The word “hate” and everything ending in “phobia” should be retired immediately. They have been overused and no longer mean anything.
Let’s proceed under the assumption that most people are good and disagreement is normal.
When people use this language, let’s refuse to engage and say, “it’s not OK to talk like this.”
What would happen if we applied exactly the same logic to the words male and female?
LikeLike
Then we’d be confusing abstract concepts with physiological reality.
LikeLike
“Then we’d be confusing abstract concepts with physiological reality.”
That isn’t true at all. All of the things mentioned, being male, female, hate, and things ending in “phobia” are all physiological realities.
Male and female are easily discerned physiologically through examination of chromosomes, while emotional states including diagnoses of phobias may be discerned using an EEG machine that measures electrical activity in the brain.
Anyway, the point that I wanted to make is that the problem isn’t that words lose meaning, but rather that people across society in general allow the misuse of words by ignorant, stupid, and/or selfish people who are so arrogant that they think that their opinion of what a word means is what it means, when it isn’t.
So, the right thing to do when a person tries to misuse a word is for you to interpret the word correctly and then speak to the person according to the meaning and sense of what they just said.
LikeLike
I see what you did there.
C-.
LikeLike
Almost OT: Cancel culture and East Germany…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1373761707500257280.html
I would say the early offline versions of cancel culture were more like the cultural revolution and the current online versions are Zersetzung all the way…
LikeLike
“Weaponising” is the one which annoys me. People saying that Rowling is “weaponising her trauma.”
LikeLike
God, I hate that one. Also, “war.” “War on COVID,” so ridiculous.
LikeLike
” Also, “war.” “War on COVID,””
“War” is the American go to metaphor and helps explain a lot of various and seemingly unrelated phenomena.
This is only possible because it’s been so long since conflicts were fought on American soil – people in countries where armed conflict and the long misery that follows are much less hesitant to want to declare “war” on people who disagree with them or on their own bodies (as in referring to treatment for serious illness as ‘battles’) etc.
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment