Picking Your Battles
Oct. 16th, 2020 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI hate the "OMG YOU USED THE WRONG WORD" thing in general-- not the "don't use slurs" part, slurs are totally reasonable to be upset about, but the thing where something was the correct term a few years ago and *now* the social justice establishment has decided that the word is Deeply Offensive. The constantly-evolving terminology is a way of excluding those who don't have the in-group connection to keep up, and to anyone who's not deeply immersed in the movement it makes the movement look petty.
As in this instance, where there are about a thousand reasons to object to Amy Coney Barrett, and yet the one certain circles seem to have decided on is "She used 'sexual preference' when the correct phrase is 'sexual orientation'!"
Whether or not that's a dog-whistle (and I'm not totally convinced it is given the number of people *within* the community I've seen use the two phrases interchangeably) do you realize how that makes you look to *other* people? People who are probably going to look at that and go "Oh, the people objecting to her are petty people fussing over language" and use that to dismiss all the legitimate human rights stuff?
(Sure, the deep-red people are going to dismiss it no matter what you say, but there actually is a decent chunk of the country that just doesn't think too hard about this stuff either way.)
As in this instance, where there are about a thousand reasons to object to Amy Coney Barrett, and yet the one certain circles seem to have decided on is "She used 'sexual preference' when the correct phrase is 'sexual orientation'!"
Whether or not that's a dog-whistle (and I'm not totally convinced it is given the number of people *within* the community I've seen use the two phrases interchangeably) do you realize how that makes you look to *other* people? People who are probably going to look at that and go "Oh, the people objecting to her are petty people fussing over language" and use that to dismiss all the legitimate human rights stuff?
(Sure, the deep-red people are going to dismiss it no matter what you say, but there actually is a decent chunk of the country that just doesn't think too hard about this stuff either way.)
