They're only banned if you let them be banned. The proper response from any agency is "Fuck you. See you in court." All of this website scrubbing and exhibit purging is cowardly and disgraceful. As Timothy Snyder has observed, it's simply teaching power what it can do. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

thetattooedprof.bsky.social • 14 hours ago

They're only banned if you let them be banned. The proper response from any agency is "Fuck you. See you in court." All of this website scrubbing and exhibit purging is cowardly and disgraceful. As Timothy Snyder has observed, it's simply teaching power what it can do.

Reposted from Olga Lautman 🇺🇦

The Trump regime expands its discouraged (BANNED) words across federal agencies. The list is long

Gift article www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Comments

bforjustice.bsky.social•12 hours ago

See also https://apnews.com/article/dei-purge-images-pentagon-diversity-women-black-8efcfaec909954f4a24bad0d49c78074

rfc19129.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Reminds me of something I recently heard about how actors should approach playing one of Shakespeare’s kings. Everyone else “plays the king”. The kings power is based entirely on his subjects and how they relate to him. No deference = no king.

suzinott.bsky.social•12 hours ago

"Fuck you. See you in court."

I believe this is the correct response to 99% of what Trusk is doing.

claycopper.bsky.social•8 hours ago

That's great for unis, but not at all possible for tens of thousands who this impacts within the gov

aloysiuso.bsky.social•11 hours ago

I came to say exactly this.

dawnddurante.bsky.social•12 hours ago

We should all use these words and terms as often as possible.

americanwoman54.bsky.social•6 hours ago

The funniest post I had seen when this list first came out was this: "And just like that, Austen is canceled." (Look at the p's if you need a hint as to why.😉)

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•5 hours ago

"Pride and [redacted]"

americanwoman54.bsky.social•5 hours ago

😃 Wish I had thought of this as a response to that original post! Thanks for the chuckle.

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•5 hours ago

We laugh to keep from shrieking, right?

jbrownblue.bsky.social•14 hours ago

They forgot a few…pollutants, poison, etc

juno.bsky.social•9 hours ago

any other response that is complicit is fascist and cowardly

spike29.bsky.social•14 hours ago

The Great Leap Backward

leonceg.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The words "cultural genocide," and "Nazi" need to enter the list of commonly used Dem pejoratives.

brenley.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Which is why Trump's targeting law firms is so effective. It is going to get harder and harder to find lawyers willing to stand up.

sonicsonia.bsky.social•9 hours ago

You are neither allowed to say female nor woman. So what should be used, a "she person" maybe 😜

betsy-cazden.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I think he/she/they pronouns are also taboo.

I don't know how you describe research into ovarian or uterine cancer, or a biography of Florence Nightingale (who was in a stereotyped female role, after all) or Queen Elizabeth I.

sonicsonia.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I suspect they didn't think about that. Really a nightmare see what is happening in US

dbonowitz.bsky.social•13 hours ago

I hear you, but while you wait 2 years for an expensive trial, you lose the grant funds you had budgeted for, and that hurts people and future capacity.
Different responses can be appropriate for different stakeholder groups.
It can be ok to put on the yellow star and also join the underground.

othiym23.bsky.social•8 hours ago

what we’re seeing is that agencies are losing the funding anyway, and in the process of complying in advance they are complicit with the project of driving marginalized populations out of American life. there is value in losing with grace and integrity, and there is a cost to complying.

dbonowitz.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Again, there are multiple stakeholders. I've been vocal since the first EOs about the fault of over-complying, esp by agencies. Down the line, universities, small jurisdictions, researchers, consultants, etc. have less power and often more to lose. Different strategies are ok for different risks.

othiym23.bsky.social•8 hours ago

This logic has already led to trans people losing access to healthcare and other support resources from organizations that subsequently lost their grants anyway for using another banned term in grant applications. I don’t believe that this strategy is effective, nor is it moral.

othiym23.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Trying to defend an institution’s core mission by tossing people at the margins overboard merely identifies who is most easily bullied.

dbonowitz.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I hear you. There might be multiple ways of trying to protect the vulnerable. I just hope we don't lose sight of who's really at fault here. I will not fault anyone for trying to elude a crooked cop in order to keep doing good in the world.

mattmmyers.bsky.social•7 hours ago

banning the word biased is fucking funny in a global panic kind of day

grumpyoldscientist.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Points out the real function of a university president is to drum up money, making them utterly subservient to wealthy donors, whose interests may not lie with either current students or academic excellence.

leeglick.bsky.social•13 hours ago

A thousand times yes!! Make them fucking enforce it. Meet the First Amendment, shit-bags.

analogretrovision.bsky.social•13 hours ago

@odileofswords.bsky.social

odileofswords.bsky.social•9 hours ago

#facts and screw that nonsense.

gaydemonicdisaster.bsky.social•12 hours ago

So tempting to just sub in the same words in a different language like French or Spanish or *whatever* it’s not technically banned.🤷‍♀️

boblivion.bsky.social•14 hours ago

++ungood

adub01488424.bsky.social•14 hours ago

The words "pronoun" and "pronouns" are banned. What about the actual pronouns themselves?

gaydemonicdisaster.bsky.social•12 hours ago

Have to edit this one even further:

“In my day, they didn't have pronouns.”
Wait I mean we didn't... it didn't have.
Fuck. In day, haven't.”

Comment image

telecordial.bsky.social•13 hours ago

When we started working on speech and language applications a couple of decades ago, it was instantly clear that single keyword stuff was going to go off the rails in *diverse* ways.

quollhorreur.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Gee, the word bias is there.

So literally every report containing stats is screwed.

The ignorance is the point.

quollhorreur.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Oh, I should have kept looking.

Every clinical trials that uses “inclusion/exclusion” criteria for eligibility of patients.

Which is pretty much all of them.

earldaley.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The trump administration has a problem with Guided By Voices?

earldaley.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Comment image

penguinlover21.bsky.social•14 hours ago

White men are the biggest cunts

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Eager compliance in advance, caving and meekly obeying, only increases the authoritarians' contempt for you. No matter how many boots you lick, it will never be enough. And one day, you wake up and realize there's nothing left around you but more boots.

birdseyemaples.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Comment image

deehellcat.bsky.social•14 hours ago

👍

Comment image

pepper-n-celery.bsky.social•12 hours ago

I love this but I'm afraid I feel like there is context that I don't have here.

dom-ma.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Don’t forget: comes with a great anthem

https://youtu.be/bWXazVhlyxQ?feature=shared

chadfarrenburg.bsky.social•11 hours ago

There’s even a ROTG song for it.

davemayhem.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Or in British…

“Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”

whome2.bsky.social•13 hours ago

I think a thing is it doesn't matter who is in power. Yes this administration is way more terrible and holy shit.

But the thing is no matter who is charge of a thing, if you don't comply or if you push your values you get marked and pushed out. Even if you have critical mass some it still happens

whome2.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Doesn't mean you shouldn't fight, but what I think it means is that the politicians and everyone who is high up in society got there by not fighting, got there by not pushing back too hard and always making deals to stop pushing back etc

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The intent of these speech codes is to create a clinate of uncertainty, of anxiety, where individuals and agencies will self-censor out of fear. People are just giving up their agency, and doing it basically for free.

claycopper.bsky.social•8 hours ago

In the gov, it's our leaders who are failing us by complying with this stuff. This advice only works for the top 2% of people in gov. If I propose a paper, my supervisor tells me it won't be approved, I draft, external affairs spikes it. I'm pissed at my leadership but everyone keeps their jobs

chadcrichton.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I think one nuance here is that the Republicans also control Congress.

So, one possible consequence of saying "F you, we'll see you in court” to the White House is Congress saying, "...and so that's when we decided to cancel all their funding entirely and shut the agency down completely".

benkester.bsky.social•14 hours ago

"The government could take more" is always an argument for compliance.

Yet history has shown that appeasement doesn't work.

chadcrichton.bsky.social•14 hours ago

That's a good argument too.

All I'm saying is that one should at least consider the possibility that this is a deliberate plan by the Republicans to manufacture a flimsy excuse for Congress to shut down dozens of federal agencies, and whether or not the agencies should complywith THAT plan if so.

benkester.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It seems a stretch that Congress has the will or ability to take that on, much less set some 3D chess trap.

chadcrichton.bsky.social•14 hours ago

You can't win a lawsuit against the federal government to force them to allow your agency to use certain words on their website if Congress shuts the agency down entirely and shutters the website in response to your refusal to comply. And many assume this exercise is meant to create that excuse.

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Then make them go that far. Make them do it in public view. Call their bluff, and be loud about it. Appeasement is a non-starter.

beccaet.bsky.social•13 hours ago

It's self censorship. If every federal agency/govt dept defied Trump's illegal exec orders, if nothing else it would tie up his govt in pointless activities & use up lots of time & resources. Should do legal challenges as well & repeatedly reference US constitution.

gmacdonell.bsky.social•12 hours ago

The answer to all those questions posed in your national anthem is, no.

bo-gardiner.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The NYT had a very good dissection of how Trump and Musk are preventing that pushback and silencing Americans through a massive and widespread instillation of fear:

https://bsky.app/profile/bo-gardiner.bsky.social/post/3ljxdgo4f222u

betsy-cazden.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I understand the temptation to self-censor if 80% of your budget comes from Federal sources. It's fine to say "Don't comply," but if the alternative is having your operation shut down, it's tough. So I'd say: If you can afford to, say "Hell no." Otherwise, hold out as long as you possibly can.

tubbles.bsky.social•8 hours ago

You are going to get shut down either way, capitulating further ensures it because now they know they can easily get you.

tubbles.bsky.social•8 hours ago

Fighting makes it harder for them to actually shut you down, capitulating makes it fucking easy.