Twitter banning "gendered pronouns"

The funniest one is replacing "grandfather" with "legacy".

It's more weird they were ever using 'grandfathered' - 'legacy' is a standard term in the software industry.

So grandparents are bad, but inherited wealth is good

If you think 'legacy' equates to 'inherited wealth' in the software world, you've obviously never inherited responsibility for legacy code. It's sometimes more like having to look after an elderly three legged idiosyncratic donkey.

Generally speaking though I think the idea of purging any language with any connection, or any perceived connection, to anything considered negative, is probably hopeless, useless, and time-wasting.

The term "grandfathered" or "grandfathering" or "grandfather clause" has a particular origin in the history of American racial segregation ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause ). How well known the origin is is unclear but it's very different from saying "grandparents are bad".

The funniest one is replacing "grandfather" with "legacy".

So grandparents are bad, but inherited wealth is good.

Interesting that the engineers in a platform that allows self-identified paedophiles (MAPs) to advertise the age of their preferred child targets and that their DMs are 'always open' are so intensely concerned with the language they use as a priority.

TehBewilderness

Wanna bet they ban people for using 'it'?

If referring to a person- why not?

I think this is more about removing what I would call 'blokey' language from coding.

I don't know much about coding, and I might be wrong, but I think I can imagine the kind of person who would come up with 'master' and 'slave' as technical terms, and I can understand why many people (including me) would not want to use them.

No worries, Rad - the OP had misunderstood what it's about.

Wanna bet they ban people for using 'it'?

@ErrolTheDragon Sorry, skim read the post after 5 hours sleep. I thought they were going to enforce gender neutral language on Twitter, not in their code. My bad.

The use of "they" to avoid the default of he or the clunky "he or she" or, in my view the even worse option of randomly littering text with alternative hes or hers has been encouraged for years. Anyone who has to write copy for promotional materials and the like and who has had any training on it will have been told that.

God, this is making me want to top myself. Or maybe just leave Twitter.

Why? Of all the things we can complain about re twitter, using neutral language in their code surely isn't one.

Lexico's usage note states: "Until relatively recently he was used to refer to a person of unspecified sex, as in every child needs to know that he is loved, but this is now generally regarded as old-fashioned or sexist."

'They' as a generic singular has been in use since Shakespeare.

God, this is making me want to top myself. Or maybe just leave Twitter.

Examples of generic "he" from lexico.com include:
'Every child needs to know that he is loved’
‘From the very beginning, love and nurture your child so he can begin to feel connected to others.’

Nowadays most people find "they" more inclusive.

Lexico's usage note states: "Until relatively recently he was used to refer to a person of unspecified sex, as in every child needs to know that he is loved, but this is now generally regarded as old-fashioned or sexist."

That's not inclusive language; it is utterly exclusive.......

Twitter is overrun by paid bots and trolls nowadays anyway. So they/he/she haven't banned gendered pronouns, but they have banned the word "groomer", which is either an arbitrator or malign ban.

Don’t change it to “list of colour.”

'They' are twats.

I saw that!

Yes it's just an internal company thing. But what was exceptionally bizarre, to me, is that the Twitter employee who has been spearheading this calls himself "negroengineer" on Twitter.

The official Tweet from Twitter HQ about this linked to one of his tweets - it cut off part of the URL. I thought I was having a stroke for a moment, reading an official company tweet about diversity and inclusive language that proceeded to link to a URL with the word "negro" in it.

And it really made me wonder about someone who is spearheading a movement to ban the word "blacklist" but apparently gives no thoughts to how his colleagues might feel about his professional handle. I mean, I totally get reclaiming the word and everything, but is he sure all his black colleagues want to reclaim it? If some of them don't, isn't he rubbing their faces in insensitive language much worse than "blacklist?"

Anyway I'm a white person so what the fuck do I know, perhaps this is all fine, but wow that Twitter HQ Tweet was jarring.

'Clearer' terms, not 'cleared' terms.

'Clearer' terms, not 'cleared' terms.

While I personally wouldn't have been inclined to replace the term "blacklist", if it's bothering other people then I can't say that I feel strongly enough to protest against the adoption of a different term.

Yes - I can see why using black and white to mean bad and good is problematic, and as there's other cleared terms it's a bit weird to defend this sort of construct. (Whereas complaining about the use of words for colours being used for coloured objects is ludicrous and I suspect largely apocryphal)