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[–] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah this place is a little better than reddit in terms of nuance and charitable interpretations, but we still have our share of toxic assholes who will deliberately misconstrue anything you say so they can shame you and put you down just to feel smug/superior.

Sometimes it's not easy to determine what to ignore and what to learn from, but yeah using "female" as a noun is definitely a big no-no these days, even offline.

And honestly, increasingly I've started to notice it expanding to include using the term correctly as an adjective, which is annoying, but I've had to adjust my language accordingly. Now I say things like "a woman doctor" even though it's incorrect and sounds awkward, because I'm afraid to say "a female doctor," lest I be shunned.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    Same, it's to the point where I now say stuff like "my male friends yadda yadda, but my woman friends blah blah," which sounds absolutely ridiculous but gives people one less thing they can use to totally discount me as a person just for using an entirely innocuous word they don't like.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    Yeah we really can't downplay the severity, cause that kind of reputational damage, even when it's unwarranted, can follow a person for a long time.

    And ultimately that just makes the left weaker. Because someone who could otherwise be a charismatic leader, a persuasive or inspiring speaker, a brilliant thinker, a strategic planner, or an effective community organizer, might be shunned into obscurity because he said something along the lines of "I would prefer to see a female therapist" and people thought that was somehow sexist...

    And how many people like that have we already lost due to this BS? How many are hiding in basements right now, waiting for the day they can actually play an active role in the progressive movement?

    I think that day is coming, because people are waking up. But there's still some pretty firm resistance in pockets, and it could turn out to be enough to subvert the whole progress that's been made in that regard.

    We'll see how it goes though...

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