory).

I'd say any of those would be a better measure of oppression.

Govt official usage in docs is not oppression. Oppression is when govt forces your usage.

Like when they teach you in school to use it...and your grades suffer if you don't?

So? Is she entitled to immunity from criticism?

No....but what is the criticism? What possible criticism is there for not using a new word?

..... while here we are putting other agencies of govt "under fire" for excising "field". None of the under fire stuff is oppression.

All this about big brother oppression seems a little hyperventilatory to me. That said, I think relegating "field" is double plus silly.

I've been thinking this stuff was silly long before "field"

 

[Ana the Ist]

Im not feeling the pressure. I doubt I will.

I doubt you will too....

The definitions themselves give away the purpose of the words...if we are to assume that this sudden widespread attempt to change language is deliberate.

Because the definitions fail as definitions. They don't actually make the new words clear or define them as distinct concepts in the way definitions usually do. True, some words are vague....but that's because they describe either a wide range of concepts or they describe a concept that is difficult to grasp and without an obviously clear boundary.

That's not what we're seeing here though....we watching relatively clear and meaningful words get redefined into a meaningless hole of vagueness. Some of these are so transparently self serving that it's difficult to understand why the new definition appeared. Others....not so much.

If it's being done deliberately, one could argue that it's multiple self interested groups using similar tactics to advance causes important to themselves. Racism gets redefined to allow for racism against certain groups. Women gets redefined out of existence so anyone can claim to be one despite reality. And so on....

All I've really noticed is that because these new definitions never really lead to a clearer or more contextually relevant description of a concept....as a whole, they sort people into 3 relatively distinct categories.


1. The sheep, the dupes, the easily manipulated. If you accepted the new definition without any pushback at all, despite not really understanding it....well, you're in this category. You will say whatever you're told, when you're told, and let's face it....that's not a problem for you. You won't be a problem for anyone manipulating your language either.


2. Those who speak up, question, and continue to do so until they are shamed. Congratulations, you are smart enough to think for yourself and brave enough to ask questions about the new definition. You aren't so afraid of looking stupid that you blindly accepted nonsense. However, you backed down when you were attacked as a matter of moral character. You were shamed for not simply believing, and told you were causing harm to someone in some way. That probably didn't make sense either....but at some point, maybe when your job was threatened maybe when you were labeled a bigot....you backed down and started playing along. You're smarter than group #1....but a moral coward compared to group #3.


3. You not only questioned the new definition, you wholesale rejected it once you realized it wasn't going to ever make any sense and that's not because you're dumb....but because it's deliberately vague. You probably noticed that using the new definition correctly doesn't seem to matter as much as conformity to the process of accepting nonsense....and the shaming of others. You haven't stopped pointing this out, but you are starting to realize just how alone you are and question if you're not simply going insane or quite possibly dumber than everyone else. You either exist in a place that you cannot be punished for speech...or you are willing to face punishment. Congratulations, you're not only smart, but you have a moral backbone and you aren't willing to accept nonsense for any reason. You are to be targeted for silencing or reputation destruction until you lack the means or will to continue speaking against this dumb cowardly mob.

So again....that seems to be the purpose, based on the new definitions themselves....if this is intentional and not just some big coincidence of circumstances.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Latinx is a poor attempt to find a single, non-gendered word to use to describe a group as "Latino" is specifically gendered male in the language it originates from but not in English. (Many writers/speakers in English will use "Latina(a)" when speaking of specifically female persons. Mixed groups are the problem.) The term Hispanic does not have this problem, but Hispanic and Latino are not quite the same thing.

This doesn't appear to be a problem for Spanish speakers or speakers of any gendered languages. Inanimate objects are also frequently gendered in these languages....but that again doesn't seem to pose any issue for those speaking the language.

So why create a degendered word, likely a word chosen specifically to act as a precedent for degendering the entire language, if the speakers of the language don't desire any such changes?

That's sort of the dead giveaway this isn't something organic. Someone or some group came up with the word for a reason. It wasn't shaped by changing culture or context. It was dropped whole cloth onto a group of people speaking a certain language.

 

[RDKirk]

This doesn't appear to be a problem for Spanish speakers or speakers of any gendered languages. Inanimate objects are also frequently gendered in these languages....but that again doesn't seem to pose any issue for those speaking the language.

So why create a degendered word, likely a word chosen specifically to act as a precedent for degendering the entire language, if the speakers of the language don't desire any such changes?

That's sort of the dead giveaway this isn't something organic. Someone or some group came up with the word for a reason. It wasn't shaped by changing culture or context. It was dropped whole cloth onto a group of people speaking a certain language.

The "dead giveaway this isn't something organic" is the fact that the new word can't even be spoken in the intended tongue.

 

[jacks]

It's like crying wolf. When everything is offensive, eventually nothing will be.
Have patience soon everyone will be able to say whatever they feel like and the idea it is offensive will fall on deaf ears. In fact the idea that saying "I find that term offensive" will seem like a parody. I know I've already gotten to the point I can't take it seriously.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The "dead giveaway this isn't something organic" is the fact that the new word can't even be spoken in the intended tongue.

I think it's either lah-tee-nex or lah-tin-eks.

It doesn't really matter...it's only an issue because gender theory or (critical gender theory if you're in the field) has a sort of 3rd category of "non-gendered" which doesn't really make any sense for anyone. Nobody seems capable of describing what this 3rd gender or non-gender is....and while it could just be a result of the idea that gender is separated from sex causing confusion amongst it's "scholars" I'd say that gender only seems to refer to a feeling regarding one's biological sex. Anything else describes behavior in some sense....and gender is a poorly and vaguely defined term to begin with and when you see who popularized the term it's entirely debatable whether it's a real thing or not. Regardless....

The whole thing falls apart pretty quickly and the lack of any real explanation just leads one to conclude that the whole Latinx thing is a farce, joke, hoax, or otherwise a label to identify allies in some ideological struggle or method for silencing any objectors.

I've yet to hear even a Dr explain what the trans and non-gendered suicide rate is.....and anyone claiming that the rejection of the concept is somehow "marginalizing" or oppressive in some way can kick rocks. You can call yourself Fido the French bulldog for all I care....but you can't expect others to indulge that for you.

 

[RDKirk]

I think it's either lah-tee-nex or lah-tin-eks.

Neither is something that would be said organically in Spanish. It's non-Spanish. Some kind of "Spanglish."

 

[Bradskii]

Congratulations, you're not only smart, but you have a moral backbone and you aren't willing to accept nonsense for any reason.

Ah, I get it. We're either dumb, cowards or smart with a moral backbone like you.

How about a Category 4? Those who ignore the Pythonesque attempts to remove field from common parlance, except to raise an eyebrow if it's mentioned and try to think of songs or film titles that might raise a smile. Those who also accept that English is constantly changing and that we drift along with it (except maybe you still refer to having a gay old time like the Flintstones did). Those who don't think that they (whoever they are) are out to change our way of life!

It's a coin toss which is the more amusing. Someone trying to extricate field from day to day speech (you gotta larf) or listening to those who get all bent out of shape about it (And STILL manage to get gender issues and trans suicides into the mix. Outstanding).

 

[Ana the Ist]

Ah, I get it. We're either dumb, cowards or smart with a moral backbone like you.

@Bradskii I have no doubt which one of the three you are. I've never seen you fail to clearly define almost anything you believe.

How about a Category 4? Those who ignore the Pythonesque attempts to remove field from common parlance, except to raise an eyebrow if it's mentioned and try to think of songs or film titles that might raise a smile.

I've got nothing against humor. I don't want people making jokes at my execution though. Perhaps you haven't heard....but people lose jobs over this stuff now....and in nation's unfortunate enough to have laws around such speech....they get imprisoned.

I get it....it's funny to you. It's not a concern nor will it ever be. If someone never had to think for themselves....they aren't losing a thing. It's just as it's always been.

It looks comfortable. I don't blame you.

Those who also accept that English is constantly changing and that we drift along with it (except maybe you still refer to having a gay old time like the Flintstones did). Those who don't think that they (whoever they are) are out to change our way of life!

That language can be used as a weapon against the dumb only happens where we remove freedom of speech. We never need anyone to tell us to stop using a word or start using a new one....and language will still change on its own by the creation of more useful words and clearer definitions.

This isn't what's happening.....and the fact that we have people in the halls of power unable to clearly define what a woman is....indicates there's trouble coming.

It's a coin toss which is the more amusing. Someone trying to extricate field from day to day speech (you gotta larf) or listening to those who get all bent out of shape about it.

Look I'm not trying to convince you of anything....I promise. If someone has never had an original thought, if they've never held their own beliefs or views, if they have but have never stood up for them.....I'm sure this seems ordinary.

To them it's just a new set of people creating the limits they stay far from. Nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[variant]

Field? That is just stupid.

There are plenty of legitimate things to be offended by if you look just a little bit, there's no need to make up new things.

 

[Pommer]

Field? That is just stupid.

There are plenty of legitimate things to be offended by if you look just a little bit, there's no need to make up new things.

It would seem that two places in the known universe have taken to banning “field” thus we have to have a multi page thread about this.