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by 8organicbits
1484 days ago
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I'll share an example, as I suspect some people haven't felt excluded by language before. It's tough to understand if you haven't. As a parent my role has shifted to be more involved with my kindergarten aged kid. The parents like to organize events and socialize. However, the language used is often "mom" instead of "parent". My understanding is that they aren't intending to exclude "dad", as they are using "mom" as shorthand for "most active parent". My involvement in the group has been lower as a result, it's tough to feel like you may not be included. Certain language, to varying degrees, can offend or exclude your reader. You don't need to care, but it does impact the reader and could detract from the effectiveness of your docs. |
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But here lies the problem with "inclusive language": many schools argue that the terms mother, father, and parent are not inclusive.
Instead, terms like "caregiver" or "responsible adult" should be used, to include children who are raised by grandparents or adoped. The desire was to make sure father's were recognized. In a backwards way, suddenly no one was recognized.
If it's bad for society to not recognize the value of fatherhood, is this not a complete rejection of parenthood, and exclusion of children who have a nuclear family? But when you dig into the inclusivity crowd, you keep finding ridiculous things, like the idea that the nuclear family is white supremacy, and needs to be dismantled by erasing the language that supports systemic racism. Children with two biological parents are privileged, so they can yield their privilege and not have their family acknowledged with the terminology used.
Just keep pulling on the thread, and now we're referring to "birthing people" instead of women.