The phenomenon of “leftist language policing” is 99% a product of centrists whining about it constantly. I almost never encounter it in real life and requests for vocabulary updates are typically non-binding guidelines for formal written documents.
Reposted from
John Brown stan account
This take is worth what you paid for it, but I think the language policing stuff has outsized political significance.
Comments
https://bsky.app/profile/johnbrownstan.bsky.social/post/3lif6zcpjks2f
Is *specifically designed* to creat manufactured outrage
For two reasons
1. make noise to distract from what Republicans & their enablers are *doing* (so focus is on what they *say*)
2. Give the press something to report in service to #1
But they, personally, can talk about homeless people or Latinos or whatever. Just sound normal, and when (inevitably) someone complains, just say “let’s focus on real issues.”
I think this is much better than “throw trans people under the bus” as a way to rebrand.
https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/2024/10/31/study-finds-use-of-gender-neutral-latinx-by-democratic-pols-is-costing-them-votes/
https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3liexgwl4fs2w
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/how-much-does-our-language-shape-our-thinking
The left is endlessly hypothetically fanatically whorfianizing your life, its the op-ed prompt that is always feasible and fits anything. The accusation evergreen.
potty training is also emotionally salient, but we do it anyway
They need the votes but the fighting spirit is there. Make sure dems win the 3 house seats in the special election.
You should look up the Infrastructure Act if you think he did nothing, remembering that Trump claimed continuously he would do such a bill "next week" and NEVER did a pixel of it.
(That “we” may not include you, but *I* could have done more.)
They can message when they do, but they often DO NOT.
We have two problems:
1. poor, incorrect, boring, unclear Dem messaging. Just NOT hard-hitting in truth, enough!
2. a bought and complicit Press.
Ideally, @mcuban.bsky.social or similar savior billionaire, buys CBS, ABC, etc
Also if a MAGA refuses to self-language-police in response to someone else using "chest feeding," what's the consequence?
N O T H I N G
Republicans do. Even though their complaints are bullshit. But it works. Ours are just too old, lazy, & led around by consultants who get rich selling them on media buys to chase unicorn Republican swing voters.
For example, why in the hell is saying Happy Holidays a big deal?
It has magnified about 100x since the election, clearly visible now.
Seriously - we need to, no one does!
The real problem is, we are letting people get away with saying total BS -
how about we PUSH BACK ON OUR OWN BS PEOPLE?
Instead of seeing these sentiments as an add-on, the GOP frames it as an attack on the status quo. On the America they knew growing up…
Is the U.S. siding with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran the America they knew growing up? 🤬 no!
The question is why this minor annoyance is considered a more consequential liability for Democrats than, say, stochastic terrorism is for Republicans.
https://bsky.app/profile/bill-of-lefts.bsky.social/post/3lifas4hqes27
Might as well accuse the Left of being shrill and having an annoying voice.
Stochastic terrorism is 1 trillion times worse. But it doesn't live in people's heads all day long.
Stochastic terror *should* be a bigger liability for the GOP. But this is why imho it's not.
Democrats just choose to distance themselves
It’s not good, but people do it
Vernacular we can’t decode, celebrities we don’t know, pop culture that leaves us cold.
But sorting that out is hard & Rs telling us Latinx is the problem is easy.
Wiki, however, leaves me baffled.
Does Matt think the voting public fretting about email security in 2016 and then never again was a naturally occurring process?
https://bsky.app/profile/benfields.net/post/3lifh7w42sk2m
-that Saddam has WMDs
-That crime is on the upswing
-that there's a crisis at the border
(This seems so self-evident that you hardly need a theorem for it, but 🤷♂️)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_theorem
It's impossible to have a Discussion with someone who only wants to win Debates. (applies to a LOT around the web)
If I had to bet, I’d go all in on “yes”.
📜
but as hobbes points out, fears about a racist rapist felon being president, or elon stealing taxpayer money, is literally absent.
“fuck donald trump” is literally the only time i’ve seen them get sensitive about speech.
https://bsky.app/profile/notdred.bsky.social/post/3lifsj7znws2z
but if you want to continue to have ineffective communications fly at it
Where is their expectation of agency and responsibility?
Actually coercive policing, like threatening college funding if they don’t stand for the anthem, is downplayed.
What Elon is doing doesn't directly touch my life today. But if I get "yelled at online" for using the "wrong" word, there's a direct impact that makes me defensive.
There are a lot of people whom I would believe if they said this. I do not believe a lefty journalist in the 2010s never encountered this irl
It's tripping a lot of people up here.
Why do they have such strong adverse reactions to discussions about how language reinforces systematic injustice?
Says a lot about their intolerance, frailty and bigotry than anything else.
centrists whine about discomfort, minorities are ACTIVELY harmed
White suburban adults, in general, aren’t even immersed in situations where they have 2 keep up w/so-called changing language. Plus, it hasn’t even evolved or changed so rapidly that it would make your head spin.
"Tone policing" is different from what I'm getting at here... I mean there is not enough critical analysis of language in the battle, not enough necessary focus and criticism of OUR OWN use of language among the left.
a descriptivist would say that colloquial language is deeply collectivist in how it develops, where the majority wins by definition and the change is negatively reinforced. it is what it is
But not in the way one might assume.
The far right took the language police of the far left and retweeted them to infinity.
As a political weapon against them.
And that tactic worked quite well.
Convincing swing voters that Democrats were bad because pronouns!
No trans person has ever held this opinion. It's a pretty weird things to say, honestly!
Idunno, maybe instead of calling your racist team the "Chiefs" or "Braves", why not the "Racists" or the "Fascists"? Same tone
They're always going to find a grievance. Theyre grievance all the way down!
That action spawned millions of words of op-ed losers airing grievances, and right-wing circles festering in their own culture war.
I don't know if it was the middle child in me who felt the need to balance things out. In grad school, I found myself defending ideas I was opposed to just for the sake of encouraging a debate.
Second, you said a reaction to "one" thing- with no evidence (from my words or knowledge of my life). when in fact if was 8 yrs. Either 1. You're a troll. 2. You're self-righteous. 3. You lack critical thinking/reading skills. Either way have a nice life. Bye
Genius.
It wasn't even meant for use with trans patients directly.
There was that bit about expensive standard parts and tools on military planes: https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/
It was more “There will be death panels” nonsense. No one in my circles seriously said chestfeeding.
It's all rage bait playing to a "Blue Haired Pronoun Cop" Leftist trope.
The right and center will always find the leftmost position and put their stake in the ground. No matter where the left flank is it’s always “unreasonable” and “too far” if it moves right, so do they.
As if “but for neopronouns” is a sensible argument
It’s not hard.
1) Right-wing focus on language to make Dems seem out of touch.
2) Separately, left-wing spokespeople (incl Dem politicians) adhere to leftist-preferred language
3) Normies hear R criticism, they see D adherence to new language, and assume criticism is justified.
It didn't end well for him. He told me I made him sad which, being from S.E. Detroit is a compliment
That was language policing.
There is simply no equivalent on the left in America.
That's way worse than an advisory email.
They'll language-police people minding their own business on the left, while MAGA is running find-and-replace operations on the entire government web.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-16/trump-ends-climate-work-inside-agency-that-responds-to-disasters?embedded-checkout=true
Most of the discourse about it used to start because a non-disabled person would tell people to use people with disabilities because it reminds you to ‘see the person not the disability’
Our needs aren’t special
Nobody even uses the terms right wingers whine about more than the right wingers who use it when they are whining.
The "manhole" discourse, the "vegan-friendly" figures of speech (fucking PETA), "womxn" etc... None of that is fucking real irl.
But are you able to cite anything? Because this goes against everything I've ever heard about the word and it's origins
Since time immemorial, whenever the zeitgeist decides that some usage is wrong or hurtful, a lot of people will decide not to use it because they are decent people, and a minority will decide to weaponize it, because they are not.
I don't think this is at all novel.
Allow me to rephrase for you "What do you mean most people don't see annoying habits? I work at the annoying habits factory and see it all the time!"
As if it’s a real issue affecting millions
So both the frequency and to are being wildly exaggerated.
had been thriving in a nice brownstone in NY. A lot of white ppl felt like
Far less about actual policing of individuals.
And whatever you think of the merits of their language, alienating yourself from voters over language (vs policy) seems like a bad place to be.
A big example in my mind is on abortion, which drove the Michigan statewide wins in 2022.
Once Roe v Wade was overturned & the issue exploded, it took a week or two for "pregnant persons" and "birthing people" etc to fall from Whitmer etc language (replaced by "women and girls").
Guess that’s not what The Atlantic is talking about though.
My work put out guidelines for email signatures that included pronouns so I added mine as have many of my customers One colleague was horrified and said we would lose sales I advised her it’s like Ms. The more we use the more common it is and to get with modern times Not one customer was lost
/s
Is that related to the one thing people tend to know about Oberlin that happened 8 years ago?
* The people in question were online randos in niche fandom and related spaces, with no real power to speak of.
* To the extent they had power over peers, they would have chosen other ways to be bullies (and often did before ~2010).
* A a lot of them were probably /pol/ trolls.
The way you deal with such people is to block them and find non-toxic (or less-toxic) circles of people to socialize with.
it's not real, it's nothing more than made up bullshit!
It's legitimately a liability for leftist causes, even if reactionary assholes exaggerate and twist it to suit their own propaganda.
while Trump, Musk, et al literally trash their way of life
usually the other person-- and I've seen it happen across racial and gender and age lines-- say Oh haha don't worry I'm not one of those PC types
then they move on
It was from a Stanford IT circular in late 2022, never university policy, and quickly disavowed by the department.
But the circular provoked a feeding frenzy in right wing media for weeks.
Whether that particular example was noun or adjective is irrelevant: my point was that the reaction then to the “initiative,” and its citing now, is utmost bad faith.
The document is benign and there's nothing overreaching, and TCW is outright lying about it for panic
We're never going to get over this fascism shit if liberals are just doing the "[Americans see a bunch of American fascism] what are we, a bunch of Asians?" tweet.
Because that sure as shit isn't only coming from Fox News.
However, my sister-in-law wishes to just be called Chinese - and gets very upset if someone thinks she's a "Filipina" because Filipinos are best suited to be hotel domestic staff.
Rejection of terms is the rejection of who/what they represent.
Get in dummies, we’re fighting fascism
centrists whine about discomfort, minorities are ACTIVELY harmed
Exactly.
And hey surprise surprise, it's something that impacts people who write for the New York Times so it must be a HUGE deal
I'm pretty sure he's a right-wing troll trying to stir up division on the left
Like, "How dare YOU presume to be above ME!?"
There's some weird ur-feat bigots have about losing words to say to minorities (like every time they complain they can't say the n-word, but black people can)
I hope you're proud of yourselves."
They get off on imagining scenarios where they are mistreated by the world, then think they really happened and want revenge for them.
(cont)
"I've NEVER oppressed you!"
"You wanted to have me thrown in jail and make sure I never worked again because I said the 'r' word"
". . . THAT NEVER HAPPENED!"
"THEN WHY DO I SO CLEARLY REMEMBER IT?"
Honestly given that he ended up cooking his brain with benzos after becoming an alt right guy, even he might have been better off in the long run.
Someone will make you their bitch. Because they respect all genders, they won't call you a bitch but they still expect you to act as a bitch. But being a bitch implies femininity and you're also expected not to adhere to archaic outdated gender roles.
Knew a guy who'd only use correct pronouns on 'passing' people. I started calling him she until he threw a fit, and then he stopped.
You police to stand up to people being creeps and bullies, not for minor offenses.
Most of these pieces boil down to "other people annoying me should be illegal."
Now JB above saying he's never experienced it does make me wonder though.
Normal Person 2: Sure. No problem.
Right-winger: This is an existential threat to America and our way of life. You're trying to make me a slave!