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Jun 29, 2023Liked by Anna Rosenblum Palmer

As a GenXer I resent being called Boomer, does that count??

Thx for the post. Definitely food for thought.

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Here is a list that someone directed me to recently when I made a mistake:

https://itconnect.uw.edu/guides-by-topic/identity-diversity-inclusion/inclusive-language-guide/

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I'm also working on raising awareness about the terms I don't even realize (yet) that have ugly roots. Case in point: Master Bedroom. I would love a collaboratively developed, educational list of these things. I'm sure it exists somewhere. I'm going to look that up now.

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It feels like the earth moves sometimes with vocabulary. A sudden shift, not an incremental one. The reality is that is was actual incremental, it's just that it has to pile up to build pressure to push it into the collective consciousness. Or majority consciousness. Or my brain anyway. One thing I noticed recently was shifting word usage specific to certain fields of discipline. I saw some words/phrases being phased out for engineering... "master/slave controller" seemed an obvious one for the chopping black but "black box" (for modeling system behavior) is still fine I think. The word 'black' is there, and it makes people nervous, but I think 'black' was chosen as something impossible to look into. And maybe because of "black body radiation" from physics? Black has a specific meaning there, it absorbs all light (and radiates all light). But "black box"... I'm not entirely sure.

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After having grammar beaten into me (can we say that?), I struggle with they/them when writing because there's a part of my brain screaming PLURAL! And that's the only reason. It is hard to unlearn what was tattooed on our brains. It's muscle memory, not an intended affront. That doesn't stop me from trying. But I will definitely f**k right up. Yesterday, I restacked Lyz Lenz's piece on the whales and quoted it with, "I am White Gladys." And then realized that just made me sound like a bigot, like a Super Karen. But Gladys is the orcanizer of the yacht attacks! Anyway... I never sucked my thumb; it was my foot that I'd put in my mouth. It's remained there (figuratively, because that's a word and it means the opposite of literally, FFS) ever since. xo

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