Pronouns - and much more!

[andyoldlabour]

Just when we thought the compulsive pronoun ideology was bad, for some at Microsoft, that wasn't enough.
Just for the record, I am a white, elderly, frequently moany male, who uses the pronouns - do/re/mi/fa/so/la/ti - when I am playing the guitar.

Surely they are trolling due to the insanity of all this.

Although I do actually think describing things better is good for those with limited or diminished vision. How many people with this characteristic actually work for Microsoft? And he was right about reparations being made to those they stole the land from.

😂 Pretty soon, there wont be time to discuss the agenda. Do you think work has just become too boring, so all this is to help cheer up the workers.

SO patronising, so so patronising. I used to sail with blind sailors with an organisation called Sailability, they would be laughing their socks off at this one

🤣🤣🤣
Did I misscount 8 people, 5 of whom are naked or only wearing some kind of top.

[As an aside it's sad that the black woman felt the need to include not just her race and hair colour but to also define her skin tone and hair presentation.]

On topic it's a nice idea to try include people with vision problems.
But they should probably get proper training on how to do it.

With tec the blind and visually impaired can use reader software.
But if I include an icon, even if it's readable by the software e.g. purple vegetable 🍆, it may be the correct meaning or not.
Same with pictures or other screen grabs like screenshots from Twitter etc.

Apparently there are options to add a text description to images so that software can read it out.

Sorry my line was missing the end point

Same with pictures or other screen grabs like screenshots from Twitter etc. which would be unreadable by the software

How do they not see how shitty it is for everyone except the white men to have to point out their race/sex/skin tone to their audience before starting their presentation as credible professionals where these factors shouldn't matter?

And it's fucking terrible to stand there proudly acknowledging all the communities Microsoft trampled to build their empire - it's like they spoke to one person from one of those communities who said it might be helpful to acknowledge the history of their land and then assumed they spoke for all of them and went full-on corporate bullshit on them.

why do blind people, or anyone, care what colour jumpers people have go on. Its such gaslighting too. No one is going to say "I'm an overweight man" or "I'm an unattractive woman" - just like the guy with the mohawk didnt mention it.

@Shedmistress

Surely they are trolling due to the insanity of all this.

Although I do actually think describing things better is good for those with limited or diminished vision. How many people with this characteristic actually work for Microsoft? And he was right about reparations being made to those they stole the land from.

What about deaf people though? Why wasn't anyone signing for them? And for that matter, where were the translators for people who don't speak English?

What about deaf people though? Why wasn't anyone signing for them? And for that matter, where were the translators for people who don't speak English?

I'm totally with you on that. I do think at some point someone's head will actually explode with this bullshit. Like, actually properly explode. Live on air would be the way to do it.

I'm with the Youtube commenter who wondered just how densely populated this land was! This kind of thing is becoming more common in the US, but the funniest instance I saw was a speaker in England using a list of 'oppressed peoples' clearly copypasted from a US site, and going on about the land belonging to the indigenous people. Not quite the political connotations they were aiming for!

I've met a couple of blind people who were formerly sighted and asked me to describe what I looked like the first time we met, so they could form a mental picture. Describing clothing colours is just odd, though.

Some visually impaired people were born blind. So how would the know what a colour actually looks like or what a certain ethnicity looks like?

They are being abelist against those born blind. How terrible of them. Cancelled!

Seriously, all of the virtue signaling is just exhausting. I’m waiting for this all to end so we can all look back at the time where the world went collectively insane.

Esmée Fairbairn the funder did this at a webinar. It made me feel really uncomfortable, as it did feel you were focusing on age, ethnicity and sex rather than the actual point of the session. I was thinking that for some women being forced / coerced to describe what we look like against our will has been a form of sexual abuse we've experienced - possibly pretty triggering, especially online when you don't know who's out there.

I have recently seen two American speakers do this at an online conference (the describing yourself for any visually impaired people). First time I'd seen it.

I did question to myself whether this trend had come from visually impaired people themselves or not, and also considered the effect it has on people who belong to groups who are discriminated against.

In any case it looks like it might be the new thing alongside pronouns...

@GreenWhiteViolet an allotment or gardening group did the indigenous cut and paste in London. One big oops that's racist.

@nestoftables
From what I seen on Twitter it's context based and relevant to creating a visual map.
So if one of the two males were a she/her it's a male voice with a female pronoun. The she/her is relevant as listener will know that "Jo will deal with xxx and she will talk about yyy" is a reference to the other male voice.

In a presentation it would have been more relevant to set the scene "large studio with screen which will display visuals".
If you have ever created a presentation for training you will understand the visual aid/handout can be complex and dependant of the level of existing knowledge of the recipient.
Screen displays bullet point key messages, design focuses on words acronyms, charts, graphs etc to compress the data.
Starting with screen says a) b) c) and going back to expand a) to c) is difficult.
Each of the sets conveys a message, so couch v podium as part of the corporate brand, is a visual style choice and delivers a message but this too is lost without a description.

I fucking hate Tucker Carlson. He is one of the worst for promoting racism, homophobia etc. under the guise of the culture war. Regressive economic policy is sold to the working classes by millionaires like him hidden under a layer of conservative social values.

This is why it infuriates me that the seemingly liberal left make it so very easy for them to do this by coming out with stuff like this. What does reading out a list of tribes achieve? Would it not be better to fund programmes to improve life for nearby indigenous communities if they want to make reparations? Why not have an option to click for subtitles/audio described/sign language assistance as an option? It's Microsoft so it can't be they don't know how.

A colleague told me yesterday how he tried to stand as a local Labour Councillor candidate. Everyone at the meeting was referring to each other as comrade and all introduced themselves with their sexuality and gender identity. All were clearly middle class. He tried to ask about local needs relating to housing and disability access but no-one could answer. He noped out pretty quickly and now feels politically homeless as he will never vote Tory or Lib Dem.

I’ve seen some people joking on Twitter “fuck pronouns, what are your adjectives?” but it’s very much a JOKE although these people seem to be taking it seriously.