Political Correctness, LGBTQ, #meToo and other related topics

can we pls stop using labels such as "democrat" "liberal" "republican" "conservative" and act like they still mean anything and that there are strict boundaries and distinctions between them

Nobody thinks Maher is a genius, but he makes good points and has a talent of getting them across in a simple and funny way. Hes a comedian.

His "new rule" segments are mostly on point. Just because he's white or his audience are boomers doesnt make any of his points less vaild

I find Maher pretty insufferable tbh. Maybe he had a niche and a legitimate audience at one point, but now it's just the same cancel culture woke culture SJW spiel over and over and over again. I think the only reason he still has a show is because he is liberal leaning while being "anti-woke".

Pedram got him about right imo. A classist, smug bully who thinks that "telling it like it is" is a character trait. Which would be somewhat redeemable if I felt that he was actually saying something of value, not just being an asshole to be an asshole.

Not that nothing he says is of value and to some extent there has to be room for dissenting voices in any crowd of people, even if I disagree with them...to that end, I'm happy Maher exists. But I generally ignore him.

I ashamedly used to look up to Maher back in my teenage years. Religulous was a big part in my turn towards atheism.

That's about the only influence he has had on me. As has been said, he's a relic of a bygone era.

CBarca wrote:I find Maher pretty insufferable tbh. Maybe he had a niche and a legitimate audience at one point, but now it's just the same cancel culture woke culture SJW spiel over and over and over again. I think the only reason he still has a show is because he is liberal leaning while being "anti-woke".

Pedram got him about right imo. A classist, smug bully who thinks that "telling it like it is" is a character trait. Which would be somewhat redeemable if I felt that he was actually saying something of value, not just being an asshole to be an asshole.

Not that nothing he says is of value and to some extent there has to be room for dissenting voices in any crowd of people, even if I disagree with them...to that end, I'm happy Maher exists. But I generally ignore him.

Agree with all of this. I mostly find him to be a smug asshole.

Also, shaping your whole schtick to be "anti-woke" rants is so boring. There was a moment maybe a year or two ago when every other comedian spend every show talking about cancel culture. Most of what they did was complain about hypothetical people complaining, insufferable after the first couple of ones.

McLewis wrote:I ashamedly used to look up to Maher back in my teenage years. Religulous was a big part in my turn towards atheism.

That's about the only influence he has had on me. As has been said, he's a relic of a bygone era.

I had my stint with Jordan Peterson and other "anti-Woke" personalities as well as a teenager. I think it's just something to do with wanting to be a contrarian/edgy during those years. I'm not proud of it, but I think I'm a better person for it listening and believing in that stuff and then coming around to a much different point of view

CBarca wrote:

McLewis wrote:I ashamedly used to look up to Maher back in my teenage years. Religulous was a big part in my turn towards atheism.

That's about the only influence he has had on me. As has been said, he's a relic of a bygone era.

I had my stint with Jordan Peterson and other "anti-Woke" personalities as well as a teenager. I think it's just something to do with wanting to be a contraction/edgy during those years. I'm not proud of it, but I think I'm a better person for it listening and believing in that stuff and then coming around to a much different point of view

As the saying goes, if you're not a libertarian when you're young you have no heart, if you're still one when you're old, you have no brain

Aren't you a libertarian, though, Hans? I was under the impression that you were a left- libertarian.

Hans is a filthy commie

Once we start with that it never ends, there is just no line that one can draw.

Sure, if someone does a questionable gesture you can tell him and that's fine. But once that principle is established people will always drive it to the next level. Example?

In Germany we say "Schwarzfahren" to entering public transportation without a valid ticket. Schwarz = black. Fahren = driving/going by. Basically we say "you're driving black".

It probably comes from "blackening out", as in illegaly blackening out parts of a contract. Or illegal activities being done at night time and the cliché robber wearing a black mask to cover his face. It definitely has as much to do with African/black people as the classic US Thanksgiving dinner has to do with Turkish people.

Yet here we are, the Woke police has turned it into a political debate whether it's okay or not to use that term.

I don't need to live in a society where every single word has to be thought over before speaking it out in fear of getting labeled as Hitler's reincarnation.

Another example is "gender neutral" language. English speakers won't quite get it as there is no teacher and "teachress". You only got "the teacher", whether it's a male or female one. But in German we have "der Lehrer" (male teacher) and "die Lehrerin" (female teacher). Same in Spanish with "el" and "la". Plural (mixed group or males only) would be "die Lehrer". Females only would be "die Lehrerinnen".

Somehow this is sexist now. The plural of male only or mixed group is the same. So the woke have invented abominations like "die Lehrer:innen" with a colon in the middle of the word. In spoken language you do a pause. "Lehrer ..." PAUSE "innen", to be inclusive. Imagine it like this in English: "The ac ... PAUSE "tresses". This is officially being spoken in German state television news.

If you wanna see a culture that is so saturated due to wealth and starts to dismantle itself, look no further than current Germany and its "issues". While we establish 200 professorships for gender studies and can't build an airport in less than 14 years, China is about to send people to Mars.

In french the neutral pronoun don't exist but they invent one called "iels"

Because when you talk of a group of men = ils
A group of women = elles
A mixed group = ils

So yes some feminist are offended that masculine prevails and they invent a neutral pronoun. I can see the logic behind tbh. But it represents this whole idea of "rebuilding society" so it gets discarded quickly by people in general.

But when the mayor of my city whose the typical woke-leftist politician announced investment for a neutral language communication she received a ton of shit. Because violence is raising, traffic is raising, cost of life is raising, at the time Covid was exponentially raising and she cares more for genders. Lost a lot of credibility. The immigrants who voted for her now think she's a cuckoo. Only the hipsters from university remain for her and she's expected to lose the upcoming election by a landslide. She runs the city like the politburo and that much does not pass here.

futbol wrote:Once we start with that it never ends, there is just no line that one can draw.

Sure, if someone does a questionable gesture you can tell him and that's fine. But once that principle is established people will always drive it to the next level. Example?

In Germany we say "Schwarzfahren" to entering public transportation without a valid ticket. Schwarz = black. Fahren = driving/going by. Basically we say "you're driving black".

It probably comes from "blackening out", as in illegaly blackening out parts of a contract. Or illegal activities being done at night time and the cliché robber wearing a black mask to cover his face. It definitely has as much to do with African/black people as the classic US Thanksgiving dinner has to do with Turkish people.

Yet here we are, the Woke police has turned it into a political debate whether it's okay or not to use that term.

I don't need to live in a society where every single word has to be thought over before speaking it out in fear of getting labeled as Hitler's reincarnation.

Another example is "gender neutral" language. English speakers won't quite get it as there is no teacher and "teachress". You only got "the teacher", whether it's a male or female one. But in German we have "der Lehrer" (male teacher) and "die Lehrerin" (female teacher). Same in Spanish with "el" and "la". Plural (mixed group or males only) would be "die Lehrer". Females only would be "die Lehrerinnen".

Somehow this is sexist now. The plural of male only or mixed group is the same. So the woke have invented abominations like "die Lehrer:innen" with a colon in the middle of the word. In spoken language you do a pause. "Lehrer ..." PAUSE "innen", to be inclusive. Imagine it like this in English: "The ac ... PAUSE "tresses". This is officially being spoken in German state television news.

If you wanna see a culture that is so saturated due to wealth and starts to dismantle itself, look no further than current Germany and its "issues". While we establish 200 professorships for gender studies and can't build an airport in less than 14 years, China is about to send people to Mars.

Fucking kidding me with this??

I'm all in for equal rights but just having qualified myself for B2 level Deutsch and still struggling, I could not care less to follow such new gender neutral rules.

The truth is China is speeding ahead of USA while they for the most part in their system are focusing way too much on such changes and not on the actual development of their generation. Already their education system is obsolete and hilarious for the most part and adding such focuses is not helping its case given they dont even teach skills one will use in real life.

Such developments are just being pedantic.

I feel like inclusive language is one of those things that gets a lot of attention in social media but rarely makes it out into the real world. In argentina it had a spike a few years ago and has since gradually become less of a thing. Even very left leaning people think it's ridiculous.

Quite happy to hear Cosmico and Viva agree on this as well especially Viva who is usually all for a great degree of liberal choices, draws a line here.

German is not as hard as people say I will tell you but the sheer detail, the German pride in the "exact" of their language and its variables make you want to delve down into the whole of what basically is the most logical language in the world, bar maybe the unnecessary adjective endings.

For a small group of people wanting to change that just really for the sake of it is ridiculous.

Feminine part of it does apply to genders (only to an extent) but its the most dominant of the three cases in Der Die Das so be content with that

Ive made a gradual change away over the years, from the stagnant and arbitrary choices of the right but only so far Im willing to go.

I mean, I don't speak German so this is all a little lost on me. Without understanding the context, I can't really make an informed decision on how I feel about it.

My initial thought is none of this sounds racist. If it is being taken that way, I highly doubt it's happening here in the US, where German is not spoken widely. Sounds like not just a European problem, but a uniquely German one.

McLewis wrote:I mean, I don't speak German so this is all a little lost on me. Without understanding the context, I can't really make an informed decision on how I feel about it.

My initial thought is none of this sounds racist. If it is being taken that way, I highly doubt it's happening here in the US, where German is not spoken widely. Sounds like not just a European problem, but a uniquely German one.

yeah this has nothing to do with the US because English is already gender neutral (ie inclusive). When you refer to a plural you say something like "y'all" which does not assume the gender of anyone in the group. The closest english gets to it is how some people get bothered about the use of "you guys", but there's many work arounds and it's not the norm, and some people argue "guys" is gender neutral too these days.

Anyways agreed this belongs in the PC thread.

VivaStPauli wrote:While I am usually a proud member of the woke police etc, in this I stand with futbol:
it is ridiculous, it looks dumb when you read it, and it sounds even dumber when you hear it.
TBH I would've been fine just using a generic female form for all nouns after like 9000 years of the patriarchy, my issue is more with destroying the flow of the language of Goethe than with the perceived wokeness.

Would rather say Lehrerinnen and exclude all men for the next thousand years than make a break mid-word for Lehrer:innen.

I fully agree with you guys. If you ask me, the plural is female anyways (die).

@Arq
German has got some archaic elements which make the language unnecessarly difficult. All nouns or stuff that's meant as a noun has to be written in capital letters. In subsentences, the verb order is at the end which is counterintuitive. In main sentence, the conjugated verb has to be in the second place. Subject can be located before or after the conjugated verb.
Instead of just two or no genders at all, we've got three. In latin or slav languages, there is a logic, a system where you can discern the article from the noun itself. For example, in slav languages, any noun ending with an o is neutral, with an i or a feminine, with any consonant ending masculine. German version is just pure memorisation. For example, a table is masculine (der Tisch). Why isn't it neutral? What's so manly about a tabel? Maybe, it's hard
A girl is called ein/das Mädchen, neutral The list goes on. The clue is without exactly knowing the correct gender from memory forget about speaking proper German.
I'd be very happy if the eggheads would try to correct those issues. Instead, they're making the language even more contraintuitive.
For all I care they can use all female plural, just stop f***ing up the language.

Seems like it's a uniquely German issue. In polish teacher, teachress, teachers and teachressess are all different words. Its way more flexible in that way although not gender neutral like english

"He's got a clean water charity, delivers food to Haiti- what have you done Vox headline writer?"

And yet he is always getting pulled over by the woke police

BarrileteCosmico wrote:I feel like inclusive language is one of those things that gets a lot of attention in social media but rarely makes it out into the real world. In argentina it had a spike a few years ago and has since gradually become less of a thing. Even very left leaning people think it's ridiculous.

Included me

Italian is an inflectional language, I mean it declines nouns, articles, adjectives, etc. based on number and gender (male or female).

In recent years, the increased sensitivity to social issues has developed debate about the inclusiveness of language.

In fact Italian languages uses male gender for the plural, and this is believed to not include people with a different / complex gender identity.

lately you can read weird tendency to put the asterisk or schwa in these situations, for example, tutt* (tutti =all . ), but I consider it just as a provocation.
Every language changes ( evolves ? ) slowly "from below" and it tends to "simplify" over time (a linguist can confirm this ), certainly not to complicate itself by introducing new morphemes.

Another issue about the Italian language is about professions.  Many professions are called exclusively with the male term, even though it exsists its female equivalent. For example lawyer is avvocato for male and avvocata for female, but you 'll hear often just first term. Same for architetto/ a, ingegnere/a.
Well here I am very much in favor of using the female equivalent. The terms exists and so I  don't get why I shouldn't use it.
But I feel there is sometimes a problem on how same woman prefers to be definied in a working environment and so you've not idea what's the proper term
The most sexist people may be women themselves, they too have internalized an inferiority complex. Several women consider certain professions more "male" and so they consider the female version as more "demeaning".

BarrileteCosmico wrote:I feel like inclusive language is one of those things that gets a lot of attention in social media but rarely makes it out into the real world. In argentina it had a spike a few years ago and has since gradually become less of a thing. Even very left leaning people think it's ridiculous.

Agreed. I have had 0 instances where it has come up in my life offline except for people referencing the concept or outrage around it. I've never met anyone in person that speaks in way that reflects changes in the basic language structure, in english or in spanish.

IMO this is one of those issues that is hugely overblown online and in the media. Perhaps in certain countries it affects daily life (US?) but here its non-existant. Its a bit of an "imported" problem.

must-read

Historians who want to understand our decade will have to read this. From ⁦@anneapplebaum⁩ https://t.co/4nqjRei7Ka

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) September 3, 2021

That was a rather disappointing read honestly.

It read as apologia for all who have been been held accountable for shitty things they've said and done.

The writer leaned far too into the slippery slope narrative. For me, people are being held accountable by HR departments and the court of public opinion specifically because the court of law can't. When shitty things are said and done, ways will be found to ensure accountability occurs, even outside of established law.

Imagine thinking anything that David Brooks writes is a must-read.

@Myesyats no offense bro but you really need to change people who you look up to as source of opinions and information, Bill Maher and now Brooks?