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[SocJus] Yahoo: "Why Dictionary.com will no longer use 'slave' as a noun to describe people: 'It's dehumanizing'"
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dehumanizing
Slaves, by definition, are human. For most of history and in most of the rest of the world outside the US, slavery was not even about skin color or ethnicity. That doesn't make slavery right or good or defensible - it absolutely was not - but the attitudes towards this topic are so laughably Americentric that people's idea of just how bad slavery was for thousands of years of human history and why is warped beyond recognition.
Edit: I think people legitimately forget that for the vast majority of human history, nobody's lives mattered.
Edit2: Because this is relevant and it's been a while since I busted it out. The euphemism treadmill rolls on.
ID: gqr07lm -
So 2020's of Dictionary.com to display their unreliability.
ID: gqqnhngI wouldn't use Dictionary.com anyway. For me its always going to be Webster's and the Oxford English Dictionary.
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So if we're no longer acknowledging that some people were slaves (or still ARE in some cases) does that mean racism is now over and solved? And how does this change things for people who still are slaves? China's apparently pretty big on that, but they aren't black slaves and the media loves Xi Jinping so apparently fuck you if you're a Uighur, believe in Falun Gong or just don't like Communism. Wonder how they'll react as China intensifies its exploitation of sub-Saharan Africa (where much of the world's modern slavery still exists).
ID: gqqp1eiThere are more slaves today than they were at any time in history. This is why "being inclusive" basically means being an orthodox, judgemental and obnoxious cunt, because they want to gloss over reality with language.
ID: gqqs7awGoing past the headline, they're just changing "Bob was a slave," to "Bob was an enslaved person." While it's kinda pointless they're not denying that slavery occurred.
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"Tubman is now identified as having "escaped slavery," an edit which Kelly calls "subtle" but "profound.""
When you huff your own farts a bit too much and nobody is in the car to call out you smell like a corpse.
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Black man: "For decades my people were slaves!"
White twenty-something college girl: "Gasp. You can't say the s-word! It's dehumanizing and offensive!" -
Did they just marginalized the BDSM community?
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"We have a responsibility as a dictionary,"
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
1984 was a cautionary tale, not a how to guide.
ID: gqrd3hpread another book
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Isn't the job of a dictionary to state... the exact definition of words? If people were slave in the past, then why not state that slaves were... slaves? This is so wrong on so many level... Are they trying to rewrite history 1984 style or what? Even for the wokest of the woke it doesn't make sense, this is literally whitewashing history and I hate using that word...
edit: also as pointed in the comments, "dictionary.com", while a nice domain name, has absolutely zero academic credentials or relevance and is as meaningful as a wikipedia page, still people are driven to this site thanks to google shenanigans... That website isn't maintained by accredited linguists, it's just a content farm that masquerades as a dictionary.
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Going from using a noun to using an adjective.
A completely pointless signal of virtue.
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"Slaves never existed, so don't mention it", doesn't seem a good way to honor slaves and prevent slavery from happening again.
ID: gqrh8peCan you imagine explaining this all to a slave back in the day? Terrible disservice indeed.
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And just like that, Disconary.com ended slavery forever.
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So what do we call slaves?
ID: gqr4cp7Unpaid workers.
ID: gqrn6wmKamala's victims.
ID: gqretevPrisoners with jobs.
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Do these morons believe slavery ended entirely after the Civil War? Because it's still happening even today hell, Libya's became one of the largest slave markets as a result of Gaddafi's death and the shit show that followed.
ID: gqrafmzAnd Obama did that.
ID: gqr92k9"We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil. Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us back doesn’t seem crazy to me." - Neera Tanden on Libya.
Don't you know they owe america for liberating their (slave) markets?
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So officially revisionism huh? Nice; yeah fuck history right can't learn anything from that. Oh and couldn't there be a socjus case made that this is kink-shaming people in the BDSM community?
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You're not a slave if you can't say the word
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of course it's dehumanizing. that's half the reason it's so horrible
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I think dictionary.com needs to look up what "dehumanizing" means.
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Has anyone seen the "slang" section of Dictionary? It's like was written by angry SJWs who got downvoted on Urban Dictionary.
It's one long angry screed. It's not even trying to be professional. I think the suits just hired some purple haired Humanities major and didn't check on their work. "Help us compete with urban dictionary!"
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Not using a word doesn't change the fact that it was common for thousands of years and still exists today. Ostriches, the lot of them.
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So historically slaves haven't been human? That's pretty dehumanizing...
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Rewriting history 1984 style
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That's... the point...
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And just like that slavery never happened, there is no racism, and we can all go back to normal.
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Uh, what? It's not exactly a positive word (except maybe in programming). Slaves have always existed and they still exist. What are they trying to do?
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Next up: using the word “slav” to describe people is dehumanizing.
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I would urge all of you to buy a physical dictionary, preferably one from 10+ years ago. An encyclopedia too if you have the space for one.
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Yes, slavery is dehumanizing. That's why it's bad. That's why the end of slavery tracked directly with the rise of belief in the concept of human rights.
But you can't describe that without calling it what it is.
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The word comes from the Slavic people. You literally can't make this shit up.