Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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How do you get that? The word "women" names an entire gender and isn't viewed as a problem. Why do you think the problem people have with "females" is because it names an entire gender?
It was already explained, it's the premise their activism supports by advocating the disparate treatment of female as a slur. From an external, impartial observer, claiming there's a problem with the word female with little regard for context communicates the problem resides in whatever the word itself denotes rather than the contextual meaning.
Moreover, the position they advocate is counterfactual. The language community decides the meaning of words through observed usage, and in the preponderance of the community, neither female nor woman is offensive. That includes among females. Female is used self-referentially “in-group”: it shows up in feminist book titles, in dating communities (eg, “F4F/M”), classifieds (eg, “need a roommate […] females only”), etc. In conventional language, female is an acceptable word (as is woman).
Imagine online activists started condemning usage of the word dutch as a slur. It's bizarre: there is nothing wrong with the dutch, yet they're acting as though we should think so & resist that urge? Why are they propagating problematic presuppositions we don't have about the dutch? Why are they trying to make this official? Are they some special breed of stupid?
Continuing this analogy, they drag you into fights by claiming you're a racist for using the word when you're not actually saying anything offensive about the dutch. You & the rest of society know the word dutch isn't offensive, yet these activists insist it is by pointing to some fringe online community spewing vitriolic propaganda about dutch inferiority specifically using the word dutch. You repudiate their claim by asking why some fringe group irrelevant to wider society gets to decide the meaning of words, but they condemn your "hurtful" language and say you're as bad as them or one of them. Don't be an asshole & use another word like Dutchperson, Netherlander, or Hollander they say: it's the right thing to do & shows socially conscientious, moral rectitude.
While our society includes both a minority of sexists & a vast majority of non-sexists who use the word female differently, these activists privilege the language & rhetoric of the sexist minority over the non-sexist majority. Why should the sexists get to decide the meaning of words for everyone & the unequal ideas to perpetuate in society? Who does that serve?
Older activists recognized that doesn't serve them & took a different approach. Against higher odds, black activists reappropriated the word black as a word of pride. Non-heteronormative activists did likewise with the word queer. Instead of antagonizing non-sexists by treating them as sexists or fulfilling an inferiority complex to make sexist language official, online language police would be wise to learn from the older activists & follow their example.