The Night Riders of the Language Police

The mini-minds of Silicon Valley have set out to wreck English prose. In a despotic and totalitarian act they have taken it upon themselves to mutilate the English language, thereby to make English writing into a grotesque distortion, the kind that will damage your mind and cause you to give up reading. Writers beware, your prose is going to become illiterate.

For the record, language usage is one of the freest of free markets. Now, however, the tech titans of Silicon Valley have taken it upon themselves to take over the free market, the better to impose their jejune ideologies on everyone.

Case in point, Google is now imposing new and inclusive language in documents. Physicist Lawrence Krauss explains in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

Google has created guidelines for “inclusive” language in software and documentation that describe how software should reflect the hypersensitive feelings of programmers who are immersed in woke culture and fixated on victimhood and offense. Apparently these guidelines will be enforced in the future in all new open-source projects, and the company will scrub earlier versions as well. Various other technology groups, including some at universities and professional associations, have developed their own guidelines. Microsoft recently introduced a feature for its popular Word software that can ferret out and replace noninclusive words and phrases.

It would be nice indeed if it were merely a question of thin skin. That is, if it were merely about the hypersensitivities of woke millennials. In truth, there is more to it. These people want to own the language. Since most of them do not know how to read or write, they do not care how good the writing is.

Krauss continues:

The list of terms excluded in the name of inclusion often borders on ridiculous. I was amused to picture some millennials, programmed by years of training in diversity, equity and inclusion, sitting around at a sensitivity-training meeting coming up with this list.

Krauss points out the self-defeating absurdity of the project. First, the people who are straining their mini minds to exert despotic control over the way you use language are not engaging in more important tech projects:

This is all rather silly, but there are at least two underlying problems with scrubbing words from language. First, it’s a waste of time. While groups like the Association for Computing Machinery waste time debating whether the term “quantum supremacy”—the threshold where a quantum computer first solves a problem a classical computer cannot solve in any feasible time—should be replaced because it alludes to “crimes against humanity,” computer scientists in China and elsewhere are working to achieve quantum supremacy.

Perhaps more importantly, cleansing the language of colorful phrases will impoverish communication. When people risk having their syntax corrected by a dimwitted woke millennial they will be less likely to communicate with said person. And this will also diminish prose writing, to the point where people will be less likely to bother with it. Using bad grammar is offensive; it rankles the educated mind; it ought not to be imposed by people who know nothing of grammar. 

Sadly, the less people read the more stupid they will become. That means, the more easy it will be to control their minds.

More important, many colorful phrases—the very thing that makes language vivid and enjoyable—too often now are perceived as dangerous, and excising them risks diminishing the possibilities of communication. Few of us would want to read a novel devoid of colorful wording. And for anyone who has had to read computer documentation, a hint of humor would be a welcome addition. Give us, not to mention the smartphones of the future, a break.

In the same context, the Daily Caller reports that the New York Times has eliminated women from its pages. So much for women's liberation. Now it's going to be menstruater's liberation.

Again, it is tyrannical and despotic, designed in order not to hurt the feelings of trans women or even of trans men who continue to menstruate.

It would be hilarious if it were not pathetic. Unfortunately, it is not satire.

The New York Times referred to women as “menstruators” for the first time in a Thursday article on changing attitudes towards feminine hygiene products.

“New menstruators,” the article said in reference to young girls who have recently started their periods, “often turn to a parent for products and advice — now parents can hand over more than a disposable pad or tampon.”

The article avoided using feminine pronouns when noting that “the average menstruator can use thousands of tampons in their lifetime.”

The author did not use the words “woman” or “female” at any point in the article, and the article only says “girls” in reference to two specific girls the NYT interviewed for the piece. Instead, the author says “people” when referring to women experiencing menstruation periods and “young people” to describe girls experiencing menstruation.

“Young menstruators are having a completely different experience in terms of managing their periods with reusables throughout their life,” Michela Bedard, executive director of Period Inc., told the NYT.

Dare we point out that the morons who edit the New York Times made one significant mistake. They failed to notice that menstruation, like the word menopause, contains the word-- men. How can we have that? Isn’t that a sign of patriarchal control over the female body.

So, I propose that henceforth we use the words personstruation and, for good measure, personopause. Don’t you feel better knowing that the female body has been liberated from patriarchal verbal oppression?