Viktor, On 06-Apr-21 07:08, Viktor Dukhovni wrote: >> On Apr 5, 2021, at 2:49 PM, Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> You are free to disagree about the claims by many individuals that the uses of the terms master/slave are offensive. >> The claims are not absurd, and attempting as you do to dismiss them as absurd is inappropriate at best, and possibly worse. > > To be judged to be an offensive term, a term must be used and understood > to insult, demean, denigrate, ... > > There's a rich supply of offensive terms in the English language, but > master and slave are not among them. > > Show me a recent (last 50 years) documentary, newspaper article, book, play, > film, in which someone intends emotional injury upon another by calling them > "slave"? (Sorry, BDSM literature doesn't count). "Intends" is irrelevant. It's the listener's/reader's reaction that determines whether there's emotional injury. > Where are the offensive uses of those terms? I don't know where you live, Victor, but having lived for a couple of years in the US, and like most other people being aware of the deep impact of slavery, the Jim Crow era, and continued discrimination and racist systems in the USA, I have no difficulty at all with the concept that casual use of the word "slave" would distress the great-grandchildren of slaves. That doesn't mean they'd tell you about their distress, of course. The USA isn't the world, of course, but it is a large fraction of the English-mother-tongue world, so it counts for something. > I have a Master's degree, is that offensive? Nobody has, to my knowledge, suggested that. It's use of the master/slave metaphor that is in question. > This whole exercise is mere posture. It reeks of "Yes minister" logic, > we must do something about injustice, this is something, therefore we > must do it. No. The logic is that we should do something about avoidable offence and distress. And that's an ethical "should", not a interoperability "MUST". Brian Carpenter
